Two talmudic passages suggest that ancient rabbinic authorities considered removing the book of Ecclesiastes from the canon, and the standard midrashic commentary on the book states outright that some of its ideas “lean toward heresy.” While medieval exegetes found ways to harmonize the book with accepted doctrines, one brilliant and idiosyncratic Italian rabbi simply threw up his hands. Martin Lockshin writes:

Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal; 1800–1865) was a prolific poet, thinker, linguist, and scholar who composed Bible commentaries that, while rejecting most of the teachings of 19th-century biblical criticism, had a decidedly modern flavor. Most of his life, he taught Bible in the modern, Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Padua.

When he was twenty years old, he wrote a commentary on Ecclesiastes which he did not publish. . . . Luzzatto [therein] argues that Ecclesiastes rejects divine personal providence and feels that what happens to people is a result of fate. . . . Luzzatto opposes the final decision of the classical rabbis to include Ecclesiastes in the canon, and he supports the earlier rabbis at the beginning of the first millennium, who, according to classical rabbinic literature, wanted to exclude Ecclesiastes from the Bible.

Thirty-six years later, a mature Luzzatto sent the manuscript to a publisher, with a note explaining that his views of the book had changed, and that he had a newfound appreciation for it. To some extent Luzzatto’s new view mirrors the traditional understanding that King Solomon wrote the Song of Songs in his youth and Ecclesiastes in his old age. Luzzatto wrote:

I hereby apologize and ask forgiveness from the author of Ecclesiastes (whoever he may be). For in the days of my youth . . . I was angry at [him] for saying “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What benefit do people receive from all their efforts?” (1:2–3). . . . Of all the many books that I have seen and read, very few were as valuable to me as the book of Ecclesiastes. . . . From it, I derived the approach that guides me to this very day, that for people whose lives are dedicated to their own benefit, they are vanity and their existence is vanity. But people whose lives and efforts are dedicated to helping others, their lives are not vanity.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.