Time to Sob, Time to Dance
Kohelet 3:4
‘Turn, Turn, Turn’, Pete Seeger’s hit song, made popular by the Byrds quotes today’s epic poem by the biblical poet Kohelet: "To Everything There is a Season". This timeless classic poem includes Seven consecutive verses that list a total of 28 contrasting life experiences. We can read it as both good news and bad - no matter how good or bad things are, nothing lasts forever:
לַכֹּל זְמָן וְעֵת לְכׇל־חֵפֶץ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמָיִם׃
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
Kohelet 3:1
Rabbi Alan Lew combined this Jewish wisdom with the Buddhist notion of non-attachment when he commented on these verses:
“Everything rises and falls. The task is not to cling to summer nor recoil from winter, but to live fully in each moment.”
On the Jewish calendar this year, as it meets our Below the Bible Belt journey - the holiday of Purim, transitioning us from winter to spring, under the full moon of upside-down reality and revelry, meet this third chapter of the Kohelet. So much of Purim is about the binaries - Haman vs. Mordechai, fear and joy, life and death.
At a time in the world where war and violence keep sowing sorrow and where our political realities seem upside down and baffling beyond familiar territories - how do the Scroll of Kohelet help us make sense of the Scroll of Esther, and vice versa?
Maybe it’s about a joined reminder to aspire to a state of being that not only lives fully in each moment but also transcends some of the harsh and firm attachments to identities, experiences and how we respond.
The verse that speaks to me the most this year is in the middle of the poem:
עֵת לִבְכּוֹת וְעֵת לִשְׂחוֹק עֵת סְפוֹד וְעֵת רְקוֹד׃
A time for weeping and a time for laughing,
A time for wailing and a time for dancing;
Kohelet 3:4
With all that’s going on - laughing and dancing this Purim seems like a tall order and a tough stance. Even as I celebrate my people’s resilience, survival and creative energies that got us through so many generations of bad and good times - I am also painfully aware of the shadows of purim that perpetuate traumas and valorize victimhood in violent ways that keep fueling cycles of fear, hate and fighting.
From Kohelet’s sober and even somewhat cynical approach to life I come to this Purim seeking new ways of reconciling opposites and blurring familiar convictions, if even for a night. The Talmudic teaching for Purim is that we are supposed to be blurring right and wrong, possibly - optionally - with the aid of a sacred plant such as wine or other spirits, for just one night. In the blurring we may find some common ground, perhaps a bit more empathy, with lesser loved parts of self and others in the world.
Through masks and music, talking and eating, we are encouraged to celebrate our relationships and contemplate new, other ways of engaging with the world.
Maybe the verses of Koehelt aren’t always about different seasons and actions, but also about the ways we sometimes blend them together. We can dance and weep, laugh and lament.
At least on Purim.
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, beloved teacher, saw Kohelet 3 as a mystical teaching about Ein Sof, the infinite divine reality beyond opposites. He taught that the constant oscillation between life and death, joy and sorrow, is not about division but about interconnectedness.
“We do not escape time, but by embracing its dance, we align with the eternal.”
The Zohar reads these verses through the lens of tikkun, repair. Rather than opposing forces locked in conflict, the pairs in Kohelet 3 reflect the harmony of divine energy in motion.
“These are not contradictions but complements, for one cannot exist without the other.”
Maybe the scrolls will reveal what needs to be revealed, together, so that we live these words, and celebrate these sacred days under heavens of more mercy and on an earth where more empathy is what matters most. This Purim maybe we will dance with all our parts and all our poetry and find the ways to fuse the parts and hearts together, and keep turn, turn, turning. Turn it up:
עֵת לֶאֱהֹב וְעֵת לִשְׂנֹא עֵת מִלְחָמָה וְעֵת שָׁלוֹם׃
Kohelet 3:8.
Wishing us a meaningful, joyful, safe and peaceful Purim.
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