It’s Sukkot—which lasts seven days in Israel and eight days outside of Israel. A sukkah is the temporary dwelling in which farmers would live during harvesting in ancient days. Throughout the holiday, meals are eaten inside the sukkah and some choose to sleep there. During Sukkot, it is customary to read Kohelet, or Ecclesiastes, to remind us how fleeting life is, and that we should seek a deeper meaning besides the fulfillment of material goods.

No one knows for sure who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, but it has been traditionally attributed to King Solomon. Orit Gidali imagines king Solomon, Kohelet, as the author in the poem Kohelet.

Text:

Kohelet from Twenty Girls to Envy Me. New and Selected Poems of Orit Gidali. Translated Marcela Sulak. University of Texas Press, 2016.

Six Songs for Tamar by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Harold Schimmel, in Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems. Sheep Meadow Press.

Stop your sorrowing, suffering soul from Vulture in a Cage. Poems by Solomon Ibn Gavirol. translated by Raymond P. Sheindlin. Archipelago Press, 2017.

Music:

Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds