Rabbi Ari Hart on questions G-d asks us-
“Don't go to G-d looking for the answers - the afterlife, the meaning of suffering, etc...
The odds are that you'll join the other 99 percent of people who have ever lived who never got the answers. Trying to get the "answers" will most likely leave you either a fundamentalist or frustrated.
Instead, go to G-d for the questions, the questions G-d asks us in the Bible. "Where are you? Where is your brother? What is your name?" Listen for them. Those questions, more than any answer, have the power to change your life and to change the world.”
American novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote: "[O]f all I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man's life upon this earth—and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound
Abraham Lincoln quoted Ecclesiastes 1:4 in his address to the reconvening Congress on December 1, 1862, during the darkest hours of the American Civil War: "'One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.'...Our strife pertains to ourselves—to the passing generations of men; and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation."
The opening of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 59 references Ecclesiastes 1:9–10.
Leo Tolstoy's Confession describes how the reading of Ecclesiastes affected his life.
The title of Ernest Hemingway's first novel The Sun Also Rises was taken from Ecclesiastes 1:5.
The main character in George Bernard Shaw's novel The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God meets Koheleth "known to many as Ecclesiastes".
In the dystopian novel "Fahrenheit 451," Ray Bradbury's main character, Montag, memorizes much of Ecclesiastes and Revelation in a world where books are forbidden and burned.
|
Elokim |
40 |
Never mentions any other names of Hashem. Same as first perek of Berashis |
|
Adam |
49 |
Connects to Berashis, once is referring to Adam |
|
Ani |
29 |
Many of the usages are unnecessary 1:12-14 |
|
Tachat Hashemesh |
27 |
Only place in the Tanach this is used |
|
Tachat Hashamayim |
3 |
|
|
Tov |
45 |
|
|
Ra |
35 |
|
|
Kol |
78 |
|
|
Amal |
34 |
|
|
Hevel |
38 |
Used 35 times total the rest of Tanach |
|
Simcha |
17 |
Used 16 times in all of the Chumash |