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October 16, 2024

A Great Hebrew Poet Explicates Ecclesiastes

Leah Goldberg’s “Songs of the End of the Road”.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, there is a widespread practice of reading the book of Ecclesiastes in synagogue on the Sabbath that falls during the seven-day holiday of Sukkot, which begins this evening. Wendy Zierler examines this book through the lens of the celebrated Hebrew poet Leah Goldberg’s 1954 “Shirei Sof ha-Derekh,” (“Songs of the End of the Road”). To Zierler, this tripartite poem must be read as a midrash [rabbinic exegesis] on Ecclesiastes; its old man (zaken) is meant to parallel the speaker in the biblical book, who, according to tradition, is an elderly King Solomon:

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October 16, 2024

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  5. A Great Hebrew Poet Explicates Ecclesiastes

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