The Human Condition—A Philosophical Reading of Ecclesiastes
A Special Video Series
with Dr. Micah Goodman
The Hebrew Bible is about the collective experience of the Jewish people. But this experience is curiously absent from Sefer Kohelet, the Book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes, attributed by tradition to King Solomon, is not about nations, history, or covenant. It is about the individual. It is a classic example of what biblical scholars call “wisdom literature”: a stark meditation on life, death, joy, and suffering—or what it means to be human.
To the Israeli philosopher Micah Goodman, Ecclesiastes poses one question above all others: Why is suffering an inescapable part of the human experience? The writer of Kohelet tastes every pleasure, achieves every success—and still suffers. Why?
In this special video series (originally recorded as a live Zoom course for the Tikvah), Dr. Goodman guides us through the book’s startling answers to this question, and to many others. Together we will explore:
➣ What makes Ecclesiastes unlike any other book in the Hebrew Bible➣ Its provocative view of death and the afterlife
➣ Its ultimate biblical argument for living in the moment
➣ How Ecclesiastes’s philosophy can both liberate the individual and paralyze society
This video series is sponsored by The Kress Project on the Hebrew Bible,
Camille and Sandy Kress
Dr. Micah Goodman
Micah Goodman was named by the Jerusalem Post as one of the 50 most influential Jews in 2017, and by the Israeli magazine Liberal as one of the 100 most influential Israelis in 2019. He is the author of three books on classical Jewish thought—Moses’s Final Speech, The Dream of the Kuzari, and The Secrets of the Guide for the Perplexed, as well as multiple works on contemporary Israeli issues and ideas, including The Wondering Jew, Catch 67, and The Attention Revolution. His most recent book is The Eighth Day: Israel After October 7 (Hebrew).
We kindly suggest a donation of $100 to support Tikvah’s important educational programming on Jewish and Zionist ideas. The Tikvah Fund is a 501(c)(3) charity classified as a private operating foundation. Your gift will help ensure that we can continue our work:
➣ Bringing the greatest Jewish teachers to tens of thousands of students worldwide
➣ Defending Israel’s moral legitimacy with intellectual clarity and unapologetic pride
➣ Shining a light on the poisonous ideas of anti-Semitism—and showing how they threaten not only Jews, but also Western civilization itself
➣ And preparing a new generation of Jews to live with dignity, purpose, and conviction.
All course sessions are pre-recorded. You will be emailed a link with every video in this series upon registration, and you can watch them at your own pace, as many times as you like. If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, please contact us at info@tikvah.org.
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