Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters
Sukkot, Ecclesiastes, Mortality, and Delayed Gratification
Send your bread forth upon the waters; for after many days you will find it. (Ecclesiastes 11:1)
Cast you your bread upon the waters. Do goodness and kindness to a person about whom your heart tells you that you will never see him again, like a person who casts his food upon the water’s surface. (Rashi on Ecclesiastes 11:1)
Due to the merit of Rabbi Perida’s great devotion to his students, a Divine Voice emerged and said to him: Is it preferable to you that four hundred years be added to your life, or that you and the rest of your generation will merit the World-to-Come? He said: I prefer that I and my generation merit the World-to-Come. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to the angels: Give him both; he shall live a very long life and he and the rest of his generation will merit the World-to-Come. (Eruvin 54b)
So Moses the servant of the Lord died there, in the land of Moab, at the command of the Lord. (Deuteronomy (34:5)
The conclusion of the Torah coincides with the conclusion of Moses’s life and the culmination of Sukkot, taking us into Simchat Torah. Sukkot, which is a holiday about the temporary, offers an opportunity to reflect on our existential transience. With the death of Moses and the ending of the Torah we experience the Sukkah quality here, too. The sacred text in which we make a home proves to be a mere hut. The leaders on whom we rely cannot be with us, in person, forever.
The reading of Ecclesiastes on Sukkot underscores the theme of transience and its connection to mortality and conclusion. Midrashic tradition offers that King Solomon wrote the book in his old age. Having tried all things, the reflective King wonders what, if anything, has meaning, what, if anything endures? In the straightforward reading of Ecclesiastes, the answer is “nothing.” Everything is vapor. In the rabbinic teaching, there are things which stand the test of time—but we only get there by first appreciating the default vanity of this world.
In Rashi’s interpretation of Ecclesiastes 11:1 we can expect our great selfless deeds to come back to us in some way. An an act of kindness does pay back even if the payback period takes decades. But that’s not why we should be kind. The message is nuanced: do great deeds not for reward and your reward will come. One way to think about this paradox is to introduce the frame of a time horizon. If you do something that will only yield benefit in the long run, you can effectively write it down as having no reward. When we deny our mortality we may focus on the short term. But when we contemplate our mortality, we ask about the long-term value of our deeds, and we consider that we may not be the ones to directly benefit.
One of the great teachings of Jewish life is delayed gratification. The practice of selfless acts of kindness instantiate this value—caring for the sick or taking care of a corpse or hosting strangers—won’t usually yield reward from the person cared for. Do it anyways.
In Eruvin 54a, on which I wrote another piece this week, we witness the selfless act of a patient teacher who sacrifices his own time to ensure that the next generation learns. He then sacrifices a life extension of 400 years to bring merit in the World to Come to his entire generation. According to Rashi on Ecclesiastes 11:1, these acts of self-effacement are not mere sacrifices. They are only apparent sacrifices. They are spiritual gambits.
The teaching of altruism is not for everyone, but the teaching of deferred compensation may speak more broadly, and that is one way to think rabbinically about the idea that everything is vain. Everything short term is vain. But doing deeds which involve self transcendence are not in vain and yield a greater longevity, a greater terminal value. 400 years may seem like a long time, but Eruvin 54a makes the case that even this duration may be too short, too limiting a time horizon.
Considered in this way, the death of Moses is like a piece of bread cast on the water that returns a year later, the conclusion of the Torah imposes upon us the deadline that leads us to think about legacy and not just today.
The contemplation of Sukkot, the experience of impermanence, and the contention with Ecclesiastes’ brooding lead us to appreciate the distinction between deeds which are merely expedient and deeds which ripple out for centuries.
Whether we ourselves are the ones paid back for our self-transcendence, or whether it is future generations, we should appreciate that “all is vanity” is the kind of thinking that leads to selling a birthright rather than buying one. All is vanity is a challenge: what bread are you casting that will return?
Chazak chazak v’nitchazek. May we be strengthened by Torah and may Torah be strengthened by us.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,
Zohar Atkins