What is the meaning of Ecclesiastes?

[ItalianZionist]

I find myself gravitating toward this section of the Bible since I feel very depressed. I would like to know the Jewish perspective.Thanks.

[Hrvatski Noahid]

The complete Jewish Bible with Rashi's commentary is available here: https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/63255/jewish/The-Bible-with-Rashi.htm

[Israel Chai]

The debate in Talmud whether or not to include it in Tanach centers around the depressed feelings you get. However, it was included because you see in the last sentence of the book, he ties all the ideas together in "love G-d and fulfill his commandments for this is the whole purpose of man", his intention was to bring people to repentance.

You should probably read with commentary or you might think that he's saying there's no point of anything, which he isn't.

[Aces High]

I find myself gravitating toward this section of the Bible since I feel very depressed. I would like to know the Jewish perspective.Thanks.

When life throws a screw ball at me and life always does, I keep my actions on being productive and busy.   It helps keep my mind straight.   Keep truckin'.    This too, shall pass. 

[Israel Chai]

When you are depressed I would recommend that you gravitate towards something more psychologically uplifting in Torah, and read this one when you start believing you're in control of anything. If you look for the number seven, the color red, depressing things, or literally anything, eventually you will see in everywhere, and right away you may begin to see it places where it does not exist, especially since you lack a parasympathetic state and proper cognitive function under the effects of depression. You risk interpreting things in an incorrect or incomplete way to make them fit the depressing things you are searching for.

The book Tanya by the Alter Rebbe says that joy is a foundational mitzvah (commandment, connection, good deed) because without joy you won't have the desire to do the mitzvot that you are given the opportunity to fulfill. Torah is clear that the spirit of Hashem does not rest on depressed people, you are completely pulling back your heart from your connection to the Creator that makes you feel good all the time to feel it. First go read Torah to make you happy, what speaks of your worth and the love for you in everything that happens, etc. When you are in a state of inflated ego it is useful to study why you come from a drop of stinky liquid and when you die your body will be eaten by the worms, in a state of pathetic ego it will only be used for you to rebelliously justify that you feel important and all the things that lessen your importance you're just gonna sing as a rebellion, because surely everyone will see that you're so great and they're not bowing to your for it will only prove how much better you are since they can't even understand your stellar greatness.

Depressed people and people that complain can handle 3x more because they still have energy to do it. Once a man wrote to the Lubavitch Rebbe and said my life is hell, I never have enough money for my kids, I have to work and there are problems all over, I am very depressed. The Rebbe wrote back that most of the world would wish for his joys and happily accept the problems to have a loving family of their own, and that he is blocking the flow of good things into his life because he gets good things and is depressed about the problems instead of happy about the gifts, so if Hashem gives him more it will serve the opposite purpose until he is grateful. From experience, telling depressed people to be grateful feels at first to them like being whipped while an ogre screams, "submit", but it's just fake ego struggling to survive, and if you do it in its face you get to kill a little bit more of the fake you that robs the good of the lives of most people in the world in history.

[Israel Chai]

When life throws a screw ball at me and life always does, I keep my actions on being productive and busy.   It helps keep my mind straight.   Keep truckin'.    This too, shall pass.

This is correct but ultimately leaves things unresolved. Tanya says the yetzer hara (evil inclination) tricks you into fake teshuva (repentance) by making you think of the things you did wrong at inopportune times to make you do less good, and therefore you should "keep truckin'" in that particular situation. However, it is useful to plan a specific calm time to think over what you did wrong and learn from it. The same applies to the sad things that have happened to you, think over them at calculated times when you are calm, what was wrong, and you are better able to connect to how that made you suffer, which allows you to be more empathetic to people that are going through the same things and offer useful solutions based on your experiences.

Just letting them build up destroys you. If there was regret, then thinking on it is abandoning the mission at hand, and even thinking back to good times is stealing pleasure from your past instead of creating new pleasures now. Regrets are like circling and swooping carrion birds that rip pieces off your soul one swoop at a time. If you felt shame in that situation, you must remember the situation, and open yourself to feel the shame you fought off in full so it can be digested and leave. If not, you essentially have a tumor of shame that wants to go away, and the typical reaction is a cycle of self-sabotage where you set an unrealistic goal so that you can fail so that you can get new shame to feel so that you can feel it and the bit that you left unresolved so it goes away. This is typically a cycle that the majority of people die in and never figure out.

If you become like a pampered child employee and refuse to budge until all your imaginary needs are met, you will accomplish less than you destroy, so certainly don't let feelings of depression stop you from being productive. It still remains that it's quite easy and involves feeling for a few minutes and a bit of calm thought to get over situations. When you get a cut in a fight cauterize the wound and keep kicking, but when you get a moment's rest, heal the proper way.