Everyone is familiar with the Book of Ecclesiastes, even if they don't that they're familiar with it.  Vanity of vanities is a cliche, the Birds wrote a famous song, with lyrics straight from Chapter 3 (To everything there is a season, and time to every purpose under heaven: Eccl. 3:1), and the late science fiction author Roger Zelazny's novella A Rose for Ecclesiastes was a Hugo award nominee in 1963.

So what is this book, and why is it in the Bible, anyway?  I'm not a scholar, and I don't really have the space in this blog to answer that question fully, but I can put in my own two cents.

Ecclesiastes is a Greek word for "Preacher;" in Hebrew, the book is called "Koheleth," which means the same thing.  Koheleth is the narrator of the work; based on the opening sentence (The words of Koheleth, son of David, king in Jerusalem), he is usually identified with King Soloman.

Ecclesiastes is a work of deep pessimism, and also soaring optimism.  Reading it, you look at life from the standpoint of great wealth, and great poverty, and are asked to wonder what is the use?  Most of the book ponders why some men get rich, while other die young, or why we should work when we can't take the gains with us, but it is also full of proverbs.  The book breaks through the sadness and pessimism, though, to reach an interesting conclusion:

Chapter 9, verse 10: Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might.  For there is no action, no reasoning, so learning, no wisdom in the grave, where you are going.

That's deep, and, to me, it reaches back to Deut. 30:19: Choose life, that you may live.  Judaism affirms life, revels in life, teaches us to live our lives fully, and to remember who gave us those lives.