Vanity Karma: Ecclesiastes, the Bhagavad-gita, and the Meaning of Life: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

In the Introduction and in his Closing Words, Jayadvaita Swami informs the reader about his family background and the history of this book. Growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in Englewood, New Jersey—he does not mention the name of the family into which he was born—he attended Sunday school in Temple Sinai, Tenafly, New Jersey. While “the instruction was pretty light” it nevertheless involved some basic Hebrew in the Bible study class. At one time Qohelet—better known under its Latin name Ecclesiastes—was being
read. Its opening sentence—“Vanity of vanities, says Qohelet, vanity of vanities; all is vanity”—did not make much sense to the teenager. Half a century later— by now a prominent member of ISKCON—the one-time student returns to this book and draws parallels to the Bhagavad-gita, engaging in a profound JewishHindu dialogue.