Each year on the holiday of Shavuot (Pentacost), I love reading the Book of Ruth. Like so many of the narratives that fill Jewish history, the Book of Ruth is poignant, filled with drama, emotional honesty and risk-taking. I love the fact that on the holiday where Jews commemorate receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai and become a nation defined by a covenant with God, we read the saga about a convert. As my rabbi once said so aptly, it’s not enough for Jews to consider themselves the “Chosen people;” we also need to be the choosing people. Reading the Book of Ruth affirms this idea for me. Each day, I have the opportunity to choose my Jewishness anew in any number of ways: through honest prayer, study, giving charity, looking for an additional mitzvah to do. The most famous convert in history, Ruth, reminds me that I am not defined as much by where I have been as much as where I am going.
The first sentence in the Book of Ruth tells us that this episode took place in an era “of the judging of the judges.” This is a rather mysterious phrase, and the commentaries explain that it means that in that time, people did what they wanted regardless of what the judges said. After providing this context, we are introduced to the wealthy and prominent Elimelech, a man who deserted his community in Bethlehem, taking his family to Moab to avoid the famine. Things go downhill for the family from there. Elimelech dies, and his two sons marry Moabite princesses, Orpah and Ruth. This would have been unthinkable back in Bethlethem, because even with proper conversions, Moabites (and Ammonites) were prohibited from marrying Jews because those populations had demonstrated such coldness that they refused to even sell water or bread to the Jews after leaving Egypt. Most commentators do not believe that Ruth and Orpah had proper conversions.
After these deaths, Elimelech’s widow, Naomi, begins her sad trek back to Bethlehem. Not only is she bereft of her husband and sons, she accurately anticipates that she will be the object of derision and scorn upon her return. After all, her family, who had been in a position to help in a time of need, if only by their moral support in staying, skipped town. Orpah and Ruth follow her, but Naomi urges them instead to return to their royal families. Orpah is quickly convinced, but Ruth famously clings to Naomi, uttering some of the most well known lines in all of biblical literature:
“Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people are my people, and your God is my God.” This becomes her true conversion.
I am filled with emotion each time I read these few, eloquent, powerful words. Ruth forever relinquishes the opportunity to return to a life of material comfort and minimal moral demands. Instead, she stakes her claim with a people challenged with high moral demands, a downtrodden people, thought one promised a great future. Ruth chooses to go to an uncertain fate.
I try to imagine these two women, who till that point probably had an awkward relationship, now tethered together for the rest of their lives. Both were once wealthy and respected, but now reduced in every way, careworn and vulnerable. Naomi’s return prompts the response she expected: “Could this be Naomi?” the people express shock at her appearance.
“Do not call me Naomi (pleasant),” she replies. “Call me Mara (bitter), because the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.”
Yet despite her loneliness, fear and a bit of cynicism, Naomi gathers herself together and plans to build a new life. No one offers to help the women, showing that this was not only a time when people “judged the judges,” doing as they pleased, but a time when they lacked the compassion to extend themselves to two poor widows in their midst. Ruth creates a small sensation when she is seen gleaning from the edges of the field, picking up discards from the harvest, which are available to the poorest in the community. Her dignity, discretion, modesty and refusal to take charity all mark her as someone special, someone regal. She is immediately noticed by the man who owns the field, the elderly Boaz, a relative of her late father-in-law.
When Ruth reports to her mother-in-law that Boaz invited her to glean only from his fields, Naomi realizes that Boaz might prove their savior. Naomi strategizes the best way to remind Boaz of his obligation to marry Ruth, given that he is the next closest male relative to Elimelech. But it is Ruth who must put the plan into action. It involves a daring act, with Ruth laying at the elderly man’s feet in the middle of the night, a bold act that could easily be misconstrued. Boaz, however, recognizes the action and its symbolism as the determined action of a woman who understands that she has the right to marry into the family again, not only for financial security but for the chance to become a mother among the Jewish people. Naomi and Ruth are paid in full for their faith and their action. Boaz marries Ruth, and she conceives. Her great-grandson will be none other than King David.
Naomi and Ruth are among a long line of women who used foresight and displayed bravery to further what they understand to be God’s plan for the Jewish people. That list of heroines includes Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Tamar, Yocheved, Miriam, Esther, Hannah, Yael, and many others. There may not be as many women named in Jewish biblical works as men, for those who are keeping a tally, but when the women appear, the roles they play change history.
None of us can know how our actions and dedication to living an authentic Jewish life will pay off. We work to grow as people who are alive to our spiritual potential. Sometimes, living authentically Jewish lives seems not so terribly convenient. But as Ruth proves so eloquently, the gifts of being part of the people of the covenant might bring nothing less than a royal future.
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