Timely Lessons From the Book of Ruth

The Book of Ruth is read each Shavuot.  Each year when I read it, I hope to glean some new insight into its story and teachings.  This week I was pleased to attend a zoom lecture coming from Jerusalem taught by Avivah Zornberg which tried to describe the process by which Ruth found her way into a foreign and unwelcoming culture and religious tradition.

When we first meet Ruth, she is part of a group of 3 women, all of whom are widows, and in the society in which they are living, they are considered to be remnants.  In the section we read today, we see that Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, has decided to return to her home in Beit Lechem.  She tries to convince her two daughters-in-law to return to their own homes, places where they can find husbands once again, a place where they will have a future.

Naomi appears to be knowledgeable about the lack of future available to a Moabite in the land of Israel.  She knows that the Moabites are shunned in her world because of the lack of chesed, loving kindness, they showed during the time of Moses.  The Moabites refused to stretch out their hands to the Israelites and offer them safe passage with food and water as they passed through Moav on the way to the land of Canaan.  Jewish women were not allowed to marry Moabite men.  And Moabite women were considered sexually loose because they descended from Lot’s daughter who produced offspring with her father after the destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah. 

Whenever we see Ruth’s name mentioned in the megillah, up until the end of the last chapter in the book, she is called Ruth the Moabite.  She is labeled as a stranger that comes from THAT nation!  Yet we also know that despite the fact that she is labeled as a stranger, Ruth insists on joining Naomi. Ruth is the quintessential stranger; a widow who is poor and who socially doesn’t belong to the society to which she is traveling, yet she refuses to go back home.  She identifies with Naomi and insists on returning with her.  Yet if you think about the idea of returning, it is only Naomi who is returning.  Ruth is not. Ruth is moving to the unknown and where she is unknown.

In chapter two, Ruth the Moabite states to her mother-in-law, “Let me go out to the field and glean among the ears of grain behind someone in whose eyes I shall find favor.”   The midrash interprets this statement as meaning that she will find an individual who will know her, who will not just see her as a foreigner coming from a place that held negative connotations in its treatment of the Israelites.  When Ruth makes this statement, she is pointing out that she believes she will have the possibility of a future in her new country.

 

When Boaz, who owns the field, and Ruth meet, she does find favor in his eyes.  It is not because she is the object of an erotic quest.  She is never called beautiful in the text as so many other women in the Tanach are called when they are met for the first time.  Instead Boaz has heard of her chesed, of her loving-kindness, and this is what he is able to see that others do not know about her.  In many ways, Ruth is comparable to Rivka (Rebecca)

Chapter three takes place on the granary floor at midnight.  Ruth came in stealthily, after Boaz had had a successful harvest and had eaten and drunk and was feeling good.  She placed herself at his feet but could not be seen.  Boaz trembled and asked who she was.  She announced her name, Ruth, and he recognized her once again for her kindness. Boaz’s impulse was not to curse Ruth for the situation in which he found himself, but to trust in G-d who in essence had put it in his heart to trust Ruth.

Ruth according to the Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 7b, had the ability to see that from her would come David with his songs and praises for G-d.  The text asks,  “Ruth—what is the meaning of Ruth?It states that the name Ruth comes from a word meaning “saturated.” R. Johanan said: Because she merited to have issue from her David, who saturated [she-rivahu] God with song and praises.” BT Berakhot 7b stresses her importance as the progenitor of David:

As a stranger, Ruth could have allowed the boundaries between herself and others to become entrenched.  Certainly others, who constantly referred to her as Ruth the Moabite, would have been happy to continue doing so. But she did not accept those boundaries.  She clung to Naomi, she clung to G-d, she didn’t wait for permission from others to move forward and become the individual that she always knew herself to be.  She also believed that her potential would be realized by another who would know her for her true nature even though she was a foreigner.

So, this book brings to mind many questions that are relevant today: 

What is it like to be a foreigner in a society and constantly labeled as such and why do so many find it necessary to apply those labels to others?

How can a foreigner look at his or her situation and not succumb to anger, sadness, or frustration especially if they left their homeland for economic reasons and still find themselves in a position of being disadvantaged and discriminated against?

How do we learn to recognize the potential in each human being and not succumb to stereotypes prevalent about the places from which they came?