The five scrolls or megillot, The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations, are read during the year on different holidays. Ruth, my subject here, is read on Shavuot, the holiday custom has assigned as the date of receiving the Torah at Sinai. Reading Ruth is usually associated with this verse (I use the older translation used by the Jewish Virtual Library; Chabad uses a more modern translation):
But I see another connection between this aspect of the holiday and the story of Ruth.
First, a brief summary of the story.
During the time of the Judges, a family from Bethlehem, Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons, travel to Moab during a drought, and settle there. They seem to be welcomed. Elimelech dies; later the sons, Chilion and Mahlon, grow up and marry Moabite wives, Orpah and Ruth. Both of the sons subsequently die childless. Naomi, depressed, hearing that there is now food there, decides to go back home. Her daughters-in-law go with her part of the way, then she tells them to go back to their parents so they can marry again. Orpah, weeping, obeys, but Ruth refuses with one of the most beautiful declarations of love anywhere:
1:16 And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: 1:17 Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
(The beauty of the old translation, based on the King James Bible, is why I chose JVL instead of Chabad - it's the way I first learned and loved it as a child.)
When they return, Naomi's friends recognize and greet her, but she is despondent as she tells them her story and tells them to call her Mara, or bitterness, because her life has become bitterness.
She sends Ruth to glean in the fields with the other poor people, since it is the barley harvest season, and Ruth ends up in the field belonging to Boaz, who finds out who she is and, because he is a kinsman of Elimelech, he speaks to her and tells his men to show her favor because of her kindness to Naomi. When Naomi learns where Ruth has been, she is pleased because, as close kin, he can redeem the land and widow and, thus continue the family name of Ruth's dead husband. At threshing time, she sends Ruth to wait until Boaz goes to sleep and then lie down at his feet. When he is startled awake and she reveals herself to him, he is pleased and says he will have to check with a closer relation first, but if he can, he will marry her. She tells this to Naomi, and Boaz takes care of the legal end of things with the other kinsman. The details are fascinating, but not necessary to this drosh.
Ruth and Boaz marry and have a son, who is given to Naomi as the heir to her husband and son. This son becomes the grandfather of King David.
What has this to do with Torah?
The story of the time of the Judges, as told in the book of Judges, is one of recurring lapses into idolotry followed by military defeat, followed by a hero rising and saving the people, who reform for a while until the next lapse.
It is also a story of great violence and cruelty, of abuse of strangers and of women, which perhaps begin with the story of Jephthah's daughter and culminate in the rape of the Levite's concubine, which closely parallels the scene in Genesis when the people of Sodom demand the strangers who are visiting, intending violence and rape, only in this case an actual gang rape and murder happen, not just a riot. And remember the sin of Sodom was cruelty to foreigners, not what has become known as sodomy.
Compare this to the land in the story of Ruth.
In Ruth, Torah is obeyed, and the people live in peace. So many of the laws are shown in action - kindness to "the stranger among you," care for the poor and for widows, as shown in the leaving of gleanings for the poor in all the fields, not just that belonging to Boaz, and in the affection shown to Naomi by her friends upon her return. Even the Moabites seem to have welcomed Elimelech and his family, and to have let their daughters marry their sons. Ruth, not just a foreigner but a proscribed Moabite, is valued for her goodness to Naomi, and is allowed to glean with the other poor maidens. And in Boaz' dealings with his kinsman, we see the details of keeping land within the family and of levirite marriage.
Compared to the book of Judges, Ruth is a look at what might have been.
Ruth is about kindness, or chesed. Some commentators over the centuries have noted that the book was written to show that the Davidic line of kings descended from those who were exceptionally kind. Traditionally, the book is accredited to the prophet Samuel. That seems unlikely, though. Given that the arrangement of books in Tanakh seems loosely chronological, Ruth seems to have been written after the Babylonian exile. This makes sense. Intolerance was strong after the return from exile — Ezra and Nehemiah refused to allow the lower classes, who had not been exiled, to help rebuild the Temple because they were not living by the religion as it had evolved in Babylon. There was strong distrust of the “other” and, among other things, intermarriage was forbidden. The story of Ruth shows that such intolerance is not the best way to live. Kindness to foreigners and to the poor is the true path to greatness.
It’s important that we remember this when, every day, our country’s attempts to “Make America Great Again” move us closer and closer to the exact opposite. We have deleted language from our foreign policies that made women’s safety and rights a priority. We have eliminated programs that have worked for the protection of women in education and our justice system. We have seriously cut funding to programs that aid the poor, and are trying to cut it further. If this pandemic has shown anything, it’s how woefully insufficient out safety net really is. We are consistently making it harder for ordinary people to get justice when they are cheated by the more powerful, and we have elevated cheats to an unprecedented level.
In this time of plague it is shocking to me that there are people for whom deaths nearing 90,000 Americans don’t matter, for whom it is more important (here in Arizona) that they can get their hair and nails done. People are protesting safety measures and harassing healthcare workers who are fighting this disease on the front lines and too many of whom are losing their lives. Governors who order their states to close down until things get under control receive death threats. The Wisconsin Supreme Court found their governor’s shutdown order unconstitutional.
Think about that — protecting people from a deadly virus by means shown elsewhere to be effective is unconstitutional.
Here in Arizona, evictions continue to be processed, though a short delay in removal is allowed. Workers in meat-processing plants where thousands have tested positive for the virus are ordered to reopen along with restaurants so people can go out for a burger.
Our treatment of immigrants becomes worse and worse. We are breaking up families that live here peacefully and contribute to our communities. 600 children who came seeking asylum as unaccompanied minors have been deported during this pandemic; immigrant detention centers are seeing inmates and staff getting ill from the coronavirus and some have died.
Our leaders show great eagerness to support men who have seriously abused women and children — and why? Because they will pass, and uphold in court, laws that will make the lives of the poor, of immigrants, of women, of LGBTQ ever more difficult.
We have dismantled the apparatus for diplomacy while lusting after war. We are praising tyrants and refusing to meet our obligations to our allies. We are working to sow divisions between people who could and should be able to live peacefully together. We are advancing the destruction of life on our planet.
Ruth is, above all, a story about relationships, and how caring for people close to us, in our families and communities, makes us worthy of being the ancestors of kings. It is in community that we are seeing kindness elevated with people helping each other in unprecedented ways, whether to get groceries for those who are homebound, or to provide masks to those who need them, or to have food sent to local hospitals and clinics, or just to phone and make sure people are okay.
I’ve been rereading The Lord of the Rings, and this seems so necessary to remember in these times when our president has made a pandemic a partisan issue: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer; so will the true king ever be known.
We have never needed a healer more.
Chag sameach, and stay safe.