The Book of Ruth

Since the autumn I have been volunteering to teach a “Confirmation Class” at our synagogue. Confirmation is a ceremony established within Reform Judaism (my temple, which is Conservative, has adopted it). The concept is to give teenagers a chance to “reaffirm” their commitment to Judaism when they are older and more mature than they were at the age of bar or bat mitzvah (“confirmation” usually occurs at the age of fifteen or sixteen).

I have been meeting with the students once a month for classes devoted to different topics concerning Jewish theology and religious life (past classes included discussions of God, ethics, ritual, tradition). Our last topic was “society,” which was a poignantly apt one to address in an online class during a period of “social distancing.” Since conditions precluded classroom activities like breaking into groups, I cast about for a text that we could read and discuss together in our online session. The one that sprang immediately to mind was the Book of Ruth.

I had read Ruth in the days before my own bar mitzvah, and thus was aware that it would serve our discussion well. But going back to re-read it with 52-year-old eyes gave me a new appreciation for its subtlety and depth. The text is brief, but it succinctly encapsulates some of the most complex dimensions of ancient Jewish social thought.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story is that its protagonist is not Jewish (at least not as the story begins). Hers is the only book of the Tanakh (the Jewish bible, comprising Torah, Nevi’im [prophets], and Ketuvim [writings, into which Ruth falls]) whose eponym is a non-Jew.

Another remarkable aspect of The Book of Ruth is the candor with which it depicts the inequities and weaknesses in ancient Israelite society. As the story opens, Ruth’s mother-in-law, a Hebrew woman named Naomi who has migrated into the lands of the Moabites with her husband, loses her husband and both adult sons to famine. The text is very clear that Naomi’s situation is as dire as a human being’s can be, and that her dilemma is the product of forces such as patriarchy, wealth inequality, and xenophobia. Old, female, poor, and a stranger in a strange land, she has been reduced to a position of pure need and liability. She immediately dismisses her two Moabite daughters-in-law, telling them to return home to the families of their birth. She recognizes that it would be unfair to force these young women to share her fate.

One of the daughters-in-law, Orpah, bids Naomi a tearful farewell. Ruth declines Naomi’s dismissal, famously declaring, “Where you go, I will go.” If Naomi is a case study in pure need, Ruth is one in almost pure altruism. Ruth has little to offer Naomi, only her youth and strength. But to call the exchange asymmetrical would be a colossal understatement. Israel had food at the time, so ostensibly Naomi could offer Ruth entry to better circumstances. But the story goes on to show that Naomi’s ties of common heritage have little practical power in Israel. If Ruth has little, Naomi can only requite her with less than nothing: penury, misery, and (very likely) death.

Together Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem, the native place of Naomi’s departed husband. Once there, Ruth volunteers to provide for them by “gleaning” in the fields of one of Naomi’s kinsman, a wealthy farmer named Boaz. Gleaning was essentially a form of begging. Leviticus and Deuteronomy contain “gleaning provisions”- commandments that fallen grain and certain portions of each field should not be harvested by the owner of any land, but must be left to be gathered by those who are destitute.

Ruth proposes that she will glean Boaz’s land by following one of his workers during the reaping of the barley harvest. We see from the text that though the gleaning provisions are divine Law, they were honored more in the breach than in compliance. Despite the fact that Ruth is gleaning on a kinsman’s property, she hopes to glean “behind someone in whose sight I may find favor.” In other words, she will have to find a workman that she can charm into letting her collect grain, otherwise she would presumably be chased away. The person she ultimately finds favor in is Boaz himself. He sees her in the field and speaks with her, assuring her that he has ordered his young male workers not to obstruct her and that she may glean in his field unmolested. Again, the text is remarkably candid in admitting that the Law was no guarantee of compassion. If the gleaning provisions were being generally obeyed, it would not be necessary for Boaz to order his men to give Ruth leave.

When Ruth reports back to Naomi, the older woman intuits Boaz’s feelings and sees an opportunity. Knowing that Boaz will be sleeping out on the threshing floor during the harvest and will be approachable, Naomi sends Ruth to seduce him. The text speaks in euphemisms (Ruth “sleeps by his feet”), but it makes clear that Ruth has taken a grave personal risk. Boaz praises Ruth, saying, “this last instance of loyalty [to Naomi] is better than the first.” If Boaz had rejected Ruth, she would have at least suffered a loss of good reputation, perhaps worse. Instead, he conceives of a plan by which he might help Ruth, and sends her away under cover of darkness to Naomi with gifts of food.

Boaz’s plan reveals other elements of ancient Hebrew Law, and the vagaries of its real-world application.  He goes to the gate of Bethlehem in search of one of Naomi’s other kinsman (whose name we never learn), whom he consults in front of the “city elders.”  The issue is, of the two men, who has the right to “redeem” Naomi? 

“Redemption” is one of the most interesting institutions of ancient Israel, the source of the epithet “My/Our Redeemer” often applied to God in hymn and prayer. It is articulated in disparate passages of Torah, and forms a complex of obligations and privileges that fall on individuals as a function of kinship. When any members of the community fell into circumstances from which they could not escape (for example, if they were captured by enemies and held for ransom, or had debts that they could not repay that would drive them into bondage), it was the duty of their closest relative to “redeem” them, to do that for them that they could not do for themselves.

Boaz explains that this other, closer kinsman has the right to redeem Naomi. Naomi, according to Boaz, is “selling” a property she inherited from her husband. It is not clear whether Naomi actually owns the property (in which case the kinsman would simply have to provide men to work it), or whether the kinsman is being asked to purchase it (back from someone else) to help maintain her. In either case the implication is clear: the kinsman will provide for Naomi until she dies, and the kinsman will then inherit the property dedicated to her upkeep. The kinsman immediately agrees, as this looks like a “win-win” situation: Naomi will have support, but since she is older the property used to support her will profit the kinsman in the not-too-distant-future.

Boaz then reveals that Naomi is accompanied by her young daughter-in-law, Ruth the Moabite. At that news the kinsman balks. In the best case scenario he would have to wait out the lifetime of Ruth to have the use of the property, in the worst he might lose his claims on the property altogether if Ruth remarries, and he does not want to encumber his fortune (marrying Ruth would solve the problem, but he was obviously unwilling to do that, perhaps because she was a Moabite). He surrenders his right of redemption to Boaz, who now has a perfectly legitimate pretext on which he can marry Ruth (as part of his obligation of redemption- a “levirate marriage” to continue the lineage of his childless kinsman).

The Book of Ruth is fascinating because the complex of institutions that drive much of the drama of the narrative outline, in ideal form, a relatively robust “safety net” in ancient Israel. One could leap to the conclusion that the ancient Hebrews were early “socialists,” but that is a stretch. The kinds of hard distinctions between “private” and “collective” ownership of property that underpin and distinguish modern ideologies like capitalism and socialism are not articulated in the ancient sources. What makes them intriguing from our perspective is what they have to say about the philosophical foundations of society in the abstract.

The book begins by acknowledging, in almost Aristotelian fashion, that human beings are social animals. This is the import of Ruth’s famous speech- she pledges herself to remain with Naomi not out of some specific filial imperative, but because in very general terms to do otherwise would be to abandon Naomi to die. This is made clear by the text’s framing of Ruth’s sister-in-law, Orpah. Orpah is not depicted as making a “wrong” choice to contrast the “right” path taken by Ruth. The parting between these characters is tearful and laden with emotion. Ruth’s sacrifice is taken almost as much on Orpah’s behalf as Naomi's: since staying with Naomi entails hardship and likely doom, Ruth’s acceptance of the obligation frees Orpah to save herself. From the very beginning the text acknowledges that the operation and maintenance of all social ties entails a complex negotiation between disparate individuals’ obligations to self and others. These tensions are maintained throughout the text’s depiction of the social institutions of ancient Israel and their operation in practice.

Ancient Hebrews would have understood these Laws in theological terms. The Torah opens with God offering human beings a choice between self-awareness and immortality. Two trees were accessible in Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, and only the latter was forbidden. If human beings had obeyed God’s command and accepted the gift of immortality, none of the tensions that drive the Book of Ruth would exist. Since human beings chose exile from Eden, God has taken pity on them by granting them the Torah, which Solomon (putatively) understood to be “a Tree of Life to those who hold fast to it (Proverbs 3:18).” In other words, following the Torah and the social Laws it lays down regarding gleaning, levirate marriage, and redemption could rescue humankind (particularly those of humankind most vulnerable, like childless widows) from the perils of the mortal world and restore the Edenic paradise that God had originally intended human beings to possess.   

Why then, does Eden remain elusive? Here again the text is very candid. In an ideal world, with everyone following the Law to the letter, the Torah might operate as a true “Tree of Life” on the mortal plane. But that would require all people to embrace the Law, including the Moabites, Edomites, Egyptians, and myriad other peoples with whom the ancient Hebrews traded and interacted in diverse ways. Since the reality was that this would never be the case, accepting the socioeconomic obligations of the Law to neighbors and kin always entailed personal risk, which made the probability that even Hebrews would keep faith with the Law relatively low. 

For example, redeeming my kinsman from bondage sounds like a very wise thing to do, as long as I can count on someone doing the same for me if and when I am in such need. But what if some of my kinsmen (or the kinsmen of my kinsmen) are Moabites and do not recognize that obligation? How does that figure into my risk-reward calculation as I weigh my obligation to the Law? If I operate under the assumption that God always punishes the wicked and rewards the good, I might feel more confident (i.e. as long as I keep following the Law, I can be sure never to need to be redeemed by another human being), but if that were the case, why would Laws such as the gleaning provisions, levirate marriage, and redemption be necessary in the first place?

What is most surprising about The Book of Ruth is the irreducible degree of humanism latent in its underlying message. The text shows that God’s will can never be enough to forge a functional society. Laws like redemption, levirate marriage, and the gleaning provisions can sketch out the parameters of what is fair (there but for the grace of God go I- since all providence comes from God, God may command us to share what we have with those who do not), but they cannot in and of themselves create a social compact in the absence of the personal commitment of the individual members of a community.

In the final analysis, the text demonstrates that society itself is not possible without individuals like Ruth. The human condition makes all of us vulnerable at some times (childhood, old age) and some of us vulnerable at all times (due to sickness, poverty, isolation). Unless some of us are ready to “redeem” others- to accept others’ vulnerability as our own responsibility, as Ruth does with Naomi- society will never be able to cohere to any minimal degree. Moreover, though the text acknowledges that there are almost never enough people like Ruth (everyone around Naomi wonders at her unexpected good fortune), in the figure of Boaz it shows how we might have more. Boaz chooses Ruth as a mate as much or more for her “social mindedness” as her other qualities. He shows that if we could see and value that in others (seeing past other arbitrary characteristics, such as their being widowed, poor, or a “foreigner”), the world might be a much better place.

In discussing the Book of Ruth with my students I did not make any mention of our current political situation, but I cannot help reading it in light of what is happening today. Now more than ever we can see that the persistence of society itself depends upon our willingness to accept responsibility for one-another’s welfare. Now more than ever we can see the vital importance of valuing social-mindedness in others, particularly our leaders, over vanity and self-promotion. It is no exaggeration to say that the lessons of the Book of Ruth are not merely timely and cogent, but essential to our very survival. Not bad for a bunch of ancient Hebrews.