What is the connection between the Book of Ruth and the Festival of Shavuot? The Sages assigned the five Biblical Megillot (Scrolls) to the holidays throughout the year. Most of the designations are innately obvious. The Book of Esther recounts the first Purim. The Book of Lamentations commemorates the events of Tisha B’Av. Ecclesiastes, which broods on the transience of existence, is well suited for the autumnal festival of Sukkot, the season of decay. The Song of Songs, celebrating the budding of young love, fits with the vernal festival of Pesach, the season of rebirth. But what of the Book of Ruth, a domestic story concerning women, and what’s more—what makes it stand out among all the books of the Bible—a story told from the perspective of women? Here, Ruth and Naomi are not secondary characters. The internal emotional conditions of the two women drive the entire narrative. In contrast, Shavuot centers on the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai amid thunderous, public display, and—let’s admit it—the Halachic (legal) system he acquires is essentially patriarchal. At first glance, the Book of Ruth and Shavuot could not oppose each other more strongly.
Various superficial links have been suggested over the centuries. For example, it is recorded that Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem, Naomi’s ancestral home, “at the beginning of the barley harvest” (Ruth 1:22), and Shavuot marks the culmination of the barley harvest. The Book’s final verse notes that Ruth is the great-grandmother of King David, and, according to Midrash, King David was born, and died, on Shavuot. Furthermore, Ruth’s famous declaration of loyalty to Naomi, “wherever you go, I shall go; wherever you lodge, I shall lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God,” (Ruth 1:16) renders Ruth the paradigmatic “righteous convert,” a model for all of us as we reaffirm our own commitment to Torah on Shavuot. However, these traditional explanations rely upon incidental verses in the text; they do not attempt to relate the basic themes of the story and the festival.
The Book of Ruth is fundamentally about the power of hesed, lovingkindness. Hesed is defined as unconditional love, free-flowing generosity, care and concern for another that go beyond mere legal obligation. Hesed is a quintessentially feminine human attribute. It is exemplified by Ruth’s unstinting devotion to Naomi. When Ruth the Moabite promises to follow her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi, she expects nothing for herself—no prospects, no fortune, no husband. To the contrary, she expects to be a stranger in a strange land (for Moab and Israel were ancient enemies). She is motivated solely by pure love. The power of Ruth’s hesed activates the latent hesed within others, even within men. When Boaz first acts kindly toward Ruth while she is gleaning grain in his field, he cites her example of kindness toward her widowed mother-in-law as his motivator. (Ruth 2:11) Later on, when Boaz’s inner compassion propels him to want to marry Ruth, again he cites her own generous behavior as his model: “your latest deed of hesed is greater than the first!” (Ruth 3:10)
Legal systems are designed to enable human beings to live together in peace and security. Torah not only enforces rules that ensure social harmony, it promotes ethical conduct that transcends legal obligation. Torah stands out among other codes of law not because of “You shall not murder” and “You shall not steal,” which are common to all, but because of commandments such as: “You shall not oppress the stranger, because you know the heart of the stranger.” It takes the women to remind the men of the Torah’s distinguishing core value of hesed. It takes precisely the most vulnerable members of society to remind the rest of us of our moral responsibility to care for the most vulnerable members of society. As my teacher Dr. Judith Kates writes: “These women (Ruth and Naomi)—literally the poor, the widow, the stranger—reveal the very heart of the biblical vision of human society and of God. They arouse the community to live up to its own ideals.” (Reading Ruth, p. 198) For this reason the story of Ruth instantiates the Torah’s central message of compassion and empathy. Just as the Law is soulless without Love, just as halachah is incomplete without hesed, the Festival of Shavuot and the Book of Ruth are inextricably bound together.
Chag sameach.
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