Most of the time I do not know the full meaning of what I and others do and say. These actions and words have many rungs; even at my strongest, I climb only a few. The Book of Ruth has something to do with these levels.
Shavuot involved many preparations. People brought food, flowers, and more; they helped with setup, cleanup, and details of the service. I prepared to lead a study session and two services (Kabbalat Shabbat and Shavuot). The Shavuot service included a Hallel (with many melodies, including Shlomo Carlebach’s “Ma Ashiv“), the Aseret haDibrot (Ten Commandments), and the first chapter of Ruth. So I was studying and practicing up to the last minute.
When preparing to chant Ruth, I came to understand Naomi’s words in new ways. She pours out grief and despair but also, without knowing it, keeps hinting toward hope.
She loses first her husband, then, about a decade later, her two sons; on the way back from the fields of Moab (where they had been living) to Bethlehem, her home, she urges her daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, to go back to their mothers’ homes, since there is nothing for them here.
She probably does not understand, as she speaks, that her words can be heard in more than one way. Orpah hears the literal meaning of “mother’s house” and eventually obeys Naomi’s command. Ruth perhaps hears the words differently; perhaps she sees Naomi as her mother–not the mother who gave her birth, but her mother in adulthood. She insists on staying. So, both Orpah and Ruth obey Naomi, but at different levels of her words.
Before Orpah and Ruth part ways, Naomi continues to make her case (in verses 11-13). “Turn back, my daughters, go your way,” she says, “for I am too old to have a husband.” And then: “If I should say: I have hope, should I even have an husband to-night, and also bear sons; would ye tarry for them till they were grown? would ye shut yourselves off for them and have no husbands? nay, my daughters; for it grieveth me much for your sakes, for the hand of the LORD is gone forth against me.”
“I am too old to have a husband” (“ki zakanti mihyot le’ish”)–those words immediately bring to mind Sarah’s words–and especially God’s paraphrase of them (“Ha’af umnam eled, va’ani zakanti”)–in Genesis 18:12-13. Through this echo, Naomi suggests unwittingly that she might have a second husband (and a child) yet; in the second part of the verse, her hint grows even stronger, “If I should say: I have hope….” We know from the last chapter that she will have another child–not her own, but Ruth’s, whom she will nurse.
Naomi’s words may also carry a trace of Psalm 37, verse 25, (“I have been young, and now am old [na’ar hayiti–gam zakanti]; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread”). This allusion seems likely especially given the importance of Bethlehem, the “house of bread,” in the first chapter, and given Naomi’s very gesture (mentioned in Ruth 1:6) of returning to Bethlehem because she had heard “that the LORD had remembered His people in giving them bread.”
Her words of despair in verse 13–“ki yatz’a vi yad [Hashem]” (“for the hand of the Lord has gone out [to/for/against] me”)–suggest a direct relation with God, not a state of abandonment. In her grief she feels God physically touching her. It is these relations between two–between Naomi and God, between Naomi and Ruth, between Ruth and Boaz–that bring forth unexpected joy.
In this sense, Ruth’s words bring out hidden meanings of Naomi’s own:
Naomi says, essentially: “Do what your sister-in-law is doing: return to your people and your god.” Ruth replies with both a “no” and a “yes”; she asks Naomi to stop entreating her to leave, but then explains that Naomi’s home will be her home; Naomi’s people, her people; and Naomi’s god, her god. In other words, she is returning home, just as Naomi begged her to do; she is joining with Naomi so that the two will be one.
Now the two proceed to Bethlehem, where all the city take notice of them, and the women ask, “Is this Naomi?”
Here Naomi invokes a Biblical motif of renaming; she asks them to call her not Naomi, but Marah, since the Lord has dealt bitterly with her. This request carries hubris–who is she to rename herself?–but also a recognition. To my knowledge, renamings happen only four times in the Torah: in Genesis 17, when God tells Abram that he will henceforth be Abraham and that Sarai will be Sarah; in Genesis 32, after Jacob wrestles with God all night long, and God tells him that his name from now on will be Israel; and in Numbers 13, when Moses renames Hosea, son of Nun, Joshua (this is mentioned only in passing). In asking for a renaming, Naomi senses not only the presence of God but the catastrophe of the moment (“catastrophe” not only in the sense of “terrible occurrence” but also in the sense of “overturning”). The renaming does not occur, but the overturning does. A new life begins to form, but not as she imagined it.
Thus Naomi does not hear the full meaning of her own words; they hold more than she can know in the moment. Some might dismiss her as a complainer, as a bitter old woman, but in Hebrew her words break the heart: “Al b’notai,” “no, my daughters.” She carries not only grief, not only hidden hope, but tenderness. I imagine her magnificence and courage. Ruth recognizes something in her; so do the people who have not seen her in years.
In the Shavuot service, as I have done before, I brought into the liturgy the melody of “Szól a kakas már” (“The Rooster is Already Calling”)–following the example of Rabbi Ariel Pollak, who leads services at Szim Salom about once a month.
This is no ordinary song. The lyrics are in Hungarian and Hebrew. According to legend, the first Kaliver Rebbe, Yitzchak Isaac Taub (1751-1821), learned and purchased it from a shepherd, who, after teaching it to him, forgot it completely. The Rebbe (once a shepherd himself) would often walk among the shepherds and learn songs from them. Because of its Messianic longing and grief, the song later came to be associated with the Holocaust. Still it goes beyond time and place. Once you have heard it, it goes where you go.
Here’s a beautiful rendition by Zalán Lehner (listen also to Márta Sebestyén and read some history and commentary).
I sang the melody only briefly; after I stopped, I could hear people still humming it. The humming lingered, turning thinner and thinner. Then it disappeared into the quiet.
I have known this for some time, but now I understood it more fully: to lead a service, you listen to it. You hear and carry what it already holds: the day and its meaning, the cadences of the text, the dimensions of the words, the people in the room, the person in front of, behind, or beside you, the hope in Naomi’s cries, the thing you awkwardly call faith (when you call it anything), and histories, melodies, losses, yearnings that go so far beyond you, on all sides, that all you can do is walk along and learn.
Art credit: Hajnalvárás (Waiting for Dawn) by Imre Ámos (1907-1945). Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
The quotations from Ruth are courtesy of the Mechon Mamre website. The interpretations are my own, but I imagine that many others have made similar points.
I have recorded Ruth 1:11-13 so that anyone interested can listen to these verses.
I made a few edits to this piece after posting it.
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