c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(RNS)-The women’s movement in religion is providing us with exciting new ways to understand the Bible.

One result is the transformation of Ruth from a character who seems too good to be true to an independent woman who surmounted serious obstacles to achieve her goals.

The biblical Book of Ruth will be read in synagogues May 24 and 25 during the holiday of Shavuot. But I have always found the conventional explanations for linking Ruth and Shavuot, the time when the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai, to be unsatisfying.

Jews have been taught that because Shavuot occurs during the spring harvest in Israel, and because Ruth gathered crops in the fields of Bethlehem, the two go together.

Ruth, a religious convert, is the great-grandmother of King David from whose offspring the long awaited Messiah will come. Ruth is usually portrayed as a docile widow who finds happiness only by marrying Boaz 10 years after the death of her first husband. She is not esteemed for herself, but only because she is a forebear of David.

I am indebted to many Jewish women, including my daughters, who have shown me the narrowness of these traditional explanations, which are an affront to Ruth and to all women. She is much more than just a lonely widow or an ancestor of David.

Unlike most women in the ancient world, Ruth has the opportunity to make conscious choices about her life: where she will live and with whom, and what her religious identity will be. She can easily remain in her native Moab when Naomi, Ruth’s poor and widowed Israelite mother-in-law, decides to return to her people in Bethlehem.

Indeed, Naomi’s other Moabite daughter-in-law, Orpah, who is also a widow, remains behind. Orpah does what is expected of her, but Ruth chooses the unexpected, the extraordinary. She does what few women historically have been permitted to do: make life-changing choices for and by themselves.

Ruth takes an enormous gamble. She chooses to accompany Naomi to Bethlehem and emulates the patriarch Abraham by leaving her homeland to live in a new country amid strangers.

But unlike Abraham, Ruth has no spouse or children. She has no servants, sheep or other property. She works as a field laborer in Israelite Bethlehem without wealth, status or prospects, living in poverty with her mother-in-law. It appears that being remarried with the hope of becoming a mother is not a central need for Ruth.

Ruth makes another remarkable choice: She converts to the Israelite religion of her dead husband and mother-in-law. She tells Naomi,”Your people shall be my people and your God shall be my God.” Throughout the centuries, women have often been forced to adopt new religions when they married (or were compelled to marry) men of a different faith. And, tragically, women frequently have been forcibly converted after being captured and raped during bloody wars. But not Ruth. She makes a voluntary choice based on neither a wedding bed nor a battle sword.

In rereading the ancient story, I sense that a psychologically secure Ruth is content with her momentous choices. She establishes strong roots in a new land among her adopted people. But Ruth clearly recognizes Naomi’s intense anxiety and financial insecurity about their uncertain future in Bethlehem. After all, it is never easy for poor widows to cope successfully in society.

Ruth responds to her mother-in-law’s concerns by working in the cornfields of Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s. Boaz, who is much older than Ruth, not surprisingly is attracted to the younger woman. Their marriage is one of shared loyalties: Ruth to Naomi, and Boaz to the obligation to perpetuate his family line.

In the final twist of this psychologically rich narrative, the Bible explicitly links Obed, the child of Ruth and Boaz, to his grandmother:”A son is born to Naomi.”A needy mother-in-law seems to have displaced Ruth as the center of the story.

My interpretation is that Ruth has made one more critical choice by focusing on Naomi’s joy as a first-time grandmother. Ruth has enlarged and strengthened the indestructible bond that exists between her and Naomi by first adding a loving husband and then an infant son who will become King David’s grandfather.

No wonder Ruth is so beloved by the millions of women who proudly bear her name.

LJB END RUDIN