Shavuos – Not Necessarily Ruthless |
A number of years ago, a prominent Jewish educator gave a shiur with the central theme that the Book of Ruth has no real antagonists. Everyone, the speaker maintained, simply makes understandable—if sometimes tragic—choices in a difficult world. I was bewildered, to say the least: I asked her afterward about the litany of critiques leveled at Elimelech, Machlon and Chilyon just from TB Baba Basra 91, and Orpah in TB Sanhedrin 95a. I didn’t get a clear answer, just a reiteration of the theme that there were really “no bad people” in the Megillah.
More recently, another prominent educator gave a shiur arguing not only that there are no real villains in Ruth, but that even Orpah has been given a bad rap. This second speaker paralleled Orpah with Vashti, suggesting Chazal amplified both women’s flaws to make Ruth and Esther appear more “tznius”. (I have discussed the “progsplaining” of Vashti elsewhere; suffice it to say, however, that this shiur remained firmly within Chazal’s framework and was not an attempt to impose an intersectional revisionism, even if the sources were outliers.)
Sandwiched between these two whitewashing interpretations was a clarifying shiur from an educator who has written a book on Ruth. She presented a far less rosy picture of the era of the Judges and fully endorsed my initial hava amina: Boaz knew exactly what kind of people worked his fields: those who would piously declare it “assur” to marry a Moabite convert, yet would not hesitate to take advantage of a vulnerable Moabite widow for extracurricular activity, assuming she would be more readily........