Ruth and the Sense of Self: Midrash and Difference

(15.) The Midrashic judgment on Lot is harsher than the textual evidence at first glance would seem to demand. Commenting on Lot's move eastward towards Sodom, the Midrash Rabbah focuses on the use of the word "kedem" to signify the eastern direction. Comments the Midrash: "Lot removed himself from the Originative Force of the world. He said, 'I desire neither Abraham nor his God."' (Bereshit Rabbah 41:10: va'yisa Lot mikedem: hisiya 'atzmo mi'kadmono shel 'olam 'amar: i efshi b'avraham; i efshi b'elokav.) As the Midrash reads it, Lot's move was not only a change of neighborhood, but also a change of moral compass: Lot was consciously separating himself both from Abraham and from his monotheism. In that respect, Elimelech's move to Moab acquires an even greater negative implication.

(16.) "Is this (really) Naomi?" [Hazot Naomi?] (Ruth 1:19).

(17.) To say, as Rabbi Joshua Bachrach does in The Mother of Kings (Ima shel Malchut; Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yeshivat Ohr Etzion, 1984), p. 41, that the people were simply too busy with the harvest to bother greeting Ruth and Naomi does not excuse their behavior. Rather, it condemns them for maintaining the selfishness with which the Midrashic reading of the text charges them already at the time of Joshua's death (cf. note 10).

(18.) Rabbi Bachrach again tries to excuse Boaz's (lack of) reaction to his kinswoman and to her plight by arguing that he, too, was busy with the harvest (Mother of Kings, p. 43).

(19.) Deuteronomy 23:4 Cf. Bachrach, p. 43.

(20.) The verse's description of Boaz as a "man of volar"--literally gibor chayil, "a man of strength"--alludes to the root of Boaz's own name, which can be read as a compound of two words, bo 'oz "in him there is strength."

(21.) The reference here is to the conversation between Samuel and Saul after Saul has not obeyed the Divine command completely to destroy the Amalekites in battle. Significantly, it is only after Saul confesses that "I feared the [Jewish] nation and [therefore spared some of the Amalekite cattle]" that Samuel concludes that Saul's royal dynasty will not last beyond his own lifetime (I Samuel 15:24--26).

(22.) TB Sanhedrin 109b. I thank Rabbi Chaim Wasserman for this citation.

(23.) Genesis 19:8.

(24.) Genesis 19:30.

(25.) The Abarbanel asks what kind of a father gives up his daughters without fighting to the death for them (Abarbanel, Commentary on Genesis, question 26, p. 272). Also cf. Midrash Tanhuma, Vayera, 12.

(26.) Liminality, often seen as marginalizing, can also serve as a critical vantage point for analysis of the structure which one is prevented from joining. Cf. especially Robert Cohn, The Shape of Sacred Space: Four Biblical Studies (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), in which he elaborates on the concept of liminality. Avivah Zornberg makes a related point in The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis (New York: Doubleday, 1996); a similar point is expressed in her lecture of 3/98.

(27.) See, for example, Roberta Apfel and Lise Gondahl, "Feminine Plurals," pp. 55-64; Francine Klagsbrun, "Ruth and Naomi, Rachel and Leah: Sisters under the Skin," pp. 261-272, both in Kates and Reimer.