Shavuot: Ruth - The Invisible Woman
"All that you say to me I will do" (Ruth 3:5).

by Dr. Aryeh Hirsch

"And the name of the man was Elimelech" (Megilat Ruth;1,2). Rabbi Meir would derive lessons from people's names: Elimelech, so named because he used to say: "Aylei tavo malchut", to me will the Royalty devolve (Midrash Rabbah, Ruth).

Naomi gave Ruth instructions to go to the threshing-grounds and meet Boaz; "And he will tell you what you then need to do. And (Ruth) answered Naomi: All that you say (to me; in Hebrew, 'Aylei') I will do" (Ruth 3,3-4).

An ancient Rabbinic tradition notes that Ruth totally disappears in the last verse. "The words 'to me' are read, but not written". On a simple level, one could note the arrogance of Elimelech, so certain that he would rule as King of Israel; and, of course, the irony in that his family did become royalty, but only via Ruth the Moabitess, and yibum (levirate marriage). But Rav Shmuel Teller, of the Eilat Hesder Yeshiva, and Rav Matis Weinberg provide a much deeper picture, with contemporary lessons.

Rav Teller notes the connection of the story of Jewish royalty, to a section of the Kuzari (Maamar3, second paragraph). The Kazar ruler asks the Jewish wise-man, the Chaver, what the Chasid, the man of kindness, does nowadays in Jewish society. The Chaver answers that "the Chasid deals carefully with his realm, measuring and doling out to each man his subsistence; he deals justly, cheating no one, giving to nobody more than is his just due; and in time of need, he commands and they obey, he warns and they pay attention". The Kuzari asks that that sounds like a description of a king, not that of a Chasid. Answers the Chaver: The Chasid is one who rules over his own physical and spiritual powers and senses; this makes him also fit to rule over others. Furthermore, the Chasid uses his intellectual abilities to remember (Zikaron) historical episodes(Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses in Egypt and in the Tabernacle of the Desert Era, etc.) and apply those lessons to contemporary problems.

Using the Kabbalistic approach of Rav Matis Weinberg to the Sefirot, one can appreciate the answer of the Chaver to the Kuzari. For seven weeks we have been counting the forty-nine days from Passover to Shavuot; this is the Sefirat HaOmer. Each week of the Omer has a Kabbalistic quality; week one is Chesed (kindness), and week seven Malchut (Kingship). These attributes are the blueprints of every living system in our world. First, it must exist. "Olam Chesed Yibaneh": the Almighty created our Universe as an act of pure Chesed, kindness, sharing His Existence with us. From this Universe, this totality(Kol; Klal) of Existence, individual entities (prat) must be carved. "Amar l'Olamo die": the Almighty, in an act of Justice ("Din", from which derives the Hebrew word "die") set boundaries to the ever-expanding Big Bang of Creation, and created all the details (prat) of the Universe. Klal and Prat, though, are opposites, and so comes Tiferet (Truth;beauty) as a synthesis of the two: in Rav Weinberg's own analogy, to see the beauty of all the Universe in a sunset, or a rose, or any other detail of Creation. The entity (be it a business, with a "mission statement"; or a human being), must have values (Netzach), and express them (Hod) in such a way as the entity "comes into its Glory (Hod)"- much as the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) donned the glorious Urim v'Tumim, received Divine, eternal messages, and expressed them to the people of Israel. Then the system must be open to relationships with the outside world (Yesod), which is the basis of Malchut. A historical example of this would be Yosef, who was the base (Yesod) of the throne of Egyptian King Pharoah. Malchut is the identity that emerges from the self-organization of all these factors, much as a personality emerges from neurons; and just as personality cannot be found within individual (prat) neurons, so too Ruth and King David "disappear" as prati individuals inasmuch as they are Royalty (See this Judaism website, 6/08/08, "Cheesecake: King of Foods"). Every living entity (prat) on earth has this structure: for example, it can be seen in the growth of a human being, from birth/existence/Chesed to the emerging adult personality/Malchut.

The first two Kabbalistic elements of structure,though, lead to the classic Kabbalistic quandary: how can we, each "prati" human being (and every other detail of Creation) exist if the Lord is everywhere, and He is in everything. The Kabbalists call the solution "Tzimtzum", G-d contracting Himself to "leave space", as it were, for our Universe. On another level, one could say that we humans only exist insofar as we partake in the sharing acts of the King Himself; in sharing of ourselves, we resemble the King, and truly "are"-a paradoxical act of "disappearance", becoming instead existence. Thus the story of Ruth and its connection to Yibum (the "levirate marriage" seen in Deuteronomy, 25,5): our Rabbis say that the soul of her dead husband, Machlon, existed in Ruth, and was passed on to her son Oved in her union with Boaz. This represented the sex act, an ultimate act of sharing (one's bed, flesh, genes), taken an octave higher, in a sharing of souls. But like the ever-climbing ladder of Jacob, there was an even higher level of sharing, as Ruth became (in the words of Rav Weinberg) a kind of surrogate mother for Naomi: "nolad ben l'Naomi", as Naomi became the wet nurse for the child, and people saw the situation as "a son has been born to Naomi" (Ruth;4,16-17).

Rav Weinberg points out one last sharing of sharing, of Malchut d'Malchut: Ruth's clinging to Naomi and becoming a Jewess, a convert. Ruth's sister Orpah could not psychologically tolerate the act of humbling and dependence that would be necessary in learning Judaism from Naomi. But Ruth, again, became invisible. She clings to Naomi in an act that provides the "kaparah" (atonement) for the way Lot, the founder of the Moabite tribe, ran away from our Father Abraham, the man of Chesed. Lot, like Orpah, could not tolerate dependence, and being always on the recipient end of Chesed. Rav Teller points out that the classic sin for which the Lord said that a Moabite may not marry a Jew, was lack of Chesed (Deuteronomy 23,4-7).

To appreciate the relationship of King to Chesed and Gevura/Din, one can look to the life of King David. In Talmud Berachot (4a), he declares, in words echoing the Chaver and the Kuzari, that he is not only King, but: "Am I not a Chasid? All the other kings think only of their own honor , but I dirty my hands with questions of menstrual blood in order to permit a wife to her husband". Unlike a selfish Elimelech, running away from starving brethren during a famine, our King David takes interest and relates to every prat in his nation, even to his subjects mundane problems (of sex, i.e. sharing). As Rav Weinberg says, this is the Malchut relating and sharing with the peratim from which he emerges, as opposed to the non-Chesed classic line of Marie Antoinette: "Let them eat cake". Similarly in Shmot Rabbah(2,2), we see the young shepherd David taking care to feed his sheep in "Din/Gevura", young sheep going out first to eat the soft grass that they can digest, older sheep going out later- exactly as depicted by the Chaver in the Kuzari.

On this Shavuot, birthday and Yahrtzeit of King David, we need look no further than David and Jewish principles of Malchut to appreciate the lack of contemporary leadership. Would a King of Chesed and sharing, have said: "For the greater good, we must evict 8,800 Jews from their homes in Gush Katif"? Would a true King of Israel not later realized the folly and evil done in the Disengagement, and made good on it by now, five years later? Would a true Jewish leader, an expert in Chesed and sharing, declare (as did Yair Lapid) that he wants to run for Knesset, and in the same breath acknowledge that he backed Disengagement in order to "teach those knit-kippot a lesson"? Could a King of Israel, remembering ("Zikaron" of the Kuzari) our King David, play selfish political games to ensure his survival, by stifling Jewish building in Jerusalem, the City of David, thereby giving an opening to a bunch of terrorists to claim sovereignty therein?

May this Shavuot see "The Return of the King", the True King, the Melech HaMoshiach, so we can all declare: "Yechi Hamelech David l'Olam". Long live King David.

Dr. Aryeh Hirsch is a physician at Magen David Adom/Terem in Jerusalem. He is proud to be a settler, residing in Beit El.