[Avodah] Boaz's nisayon with Ruth

[Simi Peters via Avodah]

From: Micha Berger [mailto:micha at aishdas.org]
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2016 7:08 PM

> On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 11:36:54AM +0300, Marty Bluke via Avodah wrote:
>: In any case, with Rivka it doesn't necessarily mean romantic love. In fact,
>: the common derasha about Yitzchak and Rivka is that the love only came
>: after he married her and brought her into his tent.

> I heard as a contrast between real love and love at first sight.

> In any case, by the time they get to Gera, they are clearly romantically in
> love. Unless the point about Boaz and Rus was about love at first sight in
> particular, and we're just using the phnrase "romantic love"
> in differing ways.

Haven't any of you read the second perek of megillat Rut? We're not
talking about a coup de foudre here. We're talking about the gradual
development of warm feelings between a much older man and a mature woman
(40 years old, according to Hazal).

Rut is a lonely woman. She knows that she is a social pariah, looked
upon with suspicion as a Moabite and not likely to bask in the social
glow of Naomi's connections because Naomi abandoned them all during the
famine and has very little social capital herself. This is why she
tells Naomi that she will go gleaning where they will let her--she's
expecting to be thrown out of some places. This is also part of the
reason Boaz tells her to stay in his field--he knows the social climate
of his town. And Naomi is extremely surprised that Rut has come back
with so much grain; it means that someone has helped her--not something
Naomi expected under the circumstances.

Rut has lousy marriage prospects because everyone looks askance at her
as the weird shiksa daughter-in-law who comes back to Bet Lehem with
her mother-in-law. No one will consider marrying her because she is
a Moabite and people who marry Moabite women die (witness Mahlon and
Khilyon) because it's probably assur (except according to wild-eyed
Reformim or silly idealists like Boaz--the man in the street always
knows better). The halakha was still in dispute well into the lifetime
of David (Yevamot). Tov (aka Ploni Almoni) is practically in a panic
when he refuses the marriage to Rut--he wants the field, but no strings
attached "pen ash'hit et nahalati." Only Boaz has the guts to champion
Rut's cause because he has the authority to do so, has the social clout
to do so, he cares about her, and he is touched by her trust in him
and her courage in coming to speak to him at the goren.

Rut's acceptance into society only comes with her marriage to Boaz and
Naomi's rehabilitation with her neighbors only comes with the birth
of Oved.


[Email #2 -micha]

I believe that 'margelotav' is like 'merashotav' (Bereshit 28:11).
The 'mem' is not part of the shoresh and I don't think it is a pun.
It may be an oblique reference to halitza and, by extension, to yibum,
a delicate way of indicating that, while what Naomi wants for Rut is
not technically yibum, it is the yibum-like 'hakamat shem be'nahala'.
See the perush of the Malbim on the mitzvah of yibum, where he compares
the mitzvah to the yibum-like story of Yehuda and Tamar on the one hand,
and Rut and Boaz on the other.

When a man says to a woman, "You could marry anybody. Why have you
picked me?" that is a compliment, not necessarily a statement of fact.
Part of what impresses Boaz about what Rut has done is that she is
willing to marry an old man when that goes against the nature of things.
As Hazal say on this pasuk, a woman would prefer to marry a young, poor
man rather than an old, rich man (gold diggers aside). Rut has set
aside her natural inclinations in order to do hesed for her mother-in-law.

The words may also be read as an expression of Boaz's sense of gratitude
and wonder in finding his one-in-a- million woman (and Rut is indeed
exceptional) especially at a time in his life when he did not expect to
marry again. When Boaz encounters Rut he has just gotten up from shiva
for his wife. Either way, Boaz is not commenting on Rut's bountiful
marriage prospects, which are pretty much non-existent (as I argued in
the previous post.)

Kol tuv,
Simi Peters