[Avodah] Another approach to Ruth's geirus

[Akiva Miller via Avodah]

I am going to revise and restate my original post, which got sidetracked
onto issues of marriage to a non-Jewess, and of the role of a "redeemer",
which I confess to knowing very little about.

But it is very clear to anyone who has looked at it (again, pages 48-52 of
ArtScroll's Ruth is an excellent summary) many of Chazal were uncomfortable
with the possibility that Machlon and Kilyon would marry women who had not
been converted at all. At the same same, they are also very uncomfortable
with Naami telling women who *had* converted that they should leave.

Some have tried to resolve this by suggesting some sort of "tentative"
conversion, but I cannot imagine that we'd allow such a conversion to be
cancelled after ten long years. Instead, my solution is that there was a
genuine halachic machlokes involved, such that Machlon and Kilyon held the
conversion to be valid (at least on some minimal b'dieved level), while
Ruth held it to be totally invalid. This simple approach answers all the
problems listed above. (It also allows you to think whatever you like about
the level of Machlon's and kilyon's gadlus.)

I will leave it as an open question whether Ruth reconverted to satisfy
Naami's shita, or whether Naami resigned herself to accepting the first
geirus. I also retract all my comments about Boaz, as they will turn on
topics that I am woefully ignorant about.

Akiva Miller
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