[Avodah] 15 Av

Akiva Miller akivagmiller at gmail.com
Sat Sep 21 23:09:16 PDT 2019


.
Continuing about Rus and Orpah, R' Micha Berger wrote:

> If they are not allowed to marry, then why assume they converted
> before marrying Machlon and Khilyon? After all, we're resigned
> to the idea that they were sinning either way.

Me, I'm not resigned to that idea. I would prefer to presume that the sons
of a gadol like Elimelech would not marry women who were assur to them. In
other words, Rus and Orpah must have had a valid conversion AND (contrary
to this idea of changing the halacha via a brand-new drasha) Machlon and
Kilyon were privy to Elimelech's insider information that female Moabite
converts were muttar for marriage. ("Boaz permitted nothing new; he merely
popularized a law that had been forgotten by the majority of the
population." - ArtScroll pg 47)

> And further ... if a woman converts for marriage, and the
> marriage is assur, is there any way to say the conversion was
> valid? I mean, there are pretty loose definitions of qabbalas
> ol malkhus Shamayim compared to what a beis din would hope for.
> But converting for the sake of being able to do an issur???

These are great questions, and their answers are far above my level. But
I'll say this: It is not at all unusual to come across a gemara that says,
"You're not allowed to convert in this manner, but if you did, then it is
valid." And some of those leniencies raise the exact question that RMB is
asking, because if the gerus was done is a forbidden manner, where is the
qabbalas ol malkhus Shamayim?

By the way, where did they find a Beis Din in Moav? Yes, that was a
rhetorical question, intended to point out that if Rus and Orpah did have a
valid conversion at the beginning of the story, the procedure must have
involved some pretty serious leniencies.

Hmmm... Actually, if Rus converted at the end of the story, that is pretty
problematic too, because even if there isn't any "conversion for the sake
of marriage" to worry about, the Beis Din is even more surprising. (Someone
*might* make a case that two brothers could be a Beis Din for gerus, but
when Naami and Rus were alone they didn't have any Jewish men around at
all.)

Akiva Miller
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