Learning the Lessons of Megillat Ruth: Be an Inviting Community

Welcome to Views from Outside the Box!  This blog will feature musings designed to challenge, affirm, outrage, and inspire.  I look forward to hearing from you!

And now, for my Maiden Blog post!

        Learning the Lessons of Megillat Ruth: Be an Inviting Community

                                      

There is a song famous in Judaism, sung at every Havdalah ceremony.  It is the song Eliyahu HaNavi.  Why do we sing this song?  Judaism understands Shabbat to be a foretaste of the world to come.  Who is the harbinger of this world to come, this period of eternal perfection and redemption?  It is not Eliyahu, he but announces the announcer.  Let's see if we can use our music recall ... mashiakh, ben David.  Now that much, many of us recall.  But fess up: How many of you know that Ruth is in David's lineage?  So big deal, you say.  What's so astounding about that?  Oh, nothing really.  Nothing at all until we stop and realize that Ruth, one of only two women in the Bible to have books named after them, was a convert.  Now imagine that.  The ultimate Jewish redemption story is ultimately born of a woman who was not born Jewish.  Hardly ever has a Biblical text resonated so closely with the reality of Jewish life in our times.  When you look at who attends synagogue in this day and age, more often as not there are Jews by Choice present.  The book of Ruth points to the redemptive possibilities that these people represent for Judaism.  What then is the wisdom that the book passes on to us?

Ruth by Fracesco Hayez

I think that the first is that there can be no such thing as a completely unacceptable candidate.  Why?  Well, Ruth was a Moabite woman.  And according to the Torah, it was absolutely forbidden for an Israelite to marry a Moabite.  Yet she indeed married into an Israelite family that had at least at one time been of some significant means.

After that, I am impressed with the sense of dedication and sincerity that is evident in Ruth's decision.  The formal language of her declaration to her mother-in-law Naomi was that of a vow.  In that time, one did not blithely make vows, for one ran the risk of violating one of the Aseret Dibrot, lo tisah et shem Adonai elokekha la'shav; “do not take the name of ADONAI your God in vain.”  Yet her devotion could not be any more explicit: "Do not abjure me to leave you nor to turn away from you, for where you will go, I will go, and where you win sleep, I win sleep; your people are my people, your God is my God.  Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried; this Adonai will do to me, and even more, if anything except death separates me away from you." Clearly the rhetoric here is of the greatest severity.  The sincerity we should expect from those seeking to become Jewish need not be expressed so extremely, yet it truly needs to be there.

There is another side to sincerity.  We must learn to want people who are looking for their spiritual home in Judaism.  And let's be honest, the idea of proselytizing seems foreign to most Jews.  Mind you, there has been more proselytizing by Jews than is commonly realized, but nonetheless this has not been a mainstream practice of Judaism, especially.  Yet, we live in different times.  The open society that draws so many away from Judaism also leads many others into a search.  Judaism, if it can be spoken of monolithically, has many appeals for different people.  Some appreciate the theology of brit and mitzvah as representative of commitment and commandment.  Others find compelling the charge to make this world a better place, and the world to come will take care of itself.  And some appreciate the spiritual discipline of prayer and study and a sanctified table.  And there are those that value the traditional concern on family that has been a hallmark of Jewish identity.  In short, in the vast array of spiritual values available to one who is searching, Judaism certainly has its appeal.

How do we break a two thousand year tradition of ambivalence towards gerim?  I'd suggest for starters, that the Talmudic dictum to turn a student away numerous times be actively ignored.  We don’t have to turn away everyone who comes in.  There is a 'significant difference between being receptive to those who seek us, and assertively marketing Judaism as an option.  Clearly Ruth had to use her wits (and then some!) to secure her place in Bethlehem, and we should never feel compelled to accept as Jewish someone who is not willing to make a real commitment.  Mind you, the attendant course for formally becoming Jewish should be intense enough and long enough to be self-­selective.  But why should we be discouraging anyone at all from exploring what Judaism offers the world, as well as the individual.  At the very least, we have the opportunity to help create another Tomekh Yisrael, a supportive friend of the Jewish people.  Optimally, we have the potential for a new Jew who will, by all indices, tend to be more Jewishly literate, more actively involved in Jewish causes and especially the synagogue, and more spiritually motivated than most Jews by birth.  I'll tell you that I don’t even like the word “conversion.”  In my mind, one converts measurements from English to metric, or currency from dollars to whatever.  In one's spiritual and religious life, there are no conversions, rather growths into a religious awareness.  Even the Talmud concedes that the soul of a person who has joined the Jewish people was Jewish in nature from its very outset.  In short, the process serves to formalize what had been there all along.  Further, there is a whole new class of potential Jews who seek the formal offices of conversion.  They are the children of Jewish fathers, or the grandchildren of Jewish women, or in some other way have been personally affected by an intermarriage or a conversion out of Judaism before they were even born.  If the Holy Blessed One is calling these people home, how dare we not facilitate this miracle?

Finally, we need to take our cue from the Book of Ruth in the language we use to refer to those who join our ranks.  There is no special word whatsoever in the entire Book of Ruth for her status after she has joined the community.  She is Ruth, just plain Ruth, no longer “Ruth the Moabite Woman.”  What should we call Jews who have joined the Jewish people by choice rather than birth?  Jews.  Period.  Total.  End of sentence.  We'll know we really welcome them, when we no longer think that their Jewish identity requires special nomenclature.  In other words, when we think of them as Jews, without thinking "Convert", or even, "Jew by Choice" then you'll know we'll have truly succeeded in making Judaism more welcoming for them.  Let's take time out to consider how we can make Judaism a more receptive tradition to those who would turn to us for a spiritual homecoming.