For the greater part of my life I have been wrestling with a question that has irritated the Jewish people for as long as we have been on the stage of world history: What is the cause of anti-Semitism? Why have nations been fixated on throwing the Jewish people onto the rubbish heap of history?

In particular, since Israel's establishment there has been a steady refusal by most of the Islamic world to recognize Israel's right to exist; it even took the Vatican decades before it established full diplomatic relations with Israel

In answering my question about anti-Semitism's rationale, I feel certain I am on the right track by relying on the testimony of the late dean of Jewish historians in the Diaspora, Professor Salo Baron, who testified at the Eichmann trial in 1960. At that time he said that the root cause of anti-Semitism is 'dislike of the unlike.'

While I essentially agree with Baron's claim, his curt definition lacks sinew, bones and flesh. The deep mystery for me is: why the dislike of the unlike of the Jew? Dislike I grasp; the why is what gnaws at me. A fuller answer to the 'why' relates to what I believe is one of the foundational pillars of Jewish survival: the virtues of 'hope' and 'resilience.'

Hope and resilience are traits that are deeply embedded in the psyche of our people and within our voluminous literature. Hope and resilience go a long way to accounting for 'dislike of the unlike.' When anti-Semites equate Jews with money, by which they really mean that Jews are successful and accomplished, what they are claiming is that Jews choose to be governed by the principle of what is possible; that when the going gets rough and one stumbles and falls, the Jewish religious-cultural formula, time-tested over 3,000 years, is to dig deep down and locate the untapped forces of hope and resilience lying dormant. Hope and resilience are catalytic agents that promote resistance to despair, and that align themselves with the power of renewal.

After I took ownership of this interpretation of hope and resilience, lo and behold, I discovered what Ecclesiastes knew long ago: there is nothing new under the sun; the essence of my 'great' discovery was already articulated by no less than Sigmund Freud. Towards the end of his life, he defined the Jewish character:

"[The Jewish people] has met misfortune and ill-treatment with an unexampled capacity for resistance; it has developed special character-traits, and incidentally has earned the hearty dislike of every other people. We should be glad to understand more of the source of this viability of the Jews and of how their characteristics are connected with their history...they are inspired by a peculiar confidence in life...a kind of optimism: pious people would call it trust in God."

And in a comment on anti-Semitism written in 1939, a year before his death, writing under the guise of a fictitious Gentile author, he noted the following:

"In some respects...the Jews are our superiors. They do not need so much alcohol as we do in order to make life tolerable; crimes of brutality, murder, robbery and sexual violence are great rarities among them (cited in Raphael Patai, The Jewish Mind, pp. 378-379).

With due apology for painting with broad brush strokes, and admittedly ignoring nuanced thinking, I weigh in on Christendom and Western civilization's less than amorous love affair with the Jewish people; historically, a dysfunctional relationship that stems, I submit, in large measure, from an inability to appreciate fully the features of hope and resilience as quintessential beacons of light guiding our way on the stage of world history.

Frankly, I do not think that classical Christianity, as I understand it, predicates its core values on hope and resilience to anywhere near the same degree as found in the enormous corpus of biblical and rabbinic sources. And if over the centuries, Christendom's political rulers and religious thinkers have incorporated hope and resilience into their outlook of the world, they have done so, frequently, by relying heavily on political and military might to achieve these ends; and while engaged in this enterprise, as Freud surmised, alcohol consumption often functioned as a necessary crutch and prop to cope with life's predictable vicissitudes.

Nor, for that matter, from what I have been able to discover as a novice probing the Islamic faith, has Islam cultivated hope and resilience in anywhere near the degree compared with the Jewish experience. Since my conclusions on this matter are still tentative I will refrain from any further comment. 

From Trauma to Triumph
Against this backdrop I submit that the scroll of Ruth gives us a front row seat as we watch one of our biblical ancestors, very possibly a woman composer, engrave the qualities of hope and resilience into the memory banks of the Jewish spirit. Hope and resilience hover over the heroes—Naomi, Ruth and Boaz—as they transition from death and mourning, from sorrow and sadness, from infertility and famine, towards fullness, fertility and restoration. Ruth's narrator-theologian, I will assume she is a woman, wants us to appreciate that the journey from tragedy to triumph, to hope and resilience, is a slow and arduous process.

There is no escape, only confrontation with death in its various forms:  there is famine in the land, which is to say that the land is 'dead.' Regrettably , the town of Bethlehem (literally, House of Bread) fails to live up to its name as a place of sustenance; famine compels Elimelech, patriarch of the family, to seek out greener pastures in Moab to the south east of the land of Israel. There, Elimelekh dies. Naomi's sons, Mahlon and Chilion, in turn, marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Some ten years later Mahlon and Chilion also die. Only when Naomi hears that Bethlehem has recovered from famine does she decide to return home, lacking assurance of a more fruitful future. 

Ruth: Exemplar of Hope
Unlike Naomi, Ruth exemplifies hope and she is the epitome of resilience. She has a 'stick-to-it' posture that equates with stubbornness; she voluntarily fuses her life to the destiny of her mother-in-law. For Ruth, hope and resilience link up with her voluntary decision to surrender her Moabite identity, culminating in her marriage to Boaz, and her eventual acceptance by Boaz and Naomi.

Through her marriage to Boaz, a relative of her deceased husband Mahlon, Ruth restores hope and resilience to Naomi. By presenting a grandson to Naomi, Ruth turns her mother-in-law's mourning into joy; she provides Naomi with a new sense of purpose. Besides which, this grandson, Obed, becomes Naomi's 'redeemer' and will care for his grandmother as she ages. Our author hints that hope and resilience are tied to a process that cannot be short-circuited. In fact, despair and depression, at times, precede healing and revival.

Following the demise of her husband and two sons, Naomi describes herself as bitter and empty. She has no sons to give to Orpah and Ruth; and Orpah and Ruth are themselves childless. So forlorn is Naomi that she has become an anonymous person in her own eyes. "The woman was bereft of her two sons and her husband" (Ruth 1:5). Upon returning to Bethlehem, the local women are shocked by Naomi's pathetic appearance. She immediately blames Shaddai, her name for God, for having cursed her life by depriving her of family and offspring.

How striking that Naomi chooses to lash out at "Shaddai,"  a rather uncommon name for God. Shaddai, in fact, appears only 48 times in our Hebrew bible; only six times in Genesis; compared with the more common name, YHWH, recorded 6,800 times. So why Shaddai? Traditionally rendered as "God Almighty," this name traces back to an Akkadian (old Babylonian) language root meaning "mountain" or "breast."  From here we see the linkage of Shaddai to the biblical Hebrew word, 'shad,' meaning breast. There is, after all, an obvious correlation between the images of mountain and breast.

But most significant is that Shaddai in the Bible is almost always associated with fertility and reproduction.₁ So, Naomi's painful outburst against Shaddai relates to her feeling less than fully feminine. She is psychologically devastated. Far beyond child-rearing years, she seems fated to live out her life without offspring, without hope. She describes herself as 'empty' (1:21).

Doubly empty, she has lost her husband and her sons, and she is empty of seed. Her future is also bleak economically since there will be no children to help sustain the household. When all is said, Naomi's anger against Shaddai connects her to the Book of Job where the name Shaddai appears no less than 31 times. How fitting! Shaddai, that aspect of God associated with fertility, has robbed Job of his entire family. So, Naomi's loss of her family converts her into a female Job!

Our female author uses literary techniques to convey the arduous journey from trauma to recovery. I refer to one such device: a reliance on an inclusio, a bracketing device in which similar words or phrases are placed at the beginning and end of a section. The inclusion in our story enables us to see in one sweep the flow from tragedy to triumph: the narrative begins with the family of Elimelekh spending ten years in Moab confronting childlessness (1:4) and in the final scene we count ten generations that end with the birth of David (4:18-22).

The Image of the Seed
Another unique feature among the 85 verses in the story is one idea that punctuates the transition from sterility to fertility, from emptiness to fullness: the image of the seed.

In chapter 1, Naomi bewails her status as a woman with no hope of ever conceiving a child. Yet, as Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem, the House of Bread, it is the beginning of the spring harvest, and our female composer hints that the fertile soil now restored, is a foreshadow of the fertile womb to be, of Ruth herself.

In chapter 2, grain from the harvest serves as the instrument Boaz uses to communicate his approval of Ruth, even though she hails from detested Moabite stock.

In chapter 3, when Ruth lies down beside Boaz and uncovers his feet, a scene full of sexual innuendo, we easily miss what is staring us in the face: Boaz, asleep, is lying down right next to a huge pile of grain, a bristling symbol of male semen. When Ruth heads home at the break of dawn, Boaz tells her to hold out her shawl which he then fills with six measures of barley, making her appear pregnant. In fact, we can say quite literally that he gives his seed to Ruth. His act also foreshadows the future seeds of the Davidic dynasty.

In the final chapter, when the women of the town shout that Ruth's new-born son has become Naomi's son, the narrative has come full circle: the void Naomi felt through the loss of spouse and sons has now been filled by the seed of her grandson whom she holds close to her bosom. 

Ambivalence Towards Ruth
Ruth is undeniably the catalyst moving the plot forward from emptiness to ecstasy. She is a woman who completely defies the Judean stereotype of the 'Moabite' woman. She is unlike her female ancestors who enticed the Israelites to engage in pagan worship through acts of ritual intercourse (Numbers 25:3). Her behavior stands at odds from her ancestral tribe that acted with aggression and callousness when Israel passed near Moabite territory on the way to Canaan (Deuteronomy 23:5; Judges 11:17).

The Torah's verdict in the Book of Deuteronomy, no doubt familiar to Ruth's author, excludes Moabites and Ammonites permanently from membership in the nation of Israel. While Torah law shuns the Moabite, Ruth's author seems intent on crushing this Moabite stereotype. She makes patently clear that Elimelech's nuclear family survived quite nicely for more than a decade within the embrace of Moabite hospitality. These Moabites of a later time are obviously worlds apart in behaviour from their ancestors. 

A modern-day comparison might be a Jewish family, native citizens of the State of Israel, who emigrate to Berlin under economic distress. There they are welcomed with open arms by German folk whose ancestors marched with the Gestapo and the SS. Is Ruth's composer challenging the law in Deuteronomy? Implicit in our story seems to be the gnawing question: How long does a community hold on to its historical grudges? At what point does dislike and suspicion give way to even a cautious handshake, and to eventual inclusivity?

In any event, to return to Ruth's behaviour in our story, she insists on following Naomi into unknown territory, willingly attaching herself to the Jewish fold, to Jewish faith, to Jewish destiny. In transferring her destiny to the Jewish people, Ruth is on a par with Abraham, if not greater. Abraham leaves his homeland for an unknown venue at God's behest, and with an explicit expectation of divine reward (Genesis 12:1-3); whereas Ruth leaves her native soil of her own volition, attaches herself to a people she does not know (2:11) and has no expectations of gain.

Equally impressive, Ruth personifies 'ẖesed', loosely translated as 'unfettered kindness.' Hesed points to Ruth's selflessness in caring for Naomi without any expectation of payback. Ruth's gesture is spontaneous going beyond what Naomi has a right to expect from her daughter-in-law. Conspicuously, Ruth does not wallow in self-pity; she does not curse God for her misery as a widow (unlike Naomi's outburst against Shaddai), and she rejects any number of available younger suitors in favour of the more mature Boaz. Why? Cynics might say she and Naomi know they will be better off with an established man of substance like Boaz. Even if self-interest is at play by marrying Boaz, who is related to her deceased husband, Ruth is bent, in a round-about-way, to perpetuate the family line of her late husband. 

With all these virtues in mind, I raise a question which, to my mind, does not lend itself to an obvious answer: to what extent is Ruth accepted as a full-fledged member of the 'tribe' by the actors on stage? I suggest that on this score ambiguity takes centre stage. Our female narrator places Ruth the Moabite somewhere between a rock and a hard place: despite Ruth's gracious behaviour, she is unable to fully shed her Moabite outsider identity; she is in fact marginalized, and in all likelihood is the butt of discrimination by the locals in Bethlehem. How so?

Let's begin with Naomi: does Naomi in the early scenes feel ambivalent about her daughter-in-law, about Ruth's Moabite identity? Through the ages generations of admirers have recited Ruth's famous soliloquy: "Where you go, I shall go; your people shall be my people; your God, shall be my God;" language that has melted the hearts of so many; yet, Naomi hears this deeply authentic affirmation of faith and remains totally silent; not a word does she utter either to Ruth, or about Ruth as they make their way back to Bethlehem.

Perhaps, one might say Naomi is profoundly stirred and touched by Ruth's declaration of faith...to the point of silence. And yet, when the two women arrive  back in Israel, Naomi opens up with her tale of woe, while all the while Ruth stands beside her, as if she were invisible. Naomi makes no effort to introduce her to the women-folk who welcome Naomi back, and they, in turn, totally ignore this Moabite woman standing before them.

In fact, our story teller feels the need to reinforce Ruth's Moabite identity, precisely at this point in the narrative: "Thus Naomi returned from the country of Moab; she returned with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabite" (1:22). Why the cold-shoulder? I suggest our female composer offers us front row seats to watch how Deuteronomy's commandment to show blatant discrimination against Moabites comes into play. Should we, on the one hand, give Naomi the benefit of the doubt, that her ill manners and self-centredness reflect her own bitterness, and sense of deprivation? Or, is Naomi simply embarrassed by Ruth the  Moabite who has insisted on clinging to her, even after Naomi begged her, mind you, to return home to her own gods?

Does Naomi gradually warm up to Ruth? Undeniably, yes! When Ruth returns home from Boaz's field with a full measure of food Naomi affectionately calls her "my daughter," and then advises her to remain cloistered with the other women in Boaz's field to avoid being molested (2:22). And again, Naomi relates to Ruth as her daughter when she sets in motion the plan she hopes will lead to a marriage proposal by Boaz to Ruth (3:1). 

Let's move on to Boaz. Why is it that once Boaz hears Naomi has returned that he does not simply reach out to her, particularly in light of her economic plight which he would have heard of through the grapevine? Is he, too, prejudiced against Naomi because she has allowed a Moabite to cross the threshold of the close-knit insider community of Bethlehem?

The truth be told, if Boaz initially harbours ambivalence towards Ruth, he undergoes a complete transformation in attitude. He becomes infatuated with Ruth, first and foremost, as a human being who has demonstrated magnanimous loyalty and steadfast concern for Naomi's welfare. However, it does seem clear that in the public square Boaz plays to the anti-Moabite prejudice of the town leaders; he does not hesitate to highlight Ruth's Moabite pedigree (4:5, 10). There seems little doubt that he seeks to reduce her status and to marginalize her in the public eye. Yet, in the privacy of his own home he does not hesitate to call her his 'daughter,' a term of endearment.

It is in the final chapter that we confront head-on the community's ambivalence towards Ruth. Yes, there is mention that Ruth gives birth to Oved, and that she is the great-grandmother of the future King David; yet, Ruth herself is physically absent from the set, just as the plot climbs to its crescendo. Boaz, as mentioned, makes a point of stressing Ruth's Moabite ancestry, while the townsfolk neglect to mention Ruth by name.

In what I believe is the piece de resistance of ambivalence, Naomi's women neighbours displace Ruth as the biological mother. They declare: "A son is born to Naomi" (4:16-17). While it may be that we are being asked to empathize with Naomi who now has a renewed purpose in life via her grandson, we ought not to ignore the unambiguous fact that Ruth has been shunted to the sidelines. She has fulfilled her role as a baby-making vessel.

Perhaps, the ambivalence I sense is appropriate when we grant weight to historical memory and to the enmity that once defined Israel-Moabite relations. Perhaps, our female composer is simply placing all the cards on the table for us to consider. Historical memory does die hard!

Aspire to...
My final illustration of hope and resilience is related to aspiration; by this I mean: we should have no expectations that hope and resilience will somehow empower us to complete the good tasks we set for ourselves with a perfect score of ten. Rather, hope and resilience are the tools we are meant to use as we claw our way ever closer to our personal goal lines. We can do no better than aspire to...

The Book of Ruth teaches this lesson in spades through another elephant in the room besides Ruth the Moabite: I speak of David himself and his Judean dynasty. We recall, our story begins in David's home town of Bethlehem (1:1-2; 19), and ends with David's family tree (4:18-22). Placing David's name as the very last word in the scroll lays the foundation for the Judean dynasty, around which so much of the Hebrew Bible hinges. At the same time, David's name conjures up complexity.

Although so many pages of the Hebrew bible are pro-David, calling David's 'yichus' (pedigree) to mind, points us to his family history, flawed in all directions, backwards and forwards. Take David's bloodline. On his maternal side, his great-grandmother is Ruth, a Moabite, about whose ancestry we have said enough. Next, David's son, Solomon, marries Na'amah, an Ammonite, another forbidden outsider (I Kings 14:21), who along with Moabites are excluded from joining the Jewish tribe (Deuteronomy 23:4). Out of Solomon's union with Na'amah is born the next Judean king, Rehoboam.

What lesson are we meant to derive from these forbidden intermarriages? The first is that David and Solomon's bloodline is nothing less than a slap in the face to Torah law as set down in Deuteronomy. Moabite and Ammonite DNA flow through the blood and skin of Judean kings. But wait, it gets worse: the Moabites and Ammonites were born from an incestuous union. The daughters of Lot were impregnated by their father after raping him while he was drunk. They then gave birth to male babies, Moab and Ben-Ammi (i.e., Ammon) (Genesis 19:30-38).

So, by ending the Book of Ruth with the name of 'David,' we as readers are deliberately drawn like a magnet to the familial messiness of David's bloodline. We see here no blue-blood trajectory, but rather a family history that underscores the Judean dynasty springing from the dregs of human civilization.

If this is a look backwards at David's family pedigree, what are we to say about the life he actually lives? We do not have time to delve into his illicit affair with Bathsheba, nor his mafia-styled murder of Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, nor how he presides as a father over the travails of his dysfunctional family, and questionable treatment of both friends and foe.

Yet, when all the ink has dried, readers down through the centuries are invited to somehow associate our most positive yearnings and dreams with the journey of a man, and with a dynasty that is deeply stained. Hence, the broader message of the Scroll of Ruth seems to be that, from the outset, life is messy; no one comes to the table with a clean slate, with anything near a perfect score. There are always skeletons in one's closet waiting to emerge!  The best we can do is to try to do better, to aspire to...

¹Genesis 17:1; 28:3; 35:11; Job 5:17, 24-26