We arrive at the Yizkor service of Shavuot to gather the harvest of memory, picking up – like the Israelites of old – the cut sheaves of our loved ones and laying them on the threshing floor of our hearts. The sanctuary setting, the call of tradition, our memorial prayers – these are the means by which we summon the memories of those ever present in our lives.
This morning, I would like to frame Yizkor by way of Shavuot’s most recognizable biblical book and persona: Ruth, whose story we read earlier this morning. I want to revisit a familiar question: Why do we read Ruth on Shavuot? The answer – or at least one answer, – provides insight not only into Ruth, Shavuot, and the connection between them, but also into our task at hand at Yizkor.
Why do we read Ruth on Shavuot? As with all Jewish questions, the first answer is “because the rabbis said so.” Lamentations on Tisha B’Av, Ecclesiastes on Sukkot, Esther on Purim, Song of Songs on Passover, – each of the five megillot is paired with a holiday – and Ruth is today’s festival. Why connect Ruth with Shavuot and not another holiday? Because our pilgrimage holidays – the shalosh regalim, Sukkot, Pesah, and Shavuot – were all originally connected to ancient’s Israel’s agricultural cycle. The backdrop of Ruth’s story is the barley harvest, an organic thematic and seasonal connection.
And if that were all there was, dayenu, to mix my holidays. That would be enough. But there is more. The prayer book refers to Shavuot as z’man matan torateinu, the time of the giving of our Torah, when the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai to enter the covenant, receive the law, and thereby become a people. The mystics suggest that on that day at Sinai there were present not only the souls of the newly emancipated Israelites, but all the Jewish souls not yet born and those not yet converted to Judaism. Ruth, a woman of Moabite origin, is perhaps the most famous of all converts to the faith. “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (1:16–17). It is by way of Ruth’s openhearted and full-throated declaration of loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi that Ruth becomes an exemplar for entering the covenant. Her affirmation is championed on this day dedicated to celebrating our bond with God.
The book of Ruth is about Ruth, it is about Naomi, it is about a lot of people, but next time you are in Israel, walk down Ruth Street in Jerusalem’s Emek Refaim neighborhood, read the street sign closely, and you will realize that for many, Ruth’s claim to fame is being sabato shel David ha-melekh, great-grandmother of King David. According to tradition, King David was born and died on Shavuot. Why do we read Ruth on Shavuot? Because it connects Ruth to David, Sinai to Zion, and Ruth’s redemption, theologically speaking, to the final redemption.
Ruth, as noted, is a Moabite who, by way of her first marriage to Naomi’s son Mahlon and then her second to Boaz binds her destiny to that of the Jewish people. But Ruth wasn’t just any foreigner. As a Moabite, her pedigree was tied to Israel’s historic enemies, a people whom the book of Deuteronomy explicitly prohibits Israelites from marrying. As such, the reader is forced to square the circle of Ruth’s inclusive message with the exclusionary stance of the rest of the Bible, an exercise that many argue is exactly the point. Ruth is the counternarrative in a Bible otherwise reluctant to embrace non-Israelites. Be it the time of Mount Sinai, the time of Ruth, or our own time, the book of Ruth offers a big tent message. If Ruth the Moabite can convert to Judaism, then perhaps we can be a little more welcoming to that non-Jewish girl your son just brought home from college? Who knows, might she just be the great-grandmother to the next King David? Why do we read Ruth on Shavuot? Because Ruth reminds us that be it Mount Sinai or today, the Jewish people were and always will be a mixed multitude.
Why do we read Ruth on Shavuot? There are more reasons than days of the Omer – I have offered only a few. This morning, by way of an insight shared by an ancient rabbi and a contemporary teacher, I want to offer one more – especially suited to Yizkor.
In the Midrash on Ruth, Rabbi Zeira pointedly asks why Ruth was even written, never mind included in the biblical canon. It contains no laws of purity or impurity and makes no mention of that which is permitted or prohibited. What business does this pastoral tale have in a Bible otherwise filled with laws and commandments? Rabbi Zeira answers his question explaining: L’lamed’kha kamah sakhar tov l’gomelei hasadim, It is to teach you the reward for those who perform acts of hesed (a Hebrew word which I will leave untranslated for the moment).
Rabbi Zeira’s terse comment needs to be unpacked – a project undertaken by my late doctoral advisor Tikva Frymer-Kensky in her masterful and posthumously published commentary on Ruth. Tikva identifies how hesed, in word and deed, is woven into the fabric of the narrative. We begin in the first chapter, when Ruth – who is widowed as a young woman and under no legal obligation to care for her mother-in-law – makes the unexpected choice to accompany Naomi back to Bethlehem. The same quality of hesed, we could say, applies to Naomi, who extends beyond the call of duty to bring her widowed Moabite daughter-in-law back to her hometown. In chapter two, having heard of Ruth’s first act of hesed, Boaz extends hesed to Ruth, not only allowing her, a foreign woman, to glean in his field but going the extra mile in instructing his staff not only not to hassle Ruth, but to leave extra stalks of grain for her to gather. Hearing of Boaz’s hesed, Naomi responds in chapter three by coaching Ruth how to endear herself to Boaz. One can only imagine the crosscurrents of Naomi’s emotions engineering the courtship of her deceased son’s widow. Without going into all the details, we learn that Boaz is under no legal obligation to redeem Ruth, the narrator sharing that there is another kinsman with a more immediate claim. Boaz responds with hesed yet again, releasing that individual from his obligation so as it to take it on for himself and marry Ruth. Our story closes with a final act of hesed, this one performed by Ruth and the community. Ruth bears a son, but our parting image is of Naomi holding him and the community announcing that a child has been born to Naomi. This is not a typo; it is hesed. What greater act of hesed can there be towards Naomi than to grant her, after the loss of her sons, the redemptive joy of becoming a grandmother?
Frymer-Kensky thus traces the narrative, in the spirit of Rav Zeira, identifying hesed as the thread tying the story of Ruth together. And now we turn to the word that I have yet to translate, hesed. Most often understood as “kindness,” the word hesed is multifaceted and hard to translate, carrying with it connotations of benevolence, loyalty, mercy, grace, and love. The great sage Maimonides, in his Guide to the Perplexed, offers a definition of hesed that I think goes directly to the heart of Ruth (3:53). Hesed is the act of extending kindness to those to whom we owe nothing – toward someone who has no claim on our time, our resources, or our very self. Call it altruism, call it unmerited generosity, hesed is an act of kindness not born of obligation or expectation, nor driven by kinship or reciprocity. It is the deeds we do that go beyond the letter of the law.
And here we arrive at Shavuot. Shavuot is the festival all about the binding authority of the law. Receiving the Torah, the obligations that stem from it, the commandments we understand and the ones we don’t, the mechanisms of enforcement, the reward in the law’s fulfillment and the penalties for its breach. Shavuot is all about din, the letter of the law. And Ruth, our counternarrative, is about going beyond the letter of the law, lifnim meshurat hadin. None of the characters in Ruth are biologically related; they are relations-in-love, not in-law; kin by deed, not by blood. Ruth is about what happens when folk act not out of obligation but hesed, a reminder that law is only part of the story, hesed is the other – one of the essential pillars upon which the world stands. We read Ruth as an important rejoinder to the festival of law we celebrate today but really every day. As Rabbi Yochanan taught in the Talmud, Jerusalem was destroyed not for the breach of law, but because the Jews of that generation judged solely according to the law, never beyond it. (Babylonian Talmud Bava Metzia 30b). Hesed is the ingredient that sustains the story of Ruth and all our stories, the ties that bind us one to another.
Which brings us back to Yizkor. We arrive here to recall our loved ones – fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. – the relationships may be biological or entered into by way of covenantal commitment. And many of us are remembering loved ones who were friends, community members, leaders, and teachers, mentors and guides without whom we would not be here – we would not be who we are. As Rabbi Harold Kushner of blessed memory once defined it, “Family are the people who show up.”
Whether the loved ones you are recalling are or are not formally kin, as the floodgates of memory open, I am willing to venture it is not the legal relationship that is occupying our hearts and our sanctuary. It is the acts of hesed. Those quiet conversations when a parent dropped their guard and let you glimpse into their humanity. The way a mother’s touch scratched your back just a moment longer than needed, long enough to make you feel safe. The handwritten notes signaling unspoken pride. The steady presence of a spouse who held your burdens without ever calling them heavy. The sibling who saw you not as you saw yourself but for the person you were becoming and had the potential to become. The friend whose presence made you feel less alone in this world. The mentor who went the extra mile, spent the extra time to nurture the spark that is uniquely yours.
These are the memories that surface at Yizkor. Not the obligatory acts, but the gestures of the heart. Not law but hesed. The deeds that endure forever, that have made us who we are and bind us forever to those we have lost. Why do we read Ruth on Shavuot as we recite Yizkor? We do so to focus our attention on the things worthy of being remembered and, by extension, the deeds by which we ourselves will be remembered by others into the future. As the Psalmist reminds us, olam hesed yibaneh,” it is by way of hesed that the world will be sustained.
Ruth to Naomi. Naomi to Ruth. Boaz to Ruth. Ruth to Boaz and so on and so on. Hesed is the quality holding the characters and book of Ruth together. A story that opens with death and closes with life, that begins with the bitter and ends with the sweet; a grief-stricken people who, despite bristling at the divine decree, honor the legacy of their loved ones by extending it forward into the future. It is the story of Ruth. It is the story of us. It is the promise, the comfort, and the blessing of this moment – the hesed of Yizkor.