{"id":14924,"date":"2014-06-03T21:21:25","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T01:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2014\/06\/03\/14924.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T19:10:11","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T00:10:11","slug":"shavuot-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2014\/06\/03\/shavuot-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Shavuot again!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So. It’s Shavuot, which has become one of my favorite holidays recently, partially because of the cheesecake, of course, but also because of the Book of Ruth<\/a>, a great interfaith family story.\n

So, anyway, I’m thinking about Ruth<\/i> today, and it occurs to me to pose y’all a counterfactual. If you don’t remember the story, it starts with Naomi and her husband and sons (the husband is Elimelech, the sons Mahlion and Chilion) move to Moab. There was a famine in Bethlehem, you see. Anyway, Elimelech dies, the sons marry—Ruth 1:4<\/a> And they took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one [was] Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth: and they dwelled there about ten years<\/i>. And then Mahlion and Chilion die, too. Moab not very healthy for Bethlehemites, evidently.\n

At this point, Naomi hears the news that the famine in Bethlehem is over and decides to return. Orpah and Ruth pack up to go back with her, but Naomi dissuades them; eventually, Ruth does go with her but Orpah returns to her people. And then the rest of the plot happens, with Ruth and Naomi and Boaz and all.\n

So. Here’s my question: what happens if Orpah sticks with them? I mean, here’s a fascinating moment—not only does the Jewish mother of this clan not say kaddish over her intermarried sons, but she gets along so well with her non-Jewish daughters-in-law that they want to make a three-person family unit together. Naomi can’t see it: she’s all Turn again, my daughters, go [your way]; for I am too old to have an husband. If I should say, I have hope, [if] I should have an husband also to night, and should also bear sons; Would ye tarry for them till they were grown? would ye stay for them from having husbands?<\/i> Naomi, bless her, can’t get past the idea that they need a paterfamilias, husbands, children, all the old-fashioned stuff that frankly has left them penniless and widowed.\n

And I want to be clear: things work out very well for Ruth and Naomi. The patriarchy is good to them, in the person of Boaz. The story confirms all that family-equals-marriage stuff, even as it has what came (later, I’m pretty sure) to be a radically positive view of intermarriage. But could it have worked the other way? The household of widows, Ruth and Naomi and Orpah, living harmoniously—or is the system too stacked against them?\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger realizes that it sounds more like a sitcom pitch than a scriptural inquiry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16614,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14924\/revisions\/16614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}