Ruth's Wholesome Seduction Strategy

The Jewish holiday, Shavuos, is approaching (tonight) and I have been studying the Book of Ruth, which is read and discussed each year on this holiday. The text and the rabbinic commentary suggest that Ruth was a vulnerable figure: a widow, she was not young, not particularly pretty, she had lost her husband, she has no children, and she clings to her mother-in-law and has decided to join the Jewish people. So she is among new people in an unfamiliar land. She does not know what will happen to her; all she knows is that she loves her mother-in-law and Judaism.

When Naomi, her mother-in-law, tries to help her by instructing her to seduce Boaz, a kind and generous man from Naomi's own family, into marriage, Ruth modestly turns the seduction plan on its head. Without defying her mother-in-law, she speaks directly and poetically to the man (in the Hebrew, the language is soft, rhythmic, and musical), asking him to "spread his wings" over her, to protect her. He is moved by her modesty (he comments on how he had noticed that she never followed young men around, and the commentators describe Ruth's modest dress-- careful to cover her legs as she gleaned barley in the fields). Boaz is also struck by Ruth's sweet metaphoric directness and her famous generosity towards her mother-in-law.

Not only does nothing sexual happen between the couple that night after their conversation (and they are all alone at night in the fields), but Boaz and Ruth responsibly go through a few official steps over the following days to make sure that their marriage will be appropriate. They go on to formally marry, and their child is conceived on their wedding night, a boy from whom King David is descended.

A note: Naomi's seduction plan is more well-meaning than it sounds. There was a time when a man who slept with a woman was obligated to marry her. It would have been unheard of for a man like Boaz to take Ruth sexually and then deny responsibility for her. Knowing Boaz's goodness and kindness, Naomi probably thought that her plan was a natural way to help her daughter-in-law. But Ruth's innate modesty did not allow her to follow Naomi's advice completely. And Boaz's modesty did not allow him to take Ruth before he was ready to give to her.

I asked my Hebrew teacher how Naomi expected that her plan could work; clearly, Naomi would not have suggested the plan if she had feared any major risk, (although, as I suggest above, we learned that the plan was not wholesome enough for Ruth who, with Boaz's help, transformed and deepened the strategy both spiritually and ethically). My teacher replied to my question regarding Naomi's strategy: "a man must take care of a woman if he sleeps with her. Even today that is a morally binding idea." We were startled. Didn't he know what it was like out there?! "It's not like that anymore," we exclaimed. He didn't believe us. We tried to describe the mainstream dating culture to him. He still didn't believe us.

Our teacher couldn't imagine that any decent man would deny responsibility for a vulnerable woman who loved him and with whom he had become so intimate. He must think that only cads (the Wickhams--see Pride and Prejudice) would behave this way. What he doesn't realize is that casual sexual intimacy between two well-meaning people is now standard behavior, not only reserved for the "cads." A "normal" man, admired and well-liked, is expected to, occasionally, have sex with a woman who hopes for more and then walk away from her. It's just NORMAL.

Modernity has stripped us of a forgotten mind-set, of a whole way of understanding men, women, and dating. At one time, the definition of manhood was "giver" or "protector." A non-giving man was not considered to be a real man (or a "mentsch").

Can the old definitions of a man only be found in religious communities today? Secular girls and women with traditional sensibilities can't seem to depend anymore on the old-fashioned assumptions about men and relationships.

It seems that a woman's modesty and a man's giving nature go hand in hand; in fact, they might depend on each other as the story of Ruth suggests. Now that these values have eroded, dating has become especially confusing and painful for many non-religious men and women.

Modesty (and the qualities that go along with it when relationships are involved, such as obligation, responsibility, giving) has become quaint. One day, modesty may be studied the way Greek mythology is analyzed: as a fascinating ancient ideology that does not apply to current times.

Comments

[Lori]

I guess your Hebrew teacher has never seen "Judge Judy."

[Liz Neville]

Eve-- what a beautiful story, and well told. It is sad to think of the traditional definitions being discarded. But we've discarded the traditions themselves. We all need to be civilized from birth: men molded into gentlemen, and women into ladies. That requires individual submission, at least in part, to a governance by social standards. I can empathize with the desire, as an individual, to do as one pleases-- but what if what pleases the one does harm to the society as a whole? I'm afraid that's where we've lost the beauty of the relationships you've described-- too few people will allow themselves to be civilized into those traditions. It pleases us more to do as we please.

That doesn't mean I'll give up. When raising children, you have a stake in the future. The standards may be reviewed and adapted, but not beyond their original effectiveness. If we are to remain a civilization, we need to behave with civility.

Thanks for the reminder.

[Jamie]

I know exactly how your teacher feels. Don't you find the more you live in a traditional world/community the more distant and unreal the craziness of society seems? I am a Traditional Catholic and that sort of behavior just doesn't go on (casual sex and casual dating etc) and I really am shocked when somehow I am brought back to the realization that there ARE people out there who DO have premarital sex..and DO have abortions..etc etc. I suppose most people would call me naive, but I would rather be naive with my innocence protected!

[Sarah]

Willoughby is from "Sense and Sensibility" ;) And thanks for sharing this.

[DM]

Eve, this is off-topic a bit (and if the moderator wants to delete it I won't be offended), but I am really curious. I have always understood that lying at the feet of someone you wished to make a request of was a normal practice in ancient times. I have never heard that Naomi was counseling Ruth to seduce Boaz but rather to propose to him. Not a big surprise given the levirate marriage customs.

Do you have a reference I could look up (or is it because I'm using the King James version of Ruth)? I am just curious because I just taught Ruth to my Sunday school class and that was not the impression I had at all. But there is absolutely no question of Ruth's modest behaivor and character (and Naomi did seem a bit of a drama queen ;)

[Eve]

Sarah- Thank you. Wickham is the cad in P&P! I mixed those two "W" cads up. I'll change it on the blog.

DM- I actually just learned over Shavous that most classic commentators do not suggest that Naomi wanted Ruth to seduce Boaz into marriage; rather she told Ruth to uncover his legs and lie at his feet, which was a way of asking a man if he could marry her, as you wrote. But my teacher did give over the interpretation I wrote about on the blog, so there must be some rabbinical commentary that sees a seduction plan in the text. I will have to ask him for his sources, and then I will get back to you.

[DM]

Thanks, that is awfully kind of you.

[Eve]

Dear DM,
I still have to look into some more specific sources, but I did learn that a more moderate interpretation, which may be in line with the classic commentaries, would say that Naomi intended to encourage copulation to initiate the Levirate marriage, and she advised Ruth to make herself enticing in order to make Boaz less inhibited. But the most important and surprising fact is that nothing physical happened between the couple that night. They were all alone at night in the fields, but they chose not to touch each other. This is remarkable. I will have to continue to ask rabbis and more knowledgable people than myself about the Naomi part of the story, and I am looking forward to going to the library later this summer to search for the sources. Thank you for asking your question.

[DM]

You're welcome. :) Thanks for the great blog!

[Emma Kurtovic]

Hi,

I would just like to know exactly what happened between Ruth and Boaz that night.

Some of my friends say she had sex with Boaz before marriage, and thats how she caught him. My friends also say that it's ok to have sex before marriage because that's what Ruth did with Boaz, and that it does not seem bad to do that.

Did she have sex with him that night when she took her mother in law's advice to go into his tent?

Emma