Elisha ben Abuyah's name occurs only seldom in rabbinic texts, but the stories about him in both Bavli and Yerushalmi Ḥagigah have captured the imagination of many students of rabbinic literature as well as people with little or no familiarity with rabbinic texts.Footnote 1 Also known as Aḥer—“the other”—Elisha ben Abuyah is portrayed as having been in the center of rabbinic life and as having permanently abandoned that world. Rabbinic texts about Elisha and, in particular, about his relationship with his student, Rabbi Meir, allow a glimpse into how those who remain within that world imagine relating to one of their own who has left.
A well-known story about Elisha ben Abuyah's encounter with R. Meir appears, with significant variations, in both the Bavli and Yerushalmi (B. Ḥagigah 15a–b; Y. Ḥagigah 2:1 [77b–c]).Footnote 2 The focus of this article is a striking feature of the Yerushalmi version of this story: at a climactic moment in this narrative, R. Meir offers a midrashic interpretation of a verse from the book of Ruth and simultaneously enacts the promise that is affirmed in that verse. He spreads his cloak over Elisha's burning grave, corresponding to Ruth's request to Boaz to spread his cloak over her (Ruth 3:9), and he challenges God to redeem his master, asserting, through an exegesis of the verse in which Boaz responds to Ruth's request (Ruth 3:13), that if God refuses, he will do so himself. His citation and explication of the latter verse explain the meaning of his action—spreading his cloak over Elisha's grave enacts the promise to redeem that is articulated in R. Meir's exegesis of the verse from Ruth.
Below is the text of the Yerushalmi story of Elisha ben Abuyah and R. Meir in the original and in translation.Footnote 3 The biblical verses cited in the narrative appear in bold, and a different bold font is used to highlight the verse from Ruth that R. Meir declaims and interprets at the climax of the story.
ר"מ הוה יתיב דרש בבית מדרשא דטיבריה.
עבר אלישע רביה רכיב על סוסייא ביום שובתא.
אתון ואמרון ליה הא רבך לבר.
פסק ליה מן דרשה ונפק לגביה.
א"ל מה הויתה דרש יומא דין?
א"ל ויי' ברך את אחרית [איוב מראשיתו] וגו' (איוב מב:יב).
א"ל ומה פתחת ביה?
א"ל ויוסף יי' את כל אשר לאיוב למשנה (איוב מב:י)—שכפל לו את כל ממונו.
אמר ווי דמובדין ולא משכחין!
עקיבה רבך לא הוה דרש כן,
אלא ויי' ברך את אחרית איוב מראשיתו—בזכות מצות ומעשים טובים שהיה בידו מראשיתו.
אמר ליה ומה הויתה דריש תובן?
א"ל טוב אחרית דבר מראשיתו (קהלת ז:ח).
אמר ליה ומה פתחת ביה?
א"ל לאדם שהוליד בנים בנערותו ומתו ובזקנותו ונתקיימו—הוי טוב אחרית דבר מראשיתו.
לאדם שעשה סחורה בילדותו והפסיד ובזקנותו ונשתכר—הוי טוב אחרית דבר מראשיתו.
לאדם שלמד תורה בנערותו ושכחה ובזקנותו וקיימה—הוי טוב אחרית דבר מראשיתו.
אמר ווי דמובדין ולא משכחין!
עקיבה רבך לא הוה דרש כן,
אלא טוב אחרית דבר מראשיתו—בזמן שהוא טוב מראשיתו.
ובי היה המעשה:
אבויה אבא מגדולי ירושלם היה.
ביום שבא למוהליני קרא לכל גדולי ירושלם והושיבן בבית אחד ולר' אליעז' ולר' יהושע בבית אחר.
מן דאכלון ושתון שרון מטפחין ומרקדין.
א"ר ליעזר לר' יהושע עד דאינון עסיקין בדידון נעסוק אנן בדידן.
וישבו ונתעסקו בדברי תורה מן התורה לנביאים ומן הנביאי' לכתובים
וירדה אש מן השמים והקיפה אותם.
אמר להן אבויה רבותיי מה באתם לשרוף את ביתי עלי?!
אמרו לו חס ושלום, אלא יושבין היינו וחוזרין בדברי תור' מן התורה לנביאים ומן הנביאים לכתובים,
והיו הדברים שמיחים כנתינתן מסיני והית' האש מלחכ' אותן כלחיכתן מסיני—
ועיקר נתינתן מסיני לא ניתנו אלא באש?—וההר בוער באש עד לב השמים (דברים ד:יא).
אמ' להן אבויה אבא רבותיי אם כך היא כוחה של תורה אם נתקיים לי בן הזה לתורה אני מפרישו.
לפי שלא היתה כוונתו לשם שמים לפיכך לא נתקיימו באותו האיש.
אמר ליה ומה הויתה דרש תובן?
א"ל לא יערכנה זהב וזכוכית (איוב כח:יז).
א"ל ומה פתחת ביה?
א"ל דברי תורה קשין לקנות ככלי זהב ונוחין לאבד ככלי זכוכית,
ומה כלי זהב וכלי זכוכית אם נשתברו יכול הוא לחזור ולעשותן כלים כמו שהיו,
אף תלמיד חכם ששכח תלמודו יכול הוא לחזור וללמדו כתחילה.
א"ל דייך מאיר עד כאן תחום שבת.
א"ל מן הן את ידע?
א"ל מן טלפי דסוסיי דהוינא מני והולך אלפיים אמה.
א"ל וכל הדא חכמתא אית בך ולית את חזר בך?!
א"ל לית אנא יכיל.
א"ל למה?
א"ל שפעם אחת הייתי עובר לפני בית קודש הקדשי' רכוב על סוסי בי"ה שחל להיות בשבת,
ושמעתי בת קול יוצאת מבית קודש הקדשים ואומרת שובו בנים (ירמיה ג:כב)—
חוץ מאלישע בן אבויה שידע כחי ומרד בי.
וכל דא מן הן אתת ליה?
אלא פעם אחת היה יושב ושונה בבקעת גיניסר,
וראה אדם אחד עלה לראש הדקל ונטל אם על הבני' וירד משם בשלום.
למחר ראה אדם אחר שעלה לראש הדקל ונטל את הבנים ושילח את האם וירד משם והכישו נחש ומת.
אמר כתיב שלח תשלח את האם ואת הבנים תקח לך למען ייטב לך והארכת ימים (דברים כב:ז)—
איכן היא טובתו של זה? איכן היא אריכות ימיו של זה?
ולא היה יודע שדרשה רבי יעקב לפנים ממנו:
למען ייטב לך—לעולם הבא שכולו טוב—והארכת ימים—לעתיד שכולו ארוך.
ויש אומ' ע"י שראה לשונו של רבי יהודה הנחתום נתון בפי הכלב שותת דם.
אמר זו תורה וזו שכרה?!
זהו הלשון שהיה מוציא דברי תורה כתיקנן? זה הוא הלשון שהיה יגיע בתורה כל ימיו? זו תורה וזו שכרה?!
דומה שאין מתן שכר ואין תחיית המתים.
ויש אומרים אמו כשהיתה מעוברת בו היתה עוברת על בתי עבודה זרה והריחה מאותו המין,
והיה אותו הריח מפעפע בגופה כאירסה של חכינה.
לאחר ימים חלה אלישע.
אתון ואמרון לרבי מאיר הא רבך באיש.
אזל בעי מבקרתיה ואשכחיה באיש.
א"ל לית את חזר בך?
א"ל ואין חזרין מתקבלין?
א"ל ולא כן כתיב תשב אנוש עד דכא (תהלים צ:ג)?—עד דיכדוכה של נפש מקבלין.
באותה שעה בכה אלישע ונפטר ומת,
והיה רבי מאיר שמח בלבו ואומר דומה שמתוך תשובה נפטר רבי.
מן דקברוניה ירדה האש מן השמים ושרפה את קברו.
אתון ואמרון לר"מ הא קבריה דרבך אייקד.
נפק בעי מבקרתיה ואשכחיה אייקד.
מה עבד?
נסב גולתיה ופרסיה עלוי.
אמ' ליני הלילה וגו'—ליני בעולם הזה שדומה ללילה
והיה בבוקר—זה העולם הבא שכולו בוקר
אם יגאלך טוב יגאל—זה הקב"ה שהוא טוב
דכתיב ביה טוב יי' לכל ורחמיו על כל מעשיו (תהלים קמה:ט)
ואם לא יחפוץ לגאלך וגאלתיך אנכי חי יי' (רות ג:ג).
ואיטפיית.
אמרון לר"מ אין אמרין לך בההוא עלמא למאן את בעי למבקר' לאבוך או לרבך?
אמר לון אנא מיקרב לר' קדמיי ובתר כן לאבא.
אמרין ליה ושמעין לך?
אמ' לון ולא כן תנינן מצילין תיק הספר עם הספר תיק תפילין עם התפילין (משנה שבת טז:א)?—
מצילין לאלישע אחר בזכות תורתו.
לאחר ימים הלכו בנותיו ליטול צדקה מר'.
גזר רבי ואמר אל יהי לו מושך חסד ואל יהי חונן ליתומיו (תהלים קט:יב).
אמרו לו רבי אל תבט במעשיו הבט בתורתו.
באותה השעה בכה רבי וגזר עליהן שיתפרנסו.
אמר מה אם זה שיגע בתורה שלא לשום שמים ראו מה העמיד,
מי שהוא יגע בתורה לשמה על אחת כמה וכמה.
R. Meir was sitting expounding [darash] in the beit midrash of Tiberias.
His master Elisha passed by riding on a horse on the Sabbath day.
They came and said to him: Behold, your master is outside!
He stopped his teaching [derashah] and went out to him.
He said to him: What were you expounding today?
He said to him: “And the Lord blessed the end of Job more than [ me- ] his beginning” (Job 42:12).
He said to him: And how did you begin it?
He said to him: “And the Lord increased all that Job had twofold” (Job 42:10).
He said: Woe for what is lost and cannot be found!
Your master Akiva did not expound thus,
rather: “And the Lord blessed the end of Job more than his beginning”—
in the merit of the mitzvot and good deeds that he possessed from [me-] his beginning.
He said to him: And what else were you expounding?
He said to him: “The end of a thing is better [ tov ] than [ me- ] its beginning” (Ecclesiastes 7:8).
He said to him: And how did you begin it?
He said to him: [It is like] a person who begat children in his youth and they died, and in his old age and they survived [ve-nitkaymu]—
this is “The end of a thing is better than its beginning”;
a person who did trade when he was young and lost it, and in his old age and profited—
this is “The end of a thing is better than its beginning”;
a person who learned Torah in his youth and forgot it, and in his old age and maintained it [ve-kiymah]—
this is “The end of a thing is better than its beginning.”
He said: Woe for what is lost and cannot be found!
Your master Akiva did not expound thus,
rather: “The end of a thing is better than its beginning”—when it is good from [me-] its beginning.
And this incident happened to me:
Abuyah, my father, was one of the great men of Jerusalem.
On the day that he was to circumcise me, he called all of the great men of Jerusalem to one house and R. Eliezer and R. Yehoshua in another house.
When they had eaten and drunk, they began clapping and dancing.
R. Eliezer said to R. Yehoshua: While they are occupied with theirs, let us occupy ourselves with ours.
And they sat and occupied themselves with words of Torah, from the Torah to the Prophets, and from the Prophets to the Writings.
And fire came down from heaven and surrounded them.
Abuyah said to them: My masters, have you come to burn my house upon me?!
They said to him: God forbid, rather we were sitting and going over [ve-ḥozrin] words of Torah, from the Torah to the Prophets, and from the Prophets to the Writings,
And the words were joyful as when they were given at Sinai, and fire was lapping at them as it lapped at them at Sinai—
Were they not originally given at Sinai in fire?—“And the mountain blazed with fire to the heart of the heavens” (Deuteronomy 4:11).
Abuyah, my father, said to them: My masters, if thus is the power [koḥah] of Torah, if this child survives [nitkayem], I dedicate him to Torah.
Because his intention was not for the sake of heaven, therefore they were not maintained [nitkaymu] in that man.
He said to him: And what else were you expounding?
He said to him: “Gold and glass cannot match its value” (Job 28:17).
He said to him: And how did you begin it?
He said to him: Words of Torah are as difficult to acquire as gold vessels and as easy to lose like glass vessels. And just as gold vessels and glass vessels, if they have broken, one can return [la ḥzor] and make them into vessels as they were, so a sage who forgot his learning can return [laḥzor] and learn it as at the beginning.
He said to him: Enough, Meir! Until here is the Sabbath boundary.
He said to him: How do you know?
He said to him: From the steps of my horse, which I was counting, and he has walked two thousand cubits.
He said to him: And you have all this wisdom and you will not repent/return [ḥazar]?!
He said to him: I am not able to.
He said to him: Why?
He said to him: Because one time I was passing before the house of the holy of holies riding on my horse on Yom Kippur that fell on Shabbat,
And I heard a heavenly voice coming out of the house of the holy of holies and saying: “Return children” (Jeremiah 3:22)—
except [ḥuẓ mi-] Elisha ben Abuyah who knew my power [koḥi] and rebelled against me.
And all this, how did it come upon him?
Rather one time he was sitting and studying in the Valley of Gennesaret,
and he saw a person go up to the top of a palm tree and take a mother [bird] with her children, and he came down from there in peace.
The next day, he saw a person go up to the top of a palm tree and take the children and send away the mother, and he came down from there, and a snake bit him, and he died.
He said: It is written “You shall surely send away the mother and the children you shall take for yourself, in order that it be good [ yitav ] for you and that you lengthen your days” (Deuteronomy 22:7)—
Where is this one's good [tovato]? Where is this one's length of days?
And he did not know that R. Yaakov had already explicated [derashah] it:
“in order that it be good [ yitav ] for you”—in the world to come, which is all [she-kulo] good [tov]—
“and that you lengthen your days”—in the future which is all [she-kulo] long.
And some say: Because he saw the tongue of R. Yehudah Hanaḥtom in the mouth of a dog dripping blood. He said: This is Torah and this is its reward?!
This is the tongue that was bringing forth words of Torah as they are fit to be? This is the tongue that was laboring in Torah all of its days? This is Torah and this is its reward?!
It seems that there is no giving of reward and there is no resurrection of the dead.
And some say: His mother, when she was pregnant with him, would pass by houses of idolatry and she smelled of that thing,
and that smell penetrated her body like the venom of a snake.
A while later [le-'a ḥar yamim], Elisha became ill.
They came and said to R. Meir: Behold, your master is ill.
He went seeking to visit him [ba‘e mevakarte] and found him ill.
He said to him: Will you not repent/return [ḥazar]?
He said to him: And if one repents/returns [ḥazrin], is he accepted?
He said to him: Is it not written “You cause the human being to return to dust [ daka’ ]” (Psalms 90:3)?—they accept until the crushing [dikhdukhah] of life.
At that moment [be-'otah sha‘ah], Elisha cried and he departed and died.
And R. Meir was glad in his heart, and he said: It seems that master departed repentant [mitokh teshuvah].
When they buried him, fire came down from the heavens and burned his grave.
They came and said to R. Meir: Behold, the grave of your master is burning.
He went out seeking to visit him [ba‘e mevakarte] and found it burning.
What did he do?
He took his cloak and spread it over him.
He said: “Stay the night”—stay in this world that is similar to night,
“and it will be in the morning”—this is the world to come that is entirely [she-kulo] morning,
“if he will redeem you, good [tov], let him redeem you”—this is the blessed Holy One who is good,
as it is written: “The Lord is good [ tov ] to all [ la-kol ], and his mercy is upon all of his creations” (Psalms 145:9),
“and if he will not want to redeem you, then I will redeem you, as the Lord lives” (Ruth 3:13).
And it was extinguished.
They said to R. Meir: If they say to you in that world “Whom do you seek to visit—your father or your master?”
He said to them: I will visit my master first and after that my father.
They said to him: And will they listen to you?
He said to them: Have we not learned “One saves the covering of the scroll together with the scrolls, the covering of the tefillin together with the tefillin” (M. Shabbat 16:1)?—
One saves Elisha–Aḥer in the merit of his Torah.
A while later [le-'a ḥar yamim], his daughters went to receive charity from Rabbi.
Rabbi decreed saying “Let there not be one to extend ḥesed to him, and let there not be one who is gracious to his orphans” (Psalms 109:12).
They said to him: Rabbi, do not look at his deeds; look at his Torah.
At that moment [be-'otah ha-sha‘ah], Rabbi cried and decreed that they be supported.
He said: If this one who labored in Torah not for the sake of heaven, see what he raised up, one who labored in Torah for its own sake, how much more so!
Citation and Explication of Biblical Verses
This aggadah cites and explicates quite a number of verses; in fact, I will argue below that how a person interprets Scripture is a core theme of the aggadah. But the derashah on the Ruth verse is unique in several ways. First, it goes beyond the verbal articulation of an interpretation of the verse. Here, the phrase-by-phrase citation and explication of the verse accompany an action that R. Meir performs, and they serve as the narration of the meaning of that action—or perhaps one might say that, in taking the action that he takes, R. Meir makes real his understanding of the verse from Ruth.
Second, most of the other verses cited and explicated in this aggadah are either the focus of an interpretive discussion or the prooftext or countertext for an argument that someone is making. In the first part of the story, R. Meir cites a series of biblical verses in response to Elisha's asking what he had been explicating in the beit midrash that day. These verses then serve as the focus of contesting interpretations offered by R. Meir and Elisha. Other verses are quoted by characters in the aggadah, often but not always introduced by a citation formula such as “is it not written,” in order to prove a point or to raise a problem. For example, R. Meir quotes Psalms 90:3 and offers an interpretation of this verse in order to prove to Elisha that one can always repent, and Elisha quotes Deuteronomy 22:7 in order to point out the falsehood of the promise of this verse in the face of the reality he has witnessed. The case of the Ruth verse is different. Here, R. Meir does not quote the verse in order to prove a point. Rather, he recites the verse as the speaker of the verse. The words that he speaks are in the first person and are a direct address—in the book of Ruth, they are spoken by Boaz to Ruth. Thus, declaiming this verse can be seen as positioning R. Meir within the passage that he cites. In a sense, as the first-person speaker of words spoken in the book of Ruth, he not only recalls and imitates a scene from that narrative but enacts that scene.Footnote 4
Finally, the verse that R. Meir cites is from the climactic scene in the book of Ruth, in which Ruth visits Boaz on the threshing floor and Boaz makes a promise to her. Similarly, R. Meir's exegesis of this verse and his enactment of its promise serve as the climax of the aggadah. This, along with the fact that R. Meir appears to be entering into the story of Ruth as the speaker of the words of Boaz, suggests that one might take a metonymic view of this scene—that we might look beyond this climactic scene in which R. Meir and Elisha are conflated with Boaz and Ruth and imagine the entire narrative of the aggadah as, in some way, echoing or perhaps enacting the narrative of the book of Ruth.
Of course, rabbinic texts often cite biblical verses. The tendency in academic study of this phenomenon has been to assume that rabbinic texts atomize the biblical text they quote, focusing on the word or phrase or verse that is being cited without regard to the larger context of those words.Footnote 5 Some scholars, though, have argued that often this is not the case, that midrashic exegesis of a word or phrase should be examined in relation to the broader biblical passage in which that word or phrase appears, or that the citation or echo of a biblical verse in an aggadah invites the reader to consider the relationship of the aggadic story to the biblical narrative or passage in which the verse occurs.Footnote 6 While in general I am open to the possibility that a rabbinic text might be engaging a broad contextual reading of the biblical verse that it cites, I think that the distinctive features of the citation of the Ruth verse in our aggadah suggest that such an engagement is particularly likely to be found in this text.
Imagining that R. Meir's speaking, interpreting, and enacting Boaz's critical words at the climactic moment in the aggadah evokes both the biblical scene and the larger narrative in which these words are spoken, this article will explore echoes of the book of Ruth in the aggadah.Footnote 7 Indeed, I think it likely that this aggadah is actually shaped, in part, in relation to key elements of the biblical narrative. But, whatever claims one might or might not want to make about the composition of this aggadah, reading the aggadah in conversation with the book of Ruth highlights core themes and helps disclose the theological and moral stance of this rabbinic narrative.Footnote 8
A few comments about the text and about my formatting of the text are in order. The boundaries of the passage, as well as the question as to whether every section of the passage should be seen as part of the narrative, are subject to debate and have been discussed extensively in recent scholarship. For the purposes of this study, I have omitted the passage that immediately precedes this section in the Yerushalmi. That passage takes the form of a sustained interpretation of the tannaitic tradition about the four who entered the pardes and does not seem to be integrated structurally or thematically with the narrative about Elisha ben Abuyah and R. Meir.Footnote 9 I have included, however, all of the segments that appear within the boundaries of the story about Elisha and R. Meir, as well as the two post- and perhaps anticlimactic final segments of the narrative.
The sections that I have indented, while they appear to interrupt the flow of the narrative,Footnote 10 share some key elements with other parts of the passage—perhaps most notably, the second of these includes a derashah on a verse about goodness (yitav/tov) and about a future time that is entirely (she-kulo) different from the present time, elements that appear in the climactic scene of the aggadah—and so I treat them as an integral part of the narrative. I have indented them to highlight that they represent flashbacks in time; they are offered at key points in the narrative as background explanations of significant elements of the narrative, but the events they relate are not part of the story that unfolds in chronologically consecutive episodes. It should be noted that narrative interruptions like these can serve important literary functions. For example, the section in which the narrator steps out of the story to ask and offer three answers about how Elisha came to this point serves as a kind of intermission between the two acts of the narrative (to use the language of drama). It closes the curtain on the scene of R. Meir and Elisha walking/riding side by side on Shabbat and transitions the audience to a much later time when they will meet R. Meir visiting Elisha on his deathbed.Footnote 11 In addition, it enables the action to pause, and the first act to come to a close, at the dramatic moment when Elisha tells R. Meir about the heavenly voice that he heard that excludes him from return.Footnote 12 The first flashback, the story that Elisha tells about his father, serves to slow down the narrative before the critical moment when R. Meir will offer a derashah that will challenge Elisha to return and when Elisha will disclose why he believes that he cannot. In addition, it makes it absolutely clear that Elisha sees the contest of derashot as deeply implicating his own life, alerting the reader to pay close attention to the next derashah and its implications for Elisha.
The final two sections also share key elements with other parts of the passage. For example, the first begins with “they said” ('amrun), an anonymous address to R. Meir, echoing the three prior occurrences of “they came and said” ('atun ve-'amrun), and continues the flow of words that share the root letters quf, bet, and resh, prominent in the immediately preceding segments.Footnote 13 And the last section is linked to the rest of the story as a chronologically later episode introduced by the words “a while later” (le-'aḥar yamim), like the earlier episode describing the encounter at Elisha's deathbed. Additionally, the expression “not for the sake of heaven” (she-lo’ le-shem shamayim),Footnote 14 the contrast between Torah and deeds (ma‘asim), the words “at that moment” (be-'otah sha‘ah) introducing someone's crying,Footnote 15 and the phrase “labored in Torah” (yaga‘ ba-torah) echo previous sections of the narrative. It should be noted, as well, that the parallels in Ruth Rabbah and Kohelet Rabbah include all of the sections brought here, and so the passage appears to have been recognized by the editors of these works as a single and self-contained literary unit.Footnote 16
The formatting I used is designed to break up the narrative into subunits and to highlight certain features of the narrative. In addition to indicating all biblical citations in bold, I underlined the tannaitic teaching that R. Meir cites in relation to Elisha. The paragraph divisions reflect structural features of the narrative, such as the three occurrences of “what were you expounding” (u-mah havitah darash) and of “they came and said” ('atun ve-'amrun) and the three explanations of the cause of Elisha's rebellion.Footnote 17
Accompaniment and Return
Turning now to look at the aggadah in relation to the book of Ruth, the first thing one might notice is the similarity between the first scene of the aggadah and the greater part of the first chapter of Ruth. The aggadah begins as R. Meir leaves the beit midrash upon hearing that Elisha is outside, and the rest of the first part of the narrative takes the form of a conversation between the two men as they walk/ride together in the space between the beit midrash and the Sabbath boundary. The first chapter of Ruth, too, follows Naomi and her daughters-in-law as they travel between two places, Moab and Judah, and reports on the conversations that Naomi has with her daughters-in-law on the way. In each story, the characters are able to be together in this space between the two zones, but a moment comes when the accompanying individual either will or will not be able to step across the boundary and continue to accompany his or her fellow traveler.
In the book of Ruth, Moab is the homeland of Naomi's daughters-in-law; Judah is Naomi's place, a place Naomi left behind but to which she now feels compelled to return. The women can walk together between these two places, but the time comes when the daughters-in-law must decide whether they can continue to accompany Naomi to her place or whether they will return to their own place. Naomi's initially indistinct pair of daughters-in-law now splits into two differentiated figures: Orpah heeds her mother-in-law's urging to return to her own place, while Ruth refuses and insists instead on staying with her mother-in-law and crossing over into Naomi's homeland. In the aggadah, R. Meir leaves his place, the beit midrash, to accompany Elisha, and the two can remain together for a while. But R. Meir, much as he seeks to be with his teacher, cannot cross the Sabbath boundary, and at this point he must leave his teacher behind. The first part of the story ends as Elisha reminds R. Meir that he cannot cross the boundary into the place where Elisha is bound and as Elisha explains why he himself cannot return to his former place.Footnote 18
Three critical themes are interwoven in each of the opening scenes. The first is the theme of accompaniment. In both stories, the younger characters remarkably leave the place where they belong in order to accompany the older figures. Orpah and Ruth, childless widows of the sons of an elderly widow with no remaining children, belong with their families in their homeland, as Naomi eloquently reminds them, but they leave to accompany their mother-in-law on her journey. R. Meir stunningly stops in the middle of teaching, of delivering a public derashah on Shabbat,Footnote 19 and leaves the beit midrash in order to be with his teacher. Ruth finds herself able to continue to accompany her older companion, in fact to swear that she will remain with Naomi forever, while R. Meir is forced to stop at the Sabbath boundary. Nevertheless the greater part of the first act of the aggadah has R. Meir walking with his master and seeking a way to bring him back to a place that they share.Footnote 20
The theme of accompaniment continues throughout the second act of the aggadah. In each of the first two scenes of this act, as in the opening scene of the narrative, “they” come and tell R. Meir about Elisha's state, and R. Meir goes to visit his master, much as he left the beit midrash to be with Elisha in the opening scene. But once again R. Meir is forced to part from his master, this time because Elisha has crossed the boundary between life and death. Although R. Meir visits Elisha's grave, he cannot join his master. The climactic scene in which he enacts and expounds the verse from Ruth underscores this separation and also makes it clear that R. Meir hopes one day to rejoin his master, in death. The following section of the narrative articulates this intention explicitly, as R. Meir tells “them” of his plan to visit his master “in that other world.”Footnote 21 It is striking, in this context, that Ruth's vow to remain with her mother-in-law culminates with the assertion that she will accompany her even in death and in the grave: “where you die I shall die, and there I shall be buried” (1:17). Ruth's ability to accompany her mother-in-law in life—“where you go I shall go”—contrasts with R. Meir's inability to remain with Elisha,Footnote 22 and her vow that even death will not separate themFootnote 23 is a rhetorical capstone to her commitment to accompany Naomi in life. For R. Meir, who throughout the narrative seeks to be with his master but is held back at boundaries that Elisha alone can cross, it is only in death and only after R. Meir himself will one day cross the boundary into “that other world”Footnote 24 that he can anticipate finally being able to be with his master.Footnote 25
Intertwined with the theme of accompaniment is the theme of place. Each character has a place where he or she belongs. But the members of the pair of characters in each story belong to different places. Much of the drama of each opening scene derives from the inability of one of the characters to enter into the other's place—and, in the case of Ruth, from her striking ability to cross into that place and make it her own. The significance of place is also dramatized in the ability or inability of each of the older figures to return to the place to which he or she once belonged. Naomi seeks to return to her original homeland, after having spent many years in Moab, the homeland of her daughters-in-law. The beit midrash once was Elisha's place, but it is no longer—as the anonymous “they” of the narrative tell R. Meir, “your master is outside.”Footnote 26 Though Elisha still seeks to participate in the discourse of the beit midrash—immediately on meeting R. Meir he inquires about what he had been teaching, and most of the ensuing conversation takes the form of a debate about these teachings—he is now an outsider; the beit midrash is a place to which he can no longer return. And R. Meir, now the master in the beit midrash, cannot go into what has become Elisha's place, the zone outside of the boundary of Shabbat observers.
The third theme, deeply connected with the first two, is the theme of return. The verb lashuv is a key word in the book of Ruth, occurring twelve times in the first chapter alone. Naomi sets out to return to Judah, accompanied by her daughters-in-law (1:6, 7); she urges them to return to their own homes (1:8, 11, 12); they insist on returning with her (1:10). Finally, Orpah heads back, and Naomi tells Ruth that her sister-in-law has returned to her people and that she should return after her sister-in-law (1:15). Ruth refuses to turn away—also lashuv—from her mother-in-law (1:16); she is with Naomi when her mother-in-law returns from Moab (1:22),Footnote 27 and she herself is later described as having returned along with Naomi from Moab (2:6).
In the aggadah, two different verbs are used for return: lashuv, in verses that are cited at critical points in each act,Footnote 28 and laḥzor, in the discussions between R. Meir and Elisha in which these verses are invoked.Footnote 29 The theme of return is of course crucial for the aggadah. In the first act, R. Meir's third derashah talks of return to a former state, and R. Meir soon urges Elisha to return. Elisha tells him that this is impossible, as he has heard a heavenly voice proclaim “Return children [ shuvu vanim (Jeremiah 3:14)]Footnote 30 —except for Elisha ben Abuyah.” In the deathbed scene, R. Meir repeats his challenge in precisely the same words that he used earlier: “Will you not return?” (let 'at ḥazar bekha). And, in response to Elisha's query as to whether return is possible—“If one returns, is he accepted?”—R. Meir offers a derashah on a verse from Psalms—“You cause the human being to return to dust and say, ‘Return, children of man!” ( tashev 'enosh ‘ad daka’ va-to'mer shuvu vene 'adam) (Ps 90:3). While the plain meaning of the verse is that God returns human beings to dust, R. Meir reinterprets the verse to mean that God anticipates and encourages people's return/repentance ( shuvu , as in the verse from Jeremiah) until the last moment of life. Elisha cries as he expires, and R. Meir rejoices in the idea that his master has died repentant (mi-tokh teshuvah ).
The idea of return is connected to the idea of finding one's place, both the physical space in which one belongs and the religious/national sphere that defines one's identity. Ruth's “return” to Judah is not a going back to a place from which she has come; it is a turn toward a core self that will redefine her identity—“where you will go I will go … ; your people is my people, and your God is my God.” R. Meir's plea to Elisha to turn back at the Sabbath boundary is, of course, also a plea to return to his former affiliation with the world of the beit midrash. Elisha has become an outsider: he is outside (le-var) of the beit midrash in the first scene, and he is outside (ḥuẓ) of the realm of possible return in the final scene of the first act. Riding his horse outside the beit midrash in the opening scene and riding his horse outside the holy of holies in the latter scene are spatial ways of locating Elisha outside in the double sense of the word—he can neither return to the beit midrash nor to the religious world that that space represents.
Incorporating the Outsider and Enacting God's Will
These last two themes—the idea of one's place and the possibility or impossibility of (re-)turning to that place—point to what is perhaps the most obvious parallel between the aggadah and the book of Ruth. Both tell the story of a person who is an outsider, and in both the outsider is ultimately (re-)incorporated. Crucially, Ruth and Elisha are not outsiders simply by origin or by choice. Their outsider status is affirmed by divine word, by a proclamation that makes it clear that they can never be incorporated into the community.Footnote 31 Ruth is from Moab, a nation whose members are forbidden from entering into the community “forever” (Deuteronomy 23:4).Footnote 32 While this directive is not mentioned explicitly in the book of Ruth, it no doubt hovers in the background of the story, like other biblical laws that are assumed by the narrative, such as the rules relating to paupers gathering in the fields and to the redemption of ancestral land. Elisha too is excluded by divine word—he has heard a heavenly voice proclaim that anyone can return except for himself.
The possibility of return, then, is not just a challenge for the individual who is outside and for the community to which the person is an outsider. The possibility of return is a challenge to God's word. Somehow in each story the characters will have to find a way to incorporate the outsider despite the divine word that permanently excludes him or her. The mechanism at work in their inclusion is yet another parallel between the two stories, and this parallel points toward an exceptionally important theme in the aggadah.
A notable feature of the book of Ruth is that the characters talk about God a good deal, yet God does very little in the book. In fact, the only two acts that the narrator attributes to God are giving bread to the people who have suffered in famine, in the first chapter (1:6),Footnote 33 and giving conception to Ruth, in the last chapter (4:13). These are both gifts of fertility,Footnote 34 life-giving acts that are outside the realm of human control.Footnote 35 All of the rest of the action is performed by people. Nevertheless, God is repeatedly invoked by the characters. God's name is invoked in blessing (2:4, 20, 3:10); characters express their wishes for others in terms of God granting them good things (1:8, 9, 2:12, 4:11–12); and good things that happen are attributed to God (2:20, 4:14).Footnote 36
The intersection of what characters in the book attribute to God and what characters in the book do themselves is crucial to understanding how the book presents the incorporation of Ruth the Moabite into the community of Israel. When Naomi first hears from Ruth about how Boaz has helped her, she offers a blessing, invoking “the Lord, who has not withheld His kindness to the living or to the dead!” (barukh hu’ la-’Adonai 'asher lo’ ‘azav ḥasdo 'et ha-ḥayim ve’-et he-metim) (2:20).Footnote 37 Earlier in the book, Naomi offers a wish for her daughters-in-law: “May the Lord perform kindness toward you, as you have performed toward the dead and toward me!” (ya‘as 'Adonai ‘imakhem ḥesed ka-'asher ‘asitem ‘im ha-metim ve-‘imadi) (1:8). Here too, Naomi presents God as one who does ḥesed, but God's ḥesed is invoked in relation to ḥesed that is done by human beings. It is Orpah and Ruth who have done ḥesed toward those who are dead and toward Naomi. Thus, the ḥesed that Naomi later attributes to God—ḥesed toward the living and the dead—is the very same kind of ḥesed that her daughters-in-law have done, and that in turn Naomi hopes will evoke God's ḥesed toward them. Later in the story, it is once again a human being who will perform ḥesed. When Boaz understands why Ruth has come to visit him on the threshing floor, he blesses her: “Be blessed of the Lord, my daughter! Your last kindness is better than the first …” (berukhah 'at la-’Adonai biti, hetavt ḥasdekh ha-'aḥaron min ha-ri'shon) (3:10).
The juxtaposition of human and divine ḥesed in these three blessings is striking. In the first verse (2:20), it is Boaz who had done ḥesed toward Ruth, going well beyond the law that requires the landowner to allow the stranger to gather food, and yet Ruth's encounter with Boaz is described by Naomi as an instance of divine ḥesed. Footnote 38 Thus, in this book, people act in a way that manifests the quality that they attribute to God. Further, when people act in a way that conforms to their understanding of what is good, they are not only enacting God's will, they are acting in God's stead—or, to put it more boldly, it is God who is acting through them.Footnote 39
This way of seeing human actionFootnote 40 enables—in fact, demands—the incorporation of Ruth into the community. When Boaz first meets Ruth, he tells her how he has heard of her actions and expresses a wish that she be rewarded by the God of Israel “under whose wings [kenafav] you have come to seek refuge” (2:12). When Ruth speaks to Boaz on the threshing floor, she says simply: “spread your cloak [kenafekha] over your maidservant, for you are a redeemer” (3:9). While the two occurrences of the word are generally translated differently, both verses refer to a person seeking refuge under another's kenafayim.Footnote 41 Boaz understands that it is God who offers this refuge; Ruth challenges him to understand that it is he, Boaz, who must offer this refuge.Footnote 42 Boaz is not just being challenged to act in place of God; he is enacting the act that is attributed to God: God does offer refuge to Ruth to the degree that Boaz is able to offer refuge to Ruth. Since it is God to whom the offer of refuge is attributed (2:12), it becomes the task of the human being who recognizes this characteristic of God to enact it. Boaz, then, cannot possibly be seen as acting in a way that is counter to God's will, because he does nothing other than enact the very will that God—the one under whose kenafayim refuge is sought—is imagined to manifest.
This scene—in which Ruth convinces Boaz to enact God's attribute of offering refuge, effectively challenging God's exclusion of the Moabite—is the very scene that R. Meir enacts in the aggadah, as he challenges God to redeem Elisha. R. Meir suggests that it is really God's job to act as redeemer. Playing with the syntax of the verse from Ruth, R. Meir construes the word tov (good) as the subject of the verb “to redeem.” And R. Meir interprets the word tov as referring to the one who is good, that is to God. And how does R. Meir know that God is good? Because of another verse that describes God in this way: “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is upon all of his creations” (tov 'Adonai la-kol ve-ra ḥamav ‘al kol ma‘asav) (Psalms 145:9). This verse not only describes God as good, it describes God as good la-kol (to all) and as compassionate la-kol (to all).Footnote 43 In the context of the derashah on the verse from Ruth, R. Meir is saying that God—the God who is good to all—is the one who ought to redeem Elisha. No one is excluded from God's goodness and compassion; la-kol stands in direct contradiction to ḥuẓ mi-. Though Elisha has heard a divine voice offering the possibility of return to everyone except for him, R. Meir recalls a verse that says that there are no exceptions to the recipients of God's goodness.Footnote 44
As in the story of Ruth, it is recognition of an attribute of God that both enables a human being to enact that attribute and empowers him to perform an action that appears to be contrary to God's own word. R. Meir, offering to be the redeemer himself, challenges God to perform the role of redeemer. Looking at the aggadah in relation to Ruth, we might see R. Meir's offer to redeem Elisha as in fact enacting God's redemption. When the fire dies down at the conclusion of this scene, it is not entirely clear whether it is R. Meir's act of covering the grave with his cloak that has subdued the fire—literally, snuffing out the fire with his cloak, and figuratively, as the redemptive enactment of u-farasta kenafekha—or whether God has accepted the challenge and decided to redeem Elisha. Given that the fire's extinction occurs now, rather than in the future time in which R. Meir promises to redeem Elisha if God refuses to do so, it would appear that God has indeed acceded to R. Meir's challenge.Footnote 45 In light of the way human action and divine will interact in the passage in Ruth, perhaps one should conclude that God has redeemed Elisha through R. Meir's act of redemption.
Exegesis and Action
It is important to recognize that R. Meir's ability to redeem Elisha occurs both through action and through interpretation. R. Meir's enactment of the verse is accompanied by an exegesis that explains the meaning of his action and serves as the rationale for his action. And his interpretation of the verse is, in turn, dependent on another verse that is essential to R. Meir's construal of the word tov in the Ruth verse as referring to God as the one who ought to redeem Elisha, since God is the one whose goodness extends to all.
It is the possibility of interpretation, then, that allows R. Meir to redeem his teacher. In fact, exegesis of Scripture is a recurring motif in this aggadah. The first act focuses on R. Meir's exegesis of three verses, the first two of which are contested by Elisha.Footnote 46 In the scene before the one in which R. Meir interprets and enacts the Ruth verse, R. Meir bases his assertion that Elisha can still return on an exegesis of a verse from Psalms. And, in the interlude that includes three explanations of what caused Elisha to go astray, the first explanation attributes this to Elisha taking a verse literally and noticing that the verse is untrue in the face of the reality that he has observed.Footnote 47 Elisha, the narrator tells us, did not know the derashah offered by a different sage, an interpretation of the verse that would have allowed this piece of Torah to speak truth within the real world of human experience.Footnote 48 This derashah, like R. Meir's exegesis of the Ruth verse, hinges on a form of the word tov, a point to which I will return shortly.
Exegesis of Scripture, in this aggadah, is deeply personal. Elisha asserts this himself, as he concludes his report of R. Akiva's alternative interpretation of R. Meir's second verse—“The end of a thing is better than its beginning” (tov 'a ḥarit davar me-re'shito)—by saying “and this incident happened to me” (u-vi hayah ma‘aseh) and telling the story of his own beginnings. All three of the opening derashot speak to Elisha's situation, and the contesting interpretations of the first two verses speak not only to Elisha's and R. Meir's different understandings of Scripture, but to their different understandings of reality, in particular of the human condition. Words of Torah, in this story, must correspond to the lives that real people lead, and so verses that cannot be true to the way one experiences the world must mean something different from what they appear to mean on the surface. To fail to interpret Scripture in this way, as Elisha failed to do when he saw the death of the man who observed the law that Scripture promises will be rewarded by goodness and long life, would be to abandon Torah. For R. Meir, making Torah true requires both interpreting Torah in a way that speaks to one's core experience and acting in a way that makes the promises that one reads in Torah become true.
As Elisha and R. Meir begin their walk together, R. Meir offers two expositions of scriptural verses that Elisha contests. While some scholars have pointed to the simplicity of R. Meir's teachings, to his failure to offer clever interpretations,Footnote 49 it seems to me that R. Meir is not attempting to reinterpret Scripture but rather to draw out what he understands as the core message of these scriptural passages—that, no matter how awful things are in the beginning (as in the case of Job, in the first derashah), the end can always be better (as in the second derashah, from Ecclesiastes). Note that his second derashah is on a verse that includes the word tov—tov 'aḥarit davar me-re'shito. This derashah, then, sets the stage for the other derashot that focus on the word tov: the derashah that Elisha does not know, causing Elisha's failure to see the tov that awaits one who follows God's law, and the derashah that R. Meir enacts at Elisha's grave, ensuring that Elisha's end will be tov.Footnote 50
If R. Meir believes, as the verse from Ecclesiastes teaches, that the end is better—tov—than the beginning, then what R. Meir does through his exegesis and enactment of the Ruth verse at Elisha's grave is to make his teaching about the Ecclesiastes verse true. Through his interpretation of the Ruth verse—“if he will redeem you, good” ('im yig'alekh tov)—by means of the Psalms verse—“The Lord is good to all” (tov 'Adonai la-kol)—R. Meir has indeed made the end better than the beginning. It bears emphasizing that he makes the teaching from Ecclesiastes true both through interpretation and through action—bringing the meaning of the scriptural verses, as he has understood them, to life. If it is true that the end will be better than the beginning, and if it is true that God is good to all, then God must redeem Elisha. If God will not, then R. Meir will make God's own words true through his own enactment of what it is God's to do.
Thus, among other things, this aggadah is a story about how one lives out the Torah that one learns and how one learns Torah in relation to lived experience. What is accomplished in Ruth through enacting the qualities and actions that are attributed to God, is accomplished in the aggadah through enacting those qualities and also through explicit reinterpretations of Scripture that allow Torah to be true and real. In both stories, the quality of goodness or ḥesed that is attributed to God (in the aggadah through the citation of a biblical verse that establishes this quality) dictates how human beings need to behave, even in the face of divine proclamations that would seem to exclude someone from this goodness. R. Meir, like Boaz, can redeem because he is convinced that his act of redemption is consistent with God's core attribute of goodness.
Tov 'Aḥarit Davar Me-re'shito
Many stories come to a happy resolution of what appears to be a hopeless situation, but in both Ruth and the aggadah the idea of a good ending is one of the themes of the story. The aggadah, as I have noted, introduces the idea through R. Meir's citation of the verse from Job, which speaks specifically of the experience of that biblical figure, and then of the verse from Ecclesiastes—“The end of a thing is better than its beginning” (tov 'a ḥarit davar me-re'shito)—which speaks in universal terms. This second verse introduces the quality of goodness, which will be critical to the unfolding of the story, as other derashot are offered on verses with forms of the word tov, and as R. Meir strives to generate an outcome that is consistent with God's goodness and with the expectation that the ending will be good.
The word tov is also important in the book of Ruth. It does not appear at all in the first part of the story. On the contrary, at the end of the first chapter Naomi describes her situation to the townswomen, who have expressed shock at the state in which she returns to Bethlehem, as the antithesis of tov: “Shaddai has done evil to me” (ve-Shaddai hera‘ li) (1:21). It is only as the first half of the narrative draws to a close, when Naomi learns of Boaz's kindness and recognizes that the person who has treated Ruth so kindly is a potential redeemer (2:20), that she uses the word tov, as she instructs her daughter-in-law to remain in Boaz's field (2:22).Footnote 51 After this, forms of the word tov appear with notable frequency: four times in the coming chapter (3:1, 7, 10, 13), culminating with “if he will redeem you, good” (3:13). The final occurrence of the word is toward the very end of the book, as the townswomen once again comment on Naomi's state and describe Ruth as “better to you than seven sons” (tovah lakh mi-shiva‘ banim) (4:15).Footnote 52
The story, then, has moved from ra‘ at the beginning to tov at the end. Moreover, the townswomen's comment that Naomi's daughter-in-law is better to or for her than seven sons suggests that Naomi is not only better off now than in the sorry state in which she returned to Bethlehem; she is, in some sense, better off now than she was at the beginning, when her family was intact and her sons were alive.Footnote 53
From the vantage point of the aggadah, the most striking occurrence of a form of the word tov in the book of Ruth is in Boaz's words to Ruth when he discovers her lying next to him on the threshing floor: “Your last kindness is better than the first” (hetavt ḥasdekh ha-'aḥaron min ha-ri'shon) (3:10). Note that this verse juxtaposes ḥesed and tov, and that Boaz praises Ruth for making her latter ḥesed better (tov) than her former ḥesed. Once again, as in the broader story of Ruth and in the aggadah, something that happens later is better than something that happens earlier. Moreover, if one reads the aggadah in relation to Ruth, one can now hear that the verses that R. Meir cites early in the aggadah—both of which compare the 'aḥarit with the re'shit—resonate with this verse from Ruth. The book of Ruth and the aggadah share the language of 'aḥarit/'aḥaron and re'shit/ri'shon, and both make the claim that the former is more tov than the latter.Footnote 54
Returning to the aggadah, it is important to note that, while I have described R. Meir's and Elisha's interpretations of biblical verses as deeply personal and as needing to be true to lived experience, the aggadah does not suggest that how one ought to interpret Torah is entirely subjective—that R. Meir's and Elisha's readings are equally valid. That the end is better than the beginning in this story, that at the critical moment R. Meir is able to invoke his understanding of God's goodness to redeem Elisha and to make his end tov, suggests that the aggadah takes a stand on R. Meir's and Elisha's core convictions and, thus, on their interpretations of Torah.Footnote 55 While both characters seem to believe that Torah must be read in a way that is true and real, the challenge presented by the aggadah is how to read and act in such a way that it is specifically the goodness that Torah describes that is seen as a possibility and enacted as a reality.Footnote 56
Similarly, in the book of Ruth, while Naomi describes God as having done ra‘ to her, her own and other characters' conviction that God is the author of ḥesed and that the good actions of human beings are an expression of that ḥesed is what ultimately allows Naomi herself, in the beginning of the third chapter, to initiate action that ensures that goodness and ḥesed will result. Here, too, characters read God's intention in relation to their own experience, but ultimately it is the core divine attributes of ḥesed and goodness that guide human action and, thus, that are manifested as the events of the book unfold. And here, too, the narrative takes a stand. Only life-giving acts are attributed to God by the narrator; the famine at the beginning of the book and the death of Naomi's husband and sons are not.Footnote 57 And the trajectory of the book from devastation to redemption and new life attests to the book's stance on divine and human ḥesed and on the reality of goodness.
Restoration through Children
Both the aggadah and the book of Ruth end by focusing on the protagonists' child or children. The aggadah ends with Elisha's daughters going to Rabbi for charity. Rabbi refuses to support them, citing a verse from Psalms: “Let there be none to extend kindness to him, nor any to be gracious to his orphans” ('al yehi lo moshekh ḥesed ve-'al yehi ḥonen li-yetomav) (109:12).Footnote 58 Elisha's daughters convince Rabbi to focus on Elisha's Torah rather than on his deeds, and Rabbi changes his mind and decrees that these women are to be supported. Thus, at the very end of the aggadah, Elisha's redemption is in a sense reaffirmed through the incorporation of his children—if the psalm speaks of the cutting off of the condemned person's posterity ('aḥarit) (109:13), then the decision to incorporate the children is tantamount to a decision to acknowledge Elisha's membership in the community. And it is noteworthy that here, for the first time in the aggadah, the acceptance of Elisha is not R. Meir's private acceptance of his master; it is the decision of the leader of the community.Footnote 59 For the first and only time, the aggadah zooms out from the intimate relationship between R. Meir and his master to look at Elisha's place within the broader community. Until now, in fact, no other character has appeared within the core narrative, other than the anonymous “they” who report events concerning Elisha to R. Meir or that question R. Meir about his relationship with his master.Footnote 60
The narrative of the book of Ruth ends as Ruth gives birth to a child—a child who, in the words of the townswomen, will be a meshiv nefesh (restorer of life) for Naomi. This phrase loops back to the key word of the first chapter, lashuv (return), which described Naomi's return to the land along with her daughter-in-law. In fact, the only other hiph‘il form of the verb in the book occurs in Naomi's response to the townswomen as she returns to Bethlehem: “the Lord has brought me back empty” (ve-rekam heshivani 'Adonai) (1:21).Footnote 61 The townswomen's later use of the causative form of the verb closes the circle of the narrative, as the woman who returned to her land but imagined herself as living the rest of her life empty (1:21)Footnote 62 and without hope for the future, now has a grandchild who will redeem her (4:14) and restore (literally, “return”) her life. The return of Naomi as well as the incorporation of Ruth is consummated with the welcoming of the child into the community.
Both the incorporation of Ruth into the community through her marriage to Boaz and the welcoming of the child who restores both Ruth and Naomi are affirmed by the members of the community. Boaz gathers ten elders together to witness his commitment to act as redeemer (4:2). Soon, “all the people” participate (4:9), serving as witnesses and offering a blessing that assimilates Ruth to the model of the biblical matriarchs who “built … the house of Israel” (4:11). And finally, the women offer words of blessing, acknowledge the new life granted to Naomi, and give the child a name (4:14–15, 17).
Both stories, then, conclude with the incorporation of the child/ren of the outsider by the community. The private worlds of Elisha and R. Meir and of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz broaden to encompass the larger communal context, and the individual whose inclusion was in doubt is assured a place in the community's future through his or her child/ren. Just as Naomi's (and Ruth's) return is complete with the birth of the child who is meshiv nefesh, Elisha's return to a place in the community, if only after death, takes the form of the acceptance of his daughters by Rabbi.
Ḥesed and Goodness
Before concluding, I will address an issue that arises from the interpretation I have offered of the mechanism at work in the incorporation of the outsider in each of these narratives. In both stories, the exclusion of the outsider is affirmed by the divine word. In the background of Ruth is the biblical prohibition against a Moabite entering into the community. In the aggadah, Elisha reports having heard a heavenly voice explicitly excluding him from the possibility of return. Yet in neither story is the divine injunction ever addressed. This is perhaps not surprising in the case of Ruth, since the law against the inclusion of Moabites, like the other biblical laws that form the backdrop of the narrative, is not explicitly mentioned in the story. Nevertheless, one might wonder how the book would have its readers understand the violation of the biblical word that Boaz's marriage to Ruth represents.Footnote 63 And the aggadah never addresses the heavenly voice that proclaims Elisha's exclusion. While it includes several citations and interpretations of biblical verses in favor of goodness and the possibility of redemption and return, it leaves unspoken an explicit response to or reinterpretation of the divine word that Elisha understands to have declared the impossibility of his return.
It could be argued that Elisha's report of having heard the heavenly voice does not accurately reflect the facts of the narrative. Perhaps Elisha only believes that he heard this voice—hearing the exclusion that he believes to be permanent and irreversible proclaimed from the holy of holies as he rides by on the Day of Atonement—but the narrative does not suggest that such a heavenly message was ever delivered.
Alternatively, it is possible that the narrative suggests that Elisha did hear a heavenly voice, but heard it proclaim only the words of Jeremiah, “Return children” (shuvu vanim) and that Elisha interpreted these words as including all of God's children except for himself.Footnote 64 This would represent yet another case of competing understandings of the biblical word, in this case of God's call to return. Elisha focuses on the verse from Jeremiah and understands the call to God's “children” to exclude himself, while R. Meir will later offer a reinterpretation of a verse from Psalms that issues the same call—shuvu—that is directed to all human beingsFootnote 65 and, according to R. Meir's derashah, invites all human beings to return.
I think it is most plausible to take Elisha's report at face value, to understand the words that exclude Elisha as indeed having issued from a heavenly voice. The story offers no indication that Elisha's report is not accurate; on the contrary, R. Meir's challenge to God in the episode in which he enacts the passage from Ruth implies that he accepts the fact that God has excluded Elisha.Footnote 66 The proposal that the aggadah is crafted in relation to the book of Ruth offers additional support for the conclusion that God has excluded Elisha, as Ruth herself is implicated in the permanent exclusion of the Moabites that is scripturally mandated. Nonetheless, in the aggadah, as in the book of Ruth, the divine word that excludes is simply not addressed. In both stories, the protagonists go about their work of incorporating the outsider, of redeeming the one whom God has excluded, without ever justifying this in relation to the divine word that has placed this person irrevocably outside of the bounds of the community.
In order to address this puzzling feature of the two stories, I want to return to the earlier discussion of ḥesed and goodness and take it one step further. In the book of Ruth, I suggested, the redemption of Ruth is an expression of the quality of ḥesed that the characters attribute to God and that they praise when it is expressed in human action. Ḥesed entails going beyond the boundaries of what is required. Ruth's accompaniment of Naomi and providing for her needs goes beyond what is required, and so does Boaz's care of Ruth when she comes to glean in his field. In the background of this book are several biblical laws, relating to allowing poor people to gather in one's field, to the redemption of land, and to the widow of a man who has died without children. The relationship between the events of Ruth and these biblical laws is not always entirely clear.Footnote 67 But it is clear, especially in the case of the first of these laws, that Boaz goes beyond what the law requires: he invites Ruth to drink from the water that his workers draw, he protects her from the young men working in his field, he includes her in his and the workers' meal, and he makes sure that she has extra produce from which to glean (2:9, 14–16).
I suggest that this same quality of ḥesed, in the sense of going beyond the boundaries of the law, explains the incorporation of Ruth into the community despite the law that forbids it. It is not just that Boaz's commitment to ḥesed convinces him that he must extend himself to the woman who has extended herself in ḥesed to others. It is that ḥesed, by its nature, cannot be bound by law. In most cases in the book, that unboundedness means that characters extend themselves beyond the law, acting in ways that fulfill the purposes of the law but that exceed what the law requires. But perhaps, in the case of the law forbidding a Moabite to enter the community, ḥesed means going beyond the bounds of the law in a different sense: breaking the bounds of the law. Boaz enacts the divine quality of ḥesed by doing what, from a legal perspective, is a violation of the rule that the law sets out.Footnote 68
It is such a reading of the nature and role of ḥesed in the book of Ruth, I believe, that lies behind the aggadah. If Elisha's report of the heavenly voice is accurate, then R. Meir must be seen as speaking and acting in ways that violate the divine word that declared Elisha to be outside of the possibility of return. In the opening scene of the second act, R. Meir repeats the question that he had put to Elisha in the final scene of the first act: “Will you not return/repent?” It was in response to the first time that R. Meir asked this question that Elisha explained that return is impossible for him, and it was then that Elisha disclosed to R. Meir the message of the heavenly voice that excluded Elisha from the invitation to return. Yet now, after asking this same question, R. Meir offers precisely the opposite message. He asserts that the invitation to return—shuvu—is extended to everyone, even to Elisha. And, in the following scene, R. Meir challenges God to redeem Elisha and declares that he will do so himself if God refuses. Both at Elisha's deathbed and at Elisha's grave, in word and in action, R. Meir refuses to accept the divine refusal to allow Elisha to return.
Now, it is true that R. Meir's conclusions about the possibility of return and about the imperative of redemption are based on biblical verses and his derashot on these verses. In that sense, then, his actions are justified. But it also true that R. Meir does not attempt to reread the words of the heavenly message that exclude Elisha. Those words are left hanging in the background of the story as R. Meir goes about the reincorporation of Elisha in the second act of the narrative. Like Boaz in the book of Ruth, then, R. Meir does what he understands is necessary without justifying his actions in relation to the divine word that they appear to violate. Like Boaz enacting the quality of divine ḥesed, R. Meir needs to enact the quality of divine goodness, and that is what he does. Tov 'Adonai la-kol—the conviction of God's unlimited goodness—simply trumps even God's own word that would exclude someone from that goodness.
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This study has argued that the aggadah's account of R. Meir speaking, interpreting, and enacting a verse spoken by Boaz in the book of Ruth calls the reader to engage with the broader narrative of Ruth and to imagine in what ways the book of Ruth might be present in the aggadah.Footnote 69 Several observations have emerged from the contrapuntal reading of these two stories that I have undertaken in response to this invitation.
First, reading the two stories in relation to each other helps highlight core themes of the aggadah as well as of the book of Ruth. For example, exploring parallels between the two stories brings into focus the theme of accompaniment in the aggadah, and in particular the powerful image of two individuals walking together in a space between boundaries that one or the other cannot cross. Conversely, the aggadah's concern with the notion of goodness and the conviction that the end can be better than the beginning helps call attention to the significance of the word tov in the book of Ruth and the theme of reversal toward good that shapes that book.
In addition, reading the two stories in relation to each other can help the reader interpret puzzling elements in one or both of the stories. Thus, an analysis of the role of ḥesed and the interplay of human and divine action in the book of Ruth helps clarify how each of the stories would have its readers understand the characters' commitment to incorporating the outsider. In the book of Ruth, the mechanism of inclusion is the belief that God is a life-giving source of goodness and ḥesed and that it is the task of human beings to enact those divine qualities. It is this same hermeneutic of goodness, anchored in biblical verses, that enables R. Meir to interpret the divine word in a way that ensures a good outcome, and to enact that very outcome. And the relationship between law and ḥesed in the book of Ruth suggests a possible way to understand R. Meir's choice to incorporate Elisha into the community in opposition to the divine word.
The starting point of this investigation was the observation that the climax of the aggadah takes the form of an enactment and interpretation of a biblical verse. What has emerged over the course of the ensuing exploration is that the entire aggadah is in a sense a reenactment and interpretation of the book in which that verse appears. These two observations help bring into focus a point discussed earlier in this study: that the aggadah tells a story that speaks powerfully about how a person might read Torah and how a person might live out his or her understanding of Torah.
