I posted a derashah on this topic for Shavuos a few years ago, but I think the core idea bears repeating with this column that appears in this week's Toronto Torah:
Ruth had been ruined by her life with Jews; her wealthy husband had died, along with his brother and father, and the family’s wealth was gone. Now her mother-in-law was preparing to return to a place where Moabites were persona non grata - and Ruth insisted on accompanying her.
Naami was astounded; what practical gain could be in store for an impoverished, friendless Moabite in a Jewish land? But Ruth insisted, “Don’t plead with me to leave you, to cease following you . Where you will go, I will go.” The book of Ruth doesn’t tell us what inspired her, only that she was idealistically certain that this was the nation and the G-d to whom she would commit her life.
Judaism tends toward the pragmatic: We focus on this world rather than meditate on reward in the afterlife. We save lives in violation of most mitzvot. We recognize civil government.
Nonetheless, Judaism has a long history of honouring the quixotic charge of the idealist: Avraham and Sarah welcomed strangers in the name of Gd. The Jews declared, “We will do and we will hear,” pledging obedience to a law they did not yet know. Our vision of Mashiach is of a pauper riding a donkey.
To borrow a passage from Man of La Mancha, “Maddest of all [is] to see life as it is, and not as it should be.” This idealism is a most Jewish concept; Judaism nods to the pragmatic, but it reveres the idealistic.
We have just finished commemorating a seven-week trek during which an entire nation was challenged to metamorphose from slaves into idealists. A slave cannot afford ideology, and throughout the desert trek a slavish pragmatism was quite visible; the constant attention to food and water reflected a mind that could not see past its most immediate needs. But, eventually, this nation stood at Sinai and established that idealism which would become Ruth’s mark.
On Shavuot we read Ruth’s story, and challenge ourselves: Will we establish that idealism, too?
Showing posts with label Tanach: Ruth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tanach: Ruth. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Monday, May 10, 2010
Four Ruths
Getting really close to the culmination of Sefirah and still counting, I’m glad to say. Hope the same is true for you…
This week I’m delivering a second shiur on Ruth, and as I prepare it I keep mulling the way that we see ourselves, perhaps our best selves, perhaps our wished-for selves, in this heroine. Here are four diverse examples:
Boaz, a person of wealth and generosity, says of Ruth (3:11) כי יודע כל שער עמי כי אשת חיל את – which may be translated, “Everyone knows that you are a woman of generosity.” [For more on translations of chayil, listen to the audio of the shiur I expect to teach tomorrow night, “Ruth as the Eishet Chayil.” Link to appear here when it is available, Gd-willing.]
John Keats was victim of a life of pain and loneliness, and in his Ode to a Nightingale he described those same traits in our heroine: “The sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home she stood in tears amid the alien corn.”
Juan Valera, who adores the greatness of a pure heart, writes in Pepita Jimenez, “I bestowed on them the sweet humility and the devotion of Ruth.”
And Richard Beer-Hofmann, in his Der Junge David (this translation comes from Liptzin’s “Beer-Hofmann’s image of Ruth,” which appeared in Jewish Bible Quarterly 19:4, Summer ‘91), sees Ruth offering advice to her great-grandson, King David. The words he puts in her mouth reflect his own views on Death:
Your end, like the end of all of us, is ultimately to become dung of the earth.
Perhaps a legend, a song, a melody, remembered for a while and wafted away before long.
And yet, like Gd’s stars circling in their assigned orbits above us, you - David - must complete your course here below, carrying on your assigned destiny.
I don’t know that any of these observers overreach; all of their visions are borne out in the woman at the center of the megilah we read on Shavuot. I’m just fascinated by their identification with a person whose moment on the biblical stage is brief, whose lines are terse, and whose role is so veiled in hints and mystery.
This week I’m delivering a second shiur on Ruth, and as I prepare it I keep mulling the way that we see ourselves, perhaps our best selves, perhaps our wished-for selves, in this heroine. Here are four diverse examples:
Boaz, a person of wealth and generosity, says of Ruth (3:11) כי יודע כל שער עמי כי אשת חיל את – which may be translated, “Everyone knows that you are a woman of generosity.” [For more on translations of chayil, listen to the audio of the shiur I expect to teach tomorrow night, “Ruth as the Eishet Chayil.” Link to appear here when it is available, Gd-willing.]
John Keats was victim of a life of pain and loneliness, and in his Ode to a Nightingale he described those same traits in our heroine: “The sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home she stood in tears amid the alien corn.”
Juan Valera, who adores the greatness of a pure heart, writes in Pepita Jimenez, “I bestowed on them the sweet humility and the devotion of Ruth.”
And Richard Beer-Hofmann, in his Der Junge David (this translation comes from Liptzin’s “Beer-Hofmann’s image of Ruth,” which appeared in Jewish Bible Quarterly 19:4, Summer ‘91), sees Ruth offering advice to her great-grandson, King David. The words he puts in her mouth reflect his own views on Death:
Your end, like the end of all of us, is ultimately to become dung of the earth.
Perhaps a legend, a song, a melody, remembered for a while and wafted away before long.
And yet, like Gd’s stars circling in their assigned orbits above us, you - David - must complete your course here below, carrying on your assigned destiny.
I don’t know that any of these observers overreach; all of their visions are borne out in the woman at the center of the megilah we read on Shavuot. I’m just fascinated by their identification with a person whose moment on the biblical stage is brief, whose lines are terse, and whose role is so veiled in hints and mystery.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Ruth and Barack, the Ideal and the Real, and Jerusalem
Ruth the Moabite had been ruined by her association with Jews; she had married a wealthy young man, and then he had died, along with his brother and his father. The family’s wealth had disappeared. Now her mother-in-law Naami was preparing to abandon her and return to a place where Moabites were persona non grata - and Ruth insisted on accompanying her to that hostile land, without a penny to their names.
Naami was astounded; what could this young girl want with her, and her people? What practical gain could be in store for an impoverished, friendless Moabite in a Jewish land?
But Ruth insisted, “אל תפגעי בי לעזבך לשוב מאחריך, Don’t plead with me to leave you, to cease following you . Where you will go, I will go. Where you will sleep, I will sleep. Your nation is my nation; your Gd is my Gd. Where you will die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May Gd act against me, and may Gd do more against me, if anything but death will separate us.”
The megilah doesn’t tell us what inspired Ruth, only that she was idealistically certain that this was the nation and the Gd to which she would commit her life. באשר תלכי אלך – Where you will go, I will go.
Contrast Ruth’s idealism with the survivalist pragmatism of a man named Barak, a Jewish general of some 3200 years ago.
In Barak’s day, the Jews lived under oppression by the Canaanites. They cried out to Gd, and their prophetess, Devorah, commanded Barak in the name of HaShem to lead a rebellion against the Canaanites. She even gave him a military strategy, instructing him which tribes to take with him, and where to engage in battle.
But Barak, a realist, was intimidated by the task, and he refused to lead alone. Instead, Barak offered Devorah a bargain which reversed the language of Ruth’s idealism. He said, “אם תלכי עמי והלכתי ואם לא תלכי לא אלך, If you will go with me then I will go, but if you will not go then I will not go either.”
Judaism tends toward Barak’s pragmatism:
• We focus on this world rather than meditate on the reward waiting for us in the afterlife;
• We save lives even in violation of the Torah’s mitzvot;
• We recognize the authority of civil government;
• We override Rabbinic law regularly for שעת הדחק, cases of need.
Nonetheless, Judaism has a long history of honoring the quixotic charge of the idealist:
• Avraham and Sarah set up an Eshel inn at the northern tip of the Negev desert, and welcomed travelers in the name of HaShem;
• The Jews at Har Sinai declared “נעשה ונשמע, We will do and we will hear,” blindly pledging obedience to a law they did not yet know;
• Our vision of mashiach is of an עני ורוכב על החמור, a pauper riding a donkey, anointed for his piety rather than for the pragmatic values of wealth or social status.
To borrow a passage from Man of La Mancha, “Maddest of all [is] to see life as it is, and not as it should be. ” This emphasis on idealism, on seeing the world as it should be, is a most Jewish concept; Judaism nods to the pragmatic, but it reveres the idealistic.
We have just completed a seven-week journey from Egyptian slavery to Divine revelation at Sinai, a trek during which an entire nation was challenged to metamorphose from Barak-style pragmatists to Ruth-style idealists.
A slave cannot afford ideology; he is too busy trying to satisfy his master and avoid harm. Through the desert trip that slavish pragmatism was quite visible, too; the constant attention to food and water reflected a mind that could not see past its most immediate needs.
But, eventually, this nation stood at Sinai and established that same נעשה ונשמע attitude which would become Ruth’s mantra. On Shavuos we read Ruth’s story for many reasons, but surely one is her willingness to embrace a Torah about which she knew little, her personal נעשה ונשמע.
Certainly, a Ruth-based yearning for the ideal can set the Jew at odds with the world in which he lives and with which he must make some peace; for an example, look no further than the news of the past two weeks, regarding the international stances on the future of Yerushalayim.
The United States, led by a different Barack, is opting for a pragmatic, survivalist stance; ditto for Europe, as expressed last week by France. They look at Yerushalayim on a practical level: The Arab world will never be satisfied with a Middle East that does not incorporate a state of Palestine, with its capital in Yerushalayim. The wrath of that Arab world, seen from a pragmatist’s perspective, is a lot more dangerous than the outrage of the Jewish world – so guess who wins?
But we know how a Devorah would reply: Yerushalayim is not a random hilltop, it is the ideal of ideals within Judaism!
The walls of Yerushalayim encircle critical elements of Jewish history; just two weeks ago they found yet another shard with an inscription dating back to the period of the first Beit haMikdash, apparently marked with the name of a king mentioned in Tanach.
Those walls also encircle the essence of Jewish unity, a city owned not by any one tribe but by the nation as a whole. To this city, Jews would flock for aliyah laregel every Yom Tov. To this city, Jews would bring their maaser sheni tithe, beautifying the markets with their produce. And to this city, Jews would come every Shavuot with their Bikkurim/first fruits and give them to the kohanim.
And those walls also encircle the essence of Jewish spirituality, the Beit haMikdash and its associated triple-corded bond between individual and nation and HaShem. It is not for nothing that the sages speak of a Yerushalayim shel Maalah, a heavenly Yerushalayim parallel to Yerushalayim here on earth, a city above in which HaShem can be found when we gather in the city below.
For the Jew, descendant of the idealistic Ruth, Yerushalayim is the indispensable ideal, and this sets him at odds with the world’s survivalists, whether the military Barak of Tanach or the presidential Barack of today.
To be a descendant of idealistic Ruth often means to be at odds with the world’s pragmatic Baraks, and we must find a way to mediate between those poles.
Today we celebrate Shavuot, and we also mark the engagement of __________ and _________.
Building a Jewish home requires a blending of the real and the ideal, but the ideal must always reign supreme.
In the beginning it’s all ideal; the thoughts of how married life will look are untempered by real experience, the conversations are about ideas more than they are about reality. Certainly, an engaged couple deals with the specific facts of the wedding, of where to live, of what sort of home to have, but it’s without the nuts and bolts that make up daily life, the price of yogurt, the questions of who will prepare dinner, mow the lawn and take out the trash, the specifics of paying bills on time. Then, once a couple becomes responsible for a home, for each other, for shared life, that’s when reality kicks in and ideology can be a struggle.
To build a strong Jewish home requires both Ruth and Barak, but more Ruth than Barak. Yes, the Jewish family must make concessions to reality, but the ideological commitment of building a Jewish home, of having active Torah study at every meal, of having Shabbat guests and a tzedakah box and sefarim, must remain primary.
[Here I'll cut the web version, since the rest is about this couple in particular.]
-
No notes to add for this one, for lack of time, but there's a lot more to say sometime on Judaism, the real and the ideal...
Naami was astounded; what could this young girl want with her, and her people? What practical gain could be in store for an impoverished, friendless Moabite in a Jewish land?
But Ruth insisted, “אל תפגעי בי לעזבך לשוב מאחריך, Don’t plead with me to leave you, to cease following you . Where you will go, I will go. Where you will sleep, I will sleep. Your nation is my nation; your Gd is my Gd. Where you will die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May Gd act against me, and may Gd do more against me, if anything but death will separate us.”
The megilah doesn’t tell us what inspired Ruth, only that she was idealistically certain that this was the nation and the Gd to which she would commit her life. באשר תלכי אלך – Where you will go, I will go.
Contrast Ruth’s idealism with the survivalist pragmatism of a man named Barak, a Jewish general of some 3200 years ago.
In Barak’s day, the Jews lived under oppression by the Canaanites. They cried out to Gd, and their prophetess, Devorah, commanded Barak in the name of HaShem to lead a rebellion against the Canaanites. She even gave him a military strategy, instructing him which tribes to take with him, and where to engage in battle.
But Barak, a realist, was intimidated by the task, and he refused to lead alone. Instead, Barak offered Devorah a bargain which reversed the language of Ruth’s idealism. He said, “אם תלכי עמי והלכתי ואם לא תלכי לא אלך, If you will go with me then I will go, but if you will not go then I will not go either.”
Judaism tends toward Barak’s pragmatism:
• We focus on this world rather than meditate on the reward waiting for us in the afterlife;
• We save lives even in violation of the Torah’s mitzvot;
• We recognize the authority of civil government;
• We override Rabbinic law regularly for שעת הדחק, cases of need.
Nonetheless, Judaism has a long history of honoring the quixotic charge of the idealist:
• Avraham and Sarah set up an Eshel inn at the northern tip of the Negev desert, and welcomed travelers in the name of HaShem;
• The Jews at Har Sinai declared “נעשה ונשמע, We will do and we will hear,” blindly pledging obedience to a law they did not yet know;
• Our vision of mashiach is of an עני ורוכב על החמור, a pauper riding a donkey, anointed for his piety rather than for the pragmatic values of wealth or social status.
To borrow a passage from Man of La Mancha, “Maddest of all [is] to see life as it is, and not as it should be. ” This emphasis on idealism, on seeing the world as it should be, is a most Jewish concept; Judaism nods to the pragmatic, but it reveres the idealistic.
We have just completed a seven-week journey from Egyptian slavery to Divine revelation at Sinai, a trek during which an entire nation was challenged to metamorphose from Barak-style pragmatists to Ruth-style idealists.
A slave cannot afford ideology; he is too busy trying to satisfy his master and avoid harm. Through the desert trip that slavish pragmatism was quite visible, too; the constant attention to food and water reflected a mind that could not see past its most immediate needs.
But, eventually, this nation stood at Sinai and established that same נעשה ונשמע attitude which would become Ruth’s mantra. On Shavuos we read Ruth’s story for many reasons, but surely one is her willingness to embrace a Torah about which she knew little, her personal נעשה ונשמע.
Certainly, a Ruth-based yearning for the ideal can set the Jew at odds with the world in which he lives and with which he must make some peace; for an example, look no further than the news of the past two weeks, regarding the international stances on the future of Yerushalayim.
The United States, led by a different Barack, is opting for a pragmatic, survivalist stance; ditto for Europe, as expressed last week by France. They look at Yerushalayim on a practical level: The Arab world will never be satisfied with a Middle East that does not incorporate a state of Palestine, with its capital in Yerushalayim. The wrath of that Arab world, seen from a pragmatist’s perspective, is a lot more dangerous than the outrage of the Jewish world – so guess who wins?
But we know how a Devorah would reply: Yerushalayim is not a random hilltop, it is the ideal of ideals within Judaism!
The walls of Yerushalayim encircle critical elements of Jewish history; just two weeks ago they found yet another shard with an inscription dating back to the period of the first Beit haMikdash, apparently marked with the name of a king mentioned in Tanach.
Those walls also encircle the essence of Jewish unity, a city owned not by any one tribe but by the nation as a whole. To this city, Jews would flock for aliyah laregel every Yom Tov. To this city, Jews would bring their maaser sheni tithe, beautifying the markets with their produce. And to this city, Jews would come every Shavuot with their Bikkurim/first fruits and give them to the kohanim.
And those walls also encircle the essence of Jewish spirituality, the Beit haMikdash and its associated triple-corded bond between individual and nation and HaShem. It is not for nothing that the sages speak of a Yerushalayim shel Maalah, a heavenly Yerushalayim parallel to Yerushalayim here on earth, a city above in which HaShem can be found when we gather in the city below.
For the Jew, descendant of the idealistic Ruth, Yerushalayim is the indispensable ideal, and this sets him at odds with the world’s survivalists, whether the military Barak of Tanach or the presidential Barack of today.
To be a descendant of idealistic Ruth often means to be at odds with the world’s pragmatic Baraks, and we must find a way to mediate between those poles.
Today we celebrate Shavuot, and we also mark the engagement of __________ and _________.
Building a Jewish home requires a blending of the real and the ideal, but the ideal must always reign supreme.
In the beginning it’s all ideal; the thoughts of how married life will look are untempered by real experience, the conversations are about ideas more than they are about reality. Certainly, an engaged couple deals with the specific facts of the wedding, of where to live, of what sort of home to have, but it’s without the nuts and bolts that make up daily life, the price of yogurt, the questions of who will prepare dinner, mow the lawn and take out the trash, the specifics of paying bills on time. Then, once a couple becomes responsible for a home, for each other, for shared life, that’s when reality kicks in and ideology can be a struggle.
To build a strong Jewish home requires both Ruth and Barak, but more Ruth than Barak. Yes, the Jewish family must make concessions to reality, but the ideological commitment of building a Jewish home, of having active Torah study at every meal, of having Shabbat guests and a tzedakah box and sefarim, must remain primary.
[Here I'll cut the web version, since the rest is about this couple in particular.]
-
No notes to add for this one, for lack of time, but there's a lot more to say sometime on Judaism, the real and the ideal...
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Daf: Nazir 24-28
These pages, like the previous installment, are fairly technical. However, one who isn’t learning through Nazir regularly, but is familiar with Gemara, might find the discussions of Halachah l’Moshe miSinai (25) and Bereirah (26a) interesting. And the wine/degradation topic on 28a is interesting in general…
24a
The word למלכות on the top of the page is problematic; how did Ruth/Moav get into the monarchy four generations before Naamah/Amon? Ruth enters monarchy with Dovid haMelech, Naamah does so with Rechavam, Dovid’s grandson!
Rivan (pseudo-Rashi), Tosafos and Rosh don’t have the word למלכות at all, which does solve the problem – Ruth married in four generations before Naamah did.
One might also suggest it was the “line of מלכות,” that of Yehudah?
25
We understand, as Tosafos הלכה writes on 25a, that the term “הלכה” here means הלכה למשה מסיני, a tradition which goes back to Moshe even though it lacks a pasuk. This is interesting because of the interplay of citing a הלכה למשה מסיני and citing a pasuk, on 25b.
26a
The gemara about identifying money as being “for korbanos” vs. specifiying which coins will be for which korbanos would seem to be a perfect candidate for the discussion of ברירה – why couldn’t I suggest that if we believe in ברירה, then money which will later be identified for specific korbanos is retroactively identified as having been designated for those specific korbanos?
The term נפלה at the bottom of the page is open to interpretation. Pseudo-Rashi says it means the money was lost or separated from the rest, but Rosh says it was earmarked!
26b
Re: בכולן see the end of Tosafos והשאר
28a
The Rosh on the mishnah includes inability to attend funerals as an element of degradation, perhaps associated with the gemara (Nedarim 83b) that people want to attend the funerals of others, so that others will attend theirs?
The debate about why not drinking wine is ניוול, degradation, is fascinating. Pseudo-Rashi, citing a pasuk, says it’s because wine beautifies a person, but Tosafos תגלחת says it’s because she suffers in being deprived from wine.
28b
In the concern for what will happen to offerings dedicated by a Nazir who then has the nezirut repealed, our gemara says we are concerned for הפסד קדשים, the loss of offerings, but pseudo-Rashi’s edition is בזיון קדשים, degradation of the offerings. That latter version is hard to understand, if these aren’t offerings at all! Perhaps, though, the concern is that in the future one might be less-than-careful with the offerings, knowing that their status could be voided via repealing of the nezirut.
It sounds like the law against repealing one’s wife’s nezirut at a late stage is a rabbinic decree – so what happens if the husband repealed it first, and asked later? Presumably it’s repealed, rather than bring offerings inappropriately?
More on 28b in the next installment...
24a
The word למלכות on the top of the page is problematic; how did Ruth/Moav get into the monarchy four generations before Naamah/Amon? Ruth enters monarchy with Dovid haMelech, Naamah does so with Rechavam, Dovid’s grandson!
Rivan (pseudo-Rashi), Tosafos and Rosh don’t have the word למלכות at all, which does solve the problem – Ruth married in four generations before Naamah did.
One might also suggest it was the “line of מלכות,” that of Yehudah?
25
We understand, as Tosafos הלכה writes on 25a, that the term “הלכה” here means הלכה למשה מסיני, a tradition which goes back to Moshe even though it lacks a pasuk. This is interesting because of the interplay of citing a הלכה למשה מסיני and citing a pasuk, on 25b.
26a
The gemara about identifying money as being “for korbanos” vs. specifiying which coins will be for which korbanos would seem to be a perfect candidate for the discussion of ברירה – why couldn’t I suggest that if we believe in ברירה, then money which will later be identified for specific korbanos is retroactively identified as having been designated for those specific korbanos?
The term נפלה at the bottom of the page is open to interpretation. Pseudo-Rashi says it means the money was lost or separated from the rest, but Rosh says it was earmarked!
26b
Re: בכולן see the end of Tosafos והשאר
28a
The Rosh on the mishnah includes inability to attend funerals as an element of degradation, perhaps associated with the gemara (Nedarim 83b) that people want to attend the funerals of others, so that others will attend theirs?
The debate about why not drinking wine is ניוול, degradation, is fascinating. Pseudo-Rashi, citing a pasuk, says it’s because wine beautifies a person, but Tosafos תגלחת says it’s because she suffers in being deprived from wine.
28b
In the concern for what will happen to offerings dedicated by a Nazir who then has the nezirut repealed, our gemara says we are concerned for הפסד קדשים, the loss of offerings, but pseudo-Rashi’s edition is בזיון קדשים, degradation of the offerings. That latter version is hard to understand, if these aren’t offerings at all! Perhaps, though, the concern is that in the future one might be less-than-careful with the offerings, knowing that their status could be voided via repealing of the nezirut.
It sounds like the law against repealing one’s wife’s nezirut at a late stage is a rabbinic decree – so what happens if the husband repealed it first, and asked later? Presumably it’s repealed, rather than bring offerings inappropriately?
More on 28b in the next installment...
Friday, April 4, 2008
Daf: Nazir 23, a fascinating page
Yes, an entire post for this daf; there is a ton to see here, and we are just touching the tip of a very large iceberg!
23a
Nazir 23a-b is very interesting, for its discussion of the role of intention in both mitzvah and transgression. Some surprising concepts surface here, most prominently the idea of עבירה לשמה, a sin performed for the sake of Heaven. The concept itself is not surprising – it’s with us pretty much from childhood – but its validation in the gemara is not what one might have expected. The ‘system’ does not normally sanction its abrogation.
Rabbi Akiva cries here, regarding the extent to which a person is held liable for his intent. It’s interesting on two levels:
1. Rabbi Akiva is the one who usually laughs when the sages cry (end of Talmud Makkot), and even shuns tears upon his own martyring. Nonetheless, I find it consistent – Rabbi Akiva is always focussed on the Divine plan, and confidence in HaShem. Here, he cries because HaShem is so strict in judgment.
2. Various sages cry, in the gemara, when they reach specific pesukim or lessons of great import for our spiritual accounting. Think of Rebbe in Avodah Zarah 17 or 18, crying because a person can acquire his ‘olam’ in an instant יש קונה עולמו בשעה אחת.
Look at Tosafos על דבר, using the ראשי תיבות (acronym) approach.
I was troubled by the use of אכילה גסה here to connote simple over-eating – until I saw Tosafos “pesach”.
23b
The midrash is troubled, at the start of Parshat Balak, regarding the interplay between Midian and Moav in hiring Bilam. The midrash’s conclusion is that Midian and Moav teamed up. Here, though (top of the page), it appears that they are considered the same nation?
The reason presented here (ancestral behavior) for the prohibition of marrying an Amonite/Moabite is not the same as the reason given in the Torah itself (behavior of those nations when the Jews arrived to enter Israel)! Perhaps the idea is that the actions of the ancestors dictated the character of their descendants, a sort of ersatz מעשה אבות סימן לבנים concept. It fits the traditional concept of mamzerut, too – that the descendant is influenced by the traits of his parents.
Our gemara speaks positively about a person who learns Torah or performs mitzvos with ulterior motives. Tosafos here, and in four other places, points out that Berachos 17a strongly condemns a person who acts with ulterior motives! In all of those sites, Tosafos explains that there is a difference between acting positively for personal gain (approved), and acting positively in order to harm others (not approved).
Ruth is identified here as the descendant of kings. This fits a general talmudic pattern of associating outsiders who joined the family of Avraham, or who wanted to join, with royal heritage; we do this for Hagar, identifying her as the daughter of a Pharoah, and for Timna (see Rashi to Bereishis 36:12).
Note also Tosafos בת בנו on the chronology of Ruth’s connection to Eglon. We don’t assume that Ruth’s mother was exceptionally long-lived. (As opposed to Ruth’s descendants, between her and Dovid haMelech.)
23a
Nazir 23a-b is very interesting, for its discussion of the role of intention in both mitzvah and transgression. Some surprising concepts surface here, most prominently the idea of עבירה לשמה, a sin performed for the sake of Heaven. The concept itself is not surprising – it’s with us pretty much from childhood – but its validation in the gemara is not what one might have expected. The ‘system’ does not normally sanction its abrogation.
Rabbi Akiva cries here, regarding the extent to which a person is held liable for his intent. It’s interesting on two levels:
1. Rabbi Akiva is the one who usually laughs when the sages cry (end of Talmud Makkot), and even shuns tears upon his own martyring. Nonetheless, I find it consistent – Rabbi Akiva is always focussed on the Divine plan, and confidence in HaShem. Here, he cries because HaShem is so strict in judgment.
2. Various sages cry, in the gemara, when they reach specific pesukim or lessons of great import for our spiritual accounting. Think of Rebbe in Avodah Zarah 17 or 18, crying because a person can acquire his ‘olam’ in an instant יש קונה עולמו בשעה אחת.
Look at Tosafos על דבר, using the ראשי תיבות (acronym) approach.
I was troubled by the use of אכילה גסה here to connote simple over-eating – until I saw Tosafos “pesach”.
23b
The midrash is troubled, at the start of Parshat Balak, regarding the interplay between Midian and Moav in hiring Bilam. The midrash’s conclusion is that Midian and Moav teamed up. Here, though (top of the page), it appears that they are considered the same nation?
The reason presented here (ancestral behavior) for the prohibition of marrying an Amonite/Moabite is not the same as the reason given in the Torah itself (behavior of those nations when the Jews arrived to enter Israel)! Perhaps the idea is that the actions of the ancestors dictated the character of their descendants, a sort of ersatz מעשה אבות סימן לבנים concept. It fits the traditional concept of mamzerut, too – that the descendant is influenced by the traits of his parents.
Our gemara speaks positively about a person who learns Torah or performs mitzvos with ulterior motives. Tosafos here, and in four other places, points out that Berachos 17a strongly condemns a person who acts with ulterior motives! In all of those sites, Tosafos explains that there is a difference between acting positively for personal gain (approved), and acting positively in order to harm others (not approved).
Ruth is identified here as the descendant of kings. This fits a general talmudic pattern of associating outsiders who joined the family of Avraham, or who wanted to join, with royal heritage; we do this for Hagar, identifying her as the daughter of a Pharoah, and for Timna (see Rashi to Bereishis 36:12).
Note also Tosafos בת בנו on the chronology of Ruth’s connection to Eglon. We don’t assume that Ruth’s mother was exceptionally long-lived. (As opposed to Ruth’s descendants, between her and Dovid haMelech.)
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