Dvar Torah on Parshat Naso

There is an almost universal custom among Jewish communities to read the Book of Ruth on Shavuot. This extremely short book tells the story of a Jewish family who leaves Israel during a famine, and migrates to the Land of Moab. There, the sons of the family marry Moabite women, and, along with their father, die. When the famine is over, the mother, Naomi, the only remaining member of the original family, returns to Israel, accompanied by one of her two daughters-in-law, Ruth. Ruth and Naomi, now penniless, are shown great kindness by a local landowner, Boaz, who happens to be a relative of Naomi, and who eventually, following ancient custom, marries Ruth and redeems (purchases) the land which Naomi's late husband had sold, restoring it to the family. He and Ruth have children, and King David is one of their descendants.

The reason behind the choice of this book for reading on Shavuot is unclear. The simplest explanation is that much of the action takes place in the harvest season, and revolves around the activities of the harvest, which is when Shavuot, a holiday which celebrates the grain harvest, takes place. The Rabbis have posited another reason. The Book of Ruth, they say, is essentially about chessed - kindness; the kindness shown by Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi when she decided to return to Israel with her, as well as Naomi's reciprocal kindnesses to her, and the kindness shown by the wealthy Boaz to the two women when he gives them grain from his field and, ultimately, marries the destitute Ruth and cares for her and her mother-in-law. Naomi expresses this when she thanks God for "not withholding his kindness" and guiding Ruth to the field of their kinsman, Boaz. The Book of Ruth, with this theme of kindness, the Rabbis say, is the perfect text for Shavuot, which is, in addition to being an agricultural holiday, also the celebration of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. In their view, chessed  is the central message of the Torah, and the Book of Ruth is its perfect expression.

It is especially worthy of note that the kindness shown in the Book of Ruth is kindness to the stranger - Naomi towards her Moabite daughter-in-law and vice versa, and the kindness of Boaz to the Moabite woman. The message seems to be that true kindness is not to be found within one's own community. There, kindness is understood to be natural, normal, often ultimately self-serving, and not especially noteworthy. It is to the stranger, the one who is not a natural part of one's community, that real kindness must be shown. This is the message of the Book of Ruth, and the essential message of the Torah, with its repeated insistence that we be kind to the stranger, as we ourselves were strangers in Egypt. It is this aspect of the Torah which the reading of the Book of Ruth teaches us to emphasize on the Holiday of the Giving of the Torah.

This notion is also expressed, in an interesting way,  in the Parsha we will read on Shabbat, Parshat Naso. The parsha includes the well-known priestly blessings: "May the Lord bless and keep you. May the Lord shine his face upon you and show grace to you. May the Lord lift up his face to you and grant you shalom - peace." On this last blessing, that of shalom, the Ba'al Ha'turim has a wonderful interpretation. I first want to say a word about him. The author of one of the great codes of Jewish Law, the Arba Turim, from which he got his pen name, the Ba'al Ha'turim - which means 'the author of the Arba Turim' - his real name was Yaakov ben Asher. He lived from approximately 1270 to 1340, first in Germany and then in Toledo, Spain. He also wrote an extensive commentary on the Bible, which is essentially out of print, and is largely unstudied today. Ironically, what is printed in many traditional editions of the Torah are his introductory pieces to his commentary, material he meant as a kind of simple, easily understood opening to his real commentary. These contain many gematrias, the substitution of letters for numbers (aleph is one, bet is two, etc. - for a good explanation, see the movie Pi). I won't bother explaining because the example I want to look at in a moment will give you a good idea.

Now, usually gematrias are looked down on as being populist, simplistic, and often forced, the crumbs from the table of wisdom, as the Rabbis put it. The Ba'al Haturim, however, has many wonderful gematrias, which I often find to be extremely profound and often radical, like this one: The last word of the Priestly blessing, shalom, has the numerical value of 376 (shin is 300, lamed is 30, vav is 6, and mem is 40), the same numerical value as that of Esav, the wicked son of Yitzchak and brother of Yaakov, whom Yaakov cheated out of the blessing and birthright. Esav is traditionally seen as the archetypal bad guy; he is, in Rabbinic thought, the forerunner of the oppressive Romans and the anti-Semitic Christians, the very antithesis of the Jewish people. And yet, the Ba'al Ha'turim says, he has the same gematria as Shalom, 376.

Now, what do you do with this funny little fact? The Ba'al Ha'turim could have made it messianic - one day we will have peace with Esav - which would have been nice and fairly innocuous. Instead, he makes this connection prescriptive, and much more radical. This is what the Ba'al Ha'turim says: The equivalence of shalom and Esav indicates to us that we should greet and offer peace to everyone, even non-Jews (in some versions, 'idol worshippers'). In this remarkable insight, we are told that the final, ultimate bracha in the Priestly blessing is that we extend ourselves, and our good will, beyond our own community, and find the strength, self-confidence, and vision, to live peacefully and positively with everyone, and not just with our own people.

Now, this is a real blessing. For so much of Jewish history, we have felt negatively towards Esav, the NON-Jew, the eternal other. The ultimate bracha, and, in fact, the ultimate point of the Torah, is NOT simply to live peacefully and with grace within a Jewish society, but, rather, to extend the message of the Torah, the message of kindness, peace, and brotherhood, to those outside the Jewish community (as happened in the book of Ruth, the Book of Chessed), to extend the blessing of shalom, which is the ultimate blessing and the ultimate value of the Torah, to those with whom we could easily see ourselves as being irreparably and unyieldingly at odds. To find it within ourselves to bring the real message of the Torah, that of Chessed, and peace, to all. That is the message of the priestly blessing, and of the Book of Ruth, and of the entire Torah.

Chag Sameach,

Rabbi Shimon Felix