Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting is having its annual sessions at Earlham this week. I asked if I could attend the afternoon workshops. Today I was planning to go to one called "A Conversation about Jesus" because I am quite fascinated by the different ways and levels of comfort with which Quakers talk about Jesus.
I ended up walking past and then into another, cozy workshop on couches which turned out to be the "Friendly Bible Study: Book of Ruth" group. It also proved distressing and thought provoking.
My knowledge of the book of Ruth is as vague as my knowledge of the rest of the Bible (especially the old testament). As we read the story memory bells tinkled faintly.
In the story, Ruth, a non-Jewish woman, becomes a widow, but is determined to remain with her mother in law, despite the MIL's instructions to return to her family. Ruth remains with Naomi and worships Naomi's God (they Jewish God).
These two women are without male protection or an income, so Ruth starts gleaning corn from harvest fields. In ancient law farmers were supposed to leave dropped corn on the ground for the poor to gather. Institutionalised charity, our study leader called it. Ruth chooses the fields of Boaz. Boaz sees her one day and is impressed with her hard work. He tells her she is welcome to drink and eat with the farm hands, and she can stay and glean in his fields rather than visit many different fields, for she may be mistreated in other fields. She falls prostrate with her face to the ground in gratitude to him.
When she tells Naomi of this man, Naomi instructs Ruth to go visit Boaz in the night, and uncover his feet. This is a bold gesture, indicating her availability for marriage. Boaz is surprised by her nighttime visit, and agrees to offer her the shelter she seeks. When the man who is eligible to redeem Ruth's late husband's land decides he doesn't want it, Boaz is free to marry Ruth. He gets her land and her along with it through public transactions in the town centre. Ruth then gives birth to King David's grandfather, and is therefore the progenitor of Jesus himself.
As we read the text, the leader asked several times for input. People commented on the beauty of Ruth's commitment to Naomi, Boaz's generosity, Ruth's strength of character. These are expected messages. But there is more in the text. These two women are in an incredibly precarious position, physically and socially.
They have no household and no male protector. They have no money, and for Ruth at least, as a foreigner in this land, no one owes her anything according to social custom. Ruth is acquiring the food necessary to stay alive by scavenging, essentially, during harvest season. What will happen to this source of food when harvest season ends? How will they survive the winter?
Someone commented on Ruth's vulnerability in the field, while gleaning the corn. YES! The field hands could rape her, Boaz could rape her, she could be bullied or beaten, all that she had gathered could be taken away from her.
It seemed to yell out at me from the text that thousands of women find themselves in similarly dangerous circumstances everyday. Migrant workers in our own country certainly fit this image, but there are many, many other industries in which the mistreatment of women is normalised and considered collateral damage. Industries in which their dignity does not figure in the story because there seems to be nothing to talk about.
In chapter three of this four-chapter book, when Ruth goes to visit Boaz in the night, I can only imagine her fear. She is a foreigner. She has absolutely no power. She is taking a risk, gambling with her own safety and even her own life, in the hopes of securing a degree of safety. The man she is approaching could easily take advantage of her, and no one would know. But who am I kidding? Even if everyone knew, there would not be any retribution for him, because there would be no objection to his exercise of power over this powerless creature.
The Bible study group focused on Boaz's goodness. Indeed, he doesn't appear to take advantage of her, (but who the hell knows what the narrator has left out - I'd like to read this story told from Ruth's perspective). But, as I tried to explain to the people sitting in the sofas, it is not this exact example of this story which causes me discomfort. It is the prevalence of just this kind of power imbalance which requires women like Ruth and Naomi to live on the margin; to scrape by on what they can get without attracting attention; to risk their dignity, their safety and their lives to achieve some form of stability which only a man can grant them (disregarding any personal toll that association with a certain man might entail).
People in the Bible study wanted to see the way Boaz looked at Ruth in the field as a kind of "Hey, she's cute" (that's a direct quote), and others were quite entertained and even comforted by this, saying "That makes it an even nicer story". I said that that didn't comfort me, because it implied that Boaz sees her as a sex object. Such a reading raises questions: Would Boaz have helped this foreign woman if she were not beautiful and young? Was it her appearance, and not just her work ethic, which attracted his eye? Ruth appears to me to be quite practical, and she uses the tools she has, (feminine attractiveness among them) to survive. That's what this story is to me - a story of survival in a society which has placed no value on your survival.
It feels very dangerous to me to entertain the kind of rosy reading that some employed today, who wanted to believe that Ruth had fallen in love with Boaz, and therefore was probably happy and "acting of her own choice" when she went to the threshing floor. I physically squirmed in my seat. What woman would choose to approach a foreign, powerful man, as a defenceless individual seeking help? She's begging him by offering herself to him sexually. Women only do that when coerced by circumstance.
When I came home I searched to find Bible study summaries of Ruth. Most employ the sterilised version, emphasising hard work, obedience to Yahweh, and charity. This study at least referred to the feminist readings, though made no connection to the state of ongoing inequality which characterises Ruth and so many contemporary counterparts.
One of the people in the study felt I was attacking Boaz, saying that he was a worse man than implied by the text. "What's the moral version then? How would you rewrite the story? Would you have him just give her money and let her go about her life, according to her own free will?"
I said that we cannot look at the story separate from its context. Given its context in Ancient Israel, this is the moral version. Boaz did act honourably. It is not the people in the story that are the problem, but the structures of violence that uphold the power imbalance. We do not rewrite the story, I said, but it is our job to rewrite the context. Our job as modern readers is to look at this ancient story and say "Could this story take place today? Is women's position equally precarious? Are women as dependent on the luck of finding a generous man?" If the answer is yes, this story could take place, then we have not done very well. And given how many people find themselves in Ruth's shoes, with a less generous Boaz standing over them, we have indeed not done well in restructuring society in almost three thousand years.
That said, it is reassuring that this week the Democratic Party nominated a woman to be president.
As often happens, anger and frustration (with society, not the Bible study group; I'm greatly indebted to today's study) often lead us to ask "What can I do about this?" I have thought, if I believe women's stories are still those of the oppressed, how can I help raise them? I believe the antidote to what I see as the misreadings of Ruth is to have more women writers, politicians, lawyers, leaders, philosophers, playwrights, professors. More women who look at the world and tell us how they see it.
My personal mentor in this area is Jean Zaru, whose book Occupied with Nonviolence I refer to often when I seek an eloquent voice on women's plight and rights, and the necessity of paying attention to both.
Lately I have also been reading the work of Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher who I first cited in a paper I wrote in college on female literacy in third-world countries, and a few weeks ago read about in this profile.
Nussbaum, like Jean, emphasises the need to appreciate all human dignity as equal. Here is part of a Guardian article about her book The New Religious Intolerance.
I ended up walking past and then into another, cozy workshop on couches which turned out to be the "Friendly Bible Study: Book of Ruth" group. It also proved distressing and thought provoking.
My knowledge of the book of Ruth is as vague as my knowledge of the rest of the Bible (especially the old testament). As we read the story memory bells tinkled faintly.
In the story, Ruth, a non-Jewish woman, becomes a widow, but is determined to remain with her mother in law, despite the MIL's instructions to return to her family. Ruth remains with Naomi and worships Naomi's God (they Jewish God).
These two women are without male protection or an income, so Ruth starts gleaning corn from harvest fields. In ancient law farmers were supposed to leave dropped corn on the ground for the poor to gather. Institutionalised charity, our study leader called it. Ruth chooses the fields of Boaz. Boaz sees her one day and is impressed with her hard work. He tells her she is welcome to drink and eat with the farm hands, and she can stay and glean in his fields rather than visit many different fields, for she may be mistreated in other fields. She falls prostrate with her face to the ground in gratitude to him.
When she tells Naomi of this man, Naomi instructs Ruth to go visit Boaz in the night, and uncover his feet. This is a bold gesture, indicating her availability for marriage. Boaz is surprised by her nighttime visit, and agrees to offer her the shelter she seeks. When the man who is eligible to redeem Ruth's late husband's land decides he doesn't want it, Boaz is free to marry Ruth. He gets her land and her along with it through public transactions in the town centre. Ruth then gives birth to King David's grandfather, and is therefore the progenitor of Jesus himself.
As we read the text, the leader asked several times for input. People commented on the beauty of Ruth's commitment to Naomi, Boaz's generosity, Ruth's strength of character. These are expected messages. But there is more in the text. These two women are in an incredibly precarious position, physically and socially.
They have no household and no male protector. They have no money, and for Ruth at least, as a foreigner in this land, no one owes her anything according to social custom. Ruth is acquiring the food necessary to stay alive by scavenging, essentially, during harvest season. What will happen to this source of food when harvest season ends? How will they survive the winter?
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| http://f.tqn.com/y/christianity/1/S/B/h/Ruth-GettyImages-91728179.jpg |
Someone commented on Ruth's vulnerability in the field, while gleaning the corn. YES! The field hands could rape her, Boaz could rape her, she could be bullied or beaten, all that she had gathered could be taken away from her.
It seemed to yell out at me from the text that thousands of women find themselves in similarly dangerous circumstances everyday. Migrant workers in our own country certainly fit this image, but there are many, many other industries in which the mistreatment of women is normalised and considered collateral damage. Industries in which their dignity does not figure in the story because there seems to be nothing to talk about.
In chapter three of this four-chapter book, when Ruth goes to visit Boaz in the night, I can only imagine her fear. She is a foreigner. She has absolutely no power. She is taking a risk, gambling with her own safety and even her own life, in the hopes of securing a degree of safety. The man she is approaching could easily take advantage of her, and no one would know. But who am I kidding? Even if everyone knew, there would not be any retribution for him, because there would be no objection to his exercise of power over this powerless creature.
The Bible study group focused on Boaz's goodness. Indeed, he doesn't appear to take advantage of her, (but who the hell knows what the narrator has left out - I'd like to read this story told from Ruth's perspective). But, as I tried to explain to the people sitting in the sofas, it is not this exact example of this story which causes me discomfort. It is the prevalence of just this kind of power imbalance which requires women like Ruth and Naomi to live on the margin; to scrape by on what they can get without attracting attention; to risk their dignity, their safety and their lives to achieve some form of stability which only a man can grant them (disregarding any personal toll that association with a certain man might entail).
People in the Bible study wanted to see the way Boaz looked at Ruth in the field as a kind of "Hey, she's cute" (that's a direct quote), and others were quite entertained and even comforted by this, saying "That makes it an even nicer story". I said that that didn't comfort me, because it implied that Boaz sees her as a sex object. Such a reading raises questions: Would Boaz have helped this foreign woman if she were not beautiful and young? Was it her appearance, and not just her work ethic, which attracted his eye? Ruth appears to me to be quite practical, and she uses the tools she has, (feminine attractiveness among them) to survive. That's what this story is to me - a story of survival in a society which has placed no value on your survival.
It feels very dangerous to me to entertain the kind of rosy reading that some employed today, who wanted to believe that Ruth had fallen in love with Boaz, and therefore was probably happy and "acting of her own choice" when she went to the threshing floor. I physically squirmed in my seat. What woman would choose to approach a foreign, powerful man, as a defenceless individual seeking help? She's begging him by offering herself to him sexually. Women only do that when coerced by circumstance.
When I came home I searched to find Bible study summaries of Ruth. Most employ the sterilised version, emphasising hard work, obedience to Yahweh, and charity. This study at least referred to the feminist readings, though made no connection to the state of ongoing inequality which characterises Ruth and so many contemporary counterparts.
One of the people in the study felt I was attacking Boaz, saying that he was a worse man than implied by the text. "What's the moral version then? How would you rewrite the story? Would you have him just give her money and let her go about her life, according to her own free will?"
I said that we cannot look at the story separate from its context. Given its context in Ancient Israel, this is the moral version. Boaz did act honourably. It is not the people in the story that are the problem, but the structures of violence that uphold the power imbalance. We do not rewrite the story, I said, but it is our job to rewrite the context. Our job as modern readers is to look at this ancient story and say "Could this story take place today? Is women's position equally precarious? Are women as dependent on the luck of finding a generous man?" If the answer is yes, this story could take place, then we have not done very well. And given how many people find themselves in Ruth's shoes, with a less generous Boaz standing over them, we have indeed not done well in restructuring society in almost three thousand years.
That said, it is reassuring that this week the Democratic Party nominated a woman to be president.
As often happens, anger and frustration (with society, not the Bible study group; I'm greatly indebted to today's study) often lead us to ask "What can I do about this?" I have thought, if I believe women's stories are still those of the oppressed, how can I help raise them? I believe the antidote to what I see as the misreadings of Ruth is to have more women writers, politicians, lawyers, leaders, philosophers, playwrights, professors. More women who look at the world and tell us how they see it.
My personal mentor in this area is Jean Zaru, whose book Occupied with Nonviolence I refer to often when I seek an eloquent voice on women's plight and rights, and the necessity of paying attention to both.
Lately I have also been reading the work of Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher who I first cited in a paper I wrote in college on female literacy in third-world countries, and a few weeks ago read about in this profile.
Nussbaum, like Jean, emphasises the need to appreciate all human dignity as equal. Here is part of a Guardian article about her book The New Religious Intolerance.
There are, she suggests in the book, three basic principles to hold on to: equal respect for conscience, the importance of self-critical vigilance, and the importance of a sympathetic imagination. The first of these, powerfully understood in the US constitution, enshrines legal protection of views that differ from those of the established majority. The state is obliged to adopt a position of neutrality with respect to matters of individual conscience. All human beings are to be afforded equal dignity – a dignity that extends to the ways in which individuals come to understand life's ultimate purpose. Conscience and human dignity are inextricably conjoined.
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| NYer |
It would be unfair for me to name the sections of society who I think need to focus on the second of these principles, so I will just say that as a teacher, it is very important that I practice all three, on a daily basis. Students who enter my classroom will not see the world the way I see it, and I need to respect their conscience, because tied to it is their dignity - I cannot question one without questioning the other, as Nussbaum points out.
I was about to say that the Bible study lacked the third principle, of sympathetic imagination. But what we really lacked was imagination tempered with the awareness of one who is constantly "vigilant" of society's injustices. People were happy to imagine that she liked Boaz, or that he didn't take advantage of her, even that he thought she was "cute". Our imagination, paradoxically, needs to be tied a little more closely to reality.
Nussbaum says that we curry this sympathetic imagination when reading (the following is from the New Yorker article):
We become merciful, she wrote, when we behave as the “concerned reader of a novel,” understanding each person’s life as a “complex narrative of human effort in a world full of obstacles.”
That is exactly how I would describe Ruth's activity throughout the book: human effort in a world full of obstacles.
I am proud that today, one woman is facing the challenge of winning a presidential election. The novelty of this challenge makes it a prize for society.
I am distressed that so many women are facing a world similarly full of obstacles to that which Ruth faced.
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