Shavuot 5786
For me, the upcoming holiday of Shavuot has always arrived with a certain gentleness.
Not only because there is the literal countdown to the holiday, and it brings with it a sense of accomplishment (that is, if you managed not to mess up the Omer count!) and a sense of special arrival.
Not only for the veil of gratitude this holiday is wrapped in, as the bringing of the first fruits of the crops on Shavuot symbolizes.
Not only because of its brevity relative to the our other holidays, and to the advance organization and preparation they demand.
Not only because of the culinary component — eating scrumptious dairy is the custom of this holiday, which makes for a lovely and delightful spring menu to fuss in the kitchen, preparing lovely and light summery holiday meals.
And not only because of the fun and substantive all-nighter aspect of staying awake on Shavuot, steeped in stimulating Torah discussion or classes, in homage to the pivotal juncture in our origin story as a people.
We collectively uttered “na’aseh v’nishma, we will do and we will understand” as we accepted the Torah at Mount Sinai, which, according to lore, was kissed with lush spring growth.
In homage to that burst and touch of green on that humble mountain, to this day we decorate and embellish our homes and synagogues, accentuating them with leafy greens, looping vines and bouquets of colorful blossoms.
All the above and —if one is present in Jerusalem as I am now — you can add to the magical pre-dawn pilgrimage through the dark but slowly emerging golden amber light of Jerusalem’s streets, as they swell with different types of Jews converging to pray at the Kotel, the Western Wall, for daybreak prayers.
All the above combined, brings a meaningful and especially sweet vibe to a sunshine filled and summery Shavuot.
Yet there’s that one dimension to Shavuot that expands it past all these beautiful facets of the holiday.
It’s Ruth.
It’s connecting with her biblical persona, so gentle yet fierce.
So loving, loyal, faithful and brave.
Her quintessential generosity of spirit.
Her and Naomi’s friendship.
Literally, Ruth — against all odds, clinging to kindness and ultimately to Judaism — forges something new and eternal within the Jewish people.
Ruth is called the matriarch of the Jewish monarchy, but only for what came later.
When Ruth clung to kindness, to Naomi, to Judaism, she had nothing.
She was a bereft woman.
A widow.
Childless.
Poor.
A vulnerable stranger in the land — an outlier.
Ruth clung to another bereft woman, Naomi, who walked as a shell and shadow of her former self, returning to Bethlehem, literally “House of Bread,” heavy with shame and profound loss, grief, sorrow and pain.
Two childless widows.
Ruth, stemming from Moab, carried an even deeper layer of marginalization.
This journey and story are bound up with the holiday whose essence is our acceptance of Torah law.
Kindness, chesed, is the prerequisite to the tradition of the law or, at the very least, a central and integral part of it.
To accept these two facets — the law and the love of kindness — as inseparable is to elevate this holiday’s meaning and the purpose of having the Torah as our guide.
Accepting the Other in our midst.
Accepting a stranger in our midst. Not only is this bound up with how we celebrate our acceptance of the Torah, but, as it turned out in the case of Ruth, accepting the “Other” who carried the continuity of the Jewish people within her.
This is more than Ruth’s and Boaz’s personal family story of rebuilding that we re-read and internalize.
Ruth re-plants the trajectory of the entire Jewish people. Her personal prevailing is emblematic of the Jewish people as she plants redemptive seeds.
Ruth, on a micro level, demonstrates with her choices and action how to overcome that place where things are lonely and broken — and rebuild.
From within a bleached yellow wheat field, from leftover forgotten sheaves of grain, Ruth takes the steps to shift from her own loss, grief, pain and longing, toward rebuilding —toward becoming the link, the needed missing piece, the transitional figure, between the collapse of the era of the Judges in Israel and the monarchy of Israel.
Ruth reminds us that even from within a field of loss, and despite loss, as well as a sense of outsider-ness, rebuilding and re-growing are possible.
As sun dappled spring explodes with color all around us, knitting a green tapestry of lush and verdant foliage punctuated by beautiful blooms and unfurling petals, this tender tableau seems in harmony with a kind of spring, that against all odds, Ruth re-awakened and planted for herself, and for the entire direction of the Jewish people.
Naomi and Ruth, in different ways displaced and bereft, find their way back to Bethlehem, to “the House-of-Bread” — the staff of life. They both return to rebuild their destroyed homes into a house of life, so to speak — learning how to break bread again.
© IJN 2026