Community Development

Chancellor's Parashah Commentary

Parashat K'doshim 5765
Leviticus 19:1–20:27
May 7, 2005     28 Nisan 5765

Sharing our possessions is not a disposition that comes naturally. Whatever else parents do, they need to referee often, fairly and good-naturedly, a task usually spared the grandparents. As the unkind quip goes: the reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they share a common enemy.




The Book of Ruth, the second of the Tanakh's five scrolls to be read on Shavu'ot, turns on at least one of these mandated forms of charity. The time of year is early spring, "the beginning of the barley harvest " (Ruth 1:22 ). Both Ruth and Naomi, her mother-in-law, have returned to Israel from Moab widowed and forlorn. To provide some food for their bare table, Ruth announces: "I would like to go to the fields and glean among the ears of grain, behind someone who may show me kindness" (2:2). The narrative posits that the practice of leaving the gleanings for the poor was part of the social fabric of ancient Israel. "As luck would have it." (2:3), she alights on the fields of Boaz, a relative of her deceased father-in-law, who is apprised of the selfless devotion that Ruth has shown to Naomi in abandoning her native land of Moab and attaching herself to Naomi's people and God. This unalloyed goodness inspires Boaz not only to shower her with grain, but to also take her as his wife in accordance with the regulations of a levirate marriage. He further buys back all the property once owned by Naomi's late husband and two sons and names the son born to him and Ruth after her former husband to perpetuate his name. The ultimate reward of these decent people is that their child became the grandfather of none other than King David.


Shabbat shalom,

Ismar Schorsch
