How to Enter History

Redemption requires shifting from Ploni’s literalism to Boaz’s creativity, turning the divine shelter we pray for into a garment of human kindness we choose to spread.

Boaz goes up to the gate of Bethlehem, sits and waits. A man walks by. Boaz calls to him: סוּרָה שְׁבָה־פֹּה פְּלֹנִי אַלְמֹנִי. Turn aside, sit here, so-and-so (Ruth 4:1).

The man has a real name, but the text conceals it. The man came when called and sat when told and walked into the most consequential scene in the history of the Davidic line and the text scrubbed his name out. This anonymous figure is no mere NPC. He is the figure of the one who declines to enter history. And at the same time, he is a spiritual figure in his own right, one that the Zohar imagines as a pre-condition for Boaz’s moment, a preparatory stage on route to redemption.

Let’s quickly review the backstory: A famine, sometime during the time of the Judges (the Midrash says Boaz is Ivtzan), had driven Elimelech of Bethlehem into Moab with his wife Naomi and two sons, Machlon and Kilyon. The sons married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. All three men died. Naomi turned back toward Bethlehem. Ruth refused to leave her: עַמֵּךְ עַמִּי וֵאלֹהַיִךְ אֱלֹהָי, your people will be my people, and your God my God (Ruth 1:16). Ruth went out to glean and happened into the field of Boaz, a wealthy kinsman of Elimelech. By the time Boaz sits at the gate, Ruth has come to him on the threshing floor at night and asked him to act as redeemer:

אָֽנֹכִי֙ ר֣וּת אֲמָתֶ֔ךָ וּפָרַשְׂתָּ֤ כְנָפֶ֙ךָ֙ עַל־אֲמָ֣תְךָ֔ כִּ֥י גֹאֵ֖ל אָֽתָּה (Ruth 3:9)

“I am Ruth your maidservant. Spread your wing over your maidservant, for you are a redeemer.”

The redeemer’s role is the hinge of the whole story. But what is a redeemer?

When a man in Israel dies without a son, the closest male kin can step in and preserve his name. The kinsman buys back the dead man’s ancestral land, which would otherwise pass out of the family, and takes the widow as a wife so that the first son born of that marriage will inherit the field in the dead man’s name. The institution exists to keep a household from vanishing. Elimelech’s line is about to vanish. Naomi is too old to bear children of her own. Ruth is the only person through whom Elimelech’s name and line can return into the world. The redeemer’s job is to make that happen. The redeemer rescues the dead from the captivity of oblivion.

Boaz is not the closest kin. The man at the gate is. An irony: Ploni, whose responsibility is to save from erasure, is himself preserved for us under erasure.

Ploni has the first right and the first duty to redeem. Boaz lays the case out, and the man’s first answer is yes. Then Boaz adds that Ruth is a Moabite, and the man pulls back: לֹא אוּכַל לִגְאָל־לִי פֶּן־אַשְׁחִית אֶת־נַחֲלָתִי, I cannot redeem her for myself, lest I damage my own inheritance (Ruth 4:6). He removes his shoe, a ritual transfer of the right, and disappears from the story. Boaz redeems Ruth. Their child is Oved, the grandfather of King David.

The question worth pulling on. Why does the text refuse him a name?

Ruth Rabbah hears something stranger still in this man’s arrival at the gate.

אָמַר רַבִּי שְׁמוּאֵל בַּר נַחְמָן, אֲפִלּוּ הָיָה בְּסוֹף הָעוֹלָם הֱטִיסוֹ הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא וֶהֱבִיאוֹ לְשָׁם, כְּדֵי שֶׁלֹא יְהֵא אוֹתוֹ צַדִּיק יוֹשֵׁב וּמִצְטַעֵר מִתּוֹךְ יִשּׁוּבוֹ

Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said: Even if he had been at the ends of the earth, the Holy One would have flown him and brought him there, so that righteous one would not be sitting in distress. (Ruth Rabbah 7:7)

Hear the verb. הֱטִיסוֹ. Flew him. The root is טוס, the same semantic field as wings, flight, the eagle bearing its young aloft. The Holy One did not just lead Ploni or send Ploni or summon Ploni. He personally flew him (or at least, He would have). God used His own cosmic wings to bring this man across the world to the gate. Ruth asks Boaz to shelter her under his wings, and here God carries Ploni on God’s wings.

The midrash continues

רַבִּי שְׁמוּאֵל בַּר נַחְמָן אָמַר אִלֵּם הָיָה מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה, אָמַר הָרִאשׁוֹנִים לֹא מֵתוּ אֶלָּא עַל יְדֵי שֶׁנָּטְלוּ אוֹתָן, וַאֲנִי הוֹלֵךְ לִטְלָהּ, חָס לִי לִטְלָהּ, לֵית אֲנָא מְעַרְבֵּב זַרְעֲיָיתִי, אֵינִי מְעָרֵב פְּסֹלֶת בְּבָנַי, וְלֹא הָיָה יוֹדֵעַ שֶׁכְּבָר נִתְחַדְּשָׁה הֲלָכָה עַמּוֹנִי וְלֹא עַמּוֹנִית מוֹאָבִי וְלֹא מוֹאָבִית

Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said: [Ploni] was mute from words of Torah. He said: the earlier ones died only because they took her, and I will take her? Heaven forbid I take her. I will not mix up my lineage. I will not mix dross into my children. And he did not know that the Law had already been renewed: Ammonite and not Ammonitess, Moabite and not Moabitess.

A verse stands behind his refusal: לֹא יָבֹא עַמּוֹנִי וּמוֹאָבִי בִּקְהַל ה׳, no Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:4). On the surface, the verse is a wall. Ploni reads the wall. And his reading isn’t just textually reasonable; it’s also empirically grounded. Elimelech’s sons both die, seemingly as a punishment for fleeing to Moab and integrating with this idolatrous nation. Ploni can be forgiven for his commonsense.

But the rabbis had heard, generations earlier, that the verse opens. עַמּוֹנִי וְלֹא עַמּוֹנִית, מוֹאָבִי וְלֹא מוֹאָבִית (Yevamot 76b). The masculine forms exclude Moabite men, not Moabite women. The verse, read closely, was already saying something other than what its surface said. Ruth could enter. She was permitted from the beginning. Ploni could not hear—he was, as it were a Karaite, not a rabbinic Jew; a literalist, not someone capable of finding a more inventive way to read Torah, a way beyond the false binary between tradition and innovation. אִלֵּם מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה. He could read the verse. But he had no way to bring it to life.

The Ralbag, the medieval philosopher-commentator, hears hiddenness in Ploni’s name itself:

פְּלוֹנִי הוּא מֵעִנְיַן הַהֶסְתֵּר כְּטַעַם וְהוּא פִלְאִי, רוֹצֶה לוֹמַר כִּי לֹא פֵּרֵשׁ שְׁמוֹ, וְכֵן אַלְמוֹנִי גַּם כֵּן הוּא מֵעִנְיַן הָעֶלֶם

Ploni is from the language of concealment, like “and it is wondrous” (Judges 13:18), meaning his name was not specified. Almoni likewise is from the language of hiddenness. (Ralbag on Ruth)

Both halves of his placeholder name name what cannot emerge into speech. פלא and אלם, wonder and muteness, two roots for what stays hidden. He is twice concealed because he is twice unable to bring something forth. His muteness is the reason the text mutes him. And here, to interpolate Ralbag via Kabbalistic terminology, it is not simply that Ploni cannot bring Torah to life, but perhaps that he chooses not to; he remains in the realm of sod, of mystery, but cannot enter the realm of asiya, action.

To see what is at stake, step out of Ruth for a moment, into Sinai.

Moshe goes up the mountain. He receives the first tablets, written by the finger of God. He comes down to the calf and breaks them. He goes back up. פְּסָל־לְךָ שְׁנֵי־לֻחֹת אֲבָנִים כָּרִאשֹׁנִים, carve for yourself two tablets of stone like the first (Exodus 34:1). The first set was made by God alone. The second set Moshe hewed himself before any letter was written on them.

The Netziv, the nineteenth-century Rosh Yeshiva of Volozhin, in his commentary Ha’amek Davar, draws out a distinction:

בְּלוּחוֹת הָרִאשׁוֹנוֹת לֹא נִיתַּן כֹּחַ הַחִידּוּשׁ אֶלָּא מַה שֶּׁקִּיבֵּל מֹשֶׁה דִּיוּקֵי הַמִּקְרָאוֹת וַהֲלָכוֹת הַיּוֹצֵא מִזֶּה אֲבָל לֹא לְחַדֵּשׁ דְּבַר הֲלָכָה עַל יְדֵי י”ג מִדּוֹת וְכַדּוֹמֶה הֲוָיוֹת הַתַּלְמוּד. וְלֹא הָיָה תּוֹרָה שֶׁבְּעַל פֶּה אֶלָּא דְּבָרִים הַמְקוּבָּלִים מִפִּי מֹשֶׁה וּמַה שֶּׁלֹּא הָיָה מְקוּבָּל הָיוּ מְדַמִּים מִילְתָא לְמִילְתָא. אֲבָל בְּלוּחוֹת הַשְּׁנִיּוֹת נִיתַּן כֹּחַ לְכָל תַּלְמִיד וָתִיק לְחַדֵּשׁ הֲלָכָה עַל פִּי הַמִּדּוֹת וְהַתַּלְמוּד

In the first tablets, no power of renewal was given, only what Moshe received: the careful readings of the verses and the halakhot that emerge from them. But not to renew any halakha by means of the thirteen interpretive principles or the workings of the Talmud. There was no Oral Torah, only matters received from the mouth of Moshe, and what was not received they would approximate by comparison of one thing to another. But in the second tablets, the power was given to every diligent student to renew halakha through the interpretive principles and the Talmud.

The first tablets carried the Decalogue and not much more. Whatever Moshe had not heard explicitly, the people could only approximate by careful analogy. The vertical channel was wide open and the horizontal channel was closed. Torah came down and did not yet flow forward through human work.

The second tablets opened the horizontal channel. The thirteen middot, the Talmud’s argumentative engine, the diligent student rising one day to renew the law. The Netziv names what this opening is. לְהוֹרוֹת דְּהֲלָכָה הַמִּתְחַדֶּשֶׁת בְּכֹחַ לוּחוֹת הַלָּלוּ הִיא הִשְׁתַּתְּפוּת עֲמַל הָאָדָם בְּסִיַּעְתָּא דִשְׁמַיָּא, to teach that the halakha that renews itself through these tablets is the partnership of human labor with the help of Heaven. The second tablets are more honored than the first. They are more honored because they require a vessel that works. יִישַׁר כֹּחֲךָ שֶׁשִּׁבַּרְתָּ, well done that you broke them. The breakage was the condition. The mouth of Oral Torah opened on the floor of the shattered stone.

Now let’s return to Boaz and Ruth and Ploni at the gate of Beit Lechem.

Ploni stands where the first tablets stood. The verse is the verse. לֹא יָבֹא מוֹאָבִי. Don’t marry a Moabite. He preserves the letter. He honors the surface. He does exactly what a first-tablet vessel would do. What he lacks is the capacity of the second tablet, the Oral Torah champion. He cannot hew the Law himself. He cannot enter the verse and find the renewal already living inside it. Ploni has the letter and not the labor.

The Hasidic tradition deepens the diagnosis. The Izhbitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner, reads Ploni’s muteness in his Mei HaShiloach not as legal ignorance but as a failure of inner sight. Ploni could see only חִיצוֹנִיּוּת, the external dimension of Torah. He saw a Moabite woman and could go no further. He could not perceive the נִיצוֹץ, the spark, burning beneath her foreignness. The Lurianic Kabbalah teaches that holy sparks of divinity are scattered through creation, sunk especially in places that look defiled, waiting to be raised by souls capable of perceiving them. Ruth carried this concealed light. Boaz had the eye to see it. The Izhbitzer is careful: Ploni was not wicked. He was just unable to do what the moment required—he served his own limited purpose. The text registers this limit by stripping him of a name. He is, as it were, a stand-in for third-person consciousness, what Heidegger would call das Man, the “they,” having no unique point of view. He is the uncreative majority view, which, most of the time is correct.

What sparks was Ruth carrying that Ploni could not see? The Arizal, transmitted in the Seder HaDorot, maps the soul-genealogy of the whole Megillah:

רוּת גִּלְגּוּל הֶבֶל... בַּת לוֹט נִתְגַּלְגְּלָה בְּרוּת... וְאֶפְשָׁר לוֹמַר כִּי לוֹט נִתְגַּלְגֵּל בִּיהוּדָה וּבְבֹעַז... שָׁלֹשׁ גִּלְגּוּלִים לוֹט יְהוּדָה בֹּעַז

Ruth was a reincarnation of Hevel... Lot’s daughter was reincarnated in Ruth... It is possible to say that Lot was reincarnated in Yehuda and in Boaz... three reincarnations: Lot, Yehuda, Boaz.

Lot, Yehuda, Boaz, one soul-root unfolding across three lives. Lot’s daughter, Tamar, Ruth, another soul completing itself in the third encounter.

The soul-genealogy is also a bloodline. Lot’s daughters in the cave bore two sons, Moab and Ammon (Genesis 19:37-38). Moab fathered the nation that bore Ruth. The very Moabite blood the verse in Deuteronomy forbids, and the very Moabite blood Ploni refuses to take into his line, is the blood of Lot himself, the same soul that across three lives has been laboring to come home. The story of Ruth’s return, in other words, is multi-generational, tracing back to a rift between Abraham and his nephew, and the choice by Lot to choose the comfortable path over the path of self-sacrifice. Ploni refuses to redeem the soul that has been trying to redeem itself through him. He chooses what he thinks is safety, normalcy.

Each iteration of this soul is a little less dark. The first, Lot in the cave, blackout drunk, knowing nothing of what his daughters do. The second, Yehuda at the crossroads, deceived, taking Tamar for a stranger. The third, Boaz at the threshing floor, awake, naming Ruth, blessing her, facing her. When Boaz says to Ruth הֵטַבְתְּ חַסְדֵּךְ הָאַחֲרוֹן מִן הָרִאשׁוֹן, you have made your last kindness better than the first, he is saying more than he knows. The Seder HaDorot hears in those words the whole chain of returns: the last kindness is greater than the first because the third time is the time that lands, the time that redeems all these past moments of failed recognition.

Malbim explains Boaz’s marriage to Ruth in a single staggering phrase:

שֶׁקָּנָה אֶת רוּת שֶׁהִיא עֲדַיִן אֵשֶׁת מַחְלוֹן כִּי רוּת בַּעֲלָהּ מְקַשְׁקֵשׁ בָּהּ כְּמוֹ שֶׁכָּתוּב בַּזֹּהַר וְזֶהוּ עִנְיַן מִצְוַת יִיבּוּם

He bought Ruth who is still the wife of Machlon, because Ruth’s husband is rattling within her, as it is written in the Zohar, and this is the matter of the mitzvah of yibum. (Malbim on Ruth 4)

מְקַשְׁקֵשׁ בָּהּ. Rattling inside her. Machlon’s soul is still lodged in Ruth’s body, an ibbur, a soul-fragment trapped in flesh, knocking, asking to be brought back into the world through a child. The whole institution of yibum, levirate marriage, becomes in the Zohar’s hands a vehicle for completing the unfinished dead through the bodies of the living. Inside this Moabite woman gleaning in a field outside Bethlehem is a man’s unfinished soul, calling out to be reborn. Boaz can hear the rattle. He can hear Machlon screaming from inside Ruth. One doesn’t need to accept the metaphysics to appreciate the psychological dimensions and the world-historical dimension of Boaz’s choice.

Ploni, who stays on the surface, has no idea what stories are contained in Ruth. He just sees a poor foreigner. The closer kinsman is structurally deaf to the soul calling out from inside the woman he is being asked to marry. He looks at Ruth and sees a Moabite. Boaz looks at Ruth and sees Machlon waiting to come home.

The Zohar Chadash gives Ploni a cosmic identity. It identifies him with Mashiach ben Yosef, the penultimate redemptive phase, the tradition in Jewish messianism of a first, partial redeemer who comes before Mashiach ben David, the Messiah son of David. Mashiach ben Yosef does necessary work and then withdraws. He cannot consummate the final redemption. The Zohar Chadash reads Ploni’s words לֹא אוּכַל לִגְאָל־לִי, I cannot redeem for myself, as divinely inspired speech. He is saying, without knowing he is saying it, the truth of his own rung. The right hand of God, chesed itself, has not yet returned to the world. The redeemer who is here cannot finish what redemption requires. Ploni is the aspect of ourselves that long for redemption, but cannot realize it, the moment in history when we prefer to go mute, to hide, rather than take on the difficult work of doing something new and risky.

In this reading, the removal of Ploni’s shoe as part of the Yibum ceremony is not defeat but transfer. The נַעַל — the sandal — in Kabbalistic language is the arousal of Yesod, the sefirah of covenant, the channel through which divine vitality flows from upper worlds into our world. When Ploni removes his shoe and gives it to Boaz, the cosmic channel itself passes from the incomplete redeemer to the one who can consummate. Mashiach ben Yosef steps aside so Mashiach ben David can come.

This is why the Holy One, in some sense, flew Ploni from the ends of the earth. He had to be there. The transfer required him. He was summoned not to redeem but to step aside. His stepping aside is the cosmic mechanism by which redemption arrives. He could not redeem and the system needed someone who could not redeem in order for redemption to happen. The first tablet had to break for the second to be written.

Rebbe Nachman, in Likutei Moharan, raises Boaz and Ruth to the level of daily liturgy:

שֶׁבֹּעַז וְרוּת הֵם סוֹד סְמִיכַת גְּאֻלָּה לִתְפִלָּה, כִּי בֹּעַז הוּא בְּחִינַת גּוֹאֵל, כְּמוֹ שֶׁכָּתוּב כִּי גוֹאֵל אָנֹכִי, וְרוּת הִיא בְּחִינַת תְּפִלָּה, כְּמוֹ שֶׁאָמְרוּ רַבּוֹתֵינוּ זִכְרוֹנָם לִבְרָכָה לָמָּה נִקְרָא שְׁמָהּ רוּת, שֶׁיָּצָא מִמֶּנָּה דָּוִד, שֶׁרִוָּה לְהַקָּדוֹשׁ־בָּרוּךְ־הוּא בְּשִׁירוֹת וְתִשְׁבָּחוֹת

Boaz and Ruth are the secret of joining redemption to prayer. Boaz is the aspect of redeemer, as it is written, “for I am a redeemer,” and Ruth is the aspect of prayer, as our sages said: why was she called Ruth? Because David came from her, who saturated the Holy One with songs and praises.

Boaz is גְּאֻלָּה, redemption. Ruth is תְּפִלָּה, prayer. Their union is סְמִיכַת גְּאֻלָּה לִתְפִלָּה, the obligation in morning prayer to join the blessing of redemption directly to the Amidah without a break. Every morning in the synagogue, when the words גָּאַל יִשְׂרָאֵל end and the Amidah begins without pause, Boaz is marrying Ruth again. We are entering history. We are moving from the concealment of the nameless Ploni to the revealing of a name.

Now the wings.

When Boaz first meets Ruth in the field, he blesses her:

יְשַׁלֵּם ה׳ פָּעֳלֵךְ וּתְהִי מַשְׂכֻּרְתֵּךְ שְׁלֵמָה מֵעִם ה׳ אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר־בָּאת לַחֲסוֹת תַּחַת־כְּנָפָיו

May the Lord repay your work, and may your reward be complete from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. (Ruth 2:12)

The word that carries everything is כָּנָף, kanaf. It means wing. It also means the corner of a garment. In this verse the wing belongs to God. But later, when Ruth tells him to place her under his wing, we hear the echo. God shelters us through the kindness of those who shelter us. The wings of the divine presence are felt in the love between people

The image of a wing runs back through the Torah. כְּנֶשֶׁר יָעִיר קִנּוֹ עַל־גּוֹזָלָיו יְרַחֵף יִפְרֹשׂ כְּנָפָיו, like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young, He spread His wings (Deuteronomy 32:11). Ibn Ezra hears the verb יְרַחֵף, hovers, and remembers the second verse of the Torah, וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם, the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2). The same root. The wing that shelters is the wing that began the world. The Creator protects the Creature.

Now return to the midrash used at the gate. הֱטִיסוֹ. Flew him. The same semantic field. The Holy One used His own wings, the wings that hovered over creation and bear Israel through the wilderness, to fly Ploni to the gate. He brought him on wings, precisely so that Ploni would fail to spread his own. Even Ploni’s failure was carried on the wings of the Shekhinah. Wings transported the man whose role was to refuse to become a wing.

The Tikkunei Zohar names the architecture explicitly. The two wings of the Shekhinah are the two letter הs of the divine Name י-ה-ו-ה. The first hei is the supernal Shekhinah, the upper indwelling. The second hei is the lower indwelling that descends into our world. Between them stands the Middle Pillar, the sefirah of Yesod, the same Yesod whose shoe Ploni will later remove. To come under the wings is to enter the breath of the Name itself, the space between its two hays, sheltered by upper and lower Shekhinah, held in the Middle Pillar that joins them.

The Tikkunei Zohar carries another image of these wings. In exile, the Shekhinah is a dove that has no rest, beating her wings against an unwelcoming world, finding nowhere to land. When Israel offers her a place to land, she becomes an eagle. Same wings, two modes. Whether they hover restlessly or spread protectively depends on whether anyone has stretched out a hand. Rut’s name, spelled backwards, is Tur, the turtledove, a reference to the bird who seeks to open her wings.

In chapter three, Naomi sends Ruth to the threshing floor at night. Ruth lies down at Boaz’s feet. He wakes. She answers:

אָנֹכִי רוּת אֲמָתֶךָ וּפָרַשְׂתָּ כְנָפֶךָ עַל־אֲמָתְךָ כִּי גֹאֵל אָתָּה

I am Ruth your maidservant. Spread your wing over your maidservant, for you are a redeemer. (Ruth 3:9)

The same word. כְנָפֶךָ, your wing. The kanaf has migrated. The wing that belonged to God in chapter two is the wing she asks Boaz to spread in chapter three. The Malbim catches the precision:

וּפָרַשְׂתָּ כְנָפֶךָ. הֵם הַכְּנָפַיִם שֶׁל הַטַּלִּית שֶׁעֲלֵיהֶם הַצִּיצִית, וְעַל יְדֵי פְּרִישַׂת הַכָּנָף הֲרֵי הִיא מְקֻדֶּשֶׁת לוֹ

Spread your wing. These are the corners of the tallit on which the tzitzit are placed, and through the spreading of the corner she is sanctified to him. (Malbim on Ruth 3:9)

The wing is the fringe. The fringe is the covenant worn on the body. To spread the kanaf of the garment is to extend the covenant outward and bring her in.

Boaz prays for the wing in chapter two. In chapter three he becomes the wing.

This is the second tablet performed in the register of chesed (creativity, lovingkindness). The partnership of human labor with the help of Heaven, woven into a garment, spread over a Moabite woman at midnight outside Bethlehem.

When, tonight on Shavuot, we open ourselves to Torah, we are invited to step out of the safe, silent anonymity of Ploni, and his notion that the text simply is what it is, to realize that the divine wings we pray for are none other than the corners of the garments we choose to spread.

Chag Sameach,
Zohar