A Midrash of Ruth
FRANK, M. Z.
A Midrash of Ruth Come Under the Wing. By Grace Goldin. Jewish Publication Society. 105 pp. $3.00. Reviewed by M. Z. Frank Author, "Sound the Great Trumpet" IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT to make a...
...Goldin adopted the midrashic interpretation of the Book of Ruth, according to which Elimelech and Boaz were brothers, and Boaz knew that he was destined to beget a Messiah...
...Goldin calls her poem a "mid-rash" a term denoting a fanciful interpretation of a Biblical story or passage...
...The verse is charming, and often more than that, and the narrative flows smoothly...
...Orpah and Ruth were Moabite princesses...
...But we must bear in mind that the rabbis who lived in the Greco-Roman period saw the Moabites as Gentiles hardly different from the Greeks or Romans...
...Ruth lived to see her grandson on the throne of Jerusaelm, etc...
...Mrs...
...The poem, in every way, is definitely an enrichment...
...The characters all live and breathe, have personalities and are easily distinguishable...
...Goliath was a grandson of Orpah just as David was a grandson of Ruth...
...The implication, then, is that the Moabites, who lived to the East of the Jews, were the occidentals...
...Goldin's poem on Ruth is a delightful piece of anachronistic writing, based in its turn on the rabbis' as well as her own disregard of history...
...But historic changes in spirit, mentality and manner of expression are more elusive...
...But the author has also superimposed her own modern midrash on the story and we see Elimelech portrayed in the image of a modern Israeli who emigrates to Canada or Brazil, pretending to do so not just in order to make money but to serve the cause of Judaism and Zionism...
...At the end of the poem, Ruth's theological ruminations seem to be gleaned from the lectures of Robert Gordis or his colleagues at the Jewish Theological Seminary...
...But Come Under the Wing is a delightful book...
...Thus Mahlon, Ruth's Jewish husband, says of his Moabite wife: "There's something terribly dark and oriental, Ruth says, about my Jewish way of thinking...
...The many lively dialogues contain ideas and expressions which are very modern...
...Mrs...
...Reviewed by M. Z. Frank Author, "Sound the Great Trumpet" IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT to make a Biblical story sound plausible if, say, Abraham were pictured surveying his flocks from a helicopter and talking to his nephew Lot by long-distance telephone...
...Thus, a novel by Wilder Penfield, portraying Abraham as the Theodore Herzl of his period, turned out pretty well...
...A midrash is sometimes told in order to teach a moral, or in order to make the Bible come more alive...
...Two hymns are incorporated which date not from the days when "the judges ruled over Israel," but from the time when Hebrew poets in Spain, a thousand years ago, were under the influence of Moslem theologians...
...Mrs...
...Of the whole vast Talmudic literature produced over a thousand years, midrashim come nearest to our modern concept of folklore...
...But his life's illusions are dashed when his sons leave the fold and marry Gentiles...
...Boaz, a childless, seventy-year-old widower, died the night he spent with Ruth in the granary—that is, after having fulfilled his mission in history...
Vol. 42 • January 1959 • No. 1
