Shavuot: Ruth, the Eshet Chayil, and Hesed

Ruth, the Focus of Shavuot

Good evening, everyone.

As usual, this lecture is dedicated to the memory of my brother and to the victims of the tragedy at Meron.

We are on the eve of Shavuot, and the focus of Shavuot is Ruth.

She was a young woman who came from a foreign land and, going back through her ancestors, from an incestuous union, and through her diligence, her zeal and her self-sacrifice she won her place among the Jewish people.

She became the ancestress not only of David, king of Israel, but also of the messianic figure we await, the Mashiach.

And the title Eshet Chayil belongs to her in a special way.

The Three Eshet Chayil of the Bible

The words Eshet Chayil appear three times in the whole Bible.

The first gives our lecture its title: “Eshet chayil ateret ba’lah,” “a woman of valor is her husband’s crown.”

The second is the woman King Shlomo praises at the end of his hymn to wisdom, which he sees embodied in the feminine.

And the third is Ruth.

Not All Gleaning Is the Same

And there is Boaz, a notable of the Jewish community, who took under his wing Ruth the foreigner, when her poverty had driven her to glean ears of wheat in his fields.

Yes, not all gleaning is the same.

There is the wheat that the reaper leaves behind and abandons, because he thinks it is only a detail that cannot feed him.

He has enough. He is in control. He knows everything. He owns a great deal.

And the poor person who comes faithfully to the fields to glean the forgotten, abandoned ears and lives on them may be the one who deserves the title Eshet Chayil, woman of valor.

The Angels of Shalom Aleichem

To put things in context, we should see when, in Jewish tradition, we recite this Eshet Chayil.

You know it very well: when we welcome Shabbat, before eating the Shabbat meal that the lady of the house has prepared for us, and after we have greeted the angels who accompany us.

Have you never asked yourselves what these angels come to do there, in Shalom Aleichem?

It is quite poetic: these angels accompany the head of the household from the synagogue to his home.

And there is a change of shift.

The angels of the week come from every field: financiers, farmers, advisers.

Today we would add handymen.

And on the eve of Shabbat they take their leave of us, of the head of the household.

We set all these worries aside.

We consider everything finished and nothing left to do.

We think of ourselves and of our family, we turn inward, and we give ourselves time to be renewed.

That is Shabbat.

Then we call on new angels to accompany us: new spheres of thought, new ideas, a new reckoning.

And we greet them.

We enter our Shabbat in a completely new spirit, a renewed spirit.

We take leave of the angels who served us during the week, we welcome Shalom Aleichem, we welcome these angels of peace.

Shalom, Fullness of Being

Notice that we always speak of angels of peace.

And shalom means fullness of being.

It is not just any peace.

It can be understood in different ways, but a person who is not at peace with himself is at peace with no one.

Shalom depends on shelemut, wholeness: an inner sense of peace with the people around him, his children and his brothers.

And once he has cleared away all these tensions, then he does not ask…

Betzeitchem Leshalom

As you know, there is a paragraph that some people say and others leave out: “Betzeitchem leshalom.”

Go in peace, shalom, angels of peace.

It is as though we were welcoming the angels of peace because we are not sure there is fullness of being in the home.

There are always tensions.

And just as we sometimes invite outsiders to liven up our table, so that boredom does not settle into the house, and because we want to widen our discussions and our interests a little…

Those who have no need of this, my dear friends, leave out “Betzeitchem leshalom.”

We do not need angels.

We will not stay timid and dependent on people who are strangers to our table and who, to some extent, would change the language of family, the language of serenity, the language of peace, the language of fullness that we can share with our family members, and first of all with the feminine, with the woman.

Isha Mevisha and the Rot in the Bones

Because it is precisely at the moment when we want to be whole and to feel our fullness of being that we are bound to honor her through every letter of the alphabet, since the Eshet Chayil is built on the twenty-two letters of the alphabet.

And that is when we declare “eshet chayil ateret ba’lah”: she is her husband’s crown.

And in this way we sweep aside the idea of isha mevisha.

Isha mevisha is a woman who causes shame, a woman who humiliates.

“A shameless woman”: that is the French translation of the Rabbinate, but it is not faithful to the text.

The mevisha is a woman who humiliates her husband.

She can humiliate him in several ways.

One is by not fulfilling herself and staying at the bottom of the ladder compared with him, and then she takes apart his structure.

“Rekav atzamot”: rot in the bones.

The bones are what give a man his structure.

For when the feminine is created, that is what it is: “tzela.”

The side of a mountain is called by that name, and man’s side is the feminine.

And without this side he cannot keep his balance.

That is why the structure of the feminine is called the inner structure, the structure of the bones, while the flesh stands only for the outside.

And if the bones are eaten away by decay, by vermin, the cure is difficult and no recovery is possible.

So he asks himself: and who will find her, this Eshet Chayil?

Where Does the Word Isha Come From?

But before going further: have you ever asked yourselves where this word isha comes from?

There is a real difference between ish and isha.

Ish has a yud.

If isha were the feminine of ish, there would also be a yud in isha.

But there is no yud in isha, and there is a dagesh, to show that a letter has been absorbed.

As you know, whenever there is such a mark, it signals an emphasis on the letter, or a fusion of two letters, or the replacement of a letter that has in some way been hidden.

And what is the plural of ish?

The plural of ish is anashim.

But where does the nun of anashim come from?

What is the plural of isha? The plural of isha is nashim.

The aleph has disappeared, so where does the nun of nashim come from?

This nun recalls the embryo of being: we are always in a state of conception.

It is contained within us when we count ourselves as individuals, but within a community it is in a state of becoming: anashim, nashim.

You know well that the nun is the embryo of being.

That is how it is represented in the Hebrew alphabet.

And in the plural it reappears.

To Name Is to Master

Now, where does this word come from in the first place?

You know that when the Holy One, blessed be He, formed the feminine from the masculine, it is He who speaks, and He brought her to him as a woman.

But at the very beginning we were told that the Holy One, blessed be He, created Adam “zachar u-nekevah,” male and female, masculine and feminine.

And Adam, of course, shares his root with adamah, the earth from which he was drawn.

But it is man who first speaks the word, when he says: “This time, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones; this one shall be called isha.”

Where does this word ish come from? Where did he get it?

He had just named all the created beings, because every created being has a clearly defined, clearly determined function, and according to the task for which each one was created, he knew how to give it a name.

In fact he still names things today.

But naming is a way of mastering things, of knowing the nature of each one.

Yet he did not yet know his own nature.

He had been given the title Adam.

But within Adam, masculine and feminine were mixed together.

Ish and Yesh: Hebrew Has No Verb “To Have”

This word ish is found in the prophet Micah and in Job as a synonym of yesh.

It is a word particular to Hebrew.

Yesh li, yesh lo, yesh lecha.

Hebrew has no verb “to have.”

There is only the verb “to be.”

“To have” is expressed by what is read in Micah and in Job as ish.

In other words, the only reality we can set against the whole created universe is what we are, what we have gained by our own effort, what is part of us, what we carry with us.

That is the yesh.

She Is Part of Myself

So when man sees the feminine, he says: no, this one is not to be named like the others.

She is not something one owns from the outside, the way one can own and master everything else.

No: she is part of myself.

Her own reality is me.

This is why our Sages say that if a man remains without a wife, he is without good, he knows neither happiness nor blessing.

In short, he is not complete.

He cannot speak of fullness of being.

He does not define the woman; the woman defines him.

In other words, Adam comes to realize his own person through the being who has just been presented to him and who until then had been his side.

This led to another teaching of our Sages: without this fullness of being there is only esh, only fire.

Because if one strips man of this divine attribute that unites them…

Masculine and Feminine in the Divine Names

As our Sages say, woman is a universe in herself, a separate universe.

One should not keep trying to compare the masculine and the feminine or draw analogies between them, because it is not possible.

And do you know why?

Unlike other religions, we do not divide the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, into masculine and feminine.

Elokim is both masculine and feminine.

In the Tanakh this appears in the duality of shamayim, spirit and matter.

In the Talmud it has another name: the Holy One, blessed be He, and His immanent presence.

In the Zohar it is a kingship: the King and the Queen.

Sometimes He is the King, and sometimes, in the Assembly of Israel, it is the Queen.

In Hasidic language it becomes the revealed and the ineffable, the unrevealed.

There is always a revealed side and a hidden side.

But a time will come when what is hidden gradually passes into the world of the revealed.

This same idea is lived out, at our own level, in the duality of masculine and feminine.

Chayil: The Dual and the Struggle Within Virtue

That is why “chayil” carries the idea of a struggle within virtue.

It has the vocalization of a dual form, like mayim, like shamayim.

There is this idea of a dual in chayil because on one side we have the harsh, unbending expression of the Written Law.

Nothing can be changed. It is the principle, the hok, a limit, a “lo,” which must not be touched.

Written Law, Oral Law

But note: that is the Written Law.

The Written Law is the zachar, the masculine.

The Oral Law is not: it is the feminine.

All the dialogue, all the discussion, is an outpouring of the self: it is transcription, interpretation, adaptation.

That is the masculine and the feminine, even in the realm of song, isn’t it?

There is a way of chanting the Torah: it follows fixed notes.

The book sings; there is a whole poetry of being, a whole range of composition. It is wonderful.

The Three Teshukot

Now, when we come to the Zohar, the fire is no longer the fire of rivalry but the fire of love, of desire.

Just as there are three “Eshet Chayil” in the text, the word teshukah appears three times in the Torah.

Teshukah: desire.

So where does this word teshukah, desire, appear?

The first time is after the sin of Adam HaRishon, when the woman’s role is defined — the woman whom man wanted to reduce to the rigor of science, as if she were incapable of it.

Yes, but that is all he wants.

No: “ve’el ishech teshukatech.”

What does it mean? That you will be the one who desires him?

No: you will be the source of his desires.

You will be his fire.

You will indeed be the one who brings back to reality every citadel of reason he may build.

Because what he will live through the fire of desire and love — that joy, that happiness, that balance, that fullness — he will never be able to have through pure scientific rigor.

The Desire of Kayin: Good Is a Yoke

So where else does the idea of teshukah appear?

After the sin of Adam, when G-d speaks to Kayin for the first time and tells him:

Listen. You thought that I forced and constrained you not to touch the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and to devote your whole life to that distinction, that line between good and evil.

I tell you: if you do good, if you apply yourself to doing good, you must take it upon yourself.

You must bear the burden of doing good.

Beware, it is a yoke. It is not as if we were treating ourselves to a good deed.

No: what counts is not doing good to yourself but doing good to the other.

You want to rise? Then you must make yourself low.

You must indeed bear the yoke.

But if you decide not to do good, know that sin is crouching at your door.

And instead of a desire for the spiritual, for the Most High who nourishes you, you will have a craving for baseness, decline and degeneration, which will indeed drag you down […].

Those are the first two occurrences of teshukah in the Tanakh.

I Am My Beloved’s

But the third is in Shir HaShirim: “I am my beloved’s.”

This is how the Assembly of Israel speaks to its Creator.

We are always in this intimate relationship of masculine and feminine, which we can never fully separate.

We must think of the two together, because man and woman are each inhabited by the masculine and the feminine, in different proportions, but both are there.

“I am my beloved’s.”

He is not the one who desires me: I am the one obliged to take up his desire.

I am the one who carries this teshukah; I am the one who desires him.

That is the third dimension.

So, together, I take up this deep desire for union with the Assembly of Israel.

And I said it, didn’t I: everything is perceived within the intimacy of this relationship.

That is why, if we have lost the intimacy of this relationship in its fullness of being, we have lost it with G-d as well, we have lost it with ourselves, we have lost it with Shabbat.

Because, as I told you, if this Eshet Chayil is read on the eve of Shabbat, it is because Shabbat itself is compared to the embodiment of the Eshet Chayil.

Reading the Eshet Chayil

And I think even a superficial reading of the translation should be enough to show us that…

Well, let those with suspicious minds beware, it may shock.

“Happy is he who has found a valiant woman.”

The Rabbinate translates it “valiant.” But it is a woman of valor, a woman of struggle.

“She is worth far more than pearls.”

Well, that goes without saying. Pearls can be bought; a woman cannot.

Unless, of course, one brings salary into the choice of a wife, and the dowry, and the parents’ wealth, and the inheritances in sight, and so on.

Then indeed that is not the woman we are speaking of, because in the end all of these are considerations foreign to the feminine we praise and to the inner life we seek.

“Her husband’s heart trusts in her completely.”

Beware of infidelities too, mind you.

“And he lacks no resources.”

Very well. But what resources does he mean?

“All the days of her life she works for his happiness and never causes him pain.”

Wonderful.

“She obtains wool and flax and does her work with willing hands.”

“She rises while it is still night, giving food to her household and portions to her maidservants.”

So far, between us, have you seen anything special?

“Her lamp does not go out at night.”

“Her hands take hold of the distaff, and her fingers work the spindle.”

Wonderful: the art of knitting.

“She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her arms to the needy.”

“Her husband is respected at the city gates when he sits among the elders of the land.”

Today they would be the great politicians.

“She makes garments and sells them, and supplies belts to the merchant.”

Well, here she is, immersed in the haberdashery trade.

“Clothed in strength and dignity, she smiles at the future.”

“She opens her mouth with wisdom, and lessons of kindness are on her lips.”

That is already better, isn’t it?

“She watches over the ways of her household and never eats the bread of idleness.”

“Her sons rise up and call her happy; her husband praises her.”

Praises her for what?

For everything she has done in the house.

She kneaded her dough well, she cooked well, she wove, she went out to work, she brought home a good paycheck.

“Many women have shown valor, but you surpass them all.”

“Charm is deceptive and beauty is vain; the woman who fears Hashem alone deserves praise.”

“Give her credit for the fruit of her hands, and let her deeds praise her.”

Nothing Permitted or Forbidden: Only Hesed

Well, did you find anything transcendent in this text about the virtuous woman, the modern woman, let us say it plainly?

So if I began by speaking to you of Ruth, the only one given the title Eshet Chayil, one wonders where the connection is.

I would have expected to be told that she is truly a woman who keeps her Shabbat properly, who is very careful with the laws of kashrut, who sorts out everything permitted from what is forbidden.

Yet Rabbi Zeira comes and tells us, about the story of Ruth, that there is nothing in it that is permitted or forbidden.

There is no rule, nothing that concerns pure and impure.

This whole megillah was written only for the sake of gemilut hasadim.

The Torah passed down this whole story of Ruth only to tell us how great the virtue of the practice of kindness is.

They did not say it in Christian language, “the practice of kindness,” but rather the giving of oneself, because that is hesed: the giving of oneself.

And Ruth embodied this giving of oneself.

And that is what will characterize the Eshet Chayil: everything she does, she already directs toward her husband and her children.

She is not at the center of her own concerns.

The other is.

First of all her husband, her children.

The Zerizah Woman

Yet our Sages still looked for a connection, a link, between the story of Ruth, or the qualities shown in Ruth, and the way they are highlighted in the Eshet Chayil.

It is true that the Eshet Chayil, as she appears here in Ruth, is first of all a zerizah woman.

The zayin: doing things with zerizut, with zeal.

That is also the quintessential rendering of the Eshet Chayil: the woman who is zerizah in everything she undertakes, who has a sense of perfection.

But this perfection is not an outward perfection.

It is first and foremost a perfection that breathes a depth of being.

There Is No Holiness Except Within a Community

And in Ruth, you know that Naomi, her mother-in-law, when she returned from the fields of Moav, from the fields of exile, from that exile where famine had been a decisive test…

And even today many people go into exile for their parnassah, their livelihood.

But livelihood is not the only cause of exile, and one ought to weigh the consequences of this pursuit of parnassah when one has the chance to live in a place that offers and ensures the education of one’s children, the fullness of being we spoke about, the fullness of one’s home, society and community.

Because Jewish life is not practiced, forgive me, in the solitude of being.

It is not possible.

One is Jewish only within a community.

That is where our belonging to the Jewish community is lived most intensely, because there is no holiness except within a community.

Individual holiness does not exist.

“Kedoshim tihyu”: you shall be men of holiness.

It is through this plural that one reaches the highest level of holiness.

And what is holiness?

Holiness is belonging to the whole, with a stronger sense that each person is responsible for the other.

The opposite of holiness, the opposite of kadosh, is kadesh: already a solitude in which a person sees only what gives him pleasure and serves his ego, even in the very practice of religion.

The practice of religion is not a protective shell for a person, is it?

One can be a naval, one can be corrupt under cover of the Torah.

That means nothing at all.

That is nevalah.

Our Judaism, our Jewish commitment, is measured within a whole community.

And the Eshet Chayil has exactly this meaning.

How?

Naomi and Her Daughter-in-Law

You know that Naomi tried to discourage her daughter-in-law from following her when she set out to return to the Land of Israel.

She told her: “There is no point. You will come there and you will not fit in; people will look at you with suspicion.

I myself will be judged harshly: I have already abandoned the community when I had the means to serve and help it.

I thought only of myself and cut myself off from the community.

So now, just stay in your own land. You can do well there.

You can be one of the righteous of the nations of the world while remaining outside the Jewish people.”

Why, indeed, bind yourself to being Jewish if you do not fulfill its obligations?

And the others are not scoundrels.

Just because they are not Jewish does not mean, Heaven forbid, that they are unworthy of life, that they do not deserve this or that, as some people regard them.

They are creatures of G-d, and you are spitting on them.

No: they have their own law; they can fulfill themselves very well through that law and be regarded as righteous among the nations.

So, given this possibility, what is better?

That is what Naomi says to her daughter-in-law.

Her daughter-in-law answers: it is no use trying to convince me.

This is not a marriage of convenience I am making with you.

If I follow you, it is my heart that follows.

Of course Judaism is a mountain for me, as it was for Avraham.

Avraham climbed the mountain. It is a mountain.

But she was making every effort to reach the top.

It is not: no, it is too hard, I can’t get there.

No. It is true, it is hard.

But every day I will try to work on myself a little, I will move forward a little.

When Naomi heard this word, that she was making the effort to go forward, she no longer argued with her: she accepted her into her ranks.

A Jew is mitametzet, one who strives.

She Girds Her Loins with Strength

And the Eshet Chayil: what is her first quality?

She girds her loins with strength and makes her arms strong.

But she does not have the strength of Hercules.

Her arms are feminine arms.

It is a fact that these fine natures are delicate.

One should not ask them to carry loads or anything of the kind.

No, that is not their nature.

But with zerizut she will give herself strength, give strength to her own arms.

That is a first point.

But I see the time is running out.

I will finish this lecture next time, if you wish, and I leave you with this.

Know, then, […].