Whenever the processions of the immortal women pass — queens and enchantresses, princesses and discoverers — I see at their head a woman, her linen robe long, touching the ground, a broad girdle binding her waist, and on her head a great white kerchief covering head and shoulders and part of her breast.
Ruth has walked in the processions of history for three thousand years and more, yet her name remains in the register of immortality as the example of that lofty love which — by the power of its loftiness — earth and heaven reward... The Torah — the oldest book of history — has recorded between its covers the names
of women whom the world has known: among them Jezebel, most wicked of queens, and the Magdalene, the repentant sinner, and others; but Ruth has remained, always and forever, the sweet song of the generations.
Thousands of years ago a famine struck Bethlehem and the country around it, and Elimelech emigrated from it with his wife Naomi and his two boys, in search of livelihood. They lived years in exile, during which the head of the family died and the two boys grew up; then both of them died, and the three women were left — a bereaved mother and two young widows.
And the land of exile grew black in Naomi's eyes, so she rose to return to Bethlehem, and her two daughters-in-law went out with her to bid her farewell outside the city. The bereaved mother-in-law stopped and kissed the two young women, and the three wept, and Naomi said: Turn back, my daughters. Why should you go with me? Are
there sons in my womb, that they might become husbands for you...? No, my daughters; my soul is bitter for your sakes. Return to your people, and may God grant that each of you find rest in the house of her husband.
And the voices rose in weeping, and one daughter-in-law kissed her mother-in-law and turned back; but Ruth, the immortal song of love, did not. She said: Do not press me, for I will not leave you. Where you go, I go; where you die, I die; there your people is, and your homeland is my homeland; only death shall part me from you.
The mother-in-law found no word to say before this
resolve, and the two women journeyed together and entered Bethlehem; and the city was shaken with grief at their bitter tragedy — above all for the aged woman, who kept saying: Call me no longer Naomi, but Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me; I went out full and have come back empty.
And Ruth began to work to support herself and her mother-in-law. It was the time of the barley harvest, and the plains stretching from Bethlehem to the Holy City were waving with gilded ears of grain, bowing their heads under their own weight. Ruth went out on the first day to glean, behind the reapers, the grains or the ears that slipped from their hands. And the owner of the field — "a kindly man of ripe years" — came and saw her and asked about her; and when he learned who she was, he charged the reapers to treat her well,
and to leave ears of grain for her on purpose. And he said to her: I have learned
