Title: Rising Moon: Unraveling the Book of Ruth
By Moshe Miller
Kodesh Press
Originally published in 2015 and recently released in its first paperback edition, Rising Moon: Unraveling the Book of Ruth by Rabbi Moshe Miller is ideal for serious students of the Book of Ruth.
Miller chose a complex structure for his sefer, modeled after a theatrical production. The book is divided into four acts, which parallel the four chapters of the Book of Ruth. Each act has two or three scenes. Within each act, he also includes one or two interludes – related topics that are not commentary on the Book of Ruth itself.
Occasionally, Miller uses dense language, impenetrable to the average reader. In a footnote on p. 158, for example, he writes, “The hallmark of the mechanical, prelapsarian world is decay.”
On the other hand, he often writes dialogue that expands on the terse biblical text, using contemporary language for what the characters might have actually said to one another or what they might have been thinking. Miller is too much of a scholar to be accused of making up biblical characters’ thoughts or dialogue out of whole cloth. Rather, he bases them on existing midrashim and aggadot.
Here is an example. As Orpah is about to walk away from Naomi and Ruth, Miller creates a kind of contemporary midrash when he writes what Orpah’s internal monologue might have been.
“True, I am going back to my idolatrous roots, but there is a lot of water under the bridge between Naomi and me. Perhaps I should give her a kiss goodbye. It’s not that this kiss will be meaningful in any way. It is purely a mechanical act that acknowledges our previous relationship and the life we shared together. True, we are now divided by an unbridgeable chasm; there is no love between us anymore. In fact, by morning I suspect I will feel such a blinding hatred for her that I will dedicate my life and my children’s lives to destroying her life and her achievements. But still, I will go through the motions and kiss her goodbye.”
Miller makes his readers work hard, but he rewards them with startling insights, such as the idea that Ruth’s relationship with Boaz was a double yibum – for Ruth’s deceased husband Machlon but also for Elimelech and Naomi, who is too old to bear a child in her dead husband’s name. Thus, Ruth is not only the yevamah for Machlon but is also serving as a surrogate mother for Naomi. This understanding explains Ruth 4:17: … And the women neighbors gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi…”
Rising Moon: Unraveling the Book of Ruth is not for the casual reader. However, for someone who wants to understand Chazal’s deeper ideas about the Book of Ruth, collected in one sefer, this book is a gem.
