After Abel and Other Stories

by Michal Lemberger

  There is something poignant about Ruth’s declaration. It has been pointed to over the centuries as an affirmation of the strength and beauty of Jewish beliefs. There’s so much more to Ruth’s words, though, and to the story in which they are set.

  For one thing, this is the only place in the Hebrew Bible in which a woman declares her devotion to another woman. Ruth doesn’t accept Judaism (really its precursor, since the story is set in the pre-Davidic, pre-national period) because she has been on a spiritual quest and found that the tenets of the Israelite faith speak most deeply to her. She speaks these words out of a sense of loyalty to her mother-in-law, and despite the fact that she isn’t obligated to say them.

  The story is fairly straightforward, at least at the beginning: a couple, Elimelech and Naomi, moves to Moab in the face of a famine in their native Judah. They live there long enough for both their sons to marry local women. Soon all three men die. In the wake of these tragedies, Naomi and her daughters-in-law, now all widowed, decide to head back to Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem. Along the way, Naomi, broken by sorrow, implores her daughters-in-law to leave her. “Turn back, each of you to her mother’s house” (Ruth 1:8). It takes some convincing, but one of them, Orpah, agrees to go and turns back.

  Here is the first remarkable thing about the Book of Ruth. Despite how she’s been portrayed in the Talmud and many commentaries, Orpah is no villain. She stays with her mother-in-law, even after the deaths of her husband and father-in-law release her from any duty to the family she has married into. At first, she also refuses to abandon Naomi. Even returning to her family of origin is an act of devotion: Orpah doesn’t want to go, but she obeys her mother-in-law’s injunction.

  The point is not that Orpah is a bad daughter. In fact, there are no villains in the Book of Ruth. Rather, she is a character whose actions are determined by her situation and a reasonable sense of human psychology, a tendency that extends to all the major players in the Book of Ruth.

  So we’re not meant to castigate Orpah—although over the years, plenty of people have. The Babylonian Talmud, for example, records a debate in which two sages try to one-up each other in imaging just how sexually deviant Orpah was, which leaves little doubt about how negatively they viewed her. But Orpah, as depicted in the Bible, is not bad. She is a foil for Ruth. Her actions illustrate for us just how exceptional Ruth is when she chooses Naomi over her own parents.

  In turning back for home, Orpah is given the chance at a comfortable life, a new marriage, the embrace of family and clan, all of which is encapsulated in Naomi’s surprising choice of words when she exhorts her daughter-in-law to return not to her father, but to her “mother’s house.” Ruth, however, chooses to stay with Naomi. In doing so, she signs up for a life of destitution, living at the margins of an alien society, in a city and culture she does not know. What she signs up for is an existence completely interwoven with Naomi’s fate.

  To really understand the Book of Ruth, a reader has to be conversant with both social and legal precepts of pre-modern Israel. Most important is the fact that the story shows us an environment that leaves a widow (elderly or not) with no resources, and no ability to claim any.

  When Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem, they are the poorest and most outcast in the city. Without husbands, they can make no claim to land, and without land, they cannot engage in commerce, or even grow food to eat.

  This is the reality that Ruth accepts when she makes her famous declaration of faith, and it is even more noteworthy than the commentators and teachers who have put the focus squarely on Ruth’s piety, would have it. Her pledge of allegiance to God is not a sign of religious awaking. It is proof of her dedication to Naomi. What matters in Ruth’s speech is how bound up she is with her mother-in-law, and her intention to remain that way. Ruth’s dedication isn’t ultimately to God. That is part and parcel of her loyalty to another woman, come what may.

  What comes is a life of scrounging desperation. Because Naomi is old and seemingly still immobilized by sorrow, Ruth heads out into the fields to pick up the dregs of the harvest, as illuminated in the biblical version of a safety net that commands the corners of a field be left to the beggars and paupers to take what they need to survive (Leviticus 19:9-10).

  And so Ruth goes out every day to pick up the few grains she can find to make sure that she and Naomi won’t starve. It is in the course of this harvest that she comes to the notice of Boaz, the owner of the fields and a distant cousin to Naomi’s late husband. Once he becomes aware of her existence, the story begins to move to its triumphant conclusion. Boaz and Ruth marry and have a son. The text even claims that Ruth is King David’s great grandmother, although scholars agree that the coda containing that genealogy was added long after the story’s original composition.

  That coda may even account for the book’s inclusion in the Hebrew Bible. Because David is the great hero and central nationalizing figure of the Hebrew Bible, and for whom very little genealogical information is given, any hint of his origins becomes important. Without those final few passages, the book is not an obvious fit with the rest of the Bible: God doesn’t play an active role. No overt miracles occur. It’s not about a hero or leader like Moses, Joseph, or Joshua. It doesn’t have any lists of laws, such as the ones that take up so much space in Exodus and Leviticus.

  The Book of Ruth diverges from the norm in other ways, too. For those interested in the women who populate the Bible, the pickings can be slim. The Hebrew Bible is a book primarily about wealthy and powerful men. When women appear, it is most often in service of the needs and goals of those men. They are the mothers of men’s children, and wives who can be reviled (Vashti), punished (Lot’s wife), or simply set aside when it is convenient for the male character to do so (Michel). Women almost never drive national achievement. They are more often than not relegated to supporting roles, and even then they can go uncredited. There are so many characters who pass only as so-and-so’s wife or daughter. They do not even merit names.

  But the Book of Ruth is about women. Not just women, but ordinary women. Even Esther, the heroine of that titular book, is not ordinary. She is queen of the Persian Empire, which is about as far from ordinary as possible. She’s also not the protagonist of the story. The narrative hinges on her courage, but it is her uncle, Mordechai, who drives the storyline.

  This is why I love the Book of Ruth. It shines a light on the female experience as it could have been, and illuminates a behind-the-scenes reality that is dependent upon the laws men pass, but structured around relationships that women establish between themselves. These relationships often turn out to look nothing like what readers of other parts of the Bible might expect.

  Some of the more famous narratives about women include Rachel and Leah, Hannah and Penina, Sarah and Hagar. In each, the women are at odds with one another—one can have children but is unloved, the other is loved by their (shared) husband but barren. These relationships, and the women themselves, are defined by jealousy. The details of these stories point to the position common to most women in the Bible, who are often important only by virtue of their sexual, emotional, and political relationships to men. They are judged based on how many children they will give to their husbands.

  Like those other female figures, Ruth has a baby, but here the text deviates from the norm, as well. Boaz is the biological father, which, if this were like any other biblical story, would be the most important detail. And yet the women of the town shout with joy, “A son is born to Naomi!” Naomi, not Boaz. The infant becomes the living symbol of the fulfillment of the loyalty and love that Naomi and Ruth share through sorrow, hardship, joy, and, finally, fullness. What’s more, the women of Bethlehem don’t just rejoice at the baby’s birth. They name him. Mothers often name their children in the Bible. This is the only instance in which the neighbors do. In the Book of Ruth, birth and rebirth become forces that bind generations and entire communities of women to one another.

  Ruth is a rare text in the Bib
le. Not only does it revolve around women, it gives the women a real story arc, from loss to rebirth. That doesn’t mean that it’s radical. The Book of Ruth doesn’t upend the expectations of the society it depicts. It doesn’t strike out at the injustices that keep widows impoverished and powerless. Instead, it pulls back the curtain to show a side of life that is generally invisible to us, and gives its heroines a happy ending within the realities of their world.

  What does all of this have to do with this book of short stories?

  Because we usually read the Bible in the context of the rabbinic and Christian traditions, we are accustomed to reading it from the perspective of the dominant male cultural and economic perspective. But there’s a long history of writers taking inspiration from the stories in the Bible to illuminate it in new ways and from new perspectives. Long before John Milton turned the narrative of the creation and Christian fall into his sprawling epic poem, Paradise Lost, Jewish midrash and agadah contained stories that give flesh to what are often bare-bones biblical tales.

  That tradition has continued in the centuries since, covering both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament. Novels and poems have been written from the viewpoint of Eve, Cain, Mary, and Jesus. I’ve given a lot of thought to all of them. This book is the result of decades of immersion in biblical stories. The product of a Jewish Day School education, I went on to write a doctoral dissertation on the way American poets have re-envisioned the biblical story of the creation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In the years since, I have taught the literary/historical approaches to the Hebrew Bible at different colleges and universities. I am lucky enough to have been exposed to both traditional, rabbinic interpretive methods and Western scholarship about the Bible.

  When I set out to write the stories that make up this book, I imagined myself into characters and situations that are well known by dint of being in the most popular book ever published, but from an angle that, I suspect, most have never considered. To do so, I established a few ground rules for myself. The most important is that, while I allowed myself to play with details of the narratives, the endings could not change: Abel had to die, Sodom had to burn, Michel had to be taken back to David.

  It’s a sad fact that the Book of Ruth is unusual in the Bible for a reason I briefly mentioned above: It has a happy ending. Most biblical women—and men, for that matter—aren’t as lucky as Ruth and Naomi. And while it’s tempting to give the women whose stories this book tells their happily ever after, that wouldn’t be true to the characters or their biblical narratives.

  The other rule that guided my writing was that I couldn’t, to the best of my ability, impose modern cultural expectations onto the plots or characters, even if my own position as a twenty-first-century writer inevitably influenced how I envisioned the stories. You won’t see any updated stories here, in which the narratives are imported into our own contemporary environment. This book presents an imaginative engagement with the ancient world—its landscapes, relationships, and laws. The pre-modern world, biblical or otherwise, was often brutal and unfair. It followed a logic that seems foreign, even barbaric to us. There are elements of the Bible that I find personally distasteful—slavery, for example, which the Bible accepts as legitimate. As a modern person, I detest slavery in all forms, including selling young women for the sole purpose of producing children for their owners/husbands, a practice that was apparently so prevalent it is mentioned, and legislated, not once, but twice, in both Exodus and Deuteronomy. No matter my feelings, it was an element of biblical life that directly affected some women’s experiences.

  In writing this book, I have followed in the steps of the great midrashists and writers who preceded me. Like them, I don’t mean for my small tales to supplant the Bible. History has proven (correctly, if you ask me) that the Bible retains its position in the Western imagination for good reason. I do hope to give a different perspective on narratives that may have become static in our reading of them.

  Which leads me back to the Book of Ruth. You won’t find a fictionalized version of Ruth and Naomi’s story in this book. Because, while some might accuse a writer of arrogance if she dares to use the Bible as the source of her own creative production, I know when not to mess with perfection. And the Book of Ruth really is a perfect little gem, worthy of study and consideration, but too good for the likes of me to take on.

  As for that other Book of Ruth, the “novel” I bought by mistake: as it turns out, I didn’t spend my money unwisely. Thirty-five dollars is surely a lot of money for a mislabeled paperback, but it’s not much when you consider that it got me thinking and writing, and prodded me to finally give voice to the stories I have to tell. It gave me, in the end, the pages you hold in your hands.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book owes its existence to people and institutions that have impacted many phases of my life. My gratitude goes out first to my all my teachers, from my earliest years through college, graduate school, and beyond. They have taught me how to read carefully, delve deeply into any topic or endeavor, and have pushed me to expand my own understanding. I include among them all the biblical scholars whose work I have mined for years as a student and teacher, whether I have met them in person or not. Their scholarship and insights have affected the way I read, teach, and think about the Bible and so much more.

  I’d like to thank Susan Weidman Schneider, Yona Zeldis McDonough, Naomi Danis, and everyone at Lilith magazine, which featured an abridged version of “Lot’s Wife” in the Summer 2014 issue. Thank you to J. Ryan Stradal and The Nervous Breakdown for featuring an excerpt of “Drawn from the Water,” and to Jim Ruland for his enthusiasm and support of my writing.

  My thanks also go to the Jewish Publication Society, whose translation of the biblical texts I have used extensively over the years, and from which I have taken the passages that introduce every story. Because I was using a translation, issues of spelling inevitably come up, especially when it comes to the way Hebrew names are rendered in English. For ease of reading, I have chosen to use alternate spellings for the names of a few of the characters. Other than that, the translations that appear here are faithful to the JPS text.

  I can’t thank Patty O’Sullivan and Colleen Dunn Bates at Prospect Park Books enough for believing in the potential of this book and for helping me see it through to completion. They are a dream to work with, and I feel lucky to have had been able to do so.

  My deepest thanks to Miriam Heller Stern and the Graduate Center for Education at the American Jewish University, where I taught Hebrew Bible for four years. My time preparing classes and engaging with my students, each of whom helped me learn more about the subject than I did before starting, was instrumental in allowing the ideas that grew into these stories to germinate and grow. It is no exaggeration to say that without the time I spent at AJU this book could not have been written.

  Many individuals have helped me along the way. Although I wrote all the stories in this collection within the last year, the seed was planted many years ago in partnership with Leilani Riehle. The end product is very different than what we cooked up, but I am so grateful for the time we spent chewing over some of this material together. I’d like to thank David Hochman, Michael Ellenberg, Esther Kustanowitz, Aimee Bender, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Jeff Zack, and Rebecca Kobrin for their support and advice. Diana Reiss kept me moving, despite long hours in front of the computer. I thank her and so does my back. Michelle Fellner was so gracious and enthusiastic about creating the book trailer. It looks great, which is all thanks to her expertise. Thanks also to Matt Duncan for building my website. Many thanks to Rachel Levin, Maggie Flynn, Elline Lipkin, Kalee Thompson, Rob Kutner, Michael Becker, and Tal Kastner for reading early drafts of some of these stories. Michael Green not only continues to give me some of the best advice I get, but was an early advocate of this project, encouraging me to pursue it before I was even ready to do so.

  This book would be nowhere without Ron Hart—incredible husband, fi
rst reader, steadfast cheerleader, lousy title generator. Thank you for hounding me until I turned one story into two, and then didn’t let up until I had a manuscript in my hands.

  Finally, to my daughters, Anina and Lula. I have been writing since I was a child, but it was only in becoming a mother that I found my voice as a writer. Athough I probably won’t let them read it for many years, this book is for them.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michal Lemberger’s nonfiction and journalism have appeared in Slate, Salon, Tablet, and other publications, and her poetry has been published in a number of print and online journals. A story from After Abel was featured in Lilith magazine. Lemberger holds an MA and PhD in English from UCLA and a BA in English and Religion from Barnard College. She has taught the Hbrew Bible as Literature at UCLA and the American Jewish University. She was born and raised in New York and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters. This is her first collection of fiction.