What Matters Now to Yair Zakovitch: Using 'Ruth' as a blueprint for creative halacha

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now.

This week, Jews all over the world will mark the holiday of Shavuot by reading from the Book of Ruth. In this biblical tale, disaster and famine strike and an elderly widow called Naomi loses her two sons. Childless, she tells her daughters-in-law to return to their parents’ homes in Moab and says that she will make her own way back to her family in Bethlehem.

One daughter-in-law, Orpah, regretfully leaves. The other, Ruth, says the famous lines, “Where you go I will go, and where you slumber I will slumber. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”

And with that, she joins the People of Israel and eventually becomes the ancestor of the much-heralded King David.

The Book of Ruth was written about 2,500 years ago. However, argues our guest this week, it couldn’t be more relevant today as a model of “creative halacha.”

Israel Prize-winning Bible scholar Prof. Yair Zakovitch joined The Times of Israel this week in his Hebrew University book-lined office to discuss the societal context of the Book of Ruth and the halachic “problems” it solves.

The author of best-selling works on the Bible was born in the pluralistic northern city of Haifa in 1945 and joined the faculty of Hebrew University in 1978. When awarded the Israel Prize for Bible in 2021, then Education Minister Yoav Gallant said, "Yair Zakovitch is one of the most original Bible researchers in the country and the world."

To bring the Bible to the next generation, Zakovtich helped found the Hebrew University's Revivim program, a prestigious teacher-training program for outstanding university students, who sign on to teach in state schools post-graduation.

In our in-depth conversation on the Book of Ruth, we hear how the scroll's author — in opposition to the writers of the contemporary prophets — offers a scripture of compassion in solving that era's challenge with intermarriage.

We also hear about today’s rampant biblical illiteracy and why it is immensely important for secular Israelis to readopt the Bible for themselves.

This Shavuot week, we ask Prof. Yair Zakovitch, What Matters Now.

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IMAGE: Prof. Yair Zakovitch in his Hebrew University of Jerusalem office, May 23, 2023. (Amanda Borschel-Dan/Times of Israel)

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