Edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg Scrolls of Love ruth and the song of songs Scrolls of Love ................. 16151$ $$FM 10-13-06 10:48:57 PS PAGE i ................. 16151$ $$FM 10-13-06 10:48:57 PS PAGE ii Scrolls of Love reading ruth and the song of songs Edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS New York / 2006 ................. 16151$ $$FM 10-13-06 10:49:01 PS PAGE iii Copyright ᭧ 2006 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, me- chanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scrolls of love : reading Ruth and the Song of songs / edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8232-2571-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8232-2571-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8232-2526-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8232-2526-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bible. O.T. Ruth—Criticism interpretation, etc. 2. Bible. O.T. Song of Solomon—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Hawkins, Peter S. II. Stahlberg, Lesleigh Cushing. BS1315.52.S37 2006 222Ј.3506—dc22 2006029474 Printed in the United States of America 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1 First edition ................. 16151$ $$FM 10-13-06 10:49:01 PS PAGE iv For John Clayton (1943–2003), mentor and friend ................. 16151$ $$FM 10-13-06 10:49:01 PS PAGE v ................. 16151$ $$FM 10-13-06 10:49:02 PS PAGE vi contents List of Illustrations xi Introduction 000 Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg xiii PART ONE: READING RUTH “All That You Say, I Will Do”: A Sermon on the Book of Ruth Ellen F. Davis 3 Beginning with Ruth: An Essay on Translating Ellen F. Davis 9 Subverting the Biblical World: Sociology and Politics in the Book of Ruth Andre´ LaCocque 20 The Book of Ruth as Comedy: Classical and Modern Perspectives Nehama Aschkenasy 31 PART TWO: READING RUTH’S READERS Transfigured Night: Midrashic Readings of the Book of Ruth Judith A. Kates 47 Dark Ladies and Redemptive Compassion: Ruth and the Messianic Lineage in Judaism Nehemia Polen 59 Ruth amid the Gentiles Peter S. Hawkins 75 vii ................. 16151$ CNTS 10-13-06 10:49:01 PS PAGE vii CONTENTS PART THREE: REIMAGINING RUTH Ruth Speaks in Yiddish: The Poetry of Rosa Yakubovitsh and Itsik Manger Kathryn Hellerstein 89 “Ruth,” by Roza Yakubovitsh, and “Ruth,” by Itsik Manger Translated by Kathryn Hellerstein 109 Printing the Story: The Bible in Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts Margaret Adams Parker 122 PART FOUR: TRANSLATING AND READING THE SONG OF SONGS Translating Eros Chana Bloch 151 “I Am Black and Beautiful” Andre´ LaCocque 162 Reading the Song Iconographically Ellen F. Davis 172 Unresolved and Unresolvable Problems in Interpreting the Song Marc Brettler 185 PART FIVE: READING THE SONG’S READERS Entering the Holy of Holies: Rabbinic Midrash and the Language of Intimacy Judith A. Kates 201 Intradivine Romance: The Song of Songs in the Zohar Arthur Green 214 The Love Song of the Millennium: Medieval Christian Apocalyptic and the Song of Songs E. Ann Matter 228 Monastic Reading and Allegorical Sub/Versions of Desire Mark Burrows 244 viii ................. 16151$ CNTS 10-13-06 10:49:01 PS PAGE viii CONTENTS The Female Voice: Hildegard of Bingen and the Song of Songs Margot Fassler 255 The Harlot and the Giant: Dante and the Song of Songs Lino Pertile 268 PART SIX: REIMAGINING THE SONG In the Absence of Love Carey Ellen Walsh 283 Song? Songs? Whose Song? Reflections of a Radical Reader Carole R. Fontaine 294 Honey and Milk Underneath Your Tongue: Chanting a Promised Land Jacqueline Osherow 306 “Where Has Your Beloved Gone?” The Song of Songs in Contemporary Israeli Poetry Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg 315 Notes 331 Contributors 369 Index 373 Index of Scriptural Citations 377 ix ................. 16151$ CNTS 10-13-06 10:49:01 PS PAGE ix ................. 16151$ CNTS 10-13-06 10:49:01 PS PAGE x illustrations Margaret Adams Parker, “Printing the Story” Figure 1. The Madonna and St. Bridget, ca. 148?–1500. Figure 2. Jesus fasting in the wilderness, from a Biblia pauperum, ca. 1465–70. Figure 3. Sacrifice of Isaac, from the Koberger Bible, 1483. Figure 4. Martin Schongauer, The Nativity, ca. 1470–75. Figure 5. Albrecht Du¨rer, The Prodigal Son, ca. 1496. Figure 6. Rembrandt, Return of the Prodigal Son, 1636. Figure 7. Fritz Eichenberg, The Lamentations of Jeremiah, 1955. Figure 8. Barry Moser, “And the sea stopped raging,” 2000. Figure 9. Edward Knippers, With His Stripes, 1993. Figure 10. Sandra Bowden, “In the Beginning.” Figure 11. Margaret Adams Parker, And Ruth the Moabite said, “So, I’m going to go to the field and glean,” 2002. Figure 12. Margaret Adams Parker, And the woman was left without her two boys and without her husband, 2000. Figure 13. Margaret Adams Parker, And Ruth said, “Don’t press me to leave you,’’ 2000. xi ................. 16151$ ILLU 10-13-06 10:49:04 PS PAGE xi ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 14. Margaret Adams Parker, “Now wash up, and anoint yourself, and put on your best dress, and go down to the threshing floor,” 2002. Figure 15. Margaret Adams Parker, And Naomi took the child and held him to her body, 2002. Marc Brettler, “Unresolved and Unresolvable” Figure 1. J. Cheryl Exum. Structure of the Song of Songs (chart). E. Ann Matter, “The Love Song of the Millennium” Figure 1. Medieval Cosmology (chart). Figure 2. Honorius’s Cosmological-Prophetic Division of the Song of Songs (chart). Figure 3. Filia Regis Babylonis, the daughter of the king of Babylon, arrives from the South. Figure 4. Sunamita comes from the West in quadrigas Aminadab,in the four-wheeled chariot of Amanidab. Figure 5. Mandragora, the Mandrake, is pulled from the earth by Christ, who places his head on her body. xii ................. 16151$ ILLU 10-13-06 10:49:04 PS PAGE xii introduction Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg Scrolls of Love is a book of unions. Edited by a Christian and a Jew who are united by a shared passion for the Bible and a common literary hermeneutic, Scrolls of Love joins two biblical scrolls (megillot) and gath- ers around them a diverse community of interpreters. It brings together the book of Ruth and the Song of Songs, two seemingly disparate texts of the Hebrew Bible, and reads them through a diversity of methodologi- cal and theological perspectives. Respectful of traditional biblical scholar- ship, the collection of essays moves beyond it; alert to contemporary trends, the volume returns venerable interpretive tradition to center stage. Moreover, Scrolls of Love expands the notion of commentary, add- ing visual art and literary interpretation to textual hermeneutics. In juxtaposing these two very different biblical books, we find in them a common theme: love. In Ruth, love is tender, filial, loyal; between Ruth and Naomi, it is almost sisterly. But even when love manifests itself sexu- ally, as between Ruth and Boaz, it is marked by gentleness and loving- kindness (h. esed). By contrast, love in the Song of Songs is physical, erotic, at times frantic, and densely metaphoric in its expression. It is a sexual love that is entirely mutual, that emboldens both lover and beloved. Ruth is a model of agape, the Song of eros, and yet both make declarations of love that are unparalleled elsewhere in the Bible. The reader is moved by Ruth’s promise to cleave to Naomi until death and by the female lover’s assertion in the Song that she belongs to her beloved and her beloved belongs to her. xiii ................. 16151$ INTR 10-13-06 10:49:09 PS PAGE xiii INTRODUCTION The careful reader, moreover, is struck by the fact that female voices utter both these vows. In their depictions of love, in fact, the two scrolls celebrate women. In their transmission of woman’s words and their fore- grounding of the woman’s body—treating female flesh not as a danger to be regulated, but as a source of pleasure, solace, and power—the book of Ruth and the Song of Songs stand apart from the rest of the canon. Unlike what we find elsewhere in Scripture, the scrolls’ women are full participants in the covenant. Furthermore, in these books, the under- standing of covenant undergoes a sea change: In contrast to more tradi- tional biblical theology, with its reliance on divine utterance, in Ruth and the Song of Songs, the divine is known primarily in the context of human relationships. The scrolls evoke an apparently secular world in which God is not present, but where the female perspective is predominant. Indeed, the Song contains no reference to God, and although the book of Ruth invokes the Lord, there is no theophany, no angelic messenger, and no evidence of the cultic life of Israel. God acts within and among people, not on them. These scrolls are not simply united by the theme of love; rather, they share an ideal of a love expressed by and for human beings that comes before the love of God. Despite the fact that Jews and Christians share a common text in the Hebrew Scripture, the two communities have read their Bibles in isola- tion from one another, each in ignorance of the richness of the other’s traditions of reading.