{"id":73160,"date":"2020-04-09T22:08:52","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T19:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=73160"},"modified":"2020-04-09T22:08:52","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T19:08:52","slug":"love-in-the-time-of-omer-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/love-in-the-time-of-omer-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Love In The Time Of Omer"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"73160","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":39523,"related_cahpter":"1091","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"From Song of Songs To Ruth...","content":"<p>The period of the Omer, the seven weeks that link the barley offer\u00ading of Pesah with the wheat offering of Shavuot, is bookended by two love stories. When we first begin counting the Omer, we read Song of Songs, a celebration of young love in all its joy and innocence. Seven weeks later, on Shavuot, we chant the Book of Ruth, a more sobering tale of two women who rebuild a family devastated by loss. In the period of the Omer, we experience the shift from young love to mature love and from freedom to redemption\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>The lovers in Song of Songs may declare, \u201cLet me be a seal upon your heart, like the seal upon your hand, for love is as fierce of death\u201d (8:6), but this rhetoric seems to be merely the well-meaning declarations of those whose love has never been put to the test. Ruth does not ask to be set as a seal on Naomi\u2019s heart; she actually does it, binding her destiny to that of her mother-in-law and demonstrating after the loss of her husband that she has already internalized the lesson that love is fiercer than death.<\/p>\n<p>The wheat and barley fields are the setting for much of the Book of Ruth, whereas Song of Songs takes place in a garden. The female lover in Song of Songs is described as a \u201clocked garden,\u201d perhaps a reference to her virginity and to all that about her which has yet to be discovered\u2026 In contrast, Ruth is not a locked garden, but a widow who has already experienced hunger, loss, and dislocation. She cannot afford to play games, and so she doesn\u2019t waste her time hiding in the crannies of the rock or pretending to be hard-to-get like a scampering fox. She has no choice but to be more forward, and so she lets herself into the granary, lies down on the floor beside a sleeping Boaz, and asks him to spread out his robe over her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo not awaken or rouse love until it please,\u201d adjures the lover in Song of Songs on three separate occasions, but Ruth does not have the luxury of waiting for the perfect spring day to get married. Instead, she holds out her shawl to Boaz after their tryst on the granary floor, and he counts out six measures of barley for her to take home. \u201cIf a man offered all his wealth for love, he would be laughed to scorn\u201d (8:7), declare the na\u00efve young lovers in Song of Songs, untutored in the harsh ways of the world; and yet this is exactly what Boaz does, and he is blessed by the townspeople and celebrated for it.<\/p>\n<p>While the lovers in Song of Songs are still frolicking amidst the gardens and valleys, Ruth gives birth to the ancestor of David\u2026 The holiday of Shavuot is often analogized to a wedding between God and Israel, with the Torah as the ketuba handed from bride to groom\u2026 The Omer serves as a sort of engagement period: on Pesah we celebrate our relationship with God like young lovers, and on Shavuot we accept all the commitments that this relationship entails. In between these two festivals, the period of the Omer reminds us that perhaps the love into which we inevitably grow is\u2026 that of the gleaners who winnow on the granary floor.<\/p>\n<p>from: \u201cGleanings: Reflections on Ruth\u201d edited by Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern, published by Maggid\/Koren.<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":55486,"id":55486,"title":"judges-ruth-gleanings3","filename":"judges-ruth-gleanings3.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/judges-ruth-gleanings3.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/struggles-storytelling-and-salvation\/judges-ruth-gleanings3\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"judges-ruth-gleanings3","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":55288,"date":"2019-05-14 13:26:00","modified":"2019-05-14 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