By Rebbetzin Lauren Levin
Do Jews run away?
Throughout our history, there have been many times Jews have had to leave a place and start again. In the Bible there is a nuanced but clear distinction between leaving ‘yavetze’ or moving ‘vayelech’ and fleeing ‘vayivrach’.
There are two instances when we see leaders flee in the Torah. When Jacob realises it is no longer safe for his family to stay with Laban, he acts immediately to remove them from danger:
“Jacob kept Laban the Aramean in the dark, not telling him that he was fleeing, and fled with all that he had. Soon he was across the Euphrates and heading toward the hill country of Gilead. On the third day, Laban was told that Jacob had fled.”
The usage of ‘fled’ three times emphasises the covert and duplicitous nature of the operation, and it is this that Laban feels so hurt by, asking: “Why did you flee in secrecy and mislead me and not tell me?”, to which Jacob replies: “I was afraid because I thought you would take your daughters from me by force.” People flee when they are afraid. Perhaps Jacob had stayed too long in a hostile environment. He managed to leave in time but the way he left came with a hefty price. He would lose his beloved wife Rachel on the journey.
We contrast this to the Israelites leaving Egypt. They left in haste but they did not flee. The exodus was not covert, frazzled or driven out of fear. It was time to go and achieve their destiny as a free and faithful nation.
The book of Ruth begins with the words:
“In the days when the Judges ruled, there was a famine in the land; and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, with his wife and two sons, went to reside in the country of Moab.
The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name was Naomi, and his two sons were named Mahlon and Chilion—Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. They came to the country of Moab and remained there.”
The first verse of the book sets up the important ‘man’ who was slated to be the protagonist of the story. Elimelech, a leader in Israel, was faced with a dilemma. With famine raging, should he stay or go? The sage criticises him for shirking responsibility and abandoning a nation in their time of need. The man who should have been the saviour is irrelevant after just a few verse of the megila. Instead, Ruth the Moabite becomes the heroine. The book is a reminder that it is never the office that makes the man. Small acts of kindness will always trump bombastic empty official gestures.
However, Eliemlech’s actions can easily be misunderstood as ‘running away’. He did not flee. The language describing his migration from Israel to Moab is particular: ‘he went’- not to emigrate, but ‘to reside’. He had not turned his back on his beloved homeland, he was just moving temporarily to save his family and potentially to help him return and lead in a more robust way. This may even be noble, but the danger is what happens along the way. The family become settled and ‘remain there’. Elimelech dies, and the family spend a decade entrenched in a foreign land. If Elimelech had noble intentions, life did not go as planned.
Over the ages, we have had to be flexible. Many would even say our ‘superpower’ has been our nation’s ability to adopt to different environments. It did not start with the destruction of the temple, the inquisition, or twentieth century antisemitism, holocaust or expulsions from Arab lands. It has always been inherent within our story, since Abraham and Sarah. Reading back through Biblical narratives sheds light on the need to adapt. It encourages us to avoid ‘fleeing’. Decisions predicated on fear and survival instinct are never ideal. And yet, we can be so determined not to flee that we miss the opportunity ‘to leave’. Without a mindset that embraces both physical and geographical change as well as emotional and psychological change, we remain stagnant, and may never fulfil our destiny.
The book of Ruth reminds us that there are different types of ‘leaving’. Are we leaving somewhere just to leave or to go somewhere else? With all the good will in the world, there is a risk of falling off our path if we lose focus of our destination. Perhaps this was Elimelech’s fatal flaw – despite his plan to just temporarily step out of Israel, life is a busy, noisy and overwhelming place. Sometimes the currents are too strong to swim against the tide. We cannot do it alone. Elimelech is ultimately replaced as the protagonist of the story by his widow Naomi and daughter in law Ruth. They act as a powerful symbol that we need to share our destination with those we love so that we can remain focused and support each other to achieve our dreams.