Negotiating Otherness. The Journey of Ruth, the Gentile, Toward Judaism

In her personal, sometimes nostalgic, essay Ruth, the American Jewish author Cynthia Ozick depicts the biblical matriarch Ruth as a «second Abraham», for being capable of speaking the language of visionaries and prophets, and, therefore, knowing by herself God’s existence and oneness. Unlike her sister-in-law, Orpah, Ruth voluntarily leaves her uncomfortable past behind to embrace a not yet realized future. Taking a cue from Maimonides’ prophetic anthropology and from Leo Baeck’s idea of Judaism, Ozick transforms the Moabite heroine into a modern alter ego. Ruth’s spiritual journey from idolatry to ethical monotheism becomes an intrinsic part of Ozick’s family story, foreshadowing her spiritual and progressive passage from a childish, mythological religiosity to an intellectual approach to God.