David Lipson Memorial Lecture

“Pledging Allegiance?: Adapting the Book of Ruth in American Literature and Culture”

Description: In an 1898 article on the Book of Ruth in The American Jewess, Rabbi Julius Magil urged readers to “look into this beautiful story and learn a lesson.” He was not alone. For American writers frequently turned to the figure of Ruth to offer “lessons” not just about how to be a dutiful daughter-in-law or faithful convert but about immigration, intermarriage, and national belonging. From the 1850s-1920s, many writers saw key questions about American-Jewish identity refracted through the Book of Ruth, particularly Ruth’s famous pledge to Naomi (“Where you go, I will go...your people shall be my people, and your God my God”) and marriage to Boaz. Can immigration and intermarriage be beneficial? Does joining a new “people” require joining a new faith? Can “my people” pledge allegiance to “we the people” without losing their Jewishness (and what exactly is that Jewishness)?  

I explore these questions in part by examining how writers interpreted Ruth’s story as a possible template for successful Jewish immigration, integration, and intermarriage in America. Texts considered include Israel Zangwill’s drama The Melting Pot (1908), which popularized that much-debated metaphor; Emma Wolf’s admired novel Other Things Being Equal (1892), which takes on interfaith marriage and Jewish-American belonging; and a variety of poems, religious commentaries, and images that illustrate how resonant the issues in the Book of Ruth were in a geographically and conceptually expanding America cast as a “new Israel” (but not always a welcome one) for the roughly two million Jews who arrived between 1880-1925 and their descendants. I conclude by briefly considering how the Book of Ruth has been employed in our own cultural moment, one in which the relationship between immigration, religion, and what “makes American great” are central to national debates.

Sarah Gracombe is a Professor of English. Previously, she served as the Director of the Moreau Honors Program and before that the Director of the IDEAS (Integrating Democratic Education at Stonehill) Program. Her teaching and research interests include Victorian representations of national identity, race, gender, psychology, and religion, particularly constructions of Jewishness.