Kassy Akiva on Conversion after October 7

Every year on Shavuot, many Jews have the custom of reading the book of Ruth. The holiday commemorates the giving of the Torah at Sinai—the moment when the Jewish people gathered at the foot of the mountain and declared, “we will do and we will listen.” The rabbis paired Sinai with Ruth for a reason. Sinai is the national conversion story, in which the whole people, swept up in thunder and fire, accept the covenant. Ruth is a more intimate counterpart: a tale of one woman, at the lowest possible moment, with every worldly reason to return to the clan of her birth, who decides instead to join the same covenant. “Your people shall be my people,” she says to Naomi, “and your God shall be my God.” Ruth was not drawn toward the Jewish people at their moment of triumph but in her and her chosen family’s hour of despair.