They say you die twice: once when you stop breathing, and again when your name is spoken for the last time.

Megillat Rut doesn’t open this way, but it could. The line, often attributed to Hemingway or Banksy, captures a deep human anxiety: being forgotten — for many, a fate worse than death. So universal is this fear that it has its own discipline called existential psychotherapy. Irvin Yalom, drawing on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, wrote: “Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory… Whose death will make me truly dead?”

The megillah begins in chaos. It was a time when the judges judged, a time without central authority, without stability, and without a king. Famine spread across the land. To escape the chaos, Elimelech and his family fled to Moav.

We meet Elimelech’s family: his wife Naomi, sons Machlon and Chilyon, and daughters-in-law, Rut and Orpah. The characters’ names foreshadow their fates. Naomi means sweet, pleasant, but after the great tragedy of losing her family, she changes her name. Machlon means affliction; Chilyon, destruction. Orpah’s name comes from oref, the nape of the neck, visible when she turns her back on her mother-in-law. Even Elimelech’s name captures an irony; it means “God is my King,” and in an age with no king, he........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)