I write some Girls in Trouble songs because I am drawn to a particular character or story; others are commissions or requests. This song was commissioned by G-dcast, a San Francisco-based organization who create wonderful animations of Torah and Jewish text.

G-dcast asked me to write a song about Ruth which would touch on the theme of intermarriage. Although I had not thought of Ruth’s story in these terms exactly (since the traditional understanding is of Ruth as a convert), exploring Ruth through this lens made intuitive sense to me. After all, intermarriage involves two people bridging a distance, and Ruth’s story also takes her across a great distance: from one people to another, from one faith to another, and from widowhood to marriage and motherhood. I saw themes of bridging cultural divides and crossing from familiar to new throughout Ruth’s story. In writing this song, I hoped to connect Ruth’s story to the idea of individual growth, risk-taking and self-transformation – and, additionally, to write a song which could be understood as a love song about intermarriage.

The song begins: “Sometimes the road chooses you, and not the other way around.” This describes the sense of being called to make changes in one’s life. In my own life, I have sometimes felt strongly drawn towards a path to the extent that I feel chosen or called by it, rather than the other way around.

My Jewish path has certainly reflected this: I grew up in a secular Jewish family, but suddenly found myself falling in love with traditional Jewish texts after a chance encounter with them in college. I felt a profound need to discover the stories, laws and customs of my heritage. Exploring the world of Orthodox Judaism after a suburban secular upbringing was a dramatic transition for me: not entirely different, perhaps, from Ruth’s journeying to the Israelite people from her Moabite origins.

After I graduated college, to the surprise of my family and even myself, I turned down a job offer in New York City and signed up to study in a progressive yeshiva in Jerusalem for a year, despite the fact that neither I nor my parents had ever been to Israel before. I felt I had to leave my current life, to step away from what I already knew, in order to explore this world. The year in Jerusalem turned into two years, and by the time I returned home, I had gone from knowing only the Hebrew alphabet and a couple blessings, to being profoundly involved with Jewish texts and traditions. Reading my own story into Ruth’s, I can’t help but imagine that Ruth might have felt similarly, radically called to follow Naomi and join her people, no matter how illogical or inexplicable that move was.

I also appreciate how Ruth’s personal, individual actions at the beginning of the story turn out to have profound communal implications that reverberate throughout generations. The story begins with an intimate exchange between Ruth and Naomi, two seemingly powerless women in a faraway land; by the end, an entire community gathers in celebration at the city gates, and we see a bird’s- eye view of generations leading from Ruth to King David.

To my reading, there is a powerful truth contained in this movement from the personal to the communal. Our individual stories are part of a much greater, multi- generational saga. The decisions we make in our personal lives can change the course of history. Just like Ruth’s story, our stories matter.