OU PRESS Shavuos: The Torah’s Mystery Man Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays

The Book of Ruth read on Shavuot is a beautiful and inspiring story, instructive to us in many ways. The story itself is fairly simple, and most of us are, or should be, well acquainted with it. The cast of characters is well-known: Boaz, Ruth and Naomi as the major characters, and Orpah, Elimelekh, Mahlon and Kilyon as the minor characters. But there is one personage who makes a brief appearance in this Book (chapter 4) whom we may designate as the “Mystery Man”! The Bible doesn’t even give him a name. He is an anonymous and therefore mysterious character.