Why did we read Megillat Ruth on Shavuot?
At the end of Megillat Ruth, Boaz gathers witnesses to be present at his wedding with Ruth, the converted Moabite princess. The Written Torah prohibits the intermingling by marriage of the People of Ammon and Moav with the Jewish People. This is because of the cruelty shown by those two nations towards the Jewish People when they denied them bread and water when the People of Israel wished to pass through their territory on the way to the Promised Land. And also because Balak, the King of Moav, hired Bilaam, the Midianite Prophet, to curse the Jews, because being able to determine G-d’s moments of “anger”, and direct that “anger” somehow against his intended victims, was that unholy prophet’s specialty. But the Oral Torah makes female Moabites an exception to that rule, because they played no part in those anti-Jewish decisions. And when Boaz, one of the Judges of Israel, who were the leaders of the nation at that time in history, married Ruth, he was affirming the validity of the Oral
