May you be like Ruth and like Ester,
Marry someone of a different race,
All will adore you,
You will be famous,
Everyone will know your face ….
[isn’t that the lesson we get from the two books of the Bible named after women?].
On Diversity
May you be like Ruth and like Ester,
Marry someone of a different race,
All will adore you,
You will be famous,
Everyone will know your face ….
[isn’t that the lesson we get from the two books of the Bible named after women?].
Wheat & Tares 
Considering that Ruth is a descendent of Lot after an incestious relationship with his daughters. That she married Boaz, a descendent of Abraham, and that Christ was one of her descendants, diversity is just one topic you could talk about. You could also talk about how in spite of what we perceive as diversity, we are all connected somehow with a greater purpose.
I’ve always been extremely uncomfortable with the story of Esther..
I’ve never understood why a woman having to marry a murderous man in order to apparently save a nation, was something to be celebrated.
Hedgehog it was a great honor to be the favorite sex slave! It proves just how valuable she was (i.e. physically beautiful).
We can’t read these stories from positions of privilege. Survival is something to be celebrated, especially if one is Jewish (or in Ruth’s case, a Moabitess…an accursed race), Jews were hanging on by their fingertips in Babylon. Both books are likely fictionalized to some degree, sort of like Jesus’ parables… so historicity isn’t the main question, meaning is. Ruth is an ancestress of David and Jesus. Which really does damage to the idea of a pure royal line, eh? Esther saves her people, but loses much of her identity as a Jewish woman to do so. Yet a heroine she is and Jews celebrate her story today by dressing up, eating and some adults getting blind drunk. We could also throw in the Tamar and Rahab stories. All women trapped in roles in which their virtue and integrity could be called into question. Yet Ruth, Tamar and Rahab were the mothers of Israel and the ancestors of the Messiah. Their blood ran in Jesus’ veins and drenched the ground in Gethsemane and on Golgotha. Obviously these stories cannot be approached with a simplistic black and white thinking or dualistic paradigms.
These stories actually give me hope. Far too many of my friends are trapped in roles which put them at odds with tradition or institutional church authority. Yet it is these people on the borders or fringes who often see the different portion of reality. At times they are visionary. They face the brutality, nastiness and vicissitudes that life delivers. They may be considered odd or outside the mainstream of LDS thought, but like the women , it is quite apparent they really are central to our story. And they should never be consigned to the footnotes or the borderlands. They are covered by the Atonement of Christ. Their stories are sacred. Yes, these stories are nonsensical and awkward. But many of our stories are nonsensical and awkward, full of error and bad circumstance. Which means the Atonement can cover us as it covered them.
Ruth had to sexually entrap Boaz (a skeevy older dude) into marriage. Yep, the Bible sucks for women.
Old man, if we got to discuss how brutal it was, how problematic it is to view women that way, rather than god placed Esther there for that very purpose, that would be a vast improvement on the Sunday school and seminary curricula of my experience. Because I think these things do affect how church members continue to view women, sadly.
Be a rebel. Go ahead and discuss it.
Huh. Maybe that’s why folks don’t sit next to me in Gospel Doctrine!
Esther / Mordecai are Ishtar / Marduk:
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/highlight-of-the-gods/
But I heard you have a Book of Ether. That stuff’ll put you to sleep!
Old man “Be a rebel”
Believe me, I have long had that reputation. It gets tiring. I would have hoped for improvements in curriculum materials by now.. alas..