Summary
I have argued elsewhere (Selwyn 2009, 2011, 2020) that the building (in the first years of the 21st century) of multiple concrete walls around Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem is one of the more extreme examples in today’s world of spatial separation. I suggested that the story of Rachel’s journey to Canaan with her family from her father’s house in the region of Paddan Aram, near the Mesopotamian city of Abraham’s birth, reveals Rachel as an embodiment of global cosmopolitanism and cultural pluralism and that her story in Genesis does not in any way legitimate her contemporary imprisonment. The present paper builds on, and departs from, Rachel’s story, concentrating as it does on the Book of Ruth. An underlying theme of the stories of both Rachel and Ruth is that these “Two Women of Bethlehem” invite us to consider what we may learn from them about separation, on the one hand, sharing, on the other - in both their own lifetimes and also in ours.  

​The story of Ruth is set in the city of Bethlehem and takes place “in the days when the Judges ruled” (Ruth: 1:1). The book concerns relationships between Ruth herself, her mother-in-law Naomi, and the man Ruth eventually marries, Boaz. It also concerns the relationship between the two neighbouring kingdoms of Judah, in which Bethlehem was located with Boaz as a senior and respected figure, and Moab where Ruth was born and raised. Readers of the bible and biblical commentaries might reasonably assume that, although Judahites and Moabites were cousins (both being descended from Abraham’s father), the two kingdoms were more less perpetual enemies. Indeed, the book of Deuteronomy 23:3 tells us “An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord .. for ever”. The book of Ruth itself, however, offers us a reading that subverts this sense of Deuteronomic hostility and exclusion. The present paper responds to the question about how this reading is achieved by looking at each of five of the story’s main themes: the role of the stranger, issues of fertility and sexuality, kinship between separate gods, the centrality of hospitality, and the perennial struggle between the worlds of myth and politico-religious rhetoric, on one hand, everyday life on the other.  

References
Selwyn, T. (2009) ‘Ghettoising a Matriarch and a City: An everyday story from the Palestinian/Israeli borderlands’. Journal of Borderland Studies 24(3): 39-55. 
Selwyn, T. (2011) ‘Tears on the Border: The case of Rachel’s Tomb, Bethlehem, Palestine’. In M. Kousis, T. Selwyn and D. Clark (eds) Contested Mediterranean Spaces. Oxford: Berghahn, 276-296. 
Selwyn, T. (2020) ‘Listening to Rachel: Re-framing the Matriarch Outside Her Imprisoned Tomb’. In M. Raheb (ed.) Bethlehem: A Socio-Cultural History. Bethlehem: Diyar, 143-164.

Tom Selwyn is a Professorial Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS, University of London, having been awarded an Emeritus Professorial Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Foundation in 2014. He is widely published in the field of the anthropology of travel, tourism and pilgrimage (ATTP) with regional interests in the Mediterranean region in general and the eastern Mediterranean in particular. He has also published work on Brexit and other examples of exclusionary nationalism. In 2018, he co-edited a volume on the meanings and practices of home, home making, and home coming. He directed/co-directed four major research and development projects involving networks of European universities focussing on Palestine and Bosnia-Herzegovina for the European Commission between 1995 and 2010; founded the MA in ATTP at SOAS in 2010; was honorary librarian of the Royal Anthropological book collection in the British Museum for a decade, and a recipient of the RAI’s Lucy Mair medal. He is presently a member of the team mounting the Xenia series of anthropological debates and the SOAS summer school in ATTP. He co-edits the series “Articulating Journeys: Festivals, Memorials, and Homecomings” for Berghahn publishers.