The Third Post in a Three-part Series
- Part III: The Book of Ruth,
Goodbye to Berlin, and the Politics of Who of Belongs
Questions from my friend Karen about her Bible study group have kept the Book of Ruth on my mind. I’ve explored some of these ideas already — Ruth as a foreigner in Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling, and Boaz as kinship‑redeemer in Why Boaz Matters: The Role That Reshapes the Book of Ruth.
At the same time, I’ve been immersed in my lecture series The Anatomy of Fascism, which keeps Nazi Germany close at
hand. That work led me back to Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 novel Goodbye to
Berlin, drawn from his life during the final years of the Weimar Republic.
The novel inspired Cabaret, the 1966 Broadway musical and the 1972 film
where Liza Minnelli’s Sally Bowles became iconic.
Everything Is Related
Regular attendees of my lectures know my mantra: Everything Is
Related. It’s my shorthand for the deep, often surprising connections among
ideas, events, and human behavior — a kind of historical and cultural “six
degrees of separation.” It’s an invitation to notice relationships that aren’t
immediately visible.
Ancient Israel and 1930s Berlin on the eve of Nazism—two very different
worlds that turn out to be asking the same question. Both ask how a society
decides who belongs. The Book of Ruth traces a foreign woman’s movement
toward inclusion; Goodbye to Berlin records a society moving in the
opposite direction, toward ever‑expanding exclusion.
Ruth: Belonging Achieved
Ruth’s story is often celebrated as a triumph of inclusion: a Moabite
woman becomes the great‑grandmother of King David. Her pledge – “Your people
shall be my people” – expresses devotion, but it also hints that
assimilation may be the price of admission. Even after Ruth marries Boaz, however,
the narrative continues to call her “Ruth the Moabite.” She belongs, yet her
foreignness remains visible.
Some readers see Ruth’s belonging as the ancient version of the “good
immigrant” trope. Although a poor immigrant she becomes acceptable because she
is loyal, self‑effacing, hardworking, grateful, and non-threatening to the
social order. She is the immigrant who does everything right.
Yet, as I argued in Ruth, Foreignness, and the “Good
Immigrant” Story We Keep Telling, Ruth is not a passive recipient of society’s acceptance. She takes the
initiative and acts strategically; she challenges cultural and patriarchal
expectations; and she remains unmistakably foreign. Her belonging is not
assimilation but a form of inclusion that permits difference. More radically,
Israel’s royal and messianic identity comes to depend on a foreign woman.
Ruth’s place in the Davidic line as King David's great grandmother stands as a theological challenge to racial and ethnic purity
politics.
Whatever the real social situation in ancient Israe might have been, Ruth’s story takes
place in a Bethlehem where the circle of belonging is expansive enough to
include the poverty-stricken Ruth and Naomi and provide them with a social safety
net. Bethlehem's circle of belonging is expansive enough to have room for her
persistent foreignness. And Bethlehem's circle of belonging is expansive enough to have
room for a woman who challenges social and cultural norms rather than simply conform.
Isherwood: The Collapse of Belonging
Goodbye to Berlin tells the reverse story. In Isherwood’s Berlin the circle of belonging is
contracting. Jews, queer people, Communists, disabled people, and the poor are
increasingly marked as outsiders as the circle narrows, and Isherwood’s novel
reveals successive forms of exclusion:
- The Nowaks represent the poor and
economic exclusion,
- The Landauers represent minorities
and philosophical exclusion,
- Sally Bowles represents the nonconformists
and cultural exclusion,
Together, they map how fascism shrinks the circle of belonging from the
margins inward.
The Nowaks and Economic Exclusion
Christopher rents a room in the Nowaks’ dilapidated, overcrowded apartment.
The apartment is filthy and cold, food is scarce, and money is always short. These details describe more than
discomfort. Overcrowding strips the family of privacy, cold and poor nutrition
make sickness more likely, and the lack of money turns every ordinary need into
a crisis. Poverty becomes a form of confinement: the Nowaks are physically
inside Berlin, yet excluded from the security, dignity, and choices that make
social membership meaningful.
By contrast to Isherwood’s Berlin, Ruth’s Bethlehem provides Ruth and
Noami with a social safety net and a way out of poverty. The Nowaks show how
fascism’s shrinking of the circle of belonging first erodes the basic
conditions of life for the poor, those already living closest to the edge. Their exclusion is not announced
by a single law or dramatic act of persecution. It happens through accumulated
deprivation: insecure work, inadequate housing, hunger, illness, and the
constant humiliation of having too little. Long before the state formally
declares certain people outsiders, poverty has already limited where the Nowaks
can live, how they are seen, and how much control they have over their own
lives. Their hardship also isolates them from civic life: survival consumes the
time and energy needed to organize, protest, or imagine alternatives. In that
sense, economic exclusion prepares the ground for political exclusion. People
who are exhausted and precarious are easier to ignore, divide, and recruit into
resentments directed at other vulnerable groups.
The Nowaks are not political actors. They are ordinary people who feel
the social floor giving way before others do. Because they possess little wealth, influence, or
institutional protection, they have few defenses when wages fall, housing
deteriorates, or public support fails.
The Landauers and Philosophical Exclusion
The Jewish Landauers are educated, cultured, patriotic, prosperous, and
deeply German. Yet once the regime redraws the boundaries of identity, their
Germanness no longer matters. As fascism contracts the circle of belonging by
redefining who is permitted to belong, minorities . As fascism
contracts the circle of belonging, fascism targets minorities who
were once fully integrated. Unlike
the Nowaks, the Landauers are not pushed out by poverty. They are expelled
symbolically first: propaganda recasts Jewish neighbors as alien, disloyal, Exclusion
begins in language and public imagination before it hardens into policy.
The
achievements of the successful Landauer family cannot
answer an accusation that is racial rather than factual, when ancestry is more
important than conduct, loyalty, or citizenship. They become outsiders not because of anything they have
done, but because the
state claims the power to define them. A family that understands itself as German
is assigned a new public identity that is consider dangerously foreign.
By contrast to Ruth’s Bethlehem where her lasting foreignness is not an
obstacle to belonging, in Isherwood’s Berlin foreignness is a dangerous threat to culture and the
social order, and neighbors are encouraged to see exclusion as patriotic, The Landauers show that in a society shrinking
the circle of belonging, belonging becomes conditional, revocable, and
political. Who people
are matters less than who the regime declares them to be—and once that
declaration is accepted, persecution can be presented not as injustice but as
defense of the nation.
Sally Bowles and Cultural Exclusion
Sally Bowles is a nonconformist. She reinvents herself constantly—actress,
singer, bohemian, femme fatale. Sexually liberated, Sally drifts between
lovers, relies on men for money, and occasionally hints at transactional
relationships. who hopes either to succeed in film or to ensnare a wealthy man
to keep her as his mistress. Isherwood deliberately keeps her morally
ambiguous. She isn’t a prostitute. She is a naïve, self‑inventing cabaret
performer who uses relationships as currency. She’s a romantic opportunist in a
city where survival often meant bending social norms.
Sally’s life depends on social elasticity just as Berlin is losing its
capacity to accommodate ambiguity, eccentricity, and experimentation. Sally
shows what happens to people who move fluidly among identities and depend on a city’s tolerance
for lives that do not conform to respectable categories.
As fascism extinguishes the cosmopolitan
culture that thrives only in an open society and Berlin’s circle of belonging contracts, the freedom to
experiment with who one might become is recast as a threat to the social order.
In Bethlehem, Ruth’s challenges family, gender and
patriarchal norms and is praised for her boundary‑crossing actions. In Berlin’s
shrinking of the circle of belonging, nonconformity to social norms is
deviance. Sally is not
politically dangerous; she is culturally inconvenient. Sally’s theatrical self‑creation,
once part of Berlin’s vitality, can be redescribed as dishonesty; her
independence as selfishness; her international outlook as disloyalty. The point
is not merely to condemn Sally as an individual, but to discredit the
pluralistic world she represents. When a regime elevates purity, discipline,
and fixed social roles, cosmopolitan culture becomes dangerous because it
demonstrates that people can live otherwise. Cultural exclusion converts
difference into defect.
If
the Nowaks show the floor giving way and the Landauers show the walls closing
in, Sally shows the ceiling collapsing on those who imagined they could remain
above the crisis.
Belonging as the Measure of a Society
The Book of Ruth and Goodbye to Berlin move in opposite directions.
- Whatever the historical reality in ancient Israel, Bethlehem in the Book of Ruth is a society with an expansive circle of belonging. The city provides a safety net for the poor, makes room for a foreigner without erasing her difference, and praises the woman who chose not to conform to gender and patriarchal norms of behavior.
- Isherwood’s Berlin depicts the reverse process: a society that narrows the terms of belonging until poverty, foreignness and nonconformity, become grounds for exclusion. As Berlin’s circle of belonging contracts, difference is no longer merely noticed but treated as evidence of danger, disloyalty, or defect.
This
comparison reveals that belonging is never only a private
feeling. Belonging depends on social practices, public institutions, and
political choices that determine who receives protection, dignity, and the
freedom to remain different.
Together, the Book of Ruth and Goodbye to Berlin offer a simple but profound insight: a society reveals its character not only by whom it welcomes. Communities are measured by whether they make room for vulnerable and unconventional people—or cast them out when fear, scarcity, and ideology make exclusion seem useful.
The Third Post in a Three-part Series
- Part III:
The Book of Ruth, Goodbye to Berlin, and the Politics of Who of Belongs
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.