In October of 2008, my now husband and I stood under a chuppah and said to each other:
Where you go, I will go.
Where you lodge, I will lodge.
Your people will be my people
And your God, my God.
Where you die, I will die
And there, I will be buried.
Just six months prior, the California Supreme Court had ruled that the prohibition on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. And faster than you could say referendum, a referendum was on the November ballot to exclude same-sex couples, which the voters of California did, in fact, pass.
In the six months between ruling and referendum, though, queer couples in California raced to the altar, thinking this might be their first and last chance to formalize their unions. My now husband and I were among them.
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The words we said to each other were a gift from the Book of Ruth (1:16-17). That book, very concerned with marital status, is our traditional reading for Shavuot, the holiday next ahead. Shavuot itself has a subtext of marriage — God’s marriage to the Jewish people. In some Sephardi congregations, a ketubah is even read before the Shavuot Torah portion.
The book follows the experience of Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi; both of their husbands have died in a plague, and neither woman has fathers or sons. Naomi is a refugee in Moab, and Ruth will soon be an immigrant to Judah. They are statusless and stateless. Ruth’s beautiful oath to Naomi — the same one we uttered under the chuppah — emerges against a background of grief and ignites the process by which Ruth and Naomi move themselves from the margins back to the center.
The Book of Ruth is also particularly resonant for many queer people. It certainly was for my husband and me, having lived the nightmare of the AIDS epidemic, our own plague in which so many fathers and sons died. Ruth’s words to Naomi declared love and loyalty in the context of a relationship for which there was no good name; theirs was neither a marriage nor a business partnership. They were two individuals bound by shared experience and mutual care.
We chose Ruth’s vow to Naomi as our own instead of adapting the traditional words, harei at m’kudeshet li, “behold, you are consecrated to me,” a formula that arises out of a legal concept of kinyan, or acquisition. Those traditional words activate a legal form in which marital rights reside exclusively with the husband. This form has caused no small amount of suffering among observant women who do not have legal standing to divorce their husbands Jewishly, even in the case of abuse or abandonment. Even though the harei at m’kudeshet language has been reinterpreted in some corners of Judaism to mean something else, it felt wrong to kick off our own marriage — especially in that moment of historic newness — with such unattractive baggage. But declining the traditional language did not mean we didn’t want Jewish language.
Ruth’s words were not a “second best.” They felt loving, simple, complete. A surrendering rather than a taking. They promised a shared journey, home, family, and spirituality, from now until death do us part. They were ancient and deeply Jewish. Beyond the poetry in them — and in Hebrew, they are especially gorgeous — they invoked this very queer narrative that sits in our tradition: the story of Ruth and Naomi, the outsiders, finding companionship and crafting a future.
In the Book of Ruth, Ruth’s oath comes at a tender moment. Naomi, after the death of her husband and sons, decides to return to her birthplace. She tells Ruth not to come with her, but to return to her childhood home instead. But Ruth will not be told to go home. Her language is reminiscent of ancient Near Eastern treaty language. Like King Yehoshaphat of Judah pledging military support to King Ahab of Israel: “I will do what you do; my people are your people, my horses are your horses.” (I Kings 22:4) Or Ittai the Gattite commander, following King David into exile, saying, “As Adonai lives and as my lord the king lives, wherever my lord the king is, I shall be, whether for death or life, there your servant shall be.” (II Samuel 15:21).
Ruth’s words are not those of a desperate and disempowered person, but an assertion of her own sovereignty. She loves like a daughter and speaks like a king.
It is perhaps this chutzpah to declare that no matter how marginalized you might seem in the eyes of society, no matter how much you are told to do otherwise, you have the power to offer your loyalty and your life to another, that made “where you go, I will go” so compelling for us as we looked into each other’s eyes under that orange harvest sky.
By the end of the Book of Ruth, there’s a traditional happy ending. Ruth is married to the kind and wealthy Boaz, giving her official status and patriarchal protection. She has given birth to an infant who is destined to be the grandfather of King David. But the story has one last queer turn for us. After the baby is born, the neighbor women call out, “A child is born to Naomi!” (Ruth 4:17). Naomi is given the honor of a parent, even though she shares no biological connection to the child. The text’s recognition of this family in all its fullness further speaks to queer (and adoptive!) families, who often are subjected to intrusive questions of maternity and paternity that trivialize the kinship framework the family has established and articulated. Naomi’s neighbors do much better than many of our own friends and families.
Queer people need stories, not only the new ones we tell each other, but the old ones we have inherited. The Book of Ruth is one such story, a mirror in which we see ourselves and our own lives; a lens through which we identify a path from peril to safety, with good companionship and a promise of better things to come. And the words are so dang romantic. Where you go, I will go.
This essay initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter Recharge on May 2, 2026. To sign up to receive Recharge each week in your inbox, click here.
