Ruth is the tradition's test case for conversion and its clearest internal contradiction. Deuteronomy states that no Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the tenth generation. Ruth is a Moabite, and four generations later her descendant is David, from whom the messiah is supposed to come. The rabbis resolved it by ruling that the biblical ban applies to men and not to women — a reading with thin textual support and obvious purpose. Her declaration to Naomi, that where you go I will go, your people will be my people and your God my God, is treated as the paradigm of conversion, and the standard rabbinic account of how to discourage a would-be convert is built on Naomi's three attempts to send her home. The book is read on Shavuot, the festival of receiving the Torah, which frames the whole tradition as something that was accepted by choice rather than only inherited. That framing matters enormously to converts, who are told by law that they may never be reminded of their origin, and who report being reminded constantly.