On Shavuot, we recite the Torah-commanded trope, "My ancestor was a perishing Aremean." Yet – that description of his current state was not the final word on it. We see Ruth, a woman excluded from Israel by law – with her widowed and child-bereaved Jewish mother in law, Naomi, declaring "all hope for me is past." Yet – while these both seemed accurate at the moment, they was not close to the final word on either woman's existence. Let us truly learn Shavuot's lessons this year, in a way letting us live them genuinely in the year to come!