Is it possible to set Ruby ENV with bash in Chef?

I have a Chef recipe in which I am creating a new randomly named user using a shell script and exporting the username as a variable. Is it possible to set the same user as a session variable in Ruby? Something like...

ENV['CHEFUSER'] = 'echo $CHEFUSER'

which does not work unfortunately. Or any way to pass environment variables from bash to ruby. I need this new user to be recognized in the same recipe in which it was created.

Thanks, sorry if this has been addressed, I could not find any info on it.

via Chebli Mohamed