Click here for Part One and Part Two of this article.
See: "War is not new to Israel" (Oct 16, 2023); "Jewish wisdom during war" (Oct 23, 2023); "Abraham's principles in war and peace" (Oct 31, 2023); "Facts and truths amid the fog of war" (Nov 13, 2023); "Samson in war and peace" (Nov 26, 2023), "The indestructible Jews in peace and war" (Dec 5, 2023), "Jewish victory depends on Jewish unity" (Dec 14, 2023), "Dear World, Part One" (Dec 25, 2023), "Dear World, Part Two" (Jan 1, 2024).
Jew-hatred is nothing new. If one has ever studied the Torah and Judaism one learns that from the very inception of Creation there is a fundamental struggle between Good and Evil. What makes it more confusing is that Evil itself clothes itself in the garments of "good" like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Jews throughout history have been the victims of such dangerous forces that have fought them. The ancient Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans did not think of themselves as "evil" but rather conveyed themselves as marvelous and superior "good" empires and cultures and looked down on the "primitive" monotheistic Jews who worshipped a mysterious invisible God who created all and ran the world, according to the Jews' Torah. The Jews survived these egotistical power-hungry empires that all suffered dramatic, and to them unexpected, downfalls.
Then came along new expansionist religions that viewed themselves as the ultimate "good" such as Christianity and Islam that were in fact distorted historical offshoots of Judaism who claimed to replace Judaism with their own intolerant violent visions, with ambitions of taking over the world with their own brand of self-proclaimed monopolies on salvation that the Jews resisted with all of their spiritual and physical might. In modern times came secular totalitarian ideologies such Fascism, Nazism and Communism that preached godless messages of intolerance and hate that they too cloaked in words that made them take on the mantle of the wolf in sheep's clothing disguise. In their twisted minds seeing themselves as the "good guys" in their own blinded-by-hate eyes and in the hypnotized eyes of the hundreds of millions, probably billions, of blind fools that followed them brainlessly, often as willing canon-fodder.
Various forms of Nationalism, Colonialism, and Imperialism offered themselves up as worthy of the ultimate "good" of their people and humankind but failed and came crashing down in wars and violent revolutions taking down old monarchies and modern small states alike. There have also been more moderate humanistic and humanitarian movements such as modern Liberalism, Socialism, Globalism, Environmentalism, Pacifism, and believers in the famous motto of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity who viewed themselves as the ultimate "good" promising Utopian solutions to humankind's problems, yet at the very time these movements came along there were also world wars, world revolutions, economic collapses, international and localized conflicts that have sacrificed the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings.
The recent war that broke out on October 7, 2023 when the Arabs of Gaza embodied in Hamas, believing in violent and bloody "Jihad" as their own "good", took Israel by surprise and started a war of their own choosing against Israel that echoes many of the above struggles that can be embodied in the simple concept of the Jews being attacked by evil once again. Today's Arab, Muslim, Western and international enemies of Israel and its Jews and of Jews everywhere, continue the hate filled tidal waves of violence, hatred, and genocidal intentions like of the ancient Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Christians, Muslims, Kingdoms, Empires, Caliphates, Fascists, Nazis, Bolsheviks, Communists that cover themselves up with deceptive packaging that makes them sound like "good" "liberals" or "progressive" "socialists" or "kind" "humanitarians" who are in sad truth and raw reality just plain old Jew-haters and antisemites repackaged in modern-day marketing and media propaganda from which assuredly, as in the past, God will save the Jews, and most notably, the Jews of Israel!
Here, continuing from part one and part two, are more of the irrational myths that the modern Jew-haters and antiisemites keep on spewing out and that gets mindlessly plastered all over the web and in the media:
Charging that Israel is nothing but a "proxy" of the United States and the West in the Middle East: What Jew-haters forget, and sometimes this includes Jews who are ignorant of their own people's history, is that the Jewish People have been around for a very, very, very long time! The Jews are the continuation of the Children of Israel that Moses led out of the Egyptian exile over 3,300 years ago. That means, among other things, that the Jewish People are about 3,300 years older than the new country of the United States. In fact, if you study the history of the founding fathers of the United States who were mainly believers in the Hebrew Bible since they were all Protestants who knew and believed in the Hebrew Bible (that they called the Old Testament) they drew inspiration from the ancient Children of Israel breaking the iron grip of Pharaoh, as they were breaking away from the British king; from the Israelites escaping from ancient Egypt, as they were escaping Great Britain; with the Israelites heading for freedom from Egyptian slavery, as they were escaping subservience to the British; and the Children of Israel receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, as they were drawing up a new American Constitution and a Bill of Rights.
"Israel" is as much an ancient spiritual notion, construct and idea as it is an ancient people and a modern country by that name that belongs to the Jewish People. Therefore to speak of Israel in any manner, be it from the Bible or in a modern political sense is to refer to something, a phenomenon and entity that is more than 3,300 years old! Israel, in all its meanings precedes the history, idea and make-up of not just the United States of America but of basically any country, nation or kingdom in the world extant today. Israel in its main meaning is the Jewish People and the Jewish People is the nation Israel. In fact, in Judaism it is taught that "Israel,Torah, God, are one"! That is the real Jewish "trinity" and by ""Israel" is meant both the People of Israel, meaning the Jewish People, and, the Land of Israel, the land and home of the Jewish People going back to the times when God promised the Land of Canaan that was to be the Land of Israel to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Biblical forefathers of the People of Israel almost 4,000 years ago!
Speaking in psychological terms, when, for example, Islamic fundamentalists refer to Israel as a "proxy" of America or of the West it is just a twisted psychological projection because the only real proxies are the Iranian ones such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen that Iran arms to the teeth and incites them to wage war against Israel and anyone else that Iran hates. Israel is nobody's "proxy" and it only acts to protect its own citizens from damage, destruction and death that its enemies scheme and seek to inflict upon it.
Israel is like Nazi Germany and its Jews are Nazis: First of all Germany is a huge country and Israel is a tiny country. It is estimated that in 1940 Germany had a population of about one hundred and ten million people living in it while Israel today has no more than about seven million Jews in it, out of a total world Jewish population of about fourteen million. There are almost five hundred million Arabs in the world today, dwarfing tiny Israel many times over. How on earth could Israel be like Nazi Germany then, when it faces such huge and gargantuan Arab odds against it and yet it still somehow miraculously survives all the attempts by the Arabs to annihilate it? Not to mention that there are well over two BILLION Muslims in the world about 25% of humanity, while Jews in total comprise about 0.2% (zero point two percent) of the world's people! Does anyone think that that makes Israel and its Jews into "Nazi Germany" or into "Nazis"? What a joke to call Jews "Nazis" and Israel a replica of "Nazi Germany"!
Which part of Israel and its Jews is like Nazi Germany? That its Jews have Jewish pride? Well, which nation or people does not have national pride? That its Jews have an army that fights its enemies to protect it? Which nation with an army does not have the same military ethos? That it views itself as superior to its antisemitic enemies? What nation has such low self-esteem that it considers itself inferior to its enemies? Bottom line, even with a little thought and contemplation it is utterly absurd, stupid and even comical to compare tiny, vulnerable, victimized Israel to the haughty, arrogant, massive and murderous Nazis or to today's Jew-haters and antisemites!
If anything, if one digs a little bit into the history of the Nazi German Third Reich and its influence in its heyday on the Arabs and Muslims of the world, one sees a big connection and cooperation of relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world:
"The antisemitism of the Nazis...was admired by some Arab and Muslim leaders, most notably the exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, see 'antisemitism in Islam'. In public and private, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler made complimentary statements about Islam...and commending what they perceived were Muhammad's skills in politics and military leadership. Minor Nazi party branches were established in the Middle East before the war...In June 1941, Wehrmacht High Command Directive No. 32...designated Special Staff F as the Wehrmacht's central agency for all issues that affected the Arab world...The two most noted Arab politicians who actively collaborated with the Nazis were the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, and the Iraqi prime minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani....
Amin al-Husseini became the most prominent Arab collaborator with the Axis powers. He developed friendships with high-ranking Nazis, including Heinrich Himmler, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and (possibly) Adolf Eichmann. He contributed to Axis propaganda services and he also contributed to the recruitment of both Arab Muslim and non-Arab Muslim soldiers for the Nazi armed forces, including three SS divisions which consisted of Bosnian Muslims. He was involved in planning 'wartime operations directed against Palestine and Iraq, including parachuting Germans and Arab agents to foment attacks against the Jews in Palestine.' He assisted the German entry into North Africa, particularly the German entry into Tunisia and Libya. His espionage network provided the Wehrmacht with a forty-eight-hour warning of the Allied invasion of North Africa...He intervened and protested to government authorities in order to prevent Jews from emigrating to Mandatory Palestine. There is persuasive evidence that he was aware of the Nazi Final Solution." (Wikipedia)
Anti-Zionism is not anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism: It all depends who one is talking about. For example, if it is the the anti-Zionism by a minority of very religious Jews in opposition to the ideology of secular political Zionism, such as by the Haredi Satmar Hasidim in America and the Eidah Hachareidis community in Israel, it is not antisemitic because they are obviously very Jewish, pro-Judaism and many of its adherents suffered from antisemitism and persecution by the Nazis during the Holocaust. There are Satmar Hasidim who live in Israel and the Eidah Hachareidis community has existed in Israel for over a hundred years, even before the state started, but they refuse any connection with the modern state of Israel. They represent a very small minority of the overall Haredi and Hasidic Jewish groups, such as Agudas Yisrael and Degel HaTorah in Israel who espouse a more moderate outlook to the secular aspects of the modern state of Israel and cooperate with secular Israeli political leaders sitting in the same Israeli governments together, as an example.
While all Haredi and Hasidic groups do share some degree of opposition to the ideology of secular political Zionism it must never be equated with the anti-Judaism or antisemitism of non-Jewish Jew-haters and gentile antisemites. It would be absurd to say that Hasidim are "anti-Semitic" which would mean they hate themselves or that they are "anti-Judaism" which would mean they oppose their own very religious Jewish identity and lifestyle.
However, when for example, modern-day radical Islamic fundamentalists speak of "Anti-Zionism" it clearly means antisemitism and anti-Judaism given the way its representatives such as Hamas from Gaza acted on October 7, 2023 that did not differentiate between secular and religious Jews, killing both hip secular Israeli party goers and religious Jews heading to synagogue. In fact Hamas chose the Jewish religious holiday of Simchat Torah to launch their heinous attack on October 7, 2023. They thereby proved that their brand of anti-Zionism is no different to the crassest form of anti-Judaism and antisemitism of the German Nazis who did not differentiate between secular or religious Jews when it came to murdering them.
Likewise when Hezbollah in Lebanon indiscriminately fires rockets and missiles into Israel not caring what kind of Jewish target they hit, that is proof enough that its anti-Zionism is no different to any form of Jew-hatred be it anti-Judaism or antisemitism.
When the Houthis of Yemen attack ships with "Israeli connections" they do not ask if those Israeli ship owners or investors are secular, religious Zionist, Haredi or Hasidic Jews because their "anti-Zionism" is just plain old blunt Jew-hatred and crude antisemitism.
What the non-Jewish enemies of the Jews mean when they use the anti-Zionism label as a pejorative is that they are anti-the Jews of Israel or anti the modern state of Israel and the corollary to that is they seek its dismemberment and destruction without caring as to what happens to any of the approximately seven million Jews who live within the boundaries of the state of Israel. The haters of modern Israel, be they Jew-haters or Judaism-haters, are blinded by their hatred and cannot think rationally. Some of them refer to this or that verse or quote from Jewish lore or from the Koran or from an antisemitic hate source as if it is the "ten commandments" which it is not.
In Torah circles for example, the greatest of Jewish sages who lived in recent times, such as the Chazon Ish, the Steipler Gaon, Rav Schach, Rav Eliashiv, the Gerrer Rebbes, the Belzer Rebbes and other Torah greats who lived in Israel in the times of modern Israel knew, as an example, about the Talmud's "Three Oaths" as knowledgeably as anyone else, yet they still supported Haredi and Hasidic involvement in the Israeli Knesset and had hearts full of love for all of Israel's Jewish people from the most religious Haredi Jews to the most secular Jewish Israelis wanting them to live and thrive in the Land of Israel.
Palestinian Arabs are "refugees" and live in "refugee camps": This is one of the most over-exploited cynical political maneuvers ever dreamed up in modern times. There were millions of Jews who fled Arab countries as refugees after 1948 as well as those who became displaced persons after the Holocaust in Europe that came to the new Jewish state of Israel. By now their descendants number several million Israeli Jews. No one advocates or pretends that they are somehow permanent vagabonds and nebbishes who want to go back "home" to the Arab countries or European states their grandparents or great-grandparents came from. Yet for those Arabs who were displaced from their homes in the British Mandate of Palestine and following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war they have been indoctrinated that they have a "right of return" and that they are living as "refugees" in "refugee camps"! Incidentally during the 1948 war between the the invading Arab armies and the new state of Israel, the Palestinian Arabs were told by their Arab leaders to flee to make way for the invading Arab armies who were openly planning to massacre Palestine's Jews and kick any Jewish survivors into the sea, at which they failed.
Some Arabs from old Palestine landed up living in the Gaza Strip which was held by the Egyptian army after 1948 and in the West Bank that was controlled by the Jordanians after 1948 as well as in Lebanon. In Israel proper its Arabs were integrated into Israeli society and given Israeli citizenship with rights equal to Jewish Israelis. In 1967 during the Six Day War, Israel defeated the Egyptian and Jordanian armies and gained control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. From 1948 to 1967, for almost twenty years the Egyptians and Jordanians kept the old Palestinian Arabs in so-called refugee camps cruelly refusing to integrate them into Egypt and Jordan even though the Palestinian Arabs were their fellow Arabs and Muslims.
Remember, after 1948, Israel integrated its own Arabs into Israeli society and gave them full rights equal to Jewish Israelis, while Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon did not do that but rather practiced segregation, yes "apartheid" from Palestinian Arabs in their midst that they refused to absorb and integrate into their countries and grant them full citizenship. What a disgrace!
Most significantly Egypt and Jordan did not grant the Palestinians the status of a so-called "state" by combining the Gaza Strip and the West Bank while they fully controlled those two areas from 1948 to 1967. In fact to the contrary, Egypt, Jordan and Syria supported and armed Arab marauding squads of terrorists known as the Fedayeen during the Fedayeen insurgency mainly from 1949 to 1956 who murdered hundreds of Israelis in cold blood.
Then in 1964 while the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control and the West Bank was under Jordanian rule the the entire Arab World under the auspices of the Arab League founded the Palestine Liberation Organization to liberate all of Palestine, meaning Israel itself, because obviously the Gaza Strip and the West Bank did not need "liberating" in 1964 since they were under Egyptian and Jordanian Arab rule already. Note, at that point, neither the Arab League nor Egypt and Jordan dreamt of giving the so-called Arab Palestinians a start up state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank because they had their sights set on the "liberation" of Jewish Israel and making that into an Arab state.
The upshot of all this is that the so-called Arab Palestinian "refugees" in "refugee camps" were merely puppets and pawns of Arab political grandmasters in Egypt and Jordan who had their own dreams of using these pawns to first attack Israel and then over-run it with Arab Fedayeen as Hamas did on October 7, 2023. So the entire story of Palestinian "refugees" in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere is a contrived Arab geopolitical tool or contraption and mechanism whereby the Arab powers that be, joined by the rest of the United Nations and a world hostile Israel and Jews, want to pressure Israel into self-destruction by accepting the "refugees" into both their own borders with the so-called "right of return" and by using the "refugees" in "refugee camps" in Gaza Strip and West Bank proper for a "two state solution" as a prelude to the "final solution to the Jewish question" they hope to implement against Israel. The Jewish people of Israel will never allow this scenario to transpire or come anywhere near to fruition.
Israel commits "genocide" against the Arabs and the Palestinians: Let's get the facts straight: On October 7, 2023 Hamas launched a war against Israel and killed over 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped over 240 of its citizens. Hamas was elected by the Arabs of the Gaza Strip. The United States has officially designated Hamas as a terrorist organization since 1997. Do not forget that in any discussion about the current situation. What did Hamas and Israel's critics expect? That Israel would twiddle its thumbs and do nothing? Israel had withdrawn from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and by 2006 Hamas had taken complete control of it. Instead of turning the Gaza Strip into a flourishing economic hub with all the billions in foreign aid and investment Hamas received from abroad, instead Hamas chose to turn the Gaza Strip into an armed fortress, built hundred of miles of attack tunnels under the ground and acquired weapons, rockets and missiles to attack Israel and from 2006 fought a series of wars with Israel until it launched its deadliest attack on the Jewish state on October 7, 2023.
Therefore, Israel counter-attacked and launched an all out war on Hamas in all of the Gaza Strip with no holds barred but at no time did Israel set out to kill out every last Arab in the Gaza Strip or anywhere else. The fact that the majority of Gazans were displaced from their homes does not equal "genocide". Blame Hamas for building its bases under and in homes, hospitals, mosques, schools and anything else that they pick on as a haven to attack Israel. Israel has asked Gazans to move to safe zones all the time. Just the fact that Israel allows inumerable convoys of supply-laden trucks to help the displaced Gazans is proof enough that Israel has not, does not and will not perpetrate "genocide" against the Arab Gazans.
The ideal would be for Egypt that is next door to the Gaza Strip to open its borders and welcome in its fellow Arab Muslim Gazan brothers and sisters who have been displaced by the fury of the battles between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces. That would require a degree of maturity, magnanimity and humanitarianism that the Egyptian are obviously incapable of and are adamant against. The Egyptians would like to see the Gazans suffer as long as they can manipulate the situation against Israel's interests. The international community is more than welcome to take in all the refugee Gazans if they think that they will be or are being subjected to "genocide" but everyone knows that there never has been, is not, and will never be "genocide" committed by the Jews of Israel who know first-hand what real genocide is following the experiences of the Jewish People at the hands of the merciless truly genocidal Nazis.
Popular propaganda likes to throw around words like "genocide" when they know its a false accusation against Israel but it serves to tar and feather the Jewish state all the same. If a lie is repeated often enough then ignorant people who are easily manipulated will start to think it is "true" when it is just a red herring and a lot of hot air being vented by antisemites and Jew-haters. If anything, if you look at modern history it is not too hard to find cases of genuine genocide that have taken place, such as the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, the genocide of the Armenians by the the Turks, the genocide of the Uyghurs by the Chinese and hundreds more verified genocides all over the world that could and should concern those who worry about "genocide" and who must stop picking on Israel and the Jews for doing something that Jews find abhorrent.
Wanting and waiting for a "two state solution": The way things have been going until now, this will never happen for the simple reason, as a famous Israeli politician put it that "the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity"! The Arabs have been offered the opportunity to have a "two state solution" multiple times and have always turned it down because what they are after is not "two states" with one being Jewish and another one Arab, but rather the Arabs seek the complete destruction of Israel and the annihilation of its Jews. Under such circumstances it is understandable why the Arabs have turned down every offer of a two state solution since the founding of Israel in 1948 and why Israel has no real partner in such a proposed remedy even though many Israelis would love to have total peace with all of their Arab neighbors if it meant giving up land and creating a two state solution that would and could bring a true final end to the Arab–Israeli conflict and the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, which is as elusive now as it was in 1948.
These are some of the main times the Palestinians and their Arab overlords have been offered a path to a two-state solution but each time they refused to accept it:
- 1947United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine: "The Arab Higher Committee, the Arab League and other Arab leaders and governments rejected it on the basis that in addition to the Arabs forming a two-thirds majority, they owned a majority of the lands. They also indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division, arguing that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN Charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny. They announced their intention to take all necessary measures to prevent the implementation of the resolution. Subsequently, a civil war broke out in Palestine, and the plan was not implemented."
- 1993Oslo I Accord: "Palestinian reactions were also divided. Fatah, the group that represented the Palestinians in the negotiations, accepted the accords. But Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine objected to the accords."
- 1995Oslo Accords: Summarizing the Arab point of view "Edward Said in an interview said, 'Israel and the Western governments want Arafat to repress certain elements of his society...I am for peace. And I am for a negotiated peace. But this accord is not a just peace'."
- 1998Wye River Memorandum: "Both parties accused each other of not fulfilling its share of responsibilities under the Wye River Memorandum, and the further implementation of the agreement remained unfinished."
- 2000Camp David Summit: "The summit ended without an agreement and its failure is considered one of the main triggers of the Second Intifada. Reports of the outcome of the summit have been described as illustrating the Rashomon effect, in which the multiple witnesses gave contradictory and self-serving interpretations."
- 2007–8Israeli–Palestinian talks: "Following the conflict that erupted between the two main Palestinian parties, Fatah and Hamas, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, splintering the Palestinian Authority into two polities, each claiming to be the true representatives of the Palestinian people. Fatah controlled the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank and Hamas governed in Gaza. Hostilities between Gaza and Israel increased. Egypt brokered the 2008 Israel–Hamas ceasefire, which lasted half a year beginning on 19 June 2008 and lasted until 19 December 2008. The collapse of the ceasefire led to the Gaza War on 27 December 2008"
- 2010–1Israeli–Palestinian peace talks: "Direct talks broke down in late September 2010 when an Israeli partial moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank expired and Netanyahu refused to extend the freeze unless the Palestinian Authority recognized Israel as a Jewish State, while the Palestinian leadership refused to continue negotiating unless Israel extended the moratorium. The proposal was rejected by the Palestinian leadership, that stressed that the topic on the Jewishness of the state has nothing to do with the building freeze."
- 2013–4Israeli–Palestinian peace talks: "On the expiry of the deadline, negotiations collapsed, with the US Special Envoy Indyk reportedly assigning blame mainly to Israel, while the US State Department insisted no one side was to blame but that 'both sides did things that were incredibly unhelpful'."
- 2019–20Trump peace plan: "The plan was authored by a team led by Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner. Both the West Bank settlers' Yesha Council and the Palestinian leadership rejected the plan, the former because it envisaged a Palestinian state, and the latter arguing that it was too biased in favor of Israel."
As Albert Einstein famously said: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results"! For about seventy five years, since 1947, Israel, the Palestinians, the United States, the Arab World and the rest of the world have been trying to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results when as the famous saying goes; "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" which means that "the real value of something can be judged only from practical experience or results and not from appearance or theory."! So let's just face the facts and reality and own up to history that a so-called "two state solution" will never happen!
"Allahu Akbar"–"God is great" meaning that God favors Islam, or Christianity, or any other religion, besides Judaism: Let's get to the conclusion first: The Jewish God is the one and only true God of the entire universe which He created. In His wisdom He has chosen the Jewish People to be his "first born" as it says in the Torah. Muslims can shout "Allahu Akbar" as much as they want but that will not change the reality that the God of the Jews rules supreme and even though gentiles, such as Muslims and Christians can reach him they nevertheless cannot get God to override his favoritism for the Jewish People.
Without the Jews and Judaism there would not have been Christianity and Christians or Islam and Muslims. The Torah is the foundation on which both the Christians' New Testament and the Muslims' Koran are built. Judaism is the purest of the three main monotheistic so-called Abrahamic religions. The pity is that most of Israel's and the world's Jews are secular and don't know this simple truth. Most Muslims are believers in Allah and they believe that Muhammed is the true prophet of God and there are over two billion of them. About as many Christians in the world believe that Jesus is God. While that may be good for the Christians and the Muslims in that it's a system of belief in God that is way ahead of paganism or atheism, as stated by Maimonides, it is still not up to the standards that Judaism requires of all gentiles (non-Jews).
Ideally, Judaism requires that non-Jews accept and practice the Seven Noahide Laws, namely: "1. Not to worship idols. 2. Not to curse God. 3. Not to commit murder. 4. Not to commit adultery or sexual immorality. 5. Not to steal. 6. Not to eat flesh torn from a living animal. 7. To establish courts of justice."
Gentiles can easily learn about all this, for example on Wikipedia that explains: "The seven Noahide laws as traditionally enumerated in the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 56 a-b and Tosefta Avodah Zarah 9:4. According to the Talmud, the seven laws were given first to Adam and subsequently to Noah. The Tannaitic and Amoraitic rabbinic sages (1st–6th centuries CE) disagreed on the exact number of Noahide laws that were originally given to Adam. Six of the seven laws were exegetically derived from passages in the Book of Genesis, with the seventh being the establishment of courts of justice.
The earliest complete rabbinic version of the seven Noahide laws can be found in the Tosefta: Seven commandments were commanded of the sons of Noah: 1. concerning adjudication (dinim) 2. concerning idolatry (avodah zarah) 3. concerning blasphemy (qilelat ha-Shem). 4. concerning sexual immorality (gilui arayot). 5. concerning blood-shed (shefikhut damim). 6. concerning robbery (gezel). 7. concerning a limb torn from a living animal (ever min ha-hay)."
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College–Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach – Kiruv Rechokim. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at[email protected]
...