Blameless

October 12, 2007
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

Our rabbis taught: Seven commandments were placed upon the descendants of Noah: to do social justice, to refrain from blasphemy, from idolatry; from adultery; from spilling human blood; from robbery; and from eating flesh cut from a living animal (Sanhedrin 56a).

The flood came upon the earth because, as God told Noah, "I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth. " That was the end of the old corrupt people and the old corrupt animals, too. With Noah, God expected to make a new beginning. After all, Noah was "a righteous person ... blameless in his age" and "Noah walked with God." But, as soon as the flood was over, things began to go wrong again. Noah got drunk. His daughters committed unspeakable sins. People went back to their corrupt ways.

So the flood taught God a lesson in parenting. If you create a person in Your image and give that person free will, then you have to allow that person to do whatever that person decides to do. The control cannot come only from punishment. After all, how many times could God keep on creating, seeing corruption, destroying, and creating again? God could only sigh and say, "These are my children. What they do is up to them. But what they need is a little guidance." And when God gives a piece of advice, we receive it as a mitzvah, a commandment.

For the Jews, the answer was ready. God gave them the Torah, chockablock with mitzvot, providing guidance for every day of their lives and every moment of every day. The Jews extended the Torah even further, continually adding to it the commandments, the advice, of the rabbis. But the Torah and the rabbinic commandments were too extensive for most people, too broad to do them any good.

So the rabbis wondered, does a person have to become a Jew, have to accept the whole Torah, in order to earn a place in heaven? There are some religions that maintain exactly that. If you do not follow this religion and accept it completely, you are doomed to hell. But the rabbis did not even have a concept like hell. If a Jew did not obey the commandments, he or she was left out of the glory of the world to come. Left out, but not doomed to any eternal suffering. Left out, in the sense of forgotten. The greatest curse they could imagine was Yimach Sh'mo, "His name would be erased." The greatest curse was to be forgotten entirely and forever.

From the rabbinic point of view, every Jew automatically has a reserved place in the world to come. Sinning can remove you from this place, but doing atonement restores you to it. So everything depends on what you do on earth. Even a murderer, someone who commits the ultimate wrong, can be restored to his or her place in the world to come. If the murderer is punished, even put to death, the murderer has paid for his or her crime, and the murderer becomes innocent again in the world to come. If a human being escapes punishment in this world, God searches his or her heart for repentance, provides the appropriate punishment, and, as soon as the punishment is over, the person is still restored to life in the world to come. No Jew can be doomed forever, provided that there is even a hint of repentance in his or her heart.

Still, that does not answer our question. Is every non-Jew destined to be forgotten entirely and forever? To this the rabbis responded, every person can earn a place in the world to come. The stranger and the enemy and the wayward can all earn a place by observing just seven mitzvot, seven laws. And these guidelines were given to all the descendants of Noah, to all humankind from the time that the Flood was over and the ark rested on Mount Ararat.

Six of these guidelines are phrased in the negative, as "Thou shalt not"s. A "thou shalt not" is easier than a "thou shalt," because it describes a specific action. So every human being is admonished by God to refrain from idolatry. Every human being is admonished to refrain from murder. Every human being is admonished to refrain from theft. Every human being is admonished to refrain from blasphemy, from swearing falsely by God's name. Every human being is admonished to refrain from sins of the flesh: incest and adultery. And every human being is admonished to refrain from eating flesh torn from a living animal.

All six of these commandments mark the difference between human beings and wild beasts. And they are the base level of laws that make it possible for human beings to live together in a community. No community will long endure if its members persist in idolatry, murder, incest and adultery, false testimony, and theft. And people are only wild beasts if they do not treat animals with respect.

The last of the seven laws requires a deeper level of choice: it requires social justice. Communities cannot live in peace while watching someone starve to death, live in the gutter, lose a husband or a father and have no means of support. But that's it. That is the full extent of the guidance given to the descendants of Noah, so the rabbis said.

If any non-Jew, no matter what he or she believes about God and the world, if anyone lives by these seven laws, then he or she is destined for a place in the world to come. A Jew has to fulfill all the laws of the Torah, including the Ten Commandments, but a non-Jew has a ticket to heaven by just following these seven laws of Noah.

Why should Jews be required to do more than these seven laws? Only because we made a covenant with heaven to be "a kingdom of priests and a holy people," to set the gold standard in sacred behavior, to be a model for other nations. We are chosen because we chose to be God's precious possession. We are chosen for extra duty, for more extreme punishment when we fail, for greater devotion, and for a higher awareness of God's guidance.

But any non-Jew can get to heaven with greater ease. So, even though we want more people to choose a Jewish way of life, we want them first to realize that they do not have to join us to be beloved by God. In fact, we always try to discourage people from joining us. It is hard enough if you are born a Jew, we tell them, but becoming one commits you to all these extra responsibilities. If you become a Jew, you must learn to suffer with Jews, even as you must learn to celebrate with them. Jews suffer in notorious ways and they celebrate in some odd ways. What other people sees its highest celebration as dancing with the Torah or being called for an aliyah, to bless the Torah reading? Most people prefer some Oktoberfest or Mardi Gras. What other people has a religion too difficult for children to understand, too difficult even for most adult Jews to fully understand, so that it requires lifelong learning? And what other people is constantly reminding itself of the destruction of its Temple, the loss of its homeland, and its prior existence as slaves?

Only seven laws are given to the descendants of Noah and they form the backbone of a kind of universal religion, placing good action above all issues of what you believe, setting ethical living above any creed or litany. All that any non-Jew needs to do to be equal to the most devout Jew is to recognize that there is a Creator who cares for us all, and to behave ethically, like a good citizen of the world.

As for the Jews, they are required to treat the stranger the way they treat themselves. If a good person joins our way of life, even if he or she does not choose to convert to Judaism, we do not question what he or she believes. We judge others as we judge ourselves, on how they behave. Live with us, be part of our community, eat what we eat, enjoy what we enjoy, be as independent and stiff-necked as the rest of us, and you are guaranteed a place in heaven. God gave non-Jews free will and God gave them guidance. God gave Jews free will and God gave Jews the Torah. It all amounts to the same thing. In the end, what we do in this world is the way we are judged. Our names will last forever, even until the world to come, provided that we learn to be like Noah, "righteous in our generation, blameless, and walking with God." And let us say: Amen.