…inhabitants of Shechem, knowing that their prince had committed a crime and failing to bring him to court, were collectively guilty of injustice. Nachmanides disagrees. The Noahide command to institute justice is a positive obligation to establish laws, courts and judges, but there is no principle of collective responsibility, nor is there liability to death for failure to implement the…
…have already seen one in our study of Succot. Judaism embraces both the universal and the particular, the universality of our humanity, given religious force in the Noahide covenant, and the particularity of our people’s relationship with God, epitomised in the covenant at Mount Sinai. The Jewish calendar gives weight to both. There is the cycle of the three pilgrimage…
…war against them. That is what Samuel told Saul to do, a command he failed fully to fulfil. Does this command still apply today? The unequivocal answer given by Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch is ‘No’.[5] Maimonides ruled that the command to destroy the Amalekites only applied if they refused to make peace and accept the seven Noahide laws. He further stated that…
…free. Honouring parents acknowledges our human createdness. It tells us that not everything that matters is the result of our choice, chief of which is the fact that we exist at all. Other people’s choices matter, not just our own. “Thou shall not murder” restates the central principle of the universal Noahide Covenant that murder is not just a crime…
…faiths finding their own relationship with God within the shared frame of the Noahide laws. These laws constitute, as it were, the depth grammar of the human experience of the Divine: of what it is to see the world as God’s work, and humanity as God’s image. God is God of all humanity, but between Babel and the end of…
QUOTES A collection of quotes from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l The Rabbi Sacks Legacy is delighted to share ‘Chiefly Quotes’, an inspirational PDF collection of 1600 quotes collated by Rabbi Johnny Solomon through his research of Rabbi Sacks’ canon of written work, and then arranged by theme. You can also find our growing bank of Rabbi Sacks quotes below,…
…all in God’s image, formed in His likeness. We share a covenant of human solidarity (the Noahide covenant). We are fellow citizens of the world God made and entrusted to our care. As Redeemer, however, God is particular. Whatever His relationship to other nations (and He has a relationship with other nations: so Amos and Isaiah insist), Jews know Him…
…culmination in the Noahide covenant, the covenant God makes with all humankind. But its great concerns are with the life we construct together and the terms on which we do so: justice, compassion, human dignity, peace, the limited and proper conduct of war, care for the dependent, welfare for the poor, concern for the long term viability of the environment,…
…“set apart” (this is the meaning of Bilaam’s famous phrase, “the people that dwells alone, not reckoned among the nations”). It mediates between God and the world. Its special laws of purity – not part of the universal Noahide commands between God and humanity as a whole – testify not to superiority but to national vocation. Like the priest, Israel…
…you can sort of visualise these words, but listen to them carefully. They are the sixth verse of the ninth chapter of Bereishis, the key sentence of the Noahide covenant. Shofech dam adam be’adam damo yeshafech. Can you hear that? A, B, C, C, B, A. In other words, there is a kind of mirror image between the first half…