…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…
…and 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…
…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…
QUOTES Chiefly 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…
…not speaking about what the Bible refers to as a ger toshav, “a resident alien”, a non-Jew who lives within a Jewish state. To fall within this category, an individual was required to keep the seven Noahide laws, one of which is a prohibition against idolatry. The “ways of peace” belong to a post-biblical environment, but their strength lies in…
…Bereishit and their 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…
…“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…
…in its twelfth chapter is there a call to an individual, Abraham, to leave his land, family and father’s house and lead a life of righteousness through which “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” There are universals of human behaviour: we call them the Noahide Laws. But we worship God in and through the particularity of our…
…basis of Judaism. We believe it is the basis of humanity as a whole. The administration of justice is one of the seven Noahide commands. So, says the Talmud, kol dayan shedan din emet le-amitato, ‘Any judge who delivers a just verdict becomes a partner with the Holy One, blessed be He, in the work of creation.’ How then can…
…universal orders of civilisation, God rejects the very concept of the universal order. He doesn’t cease the universal request that we call the seven Noahide laws, but he does no longer hope to believe that all human beings will worship God in the same way or will be a single culture. He says at the Tower of Babel: look at…