Schueller House

... increasing awareness of Torah among non-Jews ...

Seven Colors of the Rainbow

Chapter I

Among all the nations of the world and all their religions, not one regularly offers anything to people who do not belong to that faith or nation. Each and every group says to others, “Join us, and do as we do, and then you can benefit from what we have. If you do not, then you are no concern of ours, beyond what we do of our own accord.” Because the Jews do not seek to convert others to their own religion, most people assume that they are just happy to be left alone and that, if they had something to contribute to an average person's life, they would be trying to win new recruits to their cause.

Yet this is not the case. Behind the Jews' reluctance to turn other people into Jews, there is a full understanding of non-Jewish needs and a complete framework within which to satisfy those needs. The world is full of different ways and opinions, although everyone knows at heart that it is all one. Every nation has its own place in the sun, and every individual wants to follow his or her own destiny. In practice, though, this often leads to disharmony. The competing parties have too much at stake to become true allies. Something is still missing from their outlook, something to make it all hold together. The parties are alike in being non-Jewish, but no one would claim that non-Jewishness is only the negative state of not being a Jew, without any value or destiny of its own. This is not the claim of the Bible nor of the scholars of the Jewish tradition throughout history, today as always. But these two questions of Jewish and non-Jewish identity are linked, and one cannot be answered without the other.

Before any of us can know who we are, we must find out about our common origin in its truth. We see how and why humanity became divided into two distinct forms, the Jewish and the Gentile. We shall need to know what the Bible itself really is and not call it by that name, which means merely “book,” but by the Hebrew word Torah, which means “teaching.” Torah is the living source of truth and holds the key to the lives of all humanity, Jew and Gentile alike.

And even before this, one must know that there is a God, and that He is the origin and cause of everything; for all things that exist have causes, but He alone has no cause greater than Him.

The answers begin with history, the true history of the origins of humankind. There was a creation at a particular point in time, after the creation of time itself, which manifested the world in its completeness, prepared for people as we have always known them. They never lacked the upright posture, their intelligent faculties, and the human surroundings of houses and furniture and clothes. All of humanity descends only from human ancestors, without any origin at a lower level of accomplishment. At the time of the creation, after the world with all its life forms was ready, God formed and made a single man and woman, intended for marriage and the bearing of children. They were created as young adults, and at first they did not live on the physical plane as we know it, but in a higher spiritual state known as the Garden of Eden, where they were close to truth and wisdom and where all their needs were provided for. At this time God gave them six moral precepts to uphold. They were commanded to establish law in society, not to blaspheme by cursing the Creator, to worship nothing other than Him, not to steal or kill, and to refrain from forbidden sexual relations. They were also subject to the seventh precept, the prohibition of eating meat taken from a living animal, but since they were not then allowed to eat meat at all they were not in possession of this moral precept in the same sense as the others. They married there in the garden, and they were assured that they would remain forever on this high spiritual level, producing children like themselves, if only they would earn the merit of fulfilling one divine commandment: to refrain from eating the fruit of a particular tree of the Garden (Gen 2:16-17). Because this fruit had been placed outside their ownership, they would transgress the prohibition against theft if they appropriated it for food. Even though they were very wise, they were led through the limitations of their reasoning to eat of that fruit, and thus the evil which had existed separately from them beforehand became mixed in with their own nature. Their bodies assumed a more physical constitution, they lost many of the higher levels of their wisdom and beauty, and they were expelled from the Garden to work for their own maintenance, much as we do today. Nevertheless they retained the essential human attribute known as the “image of God": the human face and upright posture, the faculty of speech, and the intelligence to understand their Creator and to fulfill His wishes through moral conduct. They were the ancestors of all humanity, both Jews and Gentiles, and they knew the wisdom of the Torah as the Jews have it today from the relatively high level that they still occupied. After entering into their new state, the man and the woman remained obligated to fulfill the six commandments they had been given in the Garden of Eden. If they departed from these precepts, they would be penalized, just as in a different sense they had been in the Garden. If, on the other hand, they kept them faithfully, they would receive reward. In particular, the observance of these commandments would have the benefit of bringing all of creation back toward the state of Eden so that it might be completely restored at a time when God would choose. Everything was left to the man and woman's free will so that they might earn merit by choosing the path of kindness and obedience. At this stage, they were still forbidden to eat meat as food, and thus the tooth structure of all humanity is clearly adapted for eating vegetables, being far different from that of meat-eating animals with long, sharp incisors. In the event they kept the commandments faithfully, they would depart this world with a clear conscience and a good name, cleansed of their first sin.

They produced many children, among whom were also wise men and women, but within a short time moral standards declined so sharply that the majority of people became wrongdoers, committing violent robbery, sexual misdemeanors, and acts of false worship, all breaches of the commandments given at the start. Although God had foreseen this, the actuality brought out His divine grief and regret over having created humankind, and He resolved to destroy His world and begin the creation over again. However, there was at this time, seven full generations after the first man and woman were created, still one man who had kept the charge of upright conduct given to his ancestors and who was worthy to be spared. This was Noah, whose name derives from the Hebrew word for the “comfort” that he brought into the world. When this name is reversed it spells out the Hebrew word chen, meaning beauty or grace, as is written (Gen 6:8), “But Noah found grace in the eyes of God.” This symmetry in the words is the key to the kind of beauty that he represented. Noah was a man of great wisdom. He studied the Torah. He was a prophet and a married man, whose wife and sons also shared his level of conduct. He became prophetically aware of God's intention to destroy all the rest of humanity by a great flood if they would not cease from their evil. God told Noah to save himself by building a large wooden vessel before the people of his generation over a long period of time, in the hope that by watching his efforts they would realize the truth and also be saved. But it was not so, and amid threats to Noah's life from the watchers, God led him and all his immediate family into the ark that he had built. Along with Noah and his family came breeding pairs of every animal that had refrained from the sexual perversions being committed at the time. God Himself shut them safely inside the ark before the rains began.

The purpose of the flood was to cleanse the earth itself from the effects of the sins through the spiritual nature of water, which under certain conditions forms a part of Jewish practice today. While the flood lasted, the planetary system and the rotation of the earth were held in abeyance so that there was no day and night-and no seasons. Noah and his three sons lived separated from their wives because of the prevailing distress and were occupied in prayer and study and in caring for the animals. Theirs was a miraculous environment in every sense, except that the ark itself and its provisions had been made by their own hands. They knew that they alone were to found the renewed state of life on earth, and they prepared themselves in righteousness for the responsibility. The ark was a complete “microcosm,” a small entity that contained the elements of the whole creation within itself and, as such, it was a predecessor of the Temple at Jerusalem, a very high spiritual level where all of reality was gathered and dedicated to God.

When the waters of the flood retreated, the ark settled on the ground in the Caucasus mountains, and Noah and his sons emerged with their families. Noah built an altar at the Temple site in Jerusalem and offered sacrifice in thanksgiving for the deliverance and for the opportunity to start again. The Torah states that God “smelled the sweet odor of the sacrifice” (Gen 8:21), meaning that He was gratified that His will had indeed been carried out. At this point, God made a covenant with the whole creation that in the merit of Noah He would never again destroy it because of the sins of humanity. The rabbis say that at this moment Noah looked out from the ark upon a “new world,” completely fresh and ready for him to build and to make his own, free from the threat which had hung over it. This freshness has never disappeared, and it is revealed anew after all the lesser troubles which have come upon humanity in later generations. God also gave to the people the right to eat meat, only stipulating that food animals be rendered completely dead before any part of them was eaten.

This last commandment given to Noah, together with the previous six, completed the “Seven Commandments” that became the universal law of humankind to this day. All non-Jews in the world, of every land and color, are heirs to Noah's achievement. All of humanity, diverse as it is, descends from the three sons of this one man, whose great scope made the foundation for them all. This covenant of everlasting life was given through the sign of the rainbow, which God told Noah would be the reminder in the heavens of His eternal decision. Now everyone need only to look up after a rain, and they can see the beautiful display that assures them that evil will never be allowed to overcome them. And God gave the rainbow seven distinct colors-to remind men and women of the Seven Commandments that lay behind the covenant, the laws that will bring all of humanity to merit their ultimate redemption.

From Seven Colors of the Rainbow: Torah Ethics for Non-Jews by Yirmeyahu Bindman © 1995 Resource Publications, Inc. Published on this website by special arrangement with Resource Publications, Inc. Material may be downloaded for individual use but not otherwise published or distributed without the written permission of Resource Publications, Inc., 160 E. Virginia St. #290, San Jose, CA 95112.

Return to Table of Contents.

Paperbound book information.