GEN716 It is interesting that the ideal world of righteousness and justice that Jewish texts envision even provides for the possibility that although everyone will follow God’s ways, each person will continue to worship his or her own god
Micah 4:1-5. Along these lines, the Rabbis proclaim that God created a covenant with all human beings, the covenant of the children of Noah, and non-Jews fulfill God’s will if they obey the seven requirements of that covenant.
T. Avodah Zarah 8:4; B. Sanhedrin 56a. See Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism. Jewish sources require that Jews should follow God’s more demanding covenant with the People of Israel, but they contemplate a degree of tolerance and even pluralism that were truly unique in their day and are still rare in ours. Even if we construe the “general welfare” clause of the Preamble expansively, American law does not aspire to changing the whole world to be free of violence or want and certainly not to create one universal covenant with God; the goal is rather “the general welfare” solely “for ourselves and our posterity.” After World War II, Americans provided much of the funding to rebuild Europe, and Americans have donated some small percentage of the yearly national budget to help other countries with their medical and other needs; but most would maintain that this generosity is motivated much more by the United States’s own interests than by altruism or some vision of messianic future. Thus even the most idealistic construction of America law focuses on the United States alone, in contrast to the universalistic goals embedded in Jewish literature, in which the People Israel are the primary partner in the covenant with God, but they are to serve as a “light to the nations”
Isaiah 49:6, 51:4 of how everyone should live. This has two important ramifications. First, Jewish law presumes that Jews can never be held to a lesser standard than that to which non-Jews are held. Therefore, sometimes when internal reasoning seems to suggest that Jews are subject to a more permissive stance than non-Jews, that result alone requires a rethinking of the reasoning that brought us to that conclusion; it requires going back to the drawing board, for that results contradicts the Talmudic principle that “there is nothing permitted to an Israelite that is forbidden to an non-Jew.”
B. Sanhedrin 59a So, for example, in the Talmud Rabbi Ishmael understands [this verse] to say that for non-Jews feticide is the equivalent of murder;
B. Sanhedrin 57b. The same teaching is taught in the name of Rabbi Hanina in Genesis Rabbah 34:14 Jews, however, are actually required to abort a fetus to save the life of its mother because the fetus has a lesser legal status than its mother, as
Exodus 21:22-25 declares.
M. Oholot 7:6 That immediately raises the question, though, of how can it be that Jews are permitted to do what non-Jews are not? Jewish authorities resolve this by various methods. Most find reasons to permit non-Jews to abort for therapeutic reasons as well, despite their theoretical capital culpability for doing so. Some use that culpability for non-Jews to demonstrate how serious the decision to abort is for Jews as well, even when it is necessary and legally required to save the life of the mother and all the more so for other reasons.
Tosafot to B. Sanhedrin 59a … see, in general, Feldman, Birth Control in Jewish Law, p. 262. Second, the messianic goals of Judaism in general and Jewish law in particular can and do act as a source for critiquing any particular expression of it. When Jewish law is less just or compassionate than it can be, it fails in its function of being “a light to the nations.” That requires Jewish authorities to reevaluate the law as it has come down to us and, if necessary, change it. …because Jewish law aspires to create an ideal world, it can and should be assessed in any generation and on any issue as to the extent to which it is accomplishing that purpose. DORFFLGP 9-11
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