Who Really Runs the World? The Chabad Investigation Part 8 of 9

Watch this on Rumble: https://rumble.com/v7fothy-who-really-runs-the-world-the-chabad-investigation-part-8-of-9.html

Part 8 — Would the Full Noahide Code Threaten Religious Freedom?

Opening — Now We Open the Whole Code

For seven parts, we have been following people, organizations, governments, legislation, international institutions and eventually education. But there is something I have intentionally avoided doing until now. I didn’t want to begin this investigation with the most alarming interpretations of Noahide law and then work backward looking for evidence to support them. I wanted to establish first whether there was actually a trail worth following. There was.

We found Chabad’s documented promotion of the Seven Noahide Laws as a universal moral framework. We found the Rebbe teaching that these commandments apply to humanity generally. We found Noahide advocates entering Washington and international institutions. We found Rabbi Yakov David Cohen and the Institute of Noahide Code operating within the United Nations NGO system. We found Noahide ideas connected with global ethics, parliamentarians, proposed legislation and eventually international education initiatives.

But we also found limits. We didn’t find evidence that Chabad commands the United States government. We didn’t find evidence that the United Nations adopted the Seven Noahide Laws as international law. We didn’t find the complete Noahide Code hidden inside the children’s curriculum we examined. And when evidence worked against the theory, we included it.

Now we have reached the point where none of that answers the next question. What exactly is the Noahide Code?

Because if you visit Chabad’s introductory material, the Seven Laws can sound remarkably simple. Chabad summarizes them as recognizing God’s oneness, not cursing God, protecting human life, respecting animal life, respecting other people’s property, maintaining moral family relationships and ensuring justice. Presented at that level, most people would probably recognize several principles that already exist in one form or another throughout societies around the world.

But the Talmudic source itself tells us something more specific. Sanhedrin 56a identifies seven commandments for the descendants of Noah: establishing courts, prohibiting blasphemy, idolatry, forbidden sexual relationships, bloodshed, robbery and eating a limb taken from a living animal. The discussion then continues beyond that seven-item statement into interpretations, derivations and disputes concerning what gentiles are actually commanded to observe. And Chabad’s own material acknowledges something that becomes extremely important for Part 8. The seven aren’t merely seven sentences.

In material presenting the Rebbe’s teaching, Chabad describes them as “general statements” possessing ramifications and extensions encompassing many details. Another Chabad presentation similarly explains that the seven are general guidelines and says rabbinic teaching identifies additional obligations for non-Jews. That changes the investigation.

If someone tells me the Noahide Code simply means don’t murder, don’t steal and don’t torture animals, I haven’t actually been shown the entire legal tradition. I have been shown its headings. And headings aren’t enough for what we’re asking.

Part 8 is about religious freedom. So I want to know what happens when those broad headings encounter people who don’t believe the same things. What happens to an atheist? What happens to a Hindu? What happens to a Buddhist?

What happens to a Muslim? What happens to somebody practicing a traditional indigenous religion? And because most of the people watching this show probably come from a Christian background, we have to ask the uncomfortable question directly: what happens to Christians?

That question is more complicated than simply searching for the word “Christianity.” Rabbinic authorities have not always classified Christianity identically, and distinctions can arise concerning whether particular rulings apply to Jews, gentiles or both. We are going to have to keep those distinctions intact rather than taking one statement from one rabbi and declaring that it represents every Jewish authority. Then there is blasphemy. What precisely constitutes it?

Is this merely a religious command telling a person not to curse God, or are we looking at something that traditional jurisprudence treats as an offense for which a court could impose punishment? If it is the latter, then we are no longer talking merely about private morality. We are entering questions involving speech, religious dissent and governmental authority. Then there is sexual morality.

Again, the heading sounds simple until we ask what relationships fall underneath it. Modern governments already regulate certain sexual conduct, particularly conduct involving abuse, coercion and children. But traditional religious systems can prohibit consensual adult relationships that modern secular governments protect. If the full Noahide legal tradition were ever proposed as civil law, that distinction would matter enormously. And then we reach dinim: establishing courts of justice.

This may become one of the most important words in the entire series. Does dinim simply mean humanity needs functioning courts so murderers and thieves don’t run society? Or are those courts responsible for enforcing the other Noahide commandments? Are they secular courts applying ordinary civil law, or courts applying a divinely revealed Noahide legal system? We aren’t going to decide that from a slogan.

We’re going to open the sources. And punishment has to be handled the same way. There are severe penalties associated with Noahide violations in classical rabbinic jurisprudence. But reporting a penalty without examining its legal context would be just as misleading as hiding the penalty entirely. We need to know what the source says, how later authorities understood it, what judicial requirements apply and whether modern Noahide or Chabad organizations actually advocate putting those classical penalties into contemporary criminal law.

Those are separate questions. A medieval or ancient religious text containing a death penalty doesn’t prove that a modern religious organization is campaigning to execute people. But a modern organization saying “we only promote universal ethics” doesn’t erase what the older legal tradition says either. Both pieces of evidence belong on the table.

That is why Part 8 may be the most important test of our investigation so far. If the complete Noahide legal tradition presents no meaningful threat to religious freedom when examined carefully, then we need to say that. If portions of that tradition would conflict with modern protections for religious belief, speech, sexuality or freedom of conscience if enforced as civil law, then we need to say that too. And there is one more thing I want to make absolutely clear before we begin. Examining Noahide jurisprudence isn’t examining “what Jews want.”

Judaism contains enormous internal disagreement, historical development and different schools of interpretation. Most importantly, a traditional religious legal text doesn’t establish that Jewish people generally support turning that text into government law. Our investigation concerns specific teachings, specific organizations, specific advocates and specific claims. So I’m not interested in frightening people with the words “Noahide Laws.” I’m interested in reading them.

Because after seven parts, we finally have enough context to ask the question properly. Not: are the Seven Noahide Laws good or bad? Not: does Chabad secretly control the world? But something much narrower and something we can actually investigate. If the full traditional Noahide legal framework were enforced by a modern government, what would happen to someone who refused to believe it?

That’s where Part 8 begins. Now we open the whole code.

Investigation 1 — Seven Laws Are Categories, Not Seven Sentences

Before we can ask whether the Noahide Code threatens religious freedom, we have to correct one of the easiest misunderstandings surrounding it. When people hear “Seven Noahide Laws,” they naturally imagine seven individual rules. Don’t murder. Don’t steal. Don’t worship idols. Don’t blaspheme God. Don’t engage in forbidden sexual relationships. Don’t eat flesh taken from a living animal. Establish courts of justice.

But when we open the rabbinic legal tradition, those seven statements function more like headings. The foundational list appears in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a. The text identifies seven commandments applying to the descendants of Noah: courts of justice, prohibition of cursing God’s name, idolatry, forbidden sexual relationships, bloodshed, robbery and eating a limb from a living animal. But the discussion doesn’t stop after giving us seven sentences. Sanhedrin continues into the meaning, derivation and scope of those commandments, including disagreements among rabbis about additional prohibitions.

That immediately tells us something important. “Seven” doesn’t mean there are only seven possible prohibited actions.

Take sexual morality. The heading is one prohibition, but when Maimonides systematizes Noahide law in the Mishneh Torah, he identifies multiple prohibited relationships underneath it. His list includes a man’s mother, his father’s wife, another man’s wife, his maternal sister, sexual relations between males and sexual relations with an animal. One heading therefore contains multiple distinct legal prohibitions. The same thing happens with theft.

Maimonides doesn’t restrict the category to somebody breaking into a house and taking money. His discussion includes robbery, ordinary theft, kidnapping and withholding a worker’s wages. He even discusses property below a particular monetary threshold. Whatever conclusions we eventually reach about these laws, this alone demonstrates that “do not steal” is a category whose traditional jurisprudence determines which behaviors fall underneath it. Idolatry works the same way.

It isn’t simply the sentence “don’t worship idols.” Maimonides discusses different forms of foreign worship and distinguishes conduct carrying different legal consequences. He also discusses monuments, Asherah trees and images. The moment we enter the jurisprudence, therefore, we have moved beyond a seven-point morality poster and into a legal system interpreting what each category includes. That distinction is going to become critical later in this episode.

If somebody tells me that Noahide law prohibits murder, I need to know what “murder” means inside Noahide jurisprudence. If somebody tells me it prohibits sexual immorality, I need to know which relationships are classified as immoral. If somebody tells me it prohibits idolatry, I need to know which religions or practices fall within that category. If somebody tells me it requires justice, I need to know what those courts are supposed to enforce. The headings don’t answer those questions.

The legal tradition does. And there is another complication. Even within the Talmudic discussion, rabbis debate whether additional commandments or prohibitions apply to the descendants of Noah. Sanhedrin 56b records opinions involving blood from a living animal, castration, sorcery and certain forms of mixing species. That doesn’t mean every one of those opinions became the universally accepted Noahide standard. It means the underlying rabbinic discussion itself was more complicated than simply memorizing seven lines.

Then Maimonides gives us one of the most influential systematic treatments. In Laws of Kings and Wars, chapter 9, he begins with six commandments attributed to Adam: prohibition of idolatry, cursing God, murder, forbidden sexual relations and theft, together with establishing laws and courts. He says the prohibition against eating a limb from a living animal was subsequently given to Noah, producing the familiar seven. Then he starts unpacking them. And this is where Part 8 becomes considerably more serious than simply asking whether seven moral principles sound reasonable.

Maimonides discusses legal liability for particular forms of idolatry. He discusses blasphemy using God’s names. He defines prohibited sexual relationships. He expands theft into several forms of taking or withholding property. He discusses homicide in circumstances extending beyond the simplest example of one person intentionally stabbing another. And alongside those definitions, he discusses judicial punishment.

We are going to examine those subjects individually because I don’t want to throw the most severe passages onto the screen without their context. But neither are we going to pretend they aren’t there. The traditional legal discussion includes capital punishment. That is a fact we are going to have to deal with.

For example, Maimonides’ treatment says a Noahide engaging in certain forms of idolatry is liable to execution. His discussion of blasphemy also uses legal liability language, and his treatment of theft contains applications whose stated punishment is extraordinarily severe by modern legal standards. But here is where I want us to be disciplined. Finding those statements in Maimonides does not establish that modern Chabad is campaigning for governments to execute idolaters, blasphemers or thieves. Those are two different claims.

The first is a textual question: what does classical Noahide jurisprudence contain? The second is a political question: what, if anything, do modern Noahide advocates want governments to enforce? We need evidence for each one independently.

And there is another distinction we will have to preserve throughout Part 8. Maimonides is enormously important to Jewish law, but Maimonides isn’t the entire history of Jewish legal interpretation. The Talmud itself contains debates, and later authorities interpret earlier sources. When we reach disputed questions, particularly Christianity and idolatry, I don’t want to grab whichever rabbinic statement produces the most dramatic conclusion and pretend the debate doesn’t exist. That would defeat the purpose of this investigation.

What we can establish at the beginning is much simpler. The Seven Noahide Laws are not merely seven modern English sentences.

They are seven major legal and moral categories surrounded by a much larger body of interpretation. The difference is enormous because a person can agree with a heading while disagreeing profoundly with what a particular legal tradition places underneath it. Nearly everyone agrees murder is wrong. Nearly everyone agrees theft is wrong. Most societies believe courts are necessary.

Those areas may present little difficulty for religious freedom. But then we reach the other categories. Idolatry. Blasphemy. Sexual morality.

And suddenly the question changes. Because if these are only private religious commandments, someone can believe them without forcing anyone else to obey them. But if the full traditional Noahide framework is imagined as enforceable civil law, then we have to ask what happens when another person’s religion, speech or private conduct falls inside one of those prohibited categories. That is the distinction Part 8 is going to test. But before we enter the difficult categories, I want to do something important for the fairness of this investigation.

Let’s start with the laws that present comparatively little religious-liberty problem. Because not everything inside the Noahide Code is controversial.

Investigation 2 — Some Rules Present Little Religious-Liberty Problem

Before we get to idolatry, blasphemy, sexuality and courts, I want to acknowledge something that could easily get lost if we only concentrate on the most controversial portions of Noahide law. Several of these commandments, at least at the level of the underlying conduct they prohibit, don’t create an obvious conflict with modern religious freedom. Start with murder.

Modern religious liberty doesn’t generally mean somebody has a religious right to intentionally kill another human being. International human-rights law itself distinguishes between the freedom to hold a belief and the freedom to act upon every possible manifestation of that belief. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects freedom of thought, conscience and religion very strongly, while allowing carefully limited restrictions on manifestations of religion when necessary to protect public safety, order, health, morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. So the basic Noahide prohibition against bloodshed doesn’t create a religious-freedom problem simply because it comes from a religious source. Christians prohibit murder.

Judaism prohibits murder. Islam prohibits murder. Secular criminal codes prohibit murder. An atheist doesn’t have to believe God commanded Noah in order to live under a law prohibiting homicide.

That distinction is important because we’re examining two different things throughout Part 8. One is the religious justification for a law. The other is the conduct the law actually regulates. A prohibition can have a theological origin while regulating behavior that secular governments independently prohibit for completely different reasons. The same principle applies to theft.

Modern governments don’t ordinarily recognize a religious-liberty right to steal somebody else’s property. A Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist and Noahide can disagree completely about where morality ultimately comes from while still living under the same prohibition against robbery.

In fact, Maimonides’ Noahide treatment of theft includes conduct that modern legal systems also recognize as serious wrongdoing. He includes robbery, ordinary theft, kidnapping and withholding a worker’s wages. Those aren’t uniquely Jewish religious concerns. They involve protecting people and property from harm. But there is an important warning here.

Agreement with the basic prohibition doesn’t mean agreement with the complete traditional jurisprudence surrounding it. Maimonides extends Noahide theft considerably further than simply saying, “Don’t rob people.” He discusses liability even for property worth less than a perutah, and his treatment attaches capital punishment to Noahide theft violations under the legal framework he presents. That would create an entirely different discussion if somebody proposed implementing that complete penal system in a modern country. So we have to keep separating the commandment from its punishment.

“Don’t steal” presents little inherent religious-liberty problem. “Execute a person for particular acts classified as theft” raises an entirely different set of questions involving criminal justice, proportionality and human rights. Then we have the prohibition against eating flesh taken from a living animal.

This one is unusual because most modern people don’t regularly encounter the specific practice the commandment addresses. Maimonides interprets the rule literally and in considerable detail. His discussion prohibits consuming flesh or a limb removed while the animal remains alive and considers questions about different animals and the point at which slaughtered animals are legally considered dead for purposes of the prohibition. Whatever its theological foundation, the underlying concern doesn’t immediately threaten somebody’s freedom to worship Jesus, Allah, Vishnu or nobody at all.

Modern animal-welfare laws already regulate how animals may be treated, transported and slaughtered. A society can prohibit cruelty to animals without establishing a religion.

Again, however, we shouldn’t quietly convert the Noahide commandment into a modern animal-rights slogan. The traditional rule is specifically about eating a limb or flesh taken from a living creature. Modern Noahide presentations may draw a broader principle of respect for animal life from it, but that broader ethical principle isn’t identical to the technical legal prohibition described by Maimonides. That distinction matters because this entire investigation depends upon not making ancient texts say whatever modern people want them to say. Then there is justice.

At the broadest level, requiring societies to establish courts presents no obvious religious-freedom problem either. Every functioning legal system needs some mechanism for resolving disputes, protecting rights and addressing criminal behavior. A society without courts would create enormous problems for religious freedom because minorities would have little legal protection against violence, theft or discrimination. So at the level of the heading, dinim can sound completely compatible with a free society. Establish justice.

Maintain courts. Enforce laws. Protect people. There is nothing inherently threatening about that.

But we can’t finish the analysis there because the crucial question isn’t simply whether courts exist. It is what those courts are required to enforce. If dinim means establishing ordinary systems of civil justice, that is one thing. If it means governments are obligated to establish courts enforcing the other six Noahide commandments as religious law, that is something very different. That question is important enough that we are giving it an entire investigation later.

And this exercise reveals something useful about the Noahide Code. We shouldn’t evaluate all seven categories as though they present the same religious-liberty problem. They don’t. Prohibiting murder protects another person’s life. Prohibiting theft protects another person’s property.

Prohibiting certain forms of cruelty toward living animals regulates conduct toward another living creature. Establishing courts, understood simply as requiring an orderly justice system, can protect everybody’s rights. None of those requires the government to tell me what God I must worship. And that gives us a useful standard for everything coming next.

The religious-freedom problem becomes much more serious when government moves from regulating harmful conduct toward regulating belief, worship or expression. International human-rights law makes that distinction particularly important: the freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief receives especially strong protection, while outward conduct can sometimes be restricted to protect the rights and safety of others. So if Noahide law tells me I cannot murder my neighbor, my religious freedom isn’t necessarily being violated. If it tells me I cannot steal from my neighbor, the same principle applies. But what happens when the law tells me which God I am permitted to worship?

That changes everything. Because now the prohibited conduct isn’t taking somebody’s life or somebody’s property. It may be the person’s religion itself. And that takes us directly into Investigation 3. Idolatry changes the question.

Investigation 3 — Idolatry Changes the Question

Murder gave us a relatively easy test. Theft did too. A government can prohibit me from killing or robbing another person without requiring me to accept the government’s religion. But idolatry is different because now the prohibited act can be the person’s worship itself. And the Noahide prohibition isn’t presented merely as advice for Jews.

Chabad’s own introductory explanation says the Seven Noahide Laws apply to everyone, and its first principle requires recognition of one God. Another Chabad explanation of the Rebbe’s teaching says humanity is obligated to acknowledge God as Creator and ruler and describes idolatry as one of the six prohibited categories. Chabad therefore doesn’t hide the theological foundation of the system. That doesn’t automatically create a religious-freedom problem.

A religion is free to teach that other religions are false. Christianity does it. Judaism does it. Islam does it. A Christian saying, “You should worship God rather than idols,” isn’t depriving somebody of religious freedom. A rabbi teaching the same principle isn’t either.

Religious freedom has to include the freedom to disagree about religion. The problem begins if government becomes the enforcement mechanism. And when we open Maimonides, that distinction becomes impossible to avoid.

In Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 9:2, Maimonides says a descendant of Noah who worships a foreign deity is legally liable when the worship meets the specified conditions. He connects the Noahide penalty to forms of idolatrous worship for which a Jewish court would impose capital punishment. He also says other forms remain forbidden even when they don’t carry that particular penalty. So now we are dealing with something very different from “don’t murder.” The prohibited conduct is worship.

And this is where modern religious freedom collides directly with the classical framework if that framework were actually enforced as civil law. Under modern international human-rights standards, freedom of religion protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs. The UN Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 22 says Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects the freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief of one’s choice and specifically includes the right to replace one’s religion with another or adopt atheistic views. The Committee goes further.

It says governments may not use physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or nonbelievers to accept religious beliefs, recant their religion or convert. That means a modern state cannot simply announce, “You are free to believe whatever you want unless your belief violates our official theology.” That gives us a clear comparison. If Noahide idolatry remains a religious teaching voluntarily accepted by someone who believes in it, there is no necessary conflict with religious freedom. If a modern government enforces the classical prohibition against idolatrous worship through criminal penalties, there is a direct conflict with the modern freedom to choose and practice a religion.

Those are two completely different situations. And Chabad’s contemporary language sometimes sounds considerably softer than the legal language we just read from Maimonides. One Chabad article describes the Noahide tradition as something that requires no conversion ceremony and says people don’t need to abandon their heritage. But the same article teaches that humanity must recognize divine oneness and describes the development of multiple gods and physical representations as a historical corruption of that truth.

Another Chabad explanation is more explicit. It says Noahide idolatry prohibits worship of any human being or created thing and also describes making idols and involvement with the occult as prohibited. So “you don’t need to become Jewish” isn’t the same thing as “every religious practice is acceptable under Noahide law.” That distinction matters enormously.

A person could remain culturally connected to a particular heritage while still being told that some religious practices within that heritage violate the Noahide prohibition against idolatry. Whether a particular religion falls into that category becomes a question of Noahide jurisprudence. And suddenly we have to test actual religions.

Consider Hindu traditions involving worship expressed through sacred images. Consider traditional religions involving multiple divine beings or spirits. Consider forms of religious practice involving statues, offerings or invocation of created beings. I am not going to declare from the outside that every one of those practices automatically receives the same Noahide classification, because individual traditions differ and legal classification requires more than seeing a statue and calling it an idol. But the problem is now obvious.

Someone has to decide. If Noahide law is only religious instruction, Noahide teachers can tell followers how they understand those practices, while Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and everybody else remain free to disagree. But if Noahide law becomes governmental law, somebody has to legally define idolatry. Somebody has to determine which acts constitute worship. Somebody has to determine which religions cross the line.

And somebody has to decide what happens when people refuse to stop. That is where the religious-liberty issue becomes real.

There is another detail in Maimonides that makes this more than an abstract theological question. His Noahide discussion doesn’t merely say that idolatry is spiritually mistaken. It distinguishes prohibited conduct from conduct carrying judicial liability. That is jurisprudence, not merely theology. At the same time, we cannot jump from Maimonides to the claim that modern Chabad is attempting to create government tribunals that execute practitioners of other religions.

I haven’t established that. In fact, Chabad’s modern public presentations generally emphasize teaching and dissemination of the Noahide principles. Chabad openly says the Rebbe launched a campaign to spread the Noahide Code, but that fact by itself doesn’t establish a modern campaign to implement Maimonides’ classical capital penalties through contemporary governments. This distinction is absolutely critical. The classical legal framework presents one question.

The modern political program presents another. We can conclude from the primary legal material that classical Noahide jurisprudence contains a prohibition against idolatrous worship and attaches severe judicial consequences to specified violations. We cannot conclude from that fact alone that Chabad currently intends to execute idolaters. Both statements can be true at the same time. And now we have finally reached the point where the religious-freedom question becomes unavoidable.

With murder, the government tells me what I cannot do to my neighbor. With theft, the government tells me what I cannot take from my neighbor. But with idolatry, the law can tell me whom I am permitted to worship.

Under modern religious-liberty standards, that is a fundamentally different exercise of governmental power. The Human Rights Committee specifically protects the right to adopt theistic, non-theistic or atheistic beliefs and rejects penal coercion designed to force religious conformity. And that leads directly to a person we haven’t talked much about yet. Suppose someone doesn’t worship an idol. Suppose he doesn’t worship Jesus.

Suppose he doesn’t worship Allah. Suppose he doesn’t worship Vishnu. Suppose he doesn’t worship anything at all. He simply says, “I don’t believe there is a God.” Where does that person fit?

Because if the Noahide system requires humanity not merely to avoid idols but to recognize divine authority, then atheism gives us an even cleaner test of the difference between voluntary religious belief and compulsory religious law. That takes us into Investigation 4. What happens to the atheist?

Investigation 4 — What Happens to the Atheist?

The atheist gives us one of the cleanest tests in this entire investigation because he removes idolatry from the equation. He isn’t bowing before a statue. He isn’t worshiping another god. He isn’t practicing Hinduism, Christianity, Islam or any other religion. He simply says, “I don’t believe God exists.”

So what does the Noahide system do with him? The first thing I found is that we need to separate two questions that are easy to confuse. The first is whether atheism itself is one of the seven specifically named offenses. The second is whether an atheist can actually accept the Noahide system in the theological sense required by major traditional authorities. Those aren’t quite the same question.

The traditional list in Sanhedrin identifies idolatry as one of the seven prohibitions. It does not give us an eighth commandment whose wording is simply “atheism is forbidden.” The Talmudic discussion derives the Noahide commandments from Scripture and treats idolatry as prohibited worship. That means I don’t think we can simply take every statement concerning idol worship and automatically apply its judicial penalty to somebody who doesn’t worship anything. That distinction matters.

An atheist who doesn’t believe in God isn’t necessarily committing an act of idolatrous worship merely by not believing. If we are asking the narrow legal question, “Does Sanhedrin 56–57 explicitly say execute an atheist simply because he says there is no God?” I have not found that statement in the text we are examining. But then we open Maimonides, and the question becomes much more complicated.

In Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 8:11, Maimonides describes the person who properly accepts the Seven Noahide Commandments as one of the “pious among the nations” who has a share in the World to Come. But he adds a requirement that goes beyond outward behavior. The person must accept and observe the commandments because God commanded them in the Torah and revealed through Moses that the descendants of Noah had previously been commanded to observe them. Think about what that means for an atheist. Suppose he never murders anyone.

He never steals. He doesn’t commit the sexual acts prohibited by the code. He doesn’t eat flesh from a living animal. He supports functioning courts. He doesn’t worship an idol because he doesn’t worship anything.

From the standpoint of outward behavior, he could potentially conform to much of the Noahide framework. But according to this passage in Maimonides, outward conformity isn’t sufficient for the religious status he is describing. The person is supposed to recognize that these commandments came from God through the Torah and Moses. Someone who follows them merely because reason tells him murder and theft are wrong doesn’t receive the same classification in this passage. That creates an enormous distinction between Noahide morality and secular morality.

The atheist might say, “I don’t murder people because human life has value.” Maimonides says the fully qualifying Noahide accepts the commandments because God commanded them. The atheist might say, “I don’t steal because other people have rights.”

The theological Noahide framework says these aren’t merely conclusions reached by human reason. They are divine commandments. So the two people can behave almost identically while disagreeing completely about why. And under Maimonides’ classification, that difference matters.

Now we have to be extremely careful because there is a textual complication here. Manuscripts and editions of the final phrase of Maimonides 8:11 differ over whether the person who follows these principles through reason alone is or is not counted among the “wise” of the nations. You will therefore encounter translations giving different endings. But that textual disagreement doesn’t erase the central point relevant to the atheist: Maimonides explicitly distinguishes observing these laws because God commanded them from observing similar behavior through intellectual reasoning alone. That is theology.

But then Maimonides gives us a passage immediately before it that is much more difficult if we’re asking about government. In Laws of Kings 8:10, the text says Moses gave the Torah specifically to Israel and those who convert, but then says Moses was commanded by God to compel humanity to accept the commandments given to Noah’s descendants. The traditional text therefore contains a concept of universal obligation that is stronger than simply saying, “Here are seven good ideas; follow them if you want.” And this is where I don’t want to make either of two mistakes. I don’t want to hide that passage.

But I also don’t want to turn it into proof that Chabad currently wants police officers arresting atheists. Those aren’t the same claim.

What Maimonides envisioned within his legal and messianic framework, how later Jewish authorities interpreted those passages, and what contemporary Chabad or Noahide organizations advocate politically are separate questions. Finding coercive language in a classical source establishes something about that source. It doesn’t automatically establish the political program of a twenty-first-century organization. Now compare the classical theological framework with modern religious-liberty standards. The difference is dramatic.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee’s authoritative interpretation of Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says freedom of religion or belief protects theistic beliefs, non-theistic beliefs and explicitly atheistic beliefs. It also protects the right not to profess any religion at all. That means modern religious liberty doesn’t merely protect Christians from Muslims or Muslims from Christians. It protects the person who rejects religion entirely.

The Committee also says the freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief includes the right to replace one’s religion with another and the right to adopt atheistic views. Freedom of thought and conscience receives especially strong protection. So now we can make a comparison without exaggerating either side.

If Noahide law means that religious teachers believe atheists ought to recognize God, there is no necessary religious-freedom violation. Christians evangelize atheists. Muslims invite atheists to believe in God. Jewish teachers can tell atheists that they believe humanity has obligations to its Creator. Religious freedom protects persuasion in both directions.

But if government requires an atheist to affirm that God commanded the Noahide Laws through Moses, then the situation changes completely. Now government isn’t regulating what the atheist does to somebody else. It is regulating what he believes. Under contemporary international religious-liberty standards, coercing that theological affirmation would conflict directly with the protected freedom to hold atheistic beliefs. And I think that gives us a much more precise answer to our question than saying, “Noahide law executes atheists.”

I haven’t established that statement from the sources we have examined. What I can establish is more nuanced and, in some ways, more revealing.

An atheist can behave according to many of the Noahide prohibitions without accepting their theological foundation. But in Maimonides’ influential formulation, merely reaching those moral conclusions through reason isn’t equivalent to accepting the commandments because God gave them through the Torah and Moses. So atheism exposes something important about the full traditional system. The Noahide Code isn’t purely a secular ethical code. Its authority comes from God.

Its commandments are understood as commandments because God commanded them. And at least in Maimonides’ formulation, recognizing that divine origin matters. That doesn’t prove a modern plan to persecute atheists.

But it does mean that if somebody proposed enforcing the complete theological Noahide framework through a modern government, religious freedom would immediately become an issue. A government protecting Noahide believers’ right to teach that atheism is wrong is religious freedom. A government requiring atheists themselves to accept that theology is something very different. And now we arrive at an even more difficult case. The atheist rejects the Noahide God completely.

But the Christian says he worships the God of Abraham. He accepts the Hebrew Scriptures. He believes in the Creator. He believes God gave commandments. And then he worships Jesus Christ as God.

So where does Christianity fall? That question has produced disagreement inside Jewish legal interpretation itself. And we’re not going to simplify it. That takes us to Investigation 5. What about Christianity?

Investigation 5 — What About Christianity?

Now we reach the religion that makes this question especially personal for much of my audience. Christianity isn’t atheism. Christians believe in the God of Abraham. They accept the Hebrew Scriptures. They believe God created heaven and earth. They condemn murder and theft. They believe humanity is accountable to God. But Christians also confess something Judaism emphatically rejects: Jesus Christ is divine.

So does the Noahide prohibition against idolatry make Christianity illegal? The first thing I discovered is that there is no responsible way to answer that with one sentence. Jewish legal authorities have disagreed about Christianity’s classification, especially when asking whether Christian theology constitutes prohibited idolatry for a non-Jew. That disagreement matters enormously because Part 8 is asking about the Noahide obligations of gentiles, not what Judaism permits Jews themselves to believe.

Maimonides gives us the harder position. In his Laws of Foreign Worship, he treats the Christianity known to him as idolatrous worship. His discussion of Christian festivals places Christians within the legal framework governing idolaters, and his broader theology insists upon an uncompromising divine unity incompatible with worship directed toward another being. If we stopped with Maimonides, the implications would be severe. Christian worship centers on Jesus.

Christians pray in Jesus’ name. They baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Historic Christianity confesses Jesus as Lord and God.

So if worship of Jesus is legally classified as idolatry and the complete classical Noahide prohibition against idolatry is enforced by government, Christianity would present an obvious problem. The issue wouldn’t merely be whether Christians behave morally. The central act of Christian worship could itself fall into the prohibited category. But Maimonides isn’t the end of the Jewish legal discussion.

This is where we encounter a Hebrew term that becomes extremely important: shituf, meaning something like association or partnership. The issue is whether a gentile who worships the Creator while associating another person or divine manifestation with Him necessarily commits the form of idolatry prohibited to Noahides.

The medieval Tosafists discussed Christians in precisely this context. In commenting on the Talmud’s restrictions concerning oaths involving foreign gods, Tosafot observed that Christians had the Creator of heaven and earth in mind even though they associated something else with Him. The passage then says Noahides had not been warned regarding this kind of association. That passage became enormously influential.

But even here, I don’t want to make the opposite mistake and announce that Tosafot simply declared Christianity completely acceptable under Noahide law. Scholars and later rabbinic authorities have disputed exactly how broadly that passage should be read. One interpretation understands it as a genuine allowance of shituf for gentiles. Another understands it much more narrowly, dealing with the practical problem of Christian oaths without establishing that Christian worship itself is permissible. And Chabad’s own educational material acknowledges this disagreement.

A Chabad-produced course discussing Christianity presents Maimonides alongside Tosafot and specifically asks students to compare their positions concerning Christianity, Christians and idolatry. The material quotes Tosafot saying that contemporary gentiles weren’t considered actual idol worshipers in the same way as ancient pagans and separately presents the shituf discussion concerning Christians. That is important evidence. Chabad itself is teaching that there is a legal discussion here. So I don’t think we can responsibly tell Christians, “Judaism unanimously considers you an idolater under Noahide law.”

The evidence doesn’t support that statement. But neither can we say, “Christianity unquestionably satisfies the Noahide prohibition against idolatry.” The evidence doesn’t support that statement either. There are authorities on both sides of the relevant halakhic question.

And notice how important the distinction between Jews and gentiles becomes. Something can be absolutely prohibited to a Jew while some authorities nevertheless regard a version of it as permissible for a gentile. The shituf debate therefore isn’t about whether Judaism accepts the Trinity as true. It doesn’t. The question is narrower: whether a gentile’s Trinitarian Christian worship violates the Noahide prohibition against idolatry.

Those are completely different questions. Judaism can reject Christian theology while a Jewish authority still concludes that a gentile Christian isn’t violating the Noahide prohibition.

And Christians themselves would reject the description of their theology as worshiping multiple gods. Historic Trinitarian Christianity claims one God, not three gods, understood as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That doesn’t resolve the Jewish legal classification, but it matters when describing Christianity accurately rather than imposing an outside description upon what Christians themselves believe. Now imagine turning this disagreement into governmental law. That is where the religious-freedom problem becomes enormous.

Suppose one Noahide court follows the more permissive interpretation and says Christian worship doesn’t constitute prohibited idolatry for gentiles. The Christian remains free to worship. But suppose another follows Maimonides. Now what? Does praying to Jesus constitute worship of something other than the one God?

Does receiving Communion become participation in prohibited worship? Does kneeling before a crucifix matter? Does an icon matter? Does baptism in the name of the Trinity matter? Does declaring “Jesus is God” cross the legal boundary?

Those aren’t theoretical theological disagreements anymore if government possesses enforcement authority. They become legal questions. And somebody has to decide them.

That is precisely why the difference between voluntary Noahide observance and governmental Noahide enforcement matters so much. A rabbi can tell me that he believes Christianity violates God’s law. I can tell him that I believe Jesus is the Son of God. We can disagree profoundly and still protect each other’s freedom to worship. That is religious liberty.

But once government makes one theological answer legally compulsory, somebody’s religious freedom necessarily changes. And there is another piece of evidence against the strongest persecution theory that we cannot ignore. The existence of these more accommodating rabbinic interpretations demonstrates that Jewish legal thought developed mechanisms for distinguishing contemporary Christians from ancient pagan idolaters. The Tosafist discussion arose partly from Jews actually living and conducting business among Christians. Later authorities continued debating those relationships rather than treating every Christian encounter as legally identical to encountering ancient pagan worship.

That historical complexity matters. It means the story isn’t simply, “The Noahide Code says Christians are idolaters and therefore Christians die.” That is too crude for the evidence.

But neither should Christians listening to this assume there is nothing worth investigating. Under Maimonides’ influential framework, Christian theology presents a serious problem because worship involving Jesus falls within his understanding of foreign worship. Under more lenient interpretations of shituf, gentile Christianity can receive a different Noahide classification. And that produces a question I didn’t expect when we started Part 8. If the full Noahide Code ever became governmental law, which rabbinic interpretation would become the law?

Maimonides? Tosafot? The Rema? A later authority? A modern Noahide court?

Who decides? Because saying “the Seven Noahide Laws should govern humanity” sounds simple until two respected authorities disagree about whether the world’s largest religion violates one of them. And Christianity isn’t the only test. If we’re going to investigate religious freedom fairly, we cannot spend the entire episode protecting Christians while ignoring everybody else. What happens to Hindu worship?

What happens to Buddhism? What happens to Islam? What happens to indigenous religions? What happens to someone whose religion contains images, spirits, ancestors or multiple divine beings? If religious freedom means anything, the test has to work when the religion being protected isn’t ours.

So that’s what we’re doing next. We’re going to test everyone else too.

Investigation 6 — Test Everyone Else Too

If religious freedom is the standard, I can’t stop with Christianity. It would be easy for a Christian audience to become concerned when Christian worship might fall under somebody else’s definition of idolatry and then ignore what happens when that same definition is applied to religions we don’t believe are true. But religious freedom only means something if it protects the person whose theology I reject as strongly as it protects me. So let’s test everybody else.

Islam gives us an interesting starting point because its central theological claim is uncompromising monotheism. Muslims worship one Creator and reject divine partners, images of God and the divinity of Jesus. That puts Islam in a very different position from Christianity within the specific Noahide question of worshiping created beings. Chabad’s own presentation defines the Noahide prohibition as worship of a human being or any created thing, while also requiring recognition of one God. That means I cannot simply say, “Noahide law prohibits every religion except Judaism.”

The sources don’t support that. In fact, the existence of non-Jewish monotheistic religions immediately shows why we have to distinguish Noahide observance from conversion to Judaism. Chabad explicitly says a person doesn’t need to convert or join a particular synagogue, church or temple to observe the Seven Laws. Its claim is instead that humanity has a universal obligation to the Creator while Jews have additional Torah commandments. But Hindu traditions give us a much harder test.

And I want to be careful with the word “Hinduism” because it covers an enormous range of philosophies and devotional practices. Some Hindus understand ultimate reality in strongly unitary terms. Some worship particular deities as manifestations of ultimate reality. Others participate in devotional practices involving sacred images. It would therefore be irresponsible for me to declare every Hindu an idolater based merely upon the name of the religion.

The legal problem remains, however. Maimonides says a Noahide who performs prohibited foreign worship can incur liability and that even forms of foreign worship not carrying the specified capital consequence remain forbidden. His discussion also prohibits certain monuments, Asherah-type objects and images. So imagine this becomes governmental law.

A Hindu says, “This image isn’t a separate god in the simplistic sense you’re describing. It represents or manifests the divine reality I worship.” Who decides whether that explanation satisfies Noahide law? The Hindu? The government?

A rabbi? A Noahide court?

That is the religious-freedom problem. The moment the state enforces a theological prohibition against idolatry, somebody inside government or an authorized legal institution has to classify another person’s worship. Then consider Buddhism.

Even that isn’t simple. Some forms of Buddhism are commonly described as non-theistic, while Buddhist traditions can include devotional practices, images, bodhisattvas, celestial figures and rituals that vary enormously between schools and cultures. Interestingly, Chabad.org itself has published an extended discussion titled “Is Buddhism Kosher?” Rather than simply saying every Buddhist is an idolater, the author distinguishes between aspects of Buddhist thought and practice, examining what might be compatible with Torah and what might not be. That is actually useful evidence against an overly simple persecution narrative.

Even within Chabad educational material, classification can require examining what somebody actually believes and does. But think about what happens if that examination becomes a matter of criminal law. Does bowing before a Buddha image constitute worship? What if the Buddhist says the image isn’t God? What if the bow expresses respect rather than divine worship?

What about offerings? What about meditation? What about invoking a bodhisattva?

Those questions can remain theological questions inside a voluntary religious system. The moment legal penalties attach to the answers, they become religious-liberty questions.

Traditional indigenous religions make the problem even clearer. Across the world there are traditions involving ancestors, spirits, sacred places, natural forces and rituals that don’t fit neatly into Western categories such as monotheism, polytheism or atheism. I cannot take one Noahide definition and declare how every indigenous tradition would be classified without examining each tradition individually. But that’s precisely the point. Somebody would have to classify them.

If the state were enforcing the classical Noahide prohibition against foreign worship, the legal system would eventually have to decide whether particular ceremonies constituted prohibited worship. That is fundamentally different from government asking whether somebody murdered, assaulted or robbed another person. The government would be judging theology.

And then there are people whose spirituality doesn’t fit within an organized religion at all. Someone might believe in a Creator while also believing in spirits. Another person might pray to ancestors. Another might believe divinity exists throughout nature. Another might combine traditions inherited from several cultures.

Under a modern religious-freedom system, those people can disagree with one another about God without government deciding which theology is correct. Under a fully enforced classical Noahide idolatry prohibition, the legal system would need some standard for determining which worship is permitted and which worship constitutes avodah zarah.

Maimonides makes clear that the category isn’t merely philosophical disapproval. His legal treatment states that a Noahide engaging in specified forms of foreign worship is liable to capital punishment, while other forms remain prohibited even when that punishment doesn’t apply. Again, I need to put the brake on before anyone takes that statement farther than the evidence allows. That is Maimonides’ classical jurisprudence. It is not evidence that Chabad today is organizing executions of Hindus, Buddhists or practitioners of indigenous religions.

I haven’t established anything remotely like that. Modern Chabad’s public Noahide presentation generally emphasizes persuasion. It says the Rebbe encouraged Jews to publicize the Seven Laws, and its introductory material frames them as principles humanity should voluntarily recognize because they come from God. But that doesn’t erase the distinction we’re uncovering. Teaching the Noahide Code and enforcing the full classical Noahide Code aren’t necessarily the same thing.

If a Chabad rabbi tells a Hindu, “I believe your worship violates God’s commandment against idolatry,” both people can remain religiously free. The Hindu can reject the rabbi’s theology, continue practicing Hinduism and tell the rabbi he is wrong. If government adopts that rabbi’s theological classification and criminalizes the Hindu’s worship, the situation has fundamentally changed. And I think this investigation gives us an important correction to something people sometimes say about the Noahide Laws. The issue isn’t simply whether Noahide law allows someone to remain a non-Jew.

Clearly it does. Chabad says that explicitly. The deeper question is how much theological diversity can exist inside the category of a permissible non-Jewish religion. Those aren’t identical questions. You don’t have to become Jewish.

But Chabad’s own explanation still says humanity must acknowledge one God and prohibits worship of humans or created things. Another Chabad presentation says all humanity should acknowledge God as Creator and ruler and describes the Seven Laws as divine criteria rather than morality grounded solely in human reasoning. So our test produces a mixed result.

Islam demonstrates that Noahide law cannot accurately be reduced to “Judaism or death.” Christianity exposes a genuine historical dispute over whether gentile Trinitarian worship constitutes prohibited idolatry. Buddhism requires distinctions about what particular practices actually mean. Hindu and indigenous traditions can present much sharper conflicts where practices are classified as worship of created beings. And atheism showed us something different again: a person can reject worship altogether while still rejecting the theological foundation Noahide authorities say gives the commandments their authority.

That is why religious freedom cannot be tested only with the religion we personally believe is true. The Christian has to ask whether the Hindu should be free to worship differently. The Muslim has to ask whether the Christian should be free to confess Jesus as God. The Jew has to ask whether either should be legally free to reject Noahide theology. The atheist has to be protected in saying all of them are wrong.

And each of them has to be free to try to persuade the others. That is religious liberty.

The classical Noahide idolatry category becomes problematic for that model when it moves from voluntary religious obligation into government enforcement, because government would then have to determine which forms of worship are legally acceptable. That conclusion comes from the structure of the legal problem; it does not establish that contemporary Chabad has a political program to create such a government. But idolatry isn’t the only place where belief collides with government power. Because Noahide law contains another prohibition that doesn’t require somebody to worship another god at all. A person can believe in the Creator and still say something offensive about Him.

And under the traditional code, that creates an entirely different legal problem. Now we have to talk about speech.

Investigation 7 — Blasphemy and Speech

Idolatry forced us to ask whether government could regulate whom a person worships. Blasphemy forces us into another territory altogether. Now the question is not necessarily what I worship or even what I believe privately. The question becomes what I am permitted to say about God.

The prohibition is part of the original Talmudic list. Sanhedrin 56a identifies the descendants of Noah as prohibited from “blessing the Name,” a traditional euphemism for cursing God. Chabad’s modern summary translates the principle much more plainly: “Do not curse your Creator.” So there is no question that blasphemy belongs to the traditional seven categories rather than being a later addition. But once again, the heading doesn’t tell us the entire law.

Immediately before the Noahide discussion, Sanhedrin 56a examines what constitutes legally punishable blasphemy. The text discusses the words used, which divine name was cursed, what witnesses must have heard and even how testimony was handled because the court didn’t want God’s name unnecessarily cursed again during proceedings. The Mishnah describes witnesses initially substituting an expression for the actual words, followed by a controlled procedure in which the principal witness eventually repeated what had actually been said. That tells me we aren’t merely looking at a religious teacher saying, “Please speak respectfully about God.” We are looking at jurisprudence.

And the Noahide portion makes the issue more serious. Sanhedrin records a dispute concerning precisely which divine names trigger liability. One opinion discussed there says that a descendant of Noah who curses God using even an appellation can be liable to execution, whereas the surrounding discussion distinguishes that from the rules governing Jewish liability. So now we have to ask exactly what we asked with idolatry. Is this theology, or is this government?

If I voluntarily accept Noahide law and believe that cursing God is a terrible sin, there is no religious-liberty problem simply because my religion tells me not to say something. Christianity also teaches believers to honor God’s name. Judaism does. Islam does. Religions routinely tell their followers that certain speech is sinful.

Religious freedom includes the freedom to impose religious disciplines upon yourself. But suppose the government adopts the traditional prohibition as criminal law. Now everything changes. Imagine an atheist standing outside a courthouse saying, “Your God doesn’t exist.” That isn’t necessarily the same thing as the technical curse discussed in Sanhedrin.

Imagine someone saying, “I hate God.” Again, we need the legal definition rather than assuming every offensive statement qualifies. Imagine somebody explicitly cursing God using one of the names recognized by the relevant legal authority. Now we are much closer to the conduct actually discussed in the classical source.

And that distinction matters because I don’t want to inflate “blasphemy” until it means any criticism of religion. The Talmudic material we examined is considerably more technical than that. It discusses cursing God’s name, not simply disagreeing with a rabbi, criticizing Judaism or arguing that a particular interpretation of Scripture is wrong. But even when we define it narrowly, the religious-freedom problem doesn’t disappear. Because modern freedom of expression generally protects speech that religious people consider deeply offensive.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee addressed this directly in General Comment No. 34 concerning freedom of expression. It said prohibitions on displays of disrespect toward a religion or belief system, including blasphemy laws, are generally incompatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights except under narrowly defined circumstances. It also said such laws cannot favor one religion over another or believers over nonbelievers, and they cannot be used to prevent criticism of religious leaders or commentary on religious doctrine. That gives us an important comparison.

Modern human-rights law can restrict certain speech when it crosses into something else, particularly advocacy of religious hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. But that is different from punishing someone simply because his words insult God. The protected interest changes. One law protects people from incitement to harm. The other protects God from blasphemous speech.

And under contemporary freedom-of-expression standards, those aren’t treated as the same thing. The Human Rights Committee has repeatedly urged states to repeal or substantially revise blasphemy laws when they punish religious criticism or divergent religious expression rather than narrowly addressing permissible restrictions such as incitement. This is where the atheist becomes useful again. Suppose he says something deliberately offensive about Christianity. As a Christian, I might hate what he says.

I might tell him he is wrong. I might consider his words sinful. I might refuse to associate with him. I might answer him publicly. But religious freedom and freedom of expression mean something precisely because he doesn’t need my theological permission before he speaks.

Now reverse it. Suppose a Christian says something Noahide authorities consider blasphemous. Or a Muslim. Or a Hindu. Or another Jew.

If government criminalizes the speech because it violates a particular religious understanding of God’s honor, government has crossed from protecting people into enforcing a theological boundary. And this is where I think the classical Noahide framework presents a genuine conflict with contemporary freedom-of-expression principles if its blasphemy prohibition and classical penalties are enforced as state criminal law. I want to phrase that carefully. The conflict isn’t that Noahide Judaism considers blasphemy sinful. Religions are allowed to consider speech sinful.

The conflict arises when government punishes the speaker for the religious offense itself. And once again, I have not found evidence establishing that modern Chabad is campaigning to create police units that arrest people for cursing God. Chabad’s public presentation describes the commandment morally: don’t curse your Creator, regardless of how angry you become. That is a substantially different presentation from opening Sanhedrin and reading the ancient judicial discussion surrounding the offense. That difference is becoming one of the central discoveries of Part 8.

The modern public presentation often emphasizes principle. The classical sources contain jurisprudence.

Those aren’t necessarily contradictions. A religious organization can teach the moral principle without advocating governmental enforcement of every historical legal consequence associated with it. But that means we have to be extremely careful whenever someone says, “Governments should recognize the Seven Noahide Laws.” Recognize them how? Teach that people shouldn’t curse God?

Encourage religious people to honor their Creator? Issue a proclamation recognizing the historical importance of the Seven Laws? Or actually enact the traditional blasphemy prohibition as criminal law? Those are radically different proposals. And after seven parts of following proclamations, Congress, the United Nations, legislation, global ethics and education, I think that distinction matters more than ever.

Because if somebody means the broad moral principle, there may be little governmental enforcement involved at all. If somebody means the complete classical legal system, then speech becomes a religious-liberty issue.

And the evidence from Sanhedrin doesn’t allow us to pretend the judicial element isn’t there. The Talmud discusses witnesses, liability and capital punishment in connection with blasphemy. At the same time, that ancient jurisprudence doesn’t allow us to claim, without separate evidence, that a modern Chabad political program seeks to impose those penalties today. That is the line we have to hold. The classical text says what it says.

The modern organization has to be judged by what it actually advocates. And now we reach another category where the difference between private religious morality and government enforcement becomes just as important. Because the Noahide Code doesn’t only regulate worship and speech. It also regulates sexual relationships. And unlike murder or theft, modern societies profoundly disagree about which consensual relationships government has any business prohibiting.

That takes us to Investigation 8. Sexual morality and government.

Investigation 8 — Sexual Morality and Government

Sexual morality brings us to another place where the difference between religious teaching and governmental enforcement becomes impossible to ignore. Religions have always taught sexual boundaries. Christianity does it. Judaism does it. Islam does it. People are free to believe that particular sexual behavior is sinful and to organize their own lives around those convictions. The difficult question for this investigation isn’t whether a religion may teach sexual morality. It is what happens when the government adopts one religious system’s sexual boundaries as criminal law.

First, we need to know what the Noahide category actually contains. Maimonides doesn’t leave “sexual immorality” as a vague expression. In Laws of Kings and Wars 9:5, he identifies six prohibited sexual relationships for Noahides: relations with one’s mother, father’s wife, another man’s wife, maternal sister, a male, and an animal. He derives these restrictions principally from Genesis 2:24 and Genesis 20:12. Immediately, we can see why treating all of these as one modern political question would be misleading.

Incest, adultery, same-sex relations and bestiality aren’t identical issues. Modern societies regulate them differently because questions of consent, exploitation, marriage, family relationships, harm and individual liberty differ dramatically. Noahide jurisprudence puts them underneath the same broad category of forbidden sexual relations, but that doesn’t mean a modern legal system necessarily would. Some portions therefore present much less of a religious-liberty problem than others.

A government can prohibit sexual abuse without establishing a religion. It can regulate relationships involving children or coercion because another person’s rights and safety are involved. Bestiality raises questions involving animals that cannot give human consent. Adultery can be condemned morally without requiring everybody to accept the theological foundation of Noahide law. But then we reach consensual sexual relationships between adults.

And the analysis changes. Maimonides explicitly includes sexual relations between males within the Noahide prohibition. He doesn’t present this merely as advice about an ideal family structure. In the following section, he discusses legal liability for relations with a male and places the offense inside his broader Noahide penal framework. That is classical jurisprudence.

Modern law in many countries has moved in a substantially different direction. The United Nations Human Rights Committee’s 1994 decision in Toonen v. Australia addressed Tasmanian laws criminalizing consensual sexual activity between adult men in private. The Committee concluded that those laws interfered with protected privacy and treated sexual orientation as falling within the Covenant’s nondiscrimination protection concerning “sex.” That gives us almost a perfect test case for what we’re investigating.

Imagine two adult men voluntarily having a sexual relationship in private. They haven’t murdered anybody. They haven’t stolen anything. They haven’t forced another person to participate. Under the classical Noahide framework described by Maimonides, the sexual act itself is prohibited.

Under the modern human-rights approach represented by Toonen, government criminalization of consensual adult same-sex activity in private violates protected privacy. Those are genuinely different legal systems. And I don’t think we should hide that disagreement behind the phrase “family values.”

People listening to this program may themselves believe homosexual activity is sinful. Christians can reach that conclusion from their own reading of Scripture. Jewish believers can reach it through Torah and rabbinic law. Muslims can reach it through Islamic teaching. Religious freedom protects their ability to hold and teach those beliefs.

But religious freedom also means government power is a separate question. Someone saying, “My religion teaches that this is sinful,” isn’t the same thing as saying, “The state should arrest you for doing it.” And this is where the punishment question becomes extremely important again.

The Talmud itself connects forbidden sexual relationships with Noahide criminal liability, and Maimonides develops specific rules governing which relationships qualify and when liability attaches. Sanhedrin 57a contains a discussion stating that forbidden sexual relations are among offenses for which a Noahide can incur execution, while Maimonides provides much more detailed classifications in Laws of Kings. That sounds shocking to modern ears, and we shouldn’t soften it. But neither should we turn it into something the evidence hasn’t established.

Reading a medieval codification that attaches capital punishment to prohibited Noahide sexual conduct doesn’t prove that Chabad today has a political program to execute gay people, adulterers or others who violate traditional sexual rules. Those are two separate factual claims, and throughout this investigation I haven’t found evidence establishing the second merely from the existence of the first. That distinction matters because otherwise we could take almost any ancient religious legal tradition, extract its harshest historical penalty and claim every modern follower is secretly attempting to impose it. That isn’t responsible investigation.

What we can say is that if somebody proposed governmental enforcement of the complete classical Noahide sexual code as Maimonides presents it, serious conflicts with contemporary privacy and individual-liberty standards would follow. The conflict is especially clear where consensual adult same-sex conduct is criminalized, because modern international human-rights jurisprudence has expressly addressed that issue. There is another lesson here that goes beyond homosexuality. The phrase “sexual morality” sounds simple until government has to define it. Which relationships constitute marriage?

When does marriage begin? When does it end? What constitutes adultery? Which family relationships are prohibited? Which sexual acts become crimes?

Maimonides answers questions like these within his Noahide jurisprudence. He even discusses when a Noahide woman is considered divorced, explaining that the relationship can terminate when either spouse separates and goes his or her own way rather than requiring a Jewish written divorce procedure. So again, this isn’t merely seven inspirational principles. Once the traditional categories are opened, there is actual law underneath them. And that returns us to the distinction that has followed us throughout Part 8.

A religious community teaching sexual restraint is exercising religious freedom. A person voluntarily choosing to live according to that teaching is exercising religious freedom. A rabbi telling Noahides that God prohibits certain sexual relationships is exercising religious freedom. A Christian pastor preaching biblical sexual morality is exercising religious freedom. But government criminalizing consensual adult conduct because a religious legal system defines it as sexually forbidden is a different question entirely.

That doesn’t automatically make every sexual restriction illegitimate. Governments still regulate conduct involving coercion, abuse, exploitation and other harms. The difficult boundary is determining when government is protecting another person’s rights and when it is enforcing a particular theological definition of sexual purity. And that is why this investigation can’t honestly end by saying either “the Noahide sexual laws are harmless” or “the Noahide sexual laws prove a modern persecution plan.” The evidence supports neither shortcut.

The classical framework contains sexual restrictions that overlap with widely accepted legal prohibitions, and it also contains restrictions on consensual adult conduct that conflict with modern privacy standards. Classical sources attach severe penalties to violations. But those historical legal provisions do not, without additional evidence, establish that contemporary Chabad or Noahide advocacy seeks their modern governmental enforcement. And that leaves one category capable of changing everything we have just examined. Courts.

Because murder, idolatry, blasphemy and forbidden sexual relationships can remain religious commandments until somebody is given authority to enforce them. So what exactly does the seventh Noahide commandment require governments to do? Does dinim merely mean that civilization must establish fair courts? Or are those courts supposed to enforce the other six Noahide commandments? Because if the second interpretation is correct, everything we have investigated in Part 8 suddenly becomes much more than theology.

That takes us to Investigation 9. What does dinim require?

Investigation 9 — What Does Dinim Require?

Everything we have examined in Part 8 eventually arrives here. Murder, theft, idolatry, blasphemy and forbidden sexual relationships can remain religious teachings as long as they remain matters of voluntary belief and practice. But if dinim means establishing courts with authority to enforce those commandments, then the seventh law becomes the mechanism connecting the other six to governmental power. So what does dinim actually mean?

At the simplest level, modern Chabad presents it in language almost anyone could support. Its introductory explanation says humanity should establish courts and ensure justice, and it connects that obligation with maintaining social order and obeying legitimate governmental laws. Read by itself, that sounds like a universal requirement for functioning civilization: establish courts, resolve disputes and maintain justice. But when we return to the classical sources, the picture becomes considerably more specific.

Sanhedrin 56b explicitly discusses whether establishing courts belongs among the Noahide commandments. The Gemara raises an apparent contradiction involving the laws given to Israel at Marah and answers that establishing courts was already a Noahide obligation, while Israel received additional procedural requirements concerning matters such as the number of judges, witnesses and prior warning in capital cases. So dinim isn’t something modern Noahide teachers recently invented. Courts are embedded in the classical Talmudic discussion of the Seven Laws. Then we reach Maimonides.

And here the answer becomes much clearer. In Laws of Kings and Wars 9:14, Maimonides asks how Noahides fulfill the commandment of dinim. His answer is that they must appoint judges and magistrates throughout their jurisdictions specifically to judge matters concerning the other six commandments and to warn the population regarding their observance. That is extremely important. Under Maimonides’ interpretation, dinim doesn’t merely mean, “Have some kind of court system.”

The courts have a Noahide function. They judge the other commandments. And that changes what we have been investigating. Remember what those commandments include. Murder.

Theft. Eating flesh from a living animal. Forbidden sexual relationships. Idolatry. Blasphemy.

Under this Maimonidean model, the court isn’t merely deciding property disputes and prosecuting murderers. It also has jurisdiction over religiously defined offenses involving worship and God’s name. That means our earlier hypothetical wasn’t imaginary. If this particular classical Noahide framework were implemented literally as governmental criminal law, somebody really would have to determine what constitutes prohibited idolatry. Somebody really would have to determine what constitutes punishable blasphemy.

Somebody really would have to determine which sexual relationships violate Noahide law. And courts would be the institution making those determinations.

Maimonides goes further. In the same passage, he says a Noahide who violates one of the Seven Commandments is subject to execution by the sword. He uses the inhabitants of Shechem as his example, arguing that they were liable because Shechem committed robbery or kidnapping while the inhabitants knew what had happened and failed to judge him. Then comes something that may surprise people even more.

Maimonides describes a Noahide judicial procedure in which a capital judgment can proceed on the testimony of one witness and before one judge, without the prior warning required in Jewish capital proceedings. His formulation also allows relatives as witnesses while excluding women from serving as witnesses or judges in this context. That is not simply “global ethics.” That is jurisprudence. But now we encounter something just as important for an honest investigation: Maimonides’ interpretation of dinim was not uncontested.

Nahmanides, the Ramban, challenged Maimonides’ interpretation when discussing the slaughter of Shechem in Genesis 34. He objected to the argument that all the men of Shechem were liable to death merely because they failed to establish judgment against Shechem. His criticism demonstrates that even major medieval Jewish authorities disagreed about the scope and consequences of the Noahide obligation of justice. That matters enormously because it prevents us from saying, “This is simply what Judaism says dinim means.” There is an internal legal debate.

Later commentators likewise record differing understandings. The Meiri, for example, describes Noahides as obligated to establish fixed courts to judge matters involving the Seven Commandments, while also acknowledging that some major authorities disagreed over whether failure to establish courts itself carried the capital consequence attributed to it by Maimonides. So once again, we have discovered layers. The Talmud establishes dinim as a Noahide obligation. Maimonides gives it a strong enforcement interpretation.

Nahmanides disputes important consequences of that interpretation. Later authorities continue discussing its scope. And modern Chabad introductory material presents the commandment primarily as establishing courts and ensuring justice. Those layers cannot simply be collapsed into one sentence. But they also cannot be separated so completely that we pretend the classical enforcement tradition doesn’t exist.

And this gives us a way to answer the question that has followed us throughout Part 8. Could the Seven Noahide Laws simply mean universal moral principles? Yes, they can be presented that way, and modern Chabad frequently does exactly that. Could they also constitute an actual legal system involving courts and punishments?

In major classical authorities, unquestionably yes. Maimonides explicitly describes courts adjudicating the six other commandments and specifies judicial consequences for violations. The crucial question therefore isn’t simply, “Do you support the Seven Noahide Laws?” That question is too vague. The real question is: what do you mean by support?

If somebody means humanity should reject murder, theft and cruelty, pursue justice, respect family life and acknowledge moral responsibility, that is one proposal. If somebody means governments should recognize those ideas symbolically, that is another. If somebody means governments should build educational programs around broad ethical principles, that is another. And if somebody means governments should establish courts enforcing the complete classical Noahide jurisprudence described by Maimonides, including idolatry, blasphemy and prohibited sexual conduct, that is something fundamentally different. This distinction becomes especially important because of what we uncovered earlier in this series.

We found documented Noahide advocacy. We found access to Washington. We found access at the United Nations. We found discussions about global ethics. We found efforts involving parliamentarians.

We found proposals for model legislation. We found educational initiatives. But none of those findings by themselves establish that the people involved were proposing Maimonides’ complete Noahide criminal code. That bridge requires evidence. And so far, I haven’t found it.

That may be one of the most important findings in the entire investigation. There is a classical Noahide legal tradition containing courts, offenses and severe punishments. There is also a modern Noahide advocacy movement promoting universal ethics, education and recognition of the Seven Laws. The fact that both exist does not prove that the second is secretly implementing every element of the first. But it gives us a very specific question to ask whenever legislation appears.

Show me the text. What exactly is being proposed? What offenses are created? What authority is given to courts? What penalties exist?

Does the legislation prohibit murder and theft, or does it prohibit idolatry and blasphemy? Does it promote ethical education, or does it empower judges to determine acceptable worship? Because now we know something we didn’t know when this series began. The phrase “Seven Noahide Laws” can refer to a short modern statement of universal moral principles. But underneath that statement exists a much larger classical legal tradition.

And under Maimonides’ influential interpretation, dinim is the mechanism that connects the commandments to courts capable of enforcing them. That doesn’t prove a modern plan to establish Noahide courts. It tells us exactly what evidence would be necessary to prove one. And now we’re ready for the most important investigation in Part 8. We have spent this episode looking at the strongest case for concern.

Now we have to do the opposite. If we’re really following the evidence rather than trying to prove a theory, we have to look directly at everything that argues against the idea that modern Noahide advocacy is a program for religious persecution. That takes us to Investigation 10. Evidence against a persecution interpretation.

Investigation 10 — Evidence Against a Persecution Interpretation

We have spent most of Part 8 doing something uncomfortable but necessary. We opened the traditional Noahide Code beyond the seven short statements normally presented to the public, and we found real jurisprudence underneath them. We found idolatry, blasphemy, sexual restrictions, courts and severe penalties in classical sources. If I stopped there, however, I could leave you with an impression the evidence does not justify: that modern Chabad and the Noahide organizations we have followed are therefore pursuing a governmental program to persecute Christians, atheists, Hindus, gay people or anybody else who violates classical Noahide law. I have not found evidence proving that.

In fact, there is significant evidence pushing against that interpretation. The first piece is obvious but important. Chabad is not concealing the Noahide mission itself. The Rebbe publicly taught that Jews should influence non-Jews to observe the Seven Noahide Laws. In a 1983 address published by Chabad, he cited Maimonides and argued that the responsibility to influence humanity regarding the Seven Laws remained applicable in his own time. Another Chabad collection describes the mission openly as encouraging humanity to acknowledge God and live according to the Noahide commandments. Whatever someone thinks about that theology, this isn’t evidence of a hidden doctrine discovered behind closed doors. Chabad has published it openly.

That doesn’t settle the enforcement question, but it matters. If the theory is that the phrase “global ethics” is deliberately hiding a secret Noahide program, we have to account for the fact that Noahide advocates repeatedly use the word Noahide themselves. The Institute of Noahide Code calls itself the Institute of Noahide Code. Its current website says it is rooted in the Noahide Code and promotes religious diplomacy, education, peace and cooperation among people of different backgrounds. The second piece of evidence comes from the legislation trail we already investigated.

The Institute’s United Nations profile is unusually explicit about wanting national legislation. It says the organization seeks parliamentarians, model draft legislation and alliances with religious, academic, media and business leaders. That is real political advocacy, and we shouldn’t minimize it. But look carefully at what the same UN profile says should be codified: United Nations resolutions concerning the culture of peace, environmental ethics and social justice. That is not the criminal code we just examined in Maimonides.

I have not found, in the legislative material we traced, model legislation saying governments should criminalize Christian worship. I have not found proposed legislation criminalizing atheism. I have not found a Noahide blasphemy statute carrying the classical penalty. I have not found legislation criminalizing private consensual homosexual activity because Maimonides classified it as a Noahide offense. And I have not found legislation establishing Noahide courts authorized to impose the classical Noahide penalties.

That absence doesn’t prove nobody has ever advocated such things. It means something much narrower and much more important for this investigation: the evidence we have followed does not establish that program. The third piece comes from education.

We followed this network all the way into discussions about mandatory education, model curricula, the Italian Senate, Dubai and the European Parliament. That sounded alarming enough that we opened the curriculum question directly. But when we looked at the substantive descriptions, we found peace education, human rights, social justice, environmental ethics, intercultural understanding, global citizenship and respect among religions. We did not find the classical Noahide criminal code being taught to children under another name. That is evidence against the strongest version of the theory.

The fourth piece is Chabad’s modern presentation of dinim. Chabad’s basic Seven Laws page doesn’t tell governments to replace their judicial systems with rabbinical courts. It tells Noahides to establish courts, ensure justice and obey laws established by their government for social stability. That doesn’t erase Maimonides 9:14. We read what Maimonides says.

But it demonstrates precisely why we cannot automatically substitute the harshest classical interpretation for every modern Chabad statement about the Noahide Laws. The fifth piece is the way contemporary Noahide material talks about people of different backgrounds. The Institute currently describes its mission as promoting peace, understanding and cooperation among diverse faiths and cultures, and says its programs seek respect for individuals regardless of religious or cultural background. Again, that language doesn’t prove what every member believes or what every future program could become. But if we’re collecting evidence both for and against a persecution interpretation, it belongs in the record.

There is also an important distinction between persuasion and coercion. The Rebbe’s own Noahide campaign unquestionably sought to change what non-Jews believed and how they behaved. Chabad’s published material says Jews should influence humanity to acknowledge the Creator and observe the Seven Laws because they are divine commandments. That is a universal religious mission. But universal religious ambition isn’t automatically governmental persecution.

Christianity tells Christians to make disciples of all nations. Islam contains universal claims about God’s revelation. Chabad teaches that the Noahide commandments apply universally. Those religions can disagree completely while operating through persuasion rather than governmental force. And this may be the most important distinction we have uncovered.

There is a documented Chabad goal of spreading Noahide observance. There is a documented classical Noahide legal tradition containing punishments. There is documented modern Noahide advocacy involving governments, parliamentarians, the United Nations, legislation and education. Those three facts are real. But connecting them into the statement, “Therefore Chabad is using international institutions to establish the classical Noahide penal system,” requires another piece of evidence.

We need the bridge. Show me the legislation criminalizing idolatry. Show me the proposal criminalizing blasphemy. Show me the court empowered to enforce classical Noahide sexual law. Show me the document establishing Maimonides’ penalties.

Show me the instruction from Chabad leadership saying that today’s political advocacy is intended to produce those results. So far, we haven’t found that bridge.

And there is another reason to resist jumping across it ourselves. The Institute’s UN presence is real, but consultative status doesn’t make it part of the United Nations government structure. Its official UN profile identifies it as a civil-society organization, and current UN documentation continues to list it among nongovernmental organizations participating in that system. Access is not authority. Advocacy is not adoption.

A religious objective is not legislation. Legislation is not enforcement. And a classical legal text is not proof of a contemporary political program.

That doesn’t mean there is nothing here worth watching. Quite the opposite. The Rebbe openly wanted the Seven Noahide Laws spread throughout humanity. Chabad continues teaching them as universal divine obligations. The Institute openly pursued international political relationships and openly discussed national legislation. Those are documented facts, not rumors.

But Part 8 asked a narrower question: would the full Noahide Code threaten religious freedom? If by “full Noahide Code” we mean literal governmental enforcement of the classical jurisprudence we examined, serious conflicts with modern religious freedom, freedom of expression, privacy and criminal-justice standards would arise. Idolatry could place worship under government judgment. Blasphemy could place religious speech under government judgment. Sexual prohibitions could criminalize consensual adult conduct. Maimonides’ understanding of dinim could give courts responsibility for enforcing those commandments.

But that is not the same as proving that this is what modern Chabad is presently attempting to establish. And I think we have to say both things. Otherwise we’re not investigating anymore. We’re prosecuting a theory.

The evidence has taken us somewhere more complicated. The classical code contains provisions that would create profound civil-liberty questions if a modern state enforced them literally. At the same time, the political and educational programs we have actually traced have generally been presented in the language of peace, ethics, justice, education and social responsibility, and I have not found the missing documentary bridge demonstrating that those programs are a concealed plan to impose the classical penalties. That missing evidence matters. Because tomorrow, in Part 9, we’re going back to the question that started this entire investigation.

Who really runs the world? And after eight episodes, we finally have enough evidence to distinguish something that seemed almost impossible to separate when we began. Presence. Relationships. Access.

Advocacy. Influence. Policy. And control. They are not the same thing.

Ending — The Verdict on Religious Freedom

We opened Part 8 with one question: would the full Noahide Code threaten religious freedom? After going through the actual categories, the classical legal material, the disagreements between authorities and the modern presentations of the Seven Laws, I think the evidence allows us to answer that question much more precisely than we could at the beginning. First, we have to define what we mean by “the full Noahide Code.”

If we mean the seven broad moral principles as Chabad commonly presents them today, the answer is complicated but far less alarming. Don’t murder. Don’t steal. Don’t abuse animals. Establish justice. Maintain sexual boundaries. Recognize a Creator. Don’t curse Him. Some of those principles overlap easily with ordinary civil law, while others remain religious teachings that people can voluntarily accept or reject. Chabad’s own introductory presentation emphasizes moral order, respect for life and property, sexual restraint, justice and recognition of God.

But that isn’t everything we found. When we opened the classical legal tradition, particularly Maimonides, we discovered that the Seven Laws aren’t merely seven inspirational sentences. They form categories of law. Idolatry has legal definitions. Blasphemy has legal consequences. Forbidden sexual relationships are defined. Theft extends beyond the simple word “stealing.” And dinim can mean establishing judges who adjudicate violations of the other six commandments.

Under Maimonides’ formulation, the consequences can be extraordinarily severe. He describes capital liability for violations of the Noahide commandments and a judicial procedure substantially different from modern American criminal procedure. Whatever we think of those provisions, they are present in the classical source and should not be hidden behind softer phrases such as “universal values” or “global ethics.” And if that complete Maimonidean system were literally imposed as the criminal law of a modern state, then yes, major conflicts with modern religious liberty would follow. That conclusion doesn’t require a conspiracy theory.

It comes directly from comparing the legal systems. Modern international religious-freedom standards protect the right to adopt, change or reject religion, including nonreligious belief. They reject using penal sanctions to force believers or nonbelievers to accept particular religious beliefs. A government enforcing a theological prohibition against idolatry would therefore collide with that principle when it punished people for religious worship that the Noahide court classified as forbidden. Blasphemy raises a similar problem because government would be punishing certain speech concerning God.

Sexual law raises another because some conduct prohibited under classical Noahide jurisprudence involves consensual adults. Dinim potentially connects all of them because, under Maimonides’ interpretation, Noahide judges are appointed specifically to adjudicate the other six commandments and admonish the population concerning their observance. So I don’t think we should soften that finding. If somebody said tomorrow, “I want the complete Noahide jurisprudence described by Maimonides enacted as the criminal law of the United States,” I would immediately want to know what happens to religious practices classified as idolatry, what happens to blasphemous speech, what happens to consensual conduct prohibited by that system, what procedural protections defendants receive and whether its classical penalties are included. Those would be legitimate questions because we have now read the source.

But here is the equally important other half of the verdict. I have not established that this is what Chabad is presently trying to do. That matters. Throughout this investigation, we repeatedly found the temptation to jump from one documented fact to another without proving the connection between them. The Rebbe promoted the Seven Noahide Laws.

True. Chabad teaches that they apply universally. True. Classical Noahide jurisprudence contains severe penalties. True.

Noahide advocates have interacted with political institutions. We documented that earlier in this series. The Institute of Noahide Code obtained UN consultative status. We documented that. Its network discussed parliamentarians, legislation, global ethics and education.

We documented that too. But those facts don’t automatically produce the conclusion that Chabad is secretly constructing a worldwide legal system that will execute Christians, atheists, homosexuals or people belonging to other religions. There has to be evidence connecting the pieces. And after eight parts, we haven’t found that evidence. That is important because there is a tremendous difference between saying, “I discovered a classical religious legal system containing provisions that would threaten modern religious liberty if literally enforced,” and saying, “I discovered a conspiracy currently implementing those provisions.”

The first statement is supported by the sources we examined. The second requires evidence we do not currently have.

There is another complication we cannot ignore. Even within Jewish interpretation, Noahide jurisprudence isn’t one perfectly uniform system. We encountered disagreements over Christianity and shituf. We encountered disagreements concerning dinim. We found questions about precisely what Noahide courts are obligated to enforce. So even saying “the full Noahide Code” can conceal disagreement about what the complete system actually requires.

That makes the modern political question even more dependent upon specifics. Show me the proposed law. Show me the actual curriculum. Show me the court. Show me the enforcement provision.

Show me the penalty. Show me the government document. Show me the organizational directive. Then we can judge what is actually being proposed instead of assuming what somebody secretly intends. And there is something else I want to say because this series could easily be misunderstood.

This isn’t evidence against Jewish people. Jewish identity isn’t evidence of political coordination. A Jewish politician isn’t evidence of Chabad control. A photograph with a rabbi isn’t evidence of control. A presidential proclamation isn’t evidence of control.

A meeting isn’t evidence of control. UN consultative status isn’t control of the United Nations. And a Jewish religious text containing laws I disagree with doesn’t establish what millions of Jewish people believe should become modern civil law. Our subject is narrower. We are investigating Chabad.

We are investigating specific Noahide organizations. We are investigating specific teachings. Specific relationships. Specific legislation. Specific institutions.

And specific evidence. That standard has protected this investigation from going where rumor wanted to take it. And now I think we finally understand the religious-freedom question.

As voluntary religious teaching, the Noahide Code is protected by the same principle that protects Christianity, Islam, Judaism, atheism and every other belief system. Chabad has the right to teach that humanity should recognize one Creator. Christians have the right to say Jesus is God. Muslims have the right to reject the Trinity. Atheists have the right to reject all of those claims.

That disagreement is religious freedom. The danger begins when government chooses one theological answer and gives it coercive legal authority over everybody else.

If the full classical Noahide jurisprudence we examined were imposed in that manner, significant religious-freedom conflicts would result. Maimonides’ system doesn’t merely regulate murder and theft; it also addresses worship, blasphemy and sexual conduct, while his interpretation of dinim gives courts responsibility for judging the other commandments. But evidence that such a system exists in classical jurisprudence is not evidence that Chabad has successfully imposed it, is secretly imposing it, or currently controls governments capable of imposing it. That distinction is the verdict. The concern is legitimate enough to investigate.

The classical texts are serious enough to read. The political relationships are significant enough to document. The legislative language is important enough to follow. But the evidence has not given us permission to cross the final bridge from influence to control. And that brings us exactly where this entire nine-part investigation was always supposed to end.

We started with a rumor. Chabad runs the world. Eight episodes later, I don’t want a rumor anymore. I want a standard of proof. Because in Part 9, we’re going to take everything we have uncovered and put it against the original allegation.

Not whether Chabad has influence. We already know it does. Not whether Chabad has relationships with powerful people. We already documented them. Not whether the Rebbe wanted the Noahide Laws spread throughout humanity.

Chabad says that openly. The final question is much harder. Does any of that amount to control? Presence is not control. Relationships are not control.

Access is not control. Advocacy is not control. Influence is not control. Even getting a policy adopted doesn’t necessarily mean you control the institution that adopted it. So in Part 9, we stop asking what Chabad believes.

We stop asking who Chabad knows. We stop asking where Chabad has gained access. And we finally ask the question this entire investigation was built to answer. Who really runs the world?

Bibliography

• Babylonian Talmud. Sanhedrin 56a–59a. Sefaria Edition. Sefaria: A Living Library of Jewish Texts.

• Chabad-Lubavitch. “The 7 Noahide Laws: Universal Morality.” Chabad.org.

• Chabad-Lubavitch. “The Mitzvot of Non-Jews.” Chabad.org.

• Chabad-Lubavitch. “The Seven Noachide Laws.” Teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. Chabad.org.

• Chabad-Lubavitch. “All Mankind.” Teachings and writings concerning the Seven Noahide Laws. Chabad.org.

• Chabad-Lubavitch. “Seven Laws for a Beautiful Planet.” Chabad.org.

• Chabad-Lubavitch. “Is Buddhism Kosher?” Chabad.org.

• Chabad-Lubavitch. “19th Day of Kislev, 5744 (1983).” Address by Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. Chabad.org.

• Institute of Noahide Code. “Institute of Noahide Code.” Official organizational website. Brooklyn, New York.

• Institute of Noahide Code. Organizational Profile and Consultative Status Records. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Civil Society Database.

• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Adopted December 16, 1966. United Nations Treaty Series 999.

• Maimonides, Moses. Mishneh Torah. “Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations.” Sefaria Edition.

• Maimonides, Moses. Mishneh Torah. “Kings and Wars,” chapters 8–10. Sefaria Edition.

• Meiri, Menachem ben Solomon. Commentary on Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56b–57a. Sefaria Edition.

• Nachmanides [Ramban]. Commentary on the Torah. Commentary on Genesis 34. Sefaria Edition.

• Tosafot. Commentary on Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin and Avodah Zarah. Discussions concerning Noahide law, idolatry, Christianity, and shituf.

• United Nations Human Rights Committee. General Comment No. 22: “The Right to Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion (Article 18).” CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.4. July 30, 1993.

• United Nations Human Rights Committee. General Comment No. 34: “Article 19: Freedoms of Opinion and Expression.” CCPR/C/GC/34. September 12, 2011.

• United Nations Human Rights Committee. Toonen v. Australia. Communication No. 488/1992. CCPR/C/50/D/488/1992. March 31, 1994.

• United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. “International Human Rights Standards: Selected Provisions on Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion or Belief.” Washington, D.C.: USCIRF.

Endnotes

1. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a–56b. The passage provides the foundational enumeration of the Seven Noahide Laws: establishing courts, prohibitions against blasphemy, idolatry, forbidden sexual relationships, bloodshed, robbery, and eating a limb taken from a living animal. The surrounding discussion demonstrates that these function as legal categories requiring interpretation rather than merely seven isolated moral statements.

2. Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 9:1. Maimonides explains the traditional development of the commandments, stating that six were commanded to Adam and the prohibition against eating a limb from a living animal was subsequently given to Noah.

3. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:2–9:14. These sections develop the individual Noahide categories into a larger body of jurisprudence dealing with idolatry, blasphemy, sexual relationships, murder, theft, consumption of flesh from a living animal, and courts.

4. Chabad-Lubavitch, “The 7 Noahide Laws: Universal Morality,” Chabad.org. Chabad’s modern introductory presentation summarizes the laws as universal moral obligations involving recognition of God, respect for human life and property, sexual morality, treatment of animals, and the establishment of justice.

5. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:9. Maimonides’ treatment of murder demonstrates that the Noahide prohibition is part of a broader legal system rather than simply a general statement concerning the value of human life.

6. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:9–9:10. The classical discussion of bloodshed contains distinctions and liabilities that extend beyond the short modern formulation “do not murder,” illustrating the difference between a general moral principle and its traditional jurisprudence.

7. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:9. The comparison made in Investigation 2 between a prohibition against homicide and religious liberty concerns the nature of the regulated conduct. A law protecting another person’s life does not inherently require the citizen to profess the religious source from which another person may derive that prohibition.

8. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:9–9:10. The same distinction applies throughout the investigation: agreement with the underlying prohibition does not necessarily constitute agreement with every definition, procedure, or penalty found within classical Noahide jurisprudence.

9. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:9. Classical Noahide law and contemporary secular criminal law may sometimes prohibit similar conduct while grounding their authority in very different sources. Similarity of outcome should therefore not be treated as evidence that a modern criminal statute derives from Noahide law.

10. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:9–9:14. The investigations repeatedly distinguish the substance of a commandment from the penalties and judicial procedures associated with it. That distinction becomes particularly important when evaluating whether a traditional religious legal system would be compatible with modern civil liberties.

11. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:11–9:12. The prohibition against eating flesh removed from a living animal is considerably more specific in the classical source than the broader contemporary ethical language sometimes used to describe respect for animals.

12. Chabad-Lubavitch, “The 7 Noahide Laws: Universal Morality.” Chabad’s contemporary summaries frequently draw broad moral lessons from the traditional categories. Such summaries should not automatically be treated as complete statements of the underlying classical jurisprudence.

13. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a–56b. The prohibition against idolatry is part of the original Talmudic enumeration of Noahide obligations.

14. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:2. Maimonides describes the circumstances under which Noahide participation in foreign worship produces legal liability and distinguishes among forms of worship and their consequences.

15. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations. Maimonides’ larger treatment of idolatry provides important context for understanding what “foreign worship” means within his legal system.

16. United Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 22, “The Right to Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion (Article 18),” CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.4, July 30, 1993. The Committee states that Article 18 protects theistic, non-theistic, and atheistic beliefs as well as the right not to profess a religion.

17. Ibid. General Comment No. 22 also states that coercion impairing a person’s freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief, including threats or penal sanctions intended to compel religious adherence, recantation, or conversion, is prohibited.

18. Chabad-Lubavitch, “The Mitzvot of Non-Jews.” Chabad’s presentation of Noahide idolatry includes prohibitions against worshiping human beings or other created things while presenting recognition of the Creator as a universal obligation.

19. Chabad-Lubavitch, “Seven Laws for a Beautiful Planet.” Modern Chabad Noahide material frequently emphasizes that non-Jews need not convert to Judaism in order to observe the Noahide commandments.

20. The distinction made in Investigation 3 is therefore between religious teaching and governmental coercion. A religious community may teach that another form of worship is false without possessing governmental authority to prohibit that worship.

21. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 8:10–8:11. Maimonides states that Moses was commanded to compel humanity to accept the commandments given to Noah’s descendants and distinguishes proper acceptance of the commandments because they were commanded by God through the Torah and Moses from observance based upon human reasoning alone.

22. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 8:11. The textual history of the final phrase concerning those who observe the commandments through reason contains a well-known variant concerning whether such persons should be described among the “wise” of the nations. That variation does not eliminate Maimonides’ distinction between divine command and independent rational reasoning.

23. United Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 22. Modern freedom of religion or belief expressly includes atheistic and nonreligious convictions, making governmental compulsion of theological belief incompatible with the standard described by the Committee.

24. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 9. Maimonides’ treatment of Christianity reflects the religious and historical environment in which he wrote and represents an important but not universally controlling position within later Jewish legal discussion.

25. Tosafot, commentary on Babylonian Talmud, discussions concerning Christianity and shituf. Medieval Tosafist material became important to later debate over whether association of another being with God constitutes prohibited idolatry for gentiles in precisely the same manner that it does for Jews.

26. Later Jewish authorities differ over how broadly the Tosafist statements concerning shituf should be understood. The investigation therefore does not treat either “Christianity is unquestionably Noahide idolatry” or “Christianity is unquestionably permitted under Noahide law” as a universally accepted Jewish legal conclusion.

27. Chabad educational materials discussing Christianity themselves present differing rabbinic approaches, including Maimonides and Tosafot. This provides evidence against portraying Jewish legal treatment of Christianity as entirely uniform.

28. The distinction between Jewish and gentile obligations is essential to the shituf debate. A theological doctrine rejected by Judaism can still raise a separate legal question concerning whether a non-Jew violates the Noahide prohibition against idolatry by holding it.

29. Investigation 6 applies the same standard to religions other than Christianity. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, indigenous traditions, and other belief systems cannot responsibly be assigned one Noahide classification without examining their actual beliefs and practices.

30. Chabad-Lubavitch, “Is Buddhism Kosher?” The existence of a detailed Chabad discussion considering distinctions within Buddhist philosophy and practice provides an example of why classification cannot always be reduced to the name of a religion.

31. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:2. If classical prohibitions against idolatrous worship were given governmental enforcement authority, a legal institution would necessarily have to determine which particular acts constitute prohibited worship.

32. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a. Blasphemy, traditionally expressed through the euphemistic phrase “blessing the Name,” appears among the Seven Noahide prohibitions.

33. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a–56b. The discussion of blasphemy includes evidentiary and judicial details concerning what witnesses heard and how the prohibited words were handled during proceedings, demonstrating that the classical treatment extends beyond a general instruction to speak respectfully about God.

34. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:3. Maimonides codifies blasphemy within his Noahide jurisprudence and discusses liability associated with cursing the divine name.

35. United Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 34, “Article 19: Freedoms of Opinion and Expression,” CCPR/C/GC/34, September 12, 2011. The Committee states that prohibitions on displays of lack of respect for a religion or belief system, including blasphemy laws, are generally incompatible with the Covenant except under the limited circumstances permitted by international human-rights law.

36. Ibid. General Comment No. 34 emphasizes that restrictions cannot be used to prohibit criticism of religious leaders or commentary concerning religious doctrine and tenets of faith. The modern human-rights distinction used in Investigation 7 is between protecting individuals from legally cognizable harms such as incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence and protecting a religious doctrine itself from offensive speech.

37. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:5–9:8. These sections describe the Noahide prohibition against forbidden sexual relationships and identify specific relationships and acts included within the category.

38. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 57a. The Talmud discusses prohibited sexual relationships as part of Noahide criminal liability.

39. United Nations Human Rights Committee, Toonen v. Australia, Communication No. 488/1992, CCPR/C/50/D/488/1992, March 31, 1994. The Committee concluded that criminal laws concerning consensual sexual activity between adult men in private interfered with protected privacy and addressed sexual orientation under the Covenant’s nondiscrimination provisions.

40. The comparison in Investigation 8 does not assert that every traditional sexual restriction is equivalent. Restrictions involving coercion, exploitation, abuse, incest, animals, adultery, and consensual adult relationships can raise substantially different legal and ethical questions.

41. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:8. Maimonides also discusses the formation and dissolution of Noahide marital relationships, illustrating that the traditional category of sexual morality develops into a larger body of family and sexual jurisprudence.

42. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56b. Dinim, the establishment of courts or systems of justice, is treated as a Noahide obligation in the classical discussion.

43. Maimonides, Kings and Wars 9:14. Maimonides states that Noahides are obligated to appoint judges and magistrates throughout their jurisdictions to judge matters concerning the other six commandments and to warn the population regarding their observance.

44. Ibid. Maimonides’ interpretation makes dinim particularly significant because it connects the other Noahide commandments to an institutional system of adjudication rather than treating justice merely as an abstract moral principle.

45. Ibid. Maimonides also discusses capital liability and Noahide judicial procedures involving judges, witnesses, and evidentiary requirements. These classical procedures differ substantially from modern American and international criminal-justice standards.

46. Nachmanides [Ramban], Commentary on Genesis 34. Nachmanides disputes important aspects of Maimonides’ interpretation concerning the inhabitants of Shechem and their liability for failing to administer justice, demonstrating significant disagreement within medieval Jewish jurisprudence concerning dinim.

47. Menachem Meiri, Commentary on Sanhedrin 56b. The Meiri likewise discusses the Noahide obligation to establish courts and records differing approaches to the scope and consequences of that commandment.

48. Chabad-Lubavitch, “The 7 Noahide Laws: Universal Morality.” Modern Chabad presentations generally describe dinim in broad terms involving justice, courts, and social order rather than presenting the complete judicial procedure found in Maimonides’ classical codification.

49. Chabad-Lubavitch, “The Seven Noachide Laws.” Chabad openly attributes the modern campaign to spread awareness of the Seven Noahide Laws to Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. The public nature of this campaign is evidence against describing the existence of Noahide teaching itself as secret.

50. Institute of Noahide Code, official organizational materials. The Institute publicly identifies itself with the Noahide Code and describes its activities through language involving ethics, education, peace, interfaith cooperation, and international engagement.

51. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Civil Society Database, organizational profile for the Institute of Noahide Code. The organization’s UN materials describe strategies involving parliamentarians, model legislation, culture-of-peace initiatives, environmental ethics, social justice, and cooperation with political and civil-society actors.

52. The legislative evidence examined in Parts 4 through 7 established organized advocacy involving international institutions and parliamentarians. It did not establish enactment of a comprehensive classical Noahide criminal code prohibiting idolatry, blasphemy, or the other religiously defined offenses examined in Part 8.

53. Likewise, the educational material examined in Part 7 contained themes involving peace, human rights, sustainable development, social justice, intercultural understanding, environmental ethics, and global citizenship. The material reviewed did not establish that children were being secretly instructed in Maimonides’ complete Noahide criminal jurisprudence.

54. The absence of such evidence should not be converted into proof that no individual or organization has ever advocated stronger governmental enforcement. It establishes only that the documentary trail examined in this investigation did not demonstrate the proposed bridge between contemporary international Noahide advocacy and implementation of the complete classical penal system.

55. Chabad-Lubavitch, teachings of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson concerning the Seven Noahide Laws. The Rebbe’s universal religious ambition to encourage humanity to observe the Noahide commandments is documented publicly. A universal religious mission, however, is analytically distinct from proof of governmental control or a program of coercive enforcement. The evidence therefore requires several distinctions maintained throughout the series: religious belief is not legislation; advocacy is not adoption; access is not authority; influence is not control; and the existence of a classical legal doctrine does not by itself prove a contemporary political program to enforce that doctrine.

56. Part 8’s conclusion is consequently limited. Literal governmental enforcement of important portions of the classical Noahide jurisprudence examined here would create serious conflicts with contemporary protections for freedom of religion or belief, expression, privacy, and criminal procedure. That conclusion does not establish that contemporary Chabad has implemented, or is presently implementing, such a governmental system. The evidence concerning modern Chabad and Noahide advocacy must therefore continue to be evaluated through specific documents, proposed legislation, curricula, governmental actions, institutional authority, and enforcement mechanisms rather than through assumptions based solely upon classical texts.

57. This distinction establishes the evidentiary standard for Part 9. Presence, relationships, access, advocacy, measurable influence, policy adoption, and institutional control are separate propositions requiring separate evidence; documenting the earlier stages does not by itself prove the final one. 

#Chabad #NoahideLaws #NoahideCode #SevenNoahideLaws #ReligiousFreedom #FreedomOfReligion #FreedomOfSpeech #Idolatry #Blasphemy #Maimonides #Dinim #NoahideCourts #Christianity #Judaism #GlobalEthics #HumanRights #ReligiousLiberty #ChabadInvestigation #CauseBeforeSymptom #WhoReallyRunsTheWorld 

Chabad, NoahideLaws, NoahideCode, SevenNoahideLaws, ReligiousFreedom, FreedomOfReligion, FreedomOfSpeech, Idolatry, Blasphemy, Maimonides, Dinim, NoahideCourts, Christianity, Judaism, GlobalEthics, HumanRights, ReligiousLiberty, ChabadInvestigation, CauseBeforeSymptom, WhoReallyRunsTheWorld