TabletMag: HOW JEWS SHOULD DEAL WITH GENTILES – According to this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study, as little as possible

Adam Kirsch writes:

The nominal subject of Tractate Avoda Zara is idol worship, one of the worst sins in Judaism. But as Daf Yomi readers complete our third week of studying this tractate, it is becoming clear that the real concerns of the rabbis are much broader than idolatry. In effect, they are aiming to regulate all of Jews’ relationships with non-Jews. Nowhere, perhaps, is the gulf between the Talmudic worldview and the experience of modern American Jews more evident than here. American Jews live in a world that, while certainly not free of anti-Semitism, is marked by a historically unprecedented openness and trust between Jews and non-Jews. After all, this is a country where President Barack Obama, a Christian, hosted an annual Passover Seder in the White House…

Such stories tend to suggest that the safest course for Jews was to avoid gentiles altogether, and Tractate Avoda Zara clearly uses idol worship as an excuse to separate the Jews from the pagan world that surrounded them. It is not just heresy the rabbis want to stamp out—indeed, actual idol worship seems to be the least of their worries—but excessive intimacy of any kind. We saw earlier that Jews could not do business with gentiles near their festival days, nor sell them items that might be used in pagan rituals. The mishna in Avoda Zara 14b goes further: a Jew should not sell gentiles large livestock because they will be used to violate the Shabbat prohibition on labor.

More troublingly, Jews should not leave small animals alone with gentiles, or entrust their sheep to gentile shepherds, because they are likely to use them to commit bestiality—a law that speaks volumes about the rabbis’ estimation of pagan morals. In addition, a Jew should not entrust his child to a gentile teacher “to teach him to read books or to teach him a craft.” It is not entirely clear whether this prohibition, too, stems from sexual fears, or whether it has more to do with the chance that the teacher will lead the child into apostasy. Broadly speaking, “one may not seclude oneself with gentiles,” since the assumption is that they will try to do a Jew harm.

Other prohibitions are meant to discourage social intercourse with gentiles. Jews may not go to places of amusement, such as circuses, theaters, and stadiums, for two reasons: not only are pagan sacrifices performed there, but they are what the Bible calls “the seat of the scornful,” homes of levity and frivolity. Any time spent there is time lost to Torah study. Moreover, Jews should not praise gentiles, especially women; according to Rav, “it is prohibited for a person to say: How beautiful is this gentile woman!”