Torn Kippahs, Burning Homes, and Smashing Statues – A Torah Perspective Parshas Emor
Incident #1 – On April 23rd, in a café in Modi’in, a Jewish man was arrested because of his kippah. His kippah, which they confiscated, had an Israeli flag on one side and a Palestinian flag on the other. When he was released from police detention, he demanded his kippah, which they returned, only that the police officers had cut off half the kippah, the part that had the Palestinian flag.
Incident #2 – On April 19th, a video surfaced online, showing two IDF soldiers in Lebanon, smashing a statue of Jesus.
Incident #3 – Over the past two months there has been a sharp increase in violent activity against Arabs living in Yehuda and Shomron. This violence, which has been perpetrated by masked Jews who live in the region, includes the killing of eight Arabs, and injuring over 200. It has gotten so bad that an IDF battalion that was on its way to Lebanon had to be sent to Yehuda and Shomron to keep the peace.
I have hesitated to discuss this violence publicly because Israel was at war. When your brother is getting beaten over the head, when missiles are falling daily, it is not the time to give your brother feedback. To criticize Israel in the midst of an existential war is, in my opinion, a distortion of values and downright dangerous – there is nothing that our enemies love more than quoting Jews who are critical of Israel.
But now that there is a lull in the war, we are hearing from Israelis, staunch right-wing Israelis, who are speaking openly about a growing problem. General Avi Bluth, the chief officer of Israel’s central command, one of the most high-ranking officers in the country and who is most definitely right-leaning, was recently quoted as saying that: These “terrorists” – referring to the Jews perpetrating these crimes, “are causing unfathomable damage to the State of Israel and Zionist enterprise.” They are “a disgrace to the Jewish people” and he is personally “ashamed.”
We could discuss the nuance of incidents 1 and 2. Is it appropriate to place a Palestinian flag, which has taken on a very dark connotation over the past years, on a kippah? Is a statue of Jesus an idol and should therefore be broken? All fascinating questions, but really, to me, missing the point. There is an underlying sickness that connects these three incidents that I want to focus on, something General Bluth said explicitly: “These people don’t see Arabs as human beings…”
So let’s take a few moments this morning to describe Judaism’s view of people who are not Jewish, people who practice other faiths, and non-Jews who live in the land of Israel.
Non-Jews living in the land of Israel is fairly straightforward. There is absolutely no problem with a non-Jew living in Israel. The Torah often refers to a ger toshav, a gentile who accepted a basic level of morality and is not actively attacking us. We are obligated to look out for such people. Simple.
If those people attack us, it goes without saying that we are obligated to defend ourselves. It should go without saying that there are innocent casualties in any war. As intelligent people, we could stand by the IDF with pride, knowing that they are waging war for the security of the Jewish people and we could mourn the inevitable loss of innocent lives. Simple.
What’s not so simple is our perspective to people of other faiths. To address this, I’m not going to cherry-pick sources because that’s an insult to your intelligence. I’m not going to pretend that this is not a complex question because it is. I’m not going to claim, as some in other denominations of Judaism claim, that Judaism blindly embraces all people and respects all faiths because it’s simply not true.
Shakespeare once said, “the devil doth quote scripture.” Anyone can find sources in the Talmud to back up whatever view they believe in. Go ask the Groypers, the far-right antisemitic followers of Nick Fuentes, who find random lines in the Talmud that they use as proof that the Jews are out to take over the world. That’s not how an Orthodox Jew thinks. Our Mesorah, our tradition, is built on the shoulders of sages who mastered all of our sources and synthesized them into a coherent philosophy. If you don’t have the breadth of knowledge and the fear of G-d of Maimonides, the Vilna Gaon, or one of our established Torah scholars, you cannot simply spit out some AI-generated sources and pretend that they are the sum total of Jewish thought.
So today, I’d like to share with you A view. It is not the only view; there are, in our tradition, a range of normative views on every element of Jewish thought. But this is a view that I subscribe to and I would encourage you to strongly consider.
The proponents of the view I’ll be sharing are Rav Yosef Albo, one of the leading Spanish scholars of the 15th century, Rav Yaakov Emden, seen as one of the greatest scholars of the 18th century, Rav Ovadia Seforno, head of the 16th century Italian Jewish community, Menachem HaMeri, the leading sage of Provence in the 13th century, the poet and scholar, Rav Yehuda HaLevi, Rav Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, the Rosh Yeshiva of the esteemed Volozhin Yeshiva, and Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook. You get the point. While there are dissenting views within our tradition, these views, although they all diverge at different points, taken together represent a general attitude towards non-Jews that goes like this:
In a few days we will celebrate the giving of the Torah. There is nothing that screams, “only the Jews are important!” like the moment that we, only the Jewish People, stood at Mt. Sinai, and received a particular set of commandments that were relevant to them and them alone. However, in the lead-up to the giving of the Torah, G-d describes the nation of Israel. He explains why He is giving us the Torah. “V’atem ti’h’yu li mamleches kohanim, you shall be for a me a kingdom of priests.” Commenting on this verse, Rav Ovadia Seforno writes: לְהָבִין וּלְהוֹרוֹת לְכָל הַמִּין הָאֱנוֹשִׁי לִקְרֹא כֻלָּם בְּשֵׁם ה’, “to understand and to teach all the nations of the world to call out in the name of G-d.” We were given the Torah, says the Seforno, not for ourselves, but to share its wisdom with others. The Netziv, in his introduction to the Book of Shemos, adds that this is the purpose of the world.
Now does this mean that we are to convert the nations of the world to Judaism? Absolutely not.
But it’s deeper than not proselytizing. Rav Albo explains that each nation has its own unique character. Stemming from a deep belief in diversity, he argues that each nation must have their own set of laws. While the Torah is the perfect fit for the Jewish Nation, it is incompatible to other nations. They are expected to establish their own laws and their own customs that reflect their national character. Those laws are a reflection of their own unique spiritual identity.
Rav Kook, who has the most extreme and controversial take, argues that G-d gave other nations prophets. He sees no issue in assuming that genuine prophecy existed in other nations. He goes so far as to say that it is conceivable that G-d performed miracles for those prophets. In other words, while many Jewish thinkers assume that any miracles attributed to Jesus or Mohammad were fabrications, Rav Kook says, why not? G-d cares for the nations, He desires for them to live a moral life, and so Hashem supports their prophets to see their mission through. (L’nevuchei HaDor)
How should we relate to moral and upstanding gentiles? While some of our great thinkers (most notably, the Baalei Tosafos) made a technical distinction between Christians and idolators to allow for commerce, Rav Yaakov Emden described Christians and Muslims as “our brothers.” (And if you know anything about Rav Yaakov Emden, you would know that he was not an apologist. He meant it.)
Rav Emden was following in the footsteps of Menachem HaMeiri who argues that all the laws in the Talmud that distinguish between Jew and non-Jew do not apply to non-Jews who live upstanding lives. Contrary to a simple reading of a Mishna in Yoma, he argues that we are obligated to desecrate Shabbos to save the life of a non-Jew. We are obligated to support non-Jews with tzedakah, the same way we support Jews. Every time the Torah speaks of “brother” or “fellow” this includes all the moral and upstanding people of the world. While his conclusions are not normative, his viewpoint is taken into account in mainstream Halachic thought.
Taken together, this viewpoint has zero tolerance for referring to non-Jews as animals or even as ‘goyim,’ or for denigrating their behavior and beliefs.
I have a theory. I am not a historian, sociologist, or enough of a scholar to say this definitively, but it seems to me that Torah scholars who took a more accepting view of non-Jews lived in relative peace and comfort and those who took a more isolationist and even negative approach to non-Jews lived in a climate where they were in danger; danger of death by the local gentiles or the danger of assimilation.
This is most clearly illustrated in the thought of Rav Kook. I quoted above some of his extremely positive views on Christianity. But that’s not the full picture. A decade after writing how the nations of the world can have their own prophets and miracles, he takes a sharp turn. He goes on a sustained attack of Christianity. He describes it as Satan and Amaleik. Without getting into the details, at the time of his later writings, there was a strong cultural movement that was threatening Judaism, it was a movement that was causing countless Jews to scorn and walk away from the Torah. And so, Rav Kook picked up his pen and used it to distance Judaism in the strongest of terms from other faiths.1
If this theory is correct, it is abundantly clear what our position to non-Jews should be in 2026. Yes, antisemitism is on the rise in our own backyard. Yes, Israel is demonized by countries who recently were her greatest supporters. But in the bird’s eye-view of history, we have never been so secure. We are secure in our physical security, with a land and an army that evokes fear in the hearts of all her enemies, and we are secure in our spiritual strength; the observant community is bursting at the seams. Across this country and in Israel, the amount of Torah learned today is unprecedented in at least two thousand years. While weak people need to put down others to lift themselves up, a confident people have the strength to extend a hand and see the value of all those around them.
In this Torah-based worldview, violence towards others is abhorrent, denigrating other faiths is unnecessary, cutting up the kippah of a misguided Jew is foolish. Rather, and especially as we prepare to relive the experience of Mattan Torah, the charge of being a ‘kingdom of priests’ should fill us with confidence to know our special role and elevate the special roles of those around us.
I’ll conclude with the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “The multiplicity of faiths is not a tragedy, but the gift of G-d.” “Since mankind in its diversity cannot be reduced to a single faith or language, so G-d cannot be reduced to a single faith or language.” “The great challenge to religions in a global age is whether, at last, they can make space for one another, recognizing G-d’s image in someone who is not in my image.”
Our job as Jews is to lead the way.
1.For details, see Rabbi Sarel Rosenblatt’s excellent article on this topic in G-d Shall be One by Maggid Press.