"Ger Tzedek & Ger Toshav in the Light of the Torah" by Amnon Goldberg
Contents:
1. Video Clip.
2. Brit-Am Editorial Introduction.
3. The Article by Amnon Goldberg.
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3. The Article by Amnon Goldberg.
(based on a 2022 letter printed in the Jewish Tribune).
Of the 613 mitzvos (commandments), the word 'Ger' appears appears in 46 of them. The terms "Ger Tzedek" and "Ger Toshav" do not appear in the Torah, and an examination of each posuk (verse) in context shows that in most cases the Torah is referring not to the familiar fully-Jewish Ger Tzedek convert, but rather to the non-Jewish Ger Toshav!
A Ger Tzedek is a Gentile who undergoes strict conversion and who commits to observing all the Torah, to become a full Jew.
A Ger Toshav on the other hand is a superior Noahide, a non-Jew who believes in the God of Israel and the Torah and who wishes to observe more than just the Seven Noahide Laws, but who is unwilling or unable to become a Jew. He nevertheless wishes to become formally affiliated by attachment to the People of Israel:
"The Ger will join them and be attached to the House of Yaakov" (Yeshaya-Isaiah 14).
However the terms Ger Tzedek and Ger Toshav do not appear in the Torah. Only the term "Ger." Sometimes it is clearly referring to the Ger Tzedek, for example Bamidbar (Numbers) 15:
"If a ger resides with you, or those among you in future generations, and he offers up a fire offering of pleasing fragrance to the LORD, as you make it, so shall he make it. One rule applies to the assembly, for yourselves and for the ger who resides with you; one rule applies throughout your generations just as it is for you, so it is for the ger, before the LORD. There shall be one law and one ordinance for you and the ger who resides with you."
Clearly this is referring to the Ger Tzedek.
However in Devarim (Deuteronomy) 14 it states:
"You shall not eat any found carcass. You will give it to the ger who is in your gates, that he may eat it".
Obviously we do not give neveilah (unkosher meat) to a Jewish ger tzedek. Here the mitzva is not referring to a ger tzedek, but to the non-Jewish ger toshav!
A Ger Toshav is a spiritually evolved superior Ben Noach who wishes to observe more than just the Seven Noahide Laws, who rejects idolatry and shituf (that Hashem has a partner in the Creation), but who is unable or unwilling to undergo full conversion, and yet who nevertheless wishes to become nilveh, 'attached,' to the Jewish People.
The full import of the complicated laws of the Ger Toshav apply in the times when the Yovel Year, the Jubilee, is applicable, which is not currently so. However as it says in Chassidus the mitzvos nitzchiyos - the mitzvos are eternal, and Rav Yitzchak Zeev Soloveitchik (the Griz), and Rav Aharon Soloveichik, (author of Ode Yisroel Yosef Bni Chai), wrote of the vastness, complexity and subtlety of the sugya (subject matter) of the Ger Toshav. This aside from the Talmud, Rambam, Raavad, Shulchan Aruch, Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Mishneh Berurah, the Lubavitcher Rebbe and others, that an aspect of the din of Ger Toshav has never gone in to occultation and has always existed down to today, even without the Yovel, and even outside of Eretz Yisrael.
Following the trend started in the 1960s by the famous gentile archaeologist Vendyl Jones (who was the model for the famous movie character Indiana Jones!), many non-Jews have become convinced of the truth of the Torah and identify themselves as Noahides, it is estimated around 200 million worldwide. And a number of these Noahides wish to elevate themselves further, to observe more than just the Seven Noahide commandments, to become Gerei Toshav and to affiliate to the Jewish People,
"Let no foreigner who is bound to the L-rd say "The L-rd will surely exclude me from His people" (Yeshaya 56).
"The Ger will join them and be attached to the House of Yaakov" (Yeshaya 14).
There ultimately is going to be an Ingathering of the Exiles, which the prophets predict will include many Ger Toshavs. The Redemption actually depends on the Judaization (but not conversion) of the gentiles by the reinstitutionalisation of the status of the Ger Toshav:
The Ger Toshav option may be a way of dealing with the problem of the 400,000 non-Jewish Russian immigrants in Israel, most of whom profess a belief in the G-d of Israel, but who show no inclination to undergo full conversion or strictly observe the mitzvos, by granting them the status of Ger Toshav, rather than trying to force them through tendentious Ger Tzedek conversion reforms. This could also have Aliyah implications for the future: in recent months the State of Israel is already being forced by Hashem unwillingly hold territory in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and it will one day extend from the Nile to the Euphrates as promised to Avraham, so it will have plenty of lebensraum - living space. A non-Jew who believes in Hashem Elokim Elokei Yisrael - the LORD God of Israel and His Torah, yet who does not want to become circumcised, who wishes to continue eating pork and driving on the sabbath, could in theory come before a Beth Din (Religious Court) and formally affiliate to the People of Israel by attachment, without becoming a Jew, by entering into the category of Ger Toshav.
The Israeli Chief Rabbinate under Rav David Lau recognised in 2014 for the first time in over 2000 years a man's official status as a Ger Toshav. He was in fact a Russian immigrant non-jew with a Jewish father. According to Rabbis Kook, Herzog and Yosef, for purposes of the heter mechira (technically selling the Lanbd of Israel) of the Shemittah (Sabbatical) year, it is preferable to sell the Land of Israel to a bona fide Ger Toshav, rather than to an Arab Muslim!
There a 7 levels of non-Jew: the idolatrous Akum, the Goy, the Arel, the Nochri, the Ben Noach, the Eved Knaani (the Canaanite slave who observes certain mitzvos), and at the top the Ger Toshav.
Amongst the differences between a Ger Toshav and a 'regular' Akum, Goy, Arel, Nochri and Ben Noach, is that he cannot be made into a shabbos goy. He is permitted to handle Jewish wine. He must be given sustenance and support by the Jewish community, and he is not executed if he commits manslaughter like a Ben Noach is, but rather is sent in to golus (Exile) like a Jew.
In Chazal (the Sages) there are obscure references to other categories of Gerim e.g. ger b'poal, ger b'koach, ger b'emess, ger gamur, ger sha'ar, ger vadai, ger giyura, geriei arayos, gerei chalomos, gerei Mordechai v'Ester, gerei aral v'totav, gerei umos haolam, ger tzedek bdiyeved, ger tzedek l'chatchila, and of course the famous self-made gerim gerurim who will not be able to withstand the test of the War of Gog and Magog and whose insincerity will at that time be exposed:
"Insincere converts who wear tefillin on their heads, tzitzis on their clothes, and mezuzos on their doors, when the War of Gog and Magog comes, each of them will throw off the precepts and go on their way" (Avodah Zarah 3). This alone is reason enough to adhere to the Torah-true laws of conversion! As Rabbi Avigdor Miller said: "With all due respect to geirim, and acknowledging that being Jewish is also a matter of having a Yiddishe neshomoh, a chelek elokai mima'al - but geirim are not of the dam avos - they are not blood descendants of the Patriarchs Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov!". The term limpieza de sangre (purity of blood lineage) counts for something in Judaism.
In terms of strict ideal Halacha, the only non-Jews who are allowed to reside in Eretz Yisrael are the Eved Kanaani and the Ger Toshav.
- "Do not be gracious unto them" (Devarim 2): Do not give the non-Jew a foothold in the Land.
: "They shall not dwell in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me, that you will worship their gods, which will be a snare for you". (Shmos - Exodus 23). The Halachists show that this applies not only to the 7 Canaanite nations but to all Gentiles: "Lest they cause you to sin against Me". Shame to tell, there are indeed today several hundred thousand young Israeli Sabra (Israeli-born) Jews who have been ensnared and proudly walk around wearing crucifixes, having been enticed to another religion.
B'yehios Yad Yisrael tekifah - "When Israel is in power over them, it is forbidden for us to allow a non-Jew involved in foreign worship among us. Even a temporary resident or a merchant who travels from place to place should not be allowed to pass through our land until he accepts the seven universal laws commanded to Noah and his descendants, as [Exodus 23:33] states: lo yeshvu b'artzcha - 'They shall not dwell in your land' - even temporarily." (Rambam, Laws of Avoda Zara 10).
Gerei tzeddek are considered to be Jewish souls that have been temporarily waylaid in gentile bodies (Sefer Peliah).
Gerim such as:
Tamar, Osenas, Tziporoh, Paro's daughter Basiya, Shifra, Puah, Yisro, Chovav, Rochov, Rus, Yael, Atarah, Queen Helena, Araunah, Barzillai, Yisra, Ovadiah Hanovi, the 70 sailors who sailed with Yonah Hanovi, Nevuzardan (general of Nevuchadnetzar), the descendants of Homon, Sisera and Sancherev (eg.Shemaya and Avtalyon), Esther's handmaids, Ben Bag Bag, Ben He He, the fathers of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Meir, Monbaz, Emperor Nero, Aggripas 1, King Monbaz, Abba Gullish, Ptolemy, Aristotle, Onkelos, Emperor Antoninus, Flavius Clemens, Vicilinus, Obadiah the Norman, Abraham of Ishpurk, Abraham of Augsburg, Robert of Reading, Don Lope de Vera y Alarcon, Friar Diogo da Assumpcao, Alexander Voznitzin, Count Valentin Potocki, Moses Germanus, Lord George Gordon, Warder Cresson, Abraham Kotsuji, Abraham Setsuzo, Abraham Carmell (author of "So strange my path"), and in this generation Prague chief rabbi Efrayim Sidon, Rabbis Shneur Zalman Gafni, Asher Wade, Nathan Lopes Cardozo, Nathan Gamadzeh of the Swaziland royal family, Ahuva Grey (author of "My sister the Jew"), Shira Djlilmand (author of "Rebel with a cause"), President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Yael Trump etc. etc
A frightening concept is the punkt farkert viz. a goyisher soul ending up in a yiddishe body, which then proceeds to apostasize eg Petrus Alfonsi, Pablo Christiani, Artephius, Nicholas Donin, Abner of Burgos, Petrus Schwarz, Domenico Gerosolimitano, Joshua Lorki, Johann Pfefferkorn, Abraham Benveniste, Abdullah ibn Salam, Abu Nasr, Pfaff Rapp, the parents of Nostradamus, Shabsai Zvi, Jacob Frank, Paul Levertoff, the daughters of Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, the composer Gustav Mahler, Aloisius Wiener, Franz Wentzel, Bonaventura Mayer, George Lazarus, Michael Bernays, Heinrich Marx (father of Karl Marx), Hans Herzl (the son of Theodore Herzl), Franz Rosenzweig, Heinrich Heine, Moshe Schneersohn (son of the 1st Lubavitcher Rebbe), Boris Pasternak (author of "Dr.Zhivago"), the grandparents of 1964 US presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, Bernard Berenson (art historian), Marcel Dassault (French industrialist), the nun Edith Stein, Jean-Marie Lustiger (cardinal of Paris), Moshe Rosen (director of "Jews for Jesus"), Chief Rabbi of Rome Anton Zolli, musician Bob Dylan (on and off!), Benjamin Disraeli, British MPs Nigel Lawson, Robert Adley and Edwina Currie (formerly Edwina Cohen), Robert Weissman of the "Christian Jew Foundation", Bishop Hugh Montefiore, singer Helen Shapiro, the father of former US Defence Secretary William Cohen, Israeli atom spy Mordechai Vanunu, James Rubin (former US State Department spokesman), the grandfather of French president Nicholas Sarkozy, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky etc. etc
See: Od Yisrael Yosef B'ni Chai - Ger Toshav b'zman hazeh (Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik), "The World of the Ger" (Chaim Clorfene 2014), "Laws of Ger Toshav - the Gentile who rejects idolatry" (David Katz 2017), Likutei Sichos vol.31 Parshas Mishpatim (Lubavitcher Rebbe), "Or Hara'ayon ch.20 - The Non-Jew in Israel" (Rabbi Meir Kahane 1996), and "Lighting up the Nations" (Rivka Lambert Adler 2021).