Brit Olam

Brit olam literally means "everlasting covenant." In a modern Jewish educational account, the concept is described as requiring people to consider the past, present, and future in every decision.[1] The account illustrates the idea through a student who connected it with her family, birthplace, current city, and the future she hoped to build.[1]

A rabbinic work titled Brit Olam is a commentary by Rabbi Hayyim Joseph David Azulay (the Chida) on Sefer Chasidim, the medieval pietistic work of Rabbi Yehudah Hachasid.[6] The commentary is dated to approximately 1768–1792 CE.[6]

The Brit Olam Noahide World Center is an NGO founded in 2011 by Rabbi Oury Cherki.[2] Its stated mission is to spread Judaism's universal message to non-Jews through the framework of the Seven Noahide Commandments—a code of conduct that, according to Jewish tradition, applies to non-Jews.[2] Those commandments consist of prohibitions on idolatry, sexual immorality, murder, theft, blasphemy, and cruelty to animals, together with a positive commandment to establish courts of law and abide by law.[2]

Cherki's approach treats the Noahide laws as a threshold rather than a ceiling. He argues that Noahides should also study Torah, find their place within its theology and practice, and seek guidance from rabbis—positioning Noahidism as a form of spiritual relationship with Judaism rather than merely an ethical minimum.[2] Cherki has described the organization as developing gentile spirituality in the form of "satellite religions" to Judaism. He said Brit Olam was in contact with thousands of followers and their communities around the world, including a congregation in Congo whose priest had adopted Noahidism, and that a world Noahide conference was being planned in Prague.[8]

Cherki composed a prayer book for Noahides titled Brit Olam and a religious legal codex titled Brit Shalom. Reports differ on their translation counts: a 2022 interview gave five languages for Brit Olam and 16 for Brit Shalom, while a 2024 article gave eight for the prayer book and 15 for the legal volume.[2][8] At a 2024 conference in India, participants formally accepted the commandments by reading a declaration in Hebrew and Telugu before a three-man religious tribunal.[2] Brit Olam's work has reached communities in North and South America, the Far East, and, to a lesser extent, Africa.[9]

A separate entity bearing the same name is a minor Israeli political party founded around 2005 by Ofer Lifshitz, a native of Kibbutz Masada who had spent sixteen years in the United States before returning to Israel with the goal of creating what he called "historical reconciliation between Jews and Arabs."[3] Lifshitz concluded that the Knesset offered a path to societal influence and launched the party accordingly.[3]

The party emphasized dialogue among Israel's cultural communities and sought to bring Jews, Arabs, Christians, Druze, Ethiopians, and Russian immigrants under a single political roof.[3] Its social activities included involvement in establishing an Arab-Jewish college in the Galilee, with branches in Tamra, Daliyat al-Karmel, and Basmat Tab'un, as well as a network of kindergartens guided by the principle of educational equality.[3] Candidate lists reserved places for representatives of different communities, and in 2006 the party's second- and fourth-ranked candidates were Arabs.[3]

Before the 2026 election, the party had contested five Knesset election rounds since 2006 without crossing the electoral threshold.[10] For the 2013 election, it registered eight candidates with Lifshitz heading the list.[11] Published vote totals for that election conflict: the cited official results page records 761 votes, while Ynetnews reported 722.[12][13] N12 separately reported 733.[14] In 2015 the party received 886 votes.[15] In the April 2019 election, Lifshitz was the sole candidate on the list and the party received 216 votes, reported by Ynet as the lowest total received by any party since Israel's establishment.[10] It did not contest the September 2019 election.[10]

For the 26th Knesset election in 2026, a list registered under the full name ברית עולם לגאולת ישראל ("Brit Olam for the Redemption of Israel") was assigned the ballot designation זץ.[4]

"Brit Olam" is also the title of a Hebrew love ballad and one of the early love songs written by Ehud Manor, a lyricist who went on to write more than 1,000 songs during his career.[5] Manor composed the initial verses privately for his wife, Ofra Fox, shortly after their marriage in New York in the mid-1960s, describing the song as concerning "the excitement of the first night."[5]

Manor and Fox had met and fallen in love in New York, where both worked at the Israeli club Sabra—Fox as a singer and dancer, Manor as a stagehand.[5] Manor had come to New York to study communications; Fox was then a rising actress and singer.[5] After the couple returned to Israel, Manor placed the verses in a drawer and left them there for years.[5] The song was completed only when composer Mati Caspi approached Manor seeking lyrics for a melody he had written. Manor retrieved the old verses, and the two worked together to write the chorus, producing the completed song that became associated with the couple's story.[5]

The name Brit Olam also appears in a 2016 discussion of Israeli humanitarian activity during the Syrian civil war. The chapter identified Dr. Rony Berger as director of Brit Olam's Rehabilitation and Development Unit.[7] Berger led a project implemented by Tevel b'Tzedek—an Israeli NGO concerned with social and environmental justice, world hunger, and social disparities—to assist Syrian refugees in Jordan.[7] The chapter did not provide further organizational details about Brit Olam.[7]

More broadly, the chapter described thousands of tons of humanitarian aid provided with Israeli state support but without official Israeli participation through independent Israeli and Jewish civilian NGOs, most of which operated covertly in Jordan, Turkey, and Syria.[7] This was its account of the wider aid effort, not an estimate specific to Brit Olam.