Gentile

The English word "gentile" comes from the Latin gens and gentilis, meaning "of a clan or tribe," and entered English primarily through biblical translations of the Hebrew goy.[2] The term corresponds to the later Hebrew goy, a synonym for nokri, meaning "stranger" or "non-Jew."[1] In Biblical Hebrew, goy and goyyim originally meant "nation" broadly, applicable to Israelites and non-Israelites alike; the phrase lo yisa goy al goy cherev ("nation shall not take up sword against nation") illustrates this general biblical usage.[6] Only through later development did the terms acquire the more specific sense of non-Jew or heathen.[1]

In English usage, "gentile" is the most widely used term for a non-Jew and was originally neutral.[2] Some speakers today prefer "non-Jew" because it is factual and direct.[2] The related Hebrew and Yiddish word goy carries a similar meaning but is often used derogatorily, a distinction drawn by the Anti-Defamation League between that term and "gentile."[7] A Hebrew Union College thesis argues that "gentile" does not carry the same negative connotations in contemporary usage as "heathen," while My Jewish Learning notes that "gentile" can itself be heard negatively in some contexts.[8][2]

Rabbinic terminology does not employ these terms in a single fixed sense. A term may refer to an actual idolater in one passage and to a non-Jew in general in another, particularly when the subject is ordinary social or commercial contact.[8] Textual censorship further complicates interpretation: terms such as Egyptian, Amalekite, Sadducee, or Samaritan sometimes replaced references to Christians or gentiles in surviving texts, making it difficult to determine whether a passage addresses an idolater, a Roman pagan, a Christian, or a non-Jew generally.[3][8]

The Biblical category of the non-Israelite was not uniform.[1] The Hebrew Bible distinguishes, among others, the temporary visitor and the resident alien, or ger toshav. The stranger was protected by law, had access to courts, and was generally subject to the same law as the native-born Israelite in specified matters.[1] Biblical passages command Israelites to love the stranger, while requiring the stranger to abstain from idolatry, blood, sorcery, incest, and other practices viewed as abominations.[1]

The Jewish Encyclopedia interprets Biblical hostility toward non-Israelites as directed primarily at idolatry and immoral practices rather than non-Israelite ethnicity as such.[1] It points to exemplary non-Israelites, including Eliezer, Ruth, and Job, and interprets the books of Ruth and Jonah as challenges to an exclusively racial or separatist understanding of Israelite identity.[1] Ishay Rosen-Zvi argues that in the Hebrew Bible, goy means "people" in reference to particular nations rather than a single abstract category encompassing every individual who is not Jewish, and that the later concept of the gentile developed through Second Temple Jewish literature and rabbinic usage.[9]

Rosen-Zvi further argues that the abstract concept of the gentile appears first in Paul's Letters, while rabbinic literature made it a stable and enduring category in which goy came to signify any individual who was not Jewish, thereby erasing many ethnic and social distinctions among non-Jewish peoples.[9] He contrasts this with Josephus, who generally presents non-Judean peoples through multiple, context-dependent Greek terms—ethnē, hellēnes, and allophyloi—and who had not yet developed a fully functioning binary Jew-versus-gentile structure.[9]

The Encyclopaedia Judaica account reproduced by the Jewish Virtual Library describes a sharp barrier between Jews and gentiles as developing during the later Second Temple period.[3] The Biblical prohibition on intermarriage had originally been limited to the seven Canaanite nations, but following the reforms associated with Ezra it was extended to all non-Jews.[3] Monotheism became a principal distinguishing mark of Jewish identity, while gentiles were generally associated in rabbinic thought with idolatry and the "nations of the world."[3]

Rosen-Zvi describes a rabbinic tendency to transform Biblical intermediate categories into a Jew–goy binary.[9] He points to the transformation of the Biblical ger into a convert, the classification of Kuttim and meshumadim in relation to Jewish identity, and the erasure of distinctions among Biblical peoples including Egypt, Edom, Ammon, and Moab.[9]

Rabbinic attitudes toward gentiles varied substantially by teacher, period, and historical setting, ranging from Simeon ben Yohai's hostile formulation about the "best of gentiles" to Samuel's position that God makes no distinction between Israel and the nations in judgment.[3] Rabbinic antipathy was generally attributed to idolatry, perceived moral failures, and gentile persecution of Jews rather than non-Jewish ancestry itself.[3] Some traditions treated gentiles as potentially untrustworthy; Rabbi Meir is presented as advocating a more closed and suspicious stance, whereas traditions attributed to the Sages permitted cautious interaction rather than complete segregation.[10]

Rabbinic legal discussions regulated contact with gentiles through distinctions between public and private settings, persons and property, and ordinary services and life-threatening emergencies.[10] Some traditions permitted gentile healing of property but restricted the healing of persons; others allowed a gentile practitioner to treat an Israelite when others were present. The same study records Rabbi Yohanan seeking treatment from a non-Jewish woman, illustrating that the corpus did not maintain a single categorical ban on gentile healers.[10] Rabbinic sources also require Jews to support gentile poor people, visit and care for gentile sick people, bury gentile dead, comfort gentile mourners, protect gentile property, and conduct business fairly—producing a tension between universal obligations of kindness and rules intended to limit or regulate contact.[8]

Rabbinic law places the gentile within several legal categories covering personal status, marriage, inheritance, contracts, evidence, damages, property, and offerings.[3] The gentile is characterized as "a legal personality in Jewish law" who, although sometimes subject to differential rules, is "generally treated equitably."[3] Some discriminatory rulings were justified by an absence of reciprocity or by efforts to prevent assimilation, including rules concerning lost property, testimony, non-Jewish wine, and cooked foods.[3] Discrimination was discouraged or prohibited when it threatened peaceful relations, caused enmity, or risked desecrating the Divine Name; gentile poor were to receive charity alongside Jewish poor, and gentiles were to be visited when sick and given last rites.[3]

The same account reports that Roman officials who studied Jewish law said, "We have scrutinized all your laws and found them just," while objecting to unequal liability when a Jew's ox and a gentile's ox caused damage.[3]

The legal status of the ger toshav—a non-Jew who lived in the Land of Israel and accepted the seven universal Noahide laws—occupied a distinct position within this framework. Such a person was considered a member of Israelite society and received the benefits of Israelite charity and social services.[5]

Halakhic rules concerning Jews and gentiles also addressed prohibitions on sexual relations and intermarriage.[3] The complexity of terminology in surviving texts—where censorship may have substituted ethnic or sectarian labels for more direct references—means that some passages can only be understood accurately by taking the history of textual alteration into account.[3]

Rabbinic tradition identifies seven commandments for the descendants of Noah—that is, for non-Jewish humanity.[3] As enumerated in Sanhedrin 56a, they are establishing courts of judgment, avoiding blasphemy, rejecting idolatry, avoiding forbidden sexual relations, prohibiting murder, prohibiting theft, and refraining from eating a limb from a living animal.[11] Other rabbinic authorities added further prohibitions, including castration, mixing breeds, and witchcraft.[3]

Yakov Nagen groups these commandments by the relationships they protect: blasphemy and idolatry concern the relationship between humanity and God; forbidden sexual relations and murder address serious harm within human society; theft and courts of judgment protect property and social cooperation; and the prohibition on eating a limb from a living animal prohibits cruelty toward other creatures.[11] Nagen presents the Noahide commandments as safeguards intended to preserve the post-Flood world and prevent a recurrence of catastrophic human corruption, describing them as basic regulations for a humane society.[11] On that basis, he argues that they should not by themselves be treated as a complete religion for non-Jews, since the list omits broader positive commands such as love of God and other people.[11]

A ger toshav who wishes to live among the Jewish people must observe these laws to receive that status.[11] Maimonides held that the seven commandments are the non-Jewish counterpart to the 613 commandments accepted by Israel at Sinai and that their binding force derives from divine revelation to Moses rather than human reason alone. Citing Hilkhot Melakhim 10:9, Nagen describes Maimonides as presenting two options for a non-Jew: remain a non-Jew and observe the seven commandments, or become Jewish and observe all of them.[11]

Rabbinic teaching holds that righteous gentiles are entitled to a share in the World to Come, providing an authoritative counterpoint to broad condemnations of gentiles.[3][5]

The title Righteous Among the Nations derives from this Jewish tradition and refers to non-Jews who helped the Jewish people in times of need.[12] When Yad Vashem was established in 1953, one of its assigned tasks was honoring "high-minded Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews" during the Holocaust.[12] Yad Vashem's criteria for the title require active involvement in saving Jews from death or deportation, risk to the rescuer's life or liberty, an original motive to save Jews from the Holocaust, and first-hand testimony or irrefutable documentation.[12] As of January 1, 2024, the title had been awarded to 28,707 individuals from 51 countries, including Christians of different denominations, Muslims, and atheists.[12]

Echoes & Reflections defines "gentile" as someone who is not of the Jewish faith and says the term most often refers to a Christian.[13] The 1990 National Jewish Population Survey adopted an operational definition for research purposes: "Any adult who was not and had never been identified as Jewish by religion or ethnic origin was defined a Gentile."[4] The survey separately identified adults of Jewish parentage who practiced another religion, people born or raised Jewish who had converted out, and "Jews by Choice"—people currently Jewish who had been born gentile.[4] The report emphasized that its categories reflected respondents' self-understanding rather than settling an ultimate or permanent definition of Jewish identity.[4]

Among the "Jews by Choice" category, 70 percent had formally converted to Judaism, while 30 percent practiced Judaism without having undergone a formal conversion; the survey adopted this neutral category name because no consensus existed among religious denominations regarding the acceptability of these conversions.[4] The survey also defined mixed households as those composed of a Core Jew and a gentile, reporting 1.35 million gentile adults living with the total Jewish population in qualified Jewish households.[4]

Charles S. Liebman emphasizes that Jewish tradition concerning Jewish–gentile relations is not "cut of one cloth" and contains different and sometimes contradictory beliefs, values, and norms across historical periods.[14]

The related terms goy and goyim have been appropriated and weaponized by antisemites and white supremacists to mock Jews and promote conspiracy theories. Contemporary hate groups have built antisemitic memes around the terminology in online propaganda.[6][15] The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for example, portrayed an alleged Jewish conspiracy to dominate and subjugate "the GOYIM."[6] The blood libel—the false accusation that Jews use the blood of gentiles in matzah, human sacrifice, or other rituals—is identified as one of the most pernicious and enduring anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to exploit Jew–gentile distinctions.[6]

The principal interpretive difficulty is that neither rabbinic terminology nor rabbinic attitudes toward gentiles were uniform. Talmudic literature spans more than half a millennium and a wide geographic area, so hostile and accommodating statements must be read in their particular historical settings.[3] Textual censorship adds uncertainty because surviving labels may substitute Christians, pagans, sectarians, or gentiles for one another.[3][8]

Modern terminology is also context-sensitive. My Jewish Learning notes that goy can be neutral, affectionate, humorous, or pejorative depending on context, while the Anti-Defamation League says goy and goyim are often used derogatorily and have been adopted as self-references by some white supremacists.[2][7] Rosen-Zvi's claim that the abstract gentile first appeared in Paul's Letters is a specific scholarly thesis rather than a settled historical consensus.[9]