Likewise, if gentiles are forbidden to undertake distinctively Jewish practices (the wearing of phylacteries, for example, or the separation of meat and milk), then their salvation cannot be foreclosed on the grounds that they did not undertake to observe them. In other words, the righteous among the gentiles are not blocked, as transgressor Jews are, from redemption; but righteous gentiles have their own path, different from that of Jews. At the end of the righteous gentiles’ path are the same eternal rewards that await the righteous among the Jews.
“Toleration” would not be an accurate name for this doctrine, and certainly the doctrine is not one of religious equivalence. However, the approach that Judaism takes toward righteous gentiles offers a partial solution to the problem of intolerance in monotheist religions. By establishing different sets of expectations for different groups, Judaism makes room for adherents of other faiths to perform their own religious obligations in a way that entitles them to salvation by the God of Israel. While Jews are enjoined to follow 613 commandments of theTorah, the demands that normative Judaism makes of gentiles comprise only seven laws. These six prohibitions and one positive commandment are together known as the Noahide laws because (according to chapter seven of Sanhedrin) they were the series of laws given to Noah after the flood (though they differ little from the basic laws given to Adam).<ref>The one positive command requires the establishment of courts of justice. The six prohibitions are of idolatry, murder, blasphemy (very narrowly defined), incest and adultery, robbery, and the eating of flesh cut from a live animal. The Noahide laws have intermittently, especially during the seventeenth century in Europe, been discussed in the context of international law.</ref> The Noahide laws set a universal standard for gentile religions and embody the truths that, according to Maimonides, the peoples of the world will come to recognize and share at the end of days. Thus, the Noahide laws delineate the boundaries of Jewish religious toleration: failure to observe these laws would bar a person or a people from entering their own gate into heaven. (The Jews’ gate is not open to them.)
