What should we do with the goys?

Prompt

EnglishTanakhTalmud

Sources: the Tanakh and the Talmud; answered in English in the Essay style.

The Answer in Brief

The question of how Jews should relate to non-Jews (goyim) is addressed across multiple strata of rabbinic literature, and the sources present a genuinely complex picture. The dominant framework is darkei shalom — "the ways of peace" — which generates a series of positive obligations: supporting gentile poor, allowing them access to agricultural gifts, greeting them, and maintaining civic cooperation. This framework appears in [Gittin 61a:5], [Gittin 61a:8], [Tosefta Gittin 3:18], and [Jerusalem Talmud Sheviit 4:3:1]. A second, more restrictive current, visible in [Avodah Zarah 20a:4], limits certain forms of generosity or social intimacy. The tradition does not resolve these two currents into a single rule; rather, it calibrates behavior by context — land of Israel versus diaspora, public welfare versus private favor, civic necessity versus social assimilation.

Background

The word goy (plural goyim) means simply "nation" in biblical Hebrew and is used of Israel itself in many biblical passages. In rabbinic usage it came to denote a non-Jew, and the Talmud uses several overlapping terms: nochri (foreigner), oved kokhavim (literally "worshipper of stars," a euphemism for idolater used in many manuscripts), and akum. The sources below use these interchangeably to mean non-Jews generally, though in some legal contexts the precise category matters.

The legal question of Jewish-gentile relations sits at the intersection of two bodies of law. The first is bein adam le-chavero — obligations between persons — which includes charity, honest dealing, and social welfare. The second is the set of prohibitions designed to maintain Jewish distinctiveness, prevent assimilation, and (in the rabbinic mind) avoid complicity in idolatrous practice. These two bodies of law pull in different directions, and the tension between them is the central drama of the sources below.

The principle of darkei shalom ("ways of peace") is a technical legal category, not merely a moral aspiration. It functions as a positive legal reason to extend to gentiles benefits that would otherwise be reserved for Jews — including access to agricultural charity, communal welfare funds, and ordinary social courtesies. The Tosefta and both Talmuds invoke it repeatedly in this context. It operates both as an internal Jewish value (preserving social harmony) and as a pragmatic civic consideration (maintaining workable relations with the surrounding population and, by implication, with governing authorities).

The phrase mishum eivah — "on account of enmity" — is a related but distinct legal trigger. Where darkei shalom motivates positive extension of benefit, mishum eivah motivates restraint from actions that would provoke hostility. Both principles reflect the rabbinic awareness that Jews lived embedded in gentile societies and that law had to account for that reality.

The restrictive passages, concentrated in tractate Avodah Zarah ("foreign worship"), emerge from a different concern: preventing Jews from being drawn into idolatrous social networks through commerce, dining, and friendship. Many of the prohibitions in Avodah Zarah — on gentile wine, bread, and social gatherings — are not expressions of contempt for gentiles as persons but of anxiety about the social pathways that lead to intermarriage and apostasy.

The Sources

The positive obligations: darkei shalom

The most direct statement of the affirmative framework comes from [Tosefta Gittin 3:18]:

> "עיר שיש בה ישראל ועובדי כוכבים הפרנסין גובין מישראל ומעובדי כוכבים מפני דרכי שלום ומפרנסין עניי עובדי כוכבים [ועניי] ישראל מפני דרכי שלום [מספידין] וקוברין מתי עובדי כוכבים מפני דרכי שלום [מנחמין] אבילי עובדי כוכבים מפני דרכי שלום."

"In a city where there are Jews and gentiles, the charity collectors collect from Jews and from gentiles on account of the ways of peace, and they support the poor of the gentiles and the poor of Israel on account of the ways of peace, and they eulogize and bury the dead of the gentiles on account of the ways of peace, and they comfort the mourners of the gentiles on account of the ways of peace."

This is a sweeping list. Communal charity funds — the organized infrastructure of Jewish social welfare — must include gentile recipients. The obligation extends across the full cycle of communal life: poverty relief, death, mourning. The fourfold repetition of mipnei darkei shalom is deliberate; the Tosefta is signaling that these are not optional courtesies but legally grounded obligations, each one requiring its own justification because each one extends a benefit beyond the default Jewish-only scope.

[Jerusalem Talmud Demai 4:3:8] makes the logic explicit: "Since a Jewish community is required to have organized charity, if the Gentiles do not have similar services, the Jewish social services must be offered also to the Gentiles to advance intercommunal relations." The obligation is not merely ethical but structural — where the gentile community lacks its own welfare infrastructure, the Jewish community's organized charity must fill the gap, precisely to prevent the kind of resentment that would damage communal peace.

[Gittin 61a:5] extends this principle to agricultural law:

> "One does not protest against poor gentiles who come to take gleanings, forgotten sheaves, and the produce in the corner of the field, which is given to the poor [pe'a], although they are meant exclusively for the Jewish poor, on account of the ways of peace."

Biblical agricultural charity — leket (gleanings), shikhekhah (forgotten sheaves), and pe'a (corner of the field) — is technically designated for the Jewish poor. The Mishnah rules that gentile poor who come to collect these gifts must not be turned away. The darkei shalom principle here overrides the technical restriction of the gift's intended beneficiaries.

[Gittin 61a:8] adds two further applications: "One may assist gentiles who work the land during the Sabbatical Year... Similarly, one may extend greetings to gentiles on account of the ways of peace." The Sabbatical Year (shemitah) ordinarily prohibits agricultural labor, and one may not assist a Jew who violates this prohibition. But a gentile, not bound by the same law, may be assisted — and this assistance is not merely permitted but positively endorsed. The greeting (shalom) obligation is the most quotidian expression of the principle: ordinary social acknowledgment is a legal requirement, not a personal choice.

[Jerusalem Talmud Sheviit 4:3:1] confirms and extends this: "One rents ploughed fields from Gentiles in the Sabbatical year but not from Jews. One encourages Gentiles in the Sabbatical year but not Jews. One greets them for communal peace." The asymmetry here is notable — in the Sabbatical Year context, the gentile is treated more leniently than the Jew, because the prohibition does not bind the gentile. The community's obligation to maintain peace with its gentile neighbors shapes even the application of sacred-year law.

Charity without full equality: the limits of darkei shalom

[Tosefta Peah 3:3] introduces a qualification:

> "אין נותנין מעשר עני לעניי נכרים אבל נותנין להן חולין מתוקנין לשם טובה."

"One does not give the tithe of the poor to gentile poor, but one gives them ordinary produce that has been properly tithed, as an act of goodwill."

The poor tithe (ma'aser ani) — a formal religious-legal category of redistribution — remains restricted to Jewish recipients. But the Tosefta immediately provides an alternative: ordinary tithed produce may be given as an act of tovah (goodwill or beneficence). The distinction is between a religious-legal instrument and a direct charitable act. The gentile poor are not entitled to the former but are proper recipients of the latter. This is not a retraction of the darkei shalom obligation; it is a specification of its mode.

[Bava Batra 10b:14] touches on a related tension in the allocation of charity funds: "de-iba'ei leih limfalginhu la-aniyei goyim" — "he should have distributed [charity] to gentile poor." The context involves a rabbinic figure who was criticized for not including gentile poor in a distribution. The Talmud notes that Rava also gave to gentile poor. The passage is brief, but its implication is that inclusion of gentile poor in charity distribution was expected of rabbinic leaders, not merely permitted.

The restrictive current: lo tekhonnem and social separation

[Avodah Zarah 20a:4] presents the opposing pressure:

> "This is also taught in a baraita: 'You should not show them mercy'; this teaches that you should not give them a chance to encamp in the land of Eretz Yisrael. Another matter: 'You should not show them mercy'; this indicates that you should not give them favor. Another matter: 'You should not show them mercy'; this teaches that you should not give them an undeserved gift."

The verse being expounded is Deuteronomy 7:2 (lo tekhonnem), directed at the seven Canaanite nations. The Talmud extracts three distinct prohibitions: allowing settlement in the Land of Israel, giving public praise (which might attract others to gentile ways), and giving undeserved gifts. The third prohibition — no gift without a reason — appears to directly contradict the darkei shalom charity obligations. The tradition resolves this tension by reading lo tekhonnem as applying to unsolicited, context-free gifts (the kind that would create social bonds without any civic necessity), while the darkei shalom obligations are precisely context-driven — they arise from the fact of shared civic life.

The Avodah Zarah tractate more broadly reflects anxiety about social intimacy leading to assimilation. [Avodah Zarah 31b:4] explains why the Sages prohibited gentile beer: "It is due to the concern that Jews will befriend gentiles while drinking with them, which might lead to marriage with gentiles." The prohibition is not about the beer as a substance but about the social setting — shared drinking creates friendship, friendship creates opportunity for intermarriage. [Avodah Zarah 22a:11] similarly warns against leaving animals at gentile inns, framing it in terms of the prohibition against placing a stumbling block before the blind. These passages reflect a consistent concern: proximity and commerce with gentiles, if unregulated, erode Jewish distinctiveness.

[Avodah Zarah 21a:1] shows this concern applied to property law: in the Land of Israel, one may rent houses to gentiles but not fields, because fields worked by gentiles might lead to the land being treated as gentile-owned and exempt from agricultural commandments. Outside the Land, the restrictions are looser. The geographic calibration is itself instructive — the concern intensifies where Jewish covenantal obligations to the land are at stake.

Practical commerce and daily life

Several sources address the mechanics of economic relations without resolving them into a single principle. [Avodah Zarah 65b:10] permits Jews to bake bread and sell it to gentiles, provided it is not sold in the presence of other Jews (lest Jews be tempted to buy gentile bread, which is forbidden). [Avodah Zarah 62b:4] prohibits deriving benefit from payment received for transporting gentile wine that may be yayin nesekh (wine used in idolatrous libation). [Sukkah 30a:8] advises Jews buying myrtle from gentiles to let the gentiles cut the branches themselves, because "typical gentiles are land robbers" — the concern here is that items stolen by gentiles are halakhically disqualified for ritual use, not a general moral characterization.

These passages collectively show that economic interaction with gentiles was normal, continuous, and extensively regulated — neither prohibited wholesale nor treated as unproblematic.

Where They Agree and Disagree

The sources agree on the basic structure of the problem: Jews live in proximity to non-Jews, economic and social interaction is unavoidable, and the law must govern that interaction rather than simply prohibit it. No source calls for complete separation or for hostility toward gentiles as such.

Where they diverge is on the weight of competing concerns. The darkei shalom sources — [Tosefta Gittin 3:18], [Gittin 61a:5], [Gittin 61a:8], [Jerusalem Talmud Sheviit 4:3:1], [Jerusalem Talmud Demai 4:3:8] — treat civic welfare, shared communal life, and the avoidance of enmity as primary legal values that actively expand the scope of Jewish obligation toward gentiles. On this view, the question "what should we do with the gentiles?" has a clear answer: include them in charity, allow them access to agricultural gifts, greet them, bury their dead, comfort their mourners.

The Avodah Zarah material — particularly [Avodah Zarah 20a:4] and [Avodah Zarah 31b:4] — treats the risk of assimilation and loss of Jewish distinctiveness as primary, and generates a set of restrictions on social intimacy and unsolicited generosity. On this view, the answer is: maintain boundaries, avoid the social pathways that lead to intermarriage and apostasy.

The tradition does not resolve this tension by choosing one side. Instead, it categorizes: darkei shalom obligations apply to public, civic, community-wide interactions. The restrictions in Avodah Zarah apply to private social intimacy and to contexts where idolatrous practice is plausibly at issue. [Tosefta Peah 3:3]'s distinction between the poor tithe (restricted) and direct charitable gifts (permitted and encouraged) exemplifies this categorization logic. The geographic calibration in [Avodah Zarah 21a:1] — stricter in the Land of Israel, looser in diaspora — shows the tradition adjusting its balance point based on context rather than applying a single rule universally.

Conclusion

The sources do not support either blanket hostility or undifferentiated openness toward non-Jews. What they support is a structured, context-sensitive framework. Civic coexistence generates positive obligations: support the gentile poor, do not obstruct their access to agricultural charity, greet them, bury their dead, comfort their mourners. These are not optional kindnesses but legally grounded duties rooted in darkei shalom. At the same time, the tradition maintains restrictions on social intimacy — shared drinking, unsolicited gifts, certain forms of commerce — motivated by the concern that unregulated closeness leads to assimilation. The answer the sources give to "what should we do with the gentiles?" is: treat them with consistent civic decency and material generosity in public and communal life, while maintaining the halakhic boundaries that preserve Jewish distinctiveness in private and religious life.

References

Asked without an account, so published to the SeferAI public library · 2026-10-08 · 2441 words

Syntheses are written by AI. They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the SeferAI team and are not halakhic rulings. They are meant to stimulate thought and study, not to offend anyone. Check them against the primary texts.

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