בס "ד
What Exactly Is a Ben Noah?
Who is a Ben Noah? Is it a religious identity, a spiritual choice, or something more fundamental? A careful reading of the Torah and the rabbinic sources suggests that the answer is more basic—and more profound—than we might expect.
A deceptively simple question
Let us begin with a simple question:
What exactly is a Ben Noah?
Not what should a Ben Noah do. Not what should a Ben Noah believe. Not what prayers should a Ben Noah say.
Before any of those questions comes another, more fundamental question:
Who is this person?
What does the Torah mean when it uses the category Ben Noé, “son of Noah” or “descendant of Noah”?
There is also a small but important linguistic point. The traditional sources do not speak of a person as a “Noahide.” The expression found in the rabbinic sources is Ben Noé, literally “son of Noah,” or Bnei Noé, “children of Noah.”
This matters because the terminology shapes the way we understand the entire subject.
In ordinary conversation, a person might say:
“I was a Christian for thirty years, and then I became a Noahide.”
We understand what he means. Something profound may have happened in his life. Perhaps he rejected beliefs that he came to understand as incompatible with Torah. Perhaps he came to believe in the G-d of Israel. Perhaps he accepted the authority of Torah. Perhaps he began consciously observing the Seven Noahide Commandments.
But from a strictly Torah-legal perspective, an important question remains:
Did he actually become a Ben Noah?
To answer that, we first have to understand what the category means.
The Mishnah in Nedarim: Who is included in “Bnei Noah”?
Our first source comes from a place that may initially seem unrelated to the subject: Mishnah Nedarim 3:11, dealing with the laws of vows.
The Mishnah discusses a person who makes a vow prohibiting himself from benefiting from a particular category of people. It gives the following case:
“If one says, ‘Konam, I will not benefit from Bnei Noah,’ he may benefit from Israelites, but he may not benefit from the nations of the world.”
The subject here is not interfaith relations, nor is the Mishnah recommending that anyone make such a vow. Rabbinic literature frequently examines unusual or extreme hypothetical cases in order to clarify precisely how legal language works.
A vow creates a legal reality. Therefore, we need to know exactly whom a person includes when he uses a particular expression, in this case Bnei Noach.
The Mishnah’s answer is remarkably clear:
“Bnei Noah” includes the nations of the world, but does not include Israel.
The Gemara immediately asks an obvious question:
What about Israel? Are Jews not also descendants of Noah?
The answer is:
“Since Abraham was sanctified, they were called by his name.”
— Bavli Nedarim 31a
In other words, all human beings descend from Noah, but the Jewish people came to be identified through Abraham and, ultimately, through the covenantal identity of Israel.
The Rambam codifies this principle in Hilchot Nedarim 9:20:
“One who vows from Bnei Noah is permitted [to benefit] from Israelites, for only the other nations are called Bnei Noah.”
This gives us our first major principle.
From the perspective of these halakhic categories, humanity consists of two populations:
Bnei Israel and Bnei Noah.
That does not mean that nationality, culture, language, citizenship, or ethnicity disappear. There are French people, Nigerians, Japanese people, Brazilians, and so on.
But the Torah is asking a narrower question: What are the fundamental covenantal categories?
From that perspective, there is Israel—and there is the rest of humanity.
If everyone descends from Noah, why aren’t Jews Bnei Noah?
This is where the distinction becomes important.
Everyone alive today descends from Noah. The Flood left only Noah and his family alive. So why does the Mishnah distinguish between Bnei Noah and Bnei Israel?
The Gemara’s answer is that Abraham introduced a new covenantal trajectory.
The Jewish people are technically descended from Noah, but after Abraham was “sanctified,” his descendants came to be identified through him rather than through Noah.
The Hebrew word used here is connected to kedushá, which means holiness, but also carries the sense of designation or separation.
Humanity did not cease to be humanity. But within humanity, a distinct historical and covenantal path emerged: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Twelve Tribes, the Exodus, and Sinai.
That is the emergence of Bnei Israel.
The Mishnah then gives the reverse example:
“If one says, ‘I will not benefit from the seed of Abraham,’ he is forbidden to benefit from Israelites but is permitted to benefit from the nations.”
The Gemara explains why Ishmael and Esau are not included in this legal category. The relevant “seed of Abraham” is defined through Isaac: “For through Isaac shall your seed be called” (Genesis 21:12), and the Gemara further derives, “in Isaac,” but not all of Isaac.
The Rambam likewise codifies that when someone vows against benefiting from “the seed of Abraham,” the prohibition applies to Israel, not to the descendants of Ishmael and Esau.
The point is crucial:
These Torah categories are not simply genetic categories.
Ben Noah is not a religious affiliation
If you are not Jewish, you do not have to discover the Seven Noahide Commandments in order to “become” a Ben Noah.
You are already within that population.
You could have never heard the term Bnei Noé. You could live on a remote island and have no idea that the expression exists. You could be an extraordinarily good person or an extraordinarily bad person. You could believe in G-d or deny G-d. You could obey the commandments that apply to humanity or violate them.
In the basic halakhic sense, you remain a Ben or Bat Noah.
And this immediately raises an important question.
If everyone who is not Jewish is already a Ben Noah, what does it mean when someone says:
“I am a Ben Noah”?
That is where we need to make a distinction.
Abraham and Nimrod: Two Bnei Noah, radically different lives
Consider a remarkable passage in Avodá Zará 3a.
The Gemara describes a future scene in which the nations will testify regarding Israel. Among the witnesses are Nimrod, Laban, and Potiphar’s wife.
Rashi explains that Nimrod threw Abraham into the fiery furnace because Abraham refused to accept idolatry.
And then Rashi makes a striking observation:
Abraham was a Ben Noah.
¿Por qué?
Because Abraham lived before the giving of the Torah at Sinai. He was therefore not yet part of the covenantal category of Israel in the post-Sinai sense.
Rashi explicitly explains that Abraham was a Ben Noah because he was not present at the giving of the Torah.
Now think about the scene.
Who is Nimrod?
A descendant of Noah.
Who is Abraham?
Also a descendant of Noah.
Both are within the same basic human population.
Yet one is attempting to force the other to worship idols, while the other is prepared to enter a furnace rather than do so.
The distinction, therefore, cannot simply be:
Ben Noah versus non-Ben Noah.
Both are Bnei Noah.
The difference is in their relationship to the divine command.
Jacob and Laban: the prohibition against theft
Rashi gives us another example involving Jacob.
Jacob spent twenty years in the house of Laban. When Jacob finally leaves with his wives, children, and possessions, Laban pursues him and accuses him of taking his property.
Jacob responds by essentially challenging him:
What have you found among my possessions?
Rashi points out how remarkable this is.
A son-in-law lived in his father-in-law’s household for twenty years, and when he left, Laban could not identify even one small household object that Jacob had taken.
Rashi explica:
“The children of Noah were commanded concerning theft, and Jacob fulfilled [this commandment].”
Again, the important point is that Jacob is a Ben Noah in the relevant pre-Sinai framework.
So is Laban.
Both belong to the same broad population. Both are subject to the prohibition against theft.
But their responses to that command are radically different.
Joseph and Potiphar’s wife
The same pattern appears in the story of Joseph.
When Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce Joseph, Joseph refuses:
“How then could I do this great evil and sin against G-d?”
— Genesis 39:9
Rashi comments that the prohibition of forbidden sexual relations applied to Bnei Noah, and Joseph fulfilled that command. The Talmud similarly identifies adultery as one of the prohibitions incumbent upon the descendants of Noah.
Once again, the distinction is not between one person who is a Ben Noah and another who is not.
The distinction is between a human being who is subject to divine command and a human being who consciously lives according to that command.
Two ways of being a Ben Noah
This gives us a distinction that is useful for the rest of the discussion.
There is a kind of default Ben Noah: a human being who belongs to the population descended from Noah and therefore falls under the commandments given to humanity.
And there is the conscious, observant Ben Noah: a person who understands that these obligations come from G-d and deliberately lives according to them.
These are not two different peoples.
They are two very different ways of living within the same population.
That distinction also allows us to understand what someone usually means when he says:
“I became a Noahide five years ago.”
Technically speaking, that statement is not quite accurate.
He did not move from one Torah population to another.
But that does no mean that nothing happened.
Something enormous may have happened.
Perhaps five years ago he discovered that the Torah does not teach that God abandoned humanity outside Israel.
Perhaps he learned that G-d gave commandments to humanity as a whole.
Perhaps, for the first time, he understood himself to be commanded.
Perhaps he stopped thinking of morality as merely a matter of personal preference.
Perhaps he rejected idolatry.
Perhaps he began taking theft seriously—not merely armed robbery, but dishonesty in business, taking what does not belong to him, or misusing another person’s property.
Perhaps he began thinking seriously about sexual morality, justice, and the responsibility to build a just society.
Perhaps he came to recognize G-d as Creator and King.
That is a profound transformation.
We simply need to describe it accurately.
He did not move from one Torah population to another.
He did not move from one Torah population to another. Rather, he came to understand and consciously embrace obligations that, according to Torah, already applied to humanity
That is a genuine religious transformation.
It is simply not a change of peoplehood.
Bnei Noah are not a genetic category
At this point, another question arises.
If Bnei Noah are the descendants of Noah, isn’t this essentially an ethnic or genetic designation?
In one sense, the answer is yes: the category begins with human descent.
But “genetic” can be misleading because the Torah’s categories are not primarily concerned with DNA.
Consider again the phrase “seed of Abraham.”
If we understood that expression genetically, then the descendants of Ishmael and Esau would have to be included. Both descend biologically from Abraham through Isaac.
Yet the Mishnah does not include them in the legal category of “seed of Abraham” for the purposes of that vow.
At the same time, a person who converts to Judaism has no biological descent from Abraham whatsoever, yet becomes part of Bnei Israel.
The categories are therefore fundamentally covenantal and halakhic, not genetic.
You do not need to discover Jewish ancestry hidden somewhere in your family tree.
You do not need to find a lost tribe in your DNA.
You do not need to become ethnically something else in order to serve G-d.
The Torah already knows who you are.
Different covenants do not mean different human worth
There is another danger we need to avoid.
Whenever we speak about Israel as a distinct covenantal people, someone may hear a hierarchy of human worth.
That is not what these categories mean.
Different covenantal obligations do not imply different degrees of humanity.
The rabbinic tradition makes this point in remarkably powerful language.
En Sanedrín 59a, Rabbi Meir interprets Leviticus 18:5:
“Which a person shall do and live by them.”
The Torah does not say “priests,” “Levites,” or “Israelites.” It says “the person” (ha-adam).
Rabbi Meir therefore teaches that even a gentile who engages in the Torah applicable to him is compared to a High Priest. The Gemara clarifies that the reference is to the study of the Seven Noahide Commandments.
The message is striking.
The Torah does not teach that a non-Jew must first become Jewish in order to become spiritually significant.
Righteousness is available to the human being before G-d.
Righteousness is not inherited
This idea appears again in Bamidbar Rabbah 8:2.
The Midrash asks why G-d loves the righteous.
It contrasts righteousness with inherited positions.
A person cannot simply decide to become a Kohen. A person cannot decide to become a Levite. Those identities are inherited through family.
But righteousness is different.
The Midrash says, in substance:
If a person wants to become righteous, even a gentile can become righteous, because righteousness is not a family inheritance.
It connects this with the verse:
“You who fear the L-rd, bless the L-rd.”
The Midrash emphasizes that those who fear G-d have chosen this themselves. They have voluntarily loved the Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore He loves them.
That is one of the most important ideas we can take from this entire discussion.
Human beings naturally want identity.
We want to know:
Who are my people?
Where do I belong?
What am I called?
What is my group?
These are not foolish questions. Belonging is a basic human need.
But Torah places another question before them:
Who are you becoming?
Are you becoming a tzadik, a righteous person?
Are you becoming a yerei Hashem, one who fears G-d?
Are you becoming someone who can be trusted with another person’s property?
Someone who respects marriage?
Someone who rejects idolatry?
Someone who creates justice rather than merely demanding it from others?
You do not inherit righteousness.
And you do not acquire righteousness simply by changing labels.
You choose righteousness.
What actually changes when someone accepts the Seven Mitzvot?
Now we can return to the question with which we began.
If a non-Jew is already a Ben Noah, and the obligations of the Ben Noah already exist whether he recognizes them or not, what actually changes when someone consciously accepts the Seven Noahide Commandments because they are commanded by G-d in the Torah?
Is that person simply more knowledgeable?
Has his religious status changed?
The Rambam gives us an important answer.
En Hiljot Melajim 8:11, the Rambam writes that one who accepts the Seven Commandments and is careful to observe them is among the Jasidei Umot HaOlam, the righteous or pious among the nations, and has a share in the World to Come.
But he adds an important qualification.
The person must accept and observe these commandments because G-d commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses that the descendants of Noah had previously been commanded in them.
If a person observes the same moral principles merely because human reason tells him that they are correct, the Rambam places that person in a different category.
This is a significant distinction.
It means that there is a difference between:
“I do not steal because I think stealing is socially harmful.”
and:
“I do not steal because G-d commanded humanity not to steal, and this is part of my relationship with Him.”
The outward behavior may look identical.
The religious meaning is not identical.
There is no “belt system” of Jewishness
This also means that we should be careful about imagining a ladder of increasing Jewishness.
It does not work like a martial arts system:
White belt, yellow belt, green belt, brown belt, black belt—and eventually, after enough advanced levels, someone has somehow crossed the border from Gentile to Jew.
That is not the Torah’s system.
We are dealing with a fundamental distinction between Bnei Israel y Bnei Noé.
A non-Jew does not become increasingly Jewish by becoming increasingly observant of the Seven Commandments.
Nor does a non-Jew need to become Jewish in order to become spiritually serious, righteous, or close to G-d.
The Torah provides a distinct covenantal path for Israel and a distinct set of obligations for humanity as a whole.
Precision matters here.
The Creator has not abandoned humanity
And this brings us to perhaps the largest idea contained in the entire discussion.
The Seven Noahide Commandments are not simply the rules of a small modern religious movement.
They are not merely the special practices of people who have chosen an unusual spiritual path.
The Torah’s claim is much bigger.
The Creator has not abandoned humanity.
Go back to Genesis 9 and the covenant with Noah.
Human beings stand before G-d.
Human life has obligations.
Human life matters.
Property matters.
Marriage matters.
Justice matters.
The rejection of idolatry matters.
Knowledge of G-d matters.
These things mattered before Sinai.
They mattered to Abraham.
They mattered to Isaac.
They mattered to Jacob.
They mattered to Joseph.
And they matter now.
The giving of the Torah at Sinai did not mean that humanity suddenly became obligated to morality for the first time.
The Torah’s claim is that G-d’s relationship with humanity was already there.
The question is not whether you are a Ben Noah
So perhaps the simplest way to remember all of this is to imagine a very simple diagram.
From the Torah’s perspective, humanity is divided into two fundamental covenantal populations:
Bnei Israel
y
Bnei Noah.
But within the enormous population of Bnei Noah there is an enormous moral and religious distinction.
There is the human being who is subject to G-d’s commandments simply because G-d has commanded humanity.
And there is the human being who knows this, accepts it, cares about it, and lives accordingly.
Nimrod and Abraham were both Bnei Noah—but they were not remotely the same.
Laban and Jacob were both subject to the prohibition against theft—but they were not remotely the same.
Joseph understood the divine command and allowed it to determine his behavior.
That distinction is the heart of the matter.
So if someone tells me:
“Rabbi, twenty years ago I became a Ben Noah,”
I do not need to respond by correcting him harshly.
I understand what he means.
Something happened.
He awakened to obligations that he had not previously recognized or consciously embraced.
But if we want to develop a serious Torah understanding, we need to describe what happened accurately.
He did not become a member of a third population, because the Torah does not recognize such a third population.
He awakened to the obligations of the population to which he already belonged.
And perhaps that is an even more profound statement.
The Seven Mitzvot are not merely the rules of a modern religious movement.
They are not an optional spiritual lifestyle.
They express G-d’s demands upon humanity.
Most of humanity may not know this.
Much of humanity may reject it.
But ignorance does not create the obligation.
And discovering the Seven Mitzvot does not create the obligation.
The obligation precedes the discovery.
So, what exactly is a Ben Noah?
We can now answer the original question.
A Ben Noé is not primarily the name of a modern religious affiliation.
It is not, in its basic halakhic sense, the name of a movement.
It is a Torah category.
In its most basic halakhic sense, it describes humanity outside of Bnei Israel—the Jewish people.
But within that enormous population, there is all the difference in the world between being subject to G-d’s will unconsciously and consciously choosing to live according to it.
The most important question, therefore, may not be:
“Do I have to become a Ben Noah?”
You do not.
The more profound question is:
“What kind of Ben Noah will I choose to become?”
Por el rabino Tani Burton
Más shiurim del rabino Tani Burton
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