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The Nations
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Messages: 1 - 4 (29 total)
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mattchapter25
1/27/2005 6:04 AM
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1 out of 29 |
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I was watching a series about Auschwitz on the BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/genocide/index.shtml
and they mentioned a German Army officer being remembered at Yad Vashem as "Righteous Among the Nations".
I can understand this in the practical context of saving Jewish lives, but is there a specifically religious concept of "Righteous Among the Nations"?
Could a person who never meets a Jew and never hears of Judaism become such a righteous person?
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Clyde5001
1/27/2005 7:09 AM
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2 out of 29 |
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They could be, but they would not be honored at Yad Vashem.
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nieciedo
1/27/2005 9:18 AM
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3 out of 29 |
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Technically, a person "righteous among the nations" or a "righteous Gentile" is someone who is not Jewish but upholds the seven Noachide commandments.
But as Clyde said, Yad Vashem is a memorial for the Holocaust, and the part of it dedicated to the "Righteous Among the Nations" is specifically for those Gentiles who helped Jews in the Holocaust.
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m37
1/27/2005 9:36 AM
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4 out of 29 |
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Could a person who never meets a Jew and never hears of Judaism become such a righteous person?
Yes.
And they need not even have heard of the Seven Laws as such, that is to say under that name or any of its synonyms (eg Noahide Laws). If they uphold them as part of some other system, or because they just make sense to the individual, or even because they have them unknowngly embedded in a cultural legacy that stretches back to Noah (which is arguably the most direct possible form of transmission) --- that counts.
The term is used in a "special" way at Yad Vashem.
-M
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