Texas: A man sporting a salt and pepper beard, wearing a kippah on his head and balancing a pair of circular glasses on the bridge of his nose stood behind a podium while preaching the parasha, a weekly session of Torah reading, with a southern twang. He was neither a rabbi nor Jewish. Before him, sat an audience of approximately 20 people, listening attentively. While some looked like they had come in off the street, others wore dresses and head wraps well suited for a wedding. One person stood out because of his gauge earring and tattoos.

Ilana Strauss was the only Jew in the room. While everyone else was busy understanding the Torah, Strauss was busy studying everyone else. Members of this congregation referred to themselves as Righteous Noahides – non-Jews who choose to practice Orthodox Judaism.

According to Jewish doctrine, all Jews must abide by the 613 mitzvot while everyone else in the world, also known as children of Noah, must obey only seven laws. These include not denying God, not acting in a blasphemous manner, not committing murder, not engaging in incest, pederasty, bestiality or adultery, not stealing, not eating a living animal and establishing courts. The Noahide laws that were derived from certain passages of the Torah, have also been elaborated in the Talmud.

During the Middle Ages, Maimonides imposed their observance on non-Jews, writing, “Anyone who accepts upon himself and carefully observes the Seven Commandments is of the Righteous of the Nations of the World and has a portion in the World to Come.”

However, the idea never really grew popular among non-Jews. Still, approximately 40 years ago, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Chabad Grand Rabbi, started an international “Noahide Campaign”, penning down and preaching the necessity for Righteous Noahide communities across the world. He was of the opinion that Noahide laws would help bring about peace and understanding and quicken the coming of the Messiah. At the time, some non-Jews granted Schneerson a patient listening.

For instance, in 1987, United States’ President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation glorifying “the historical tradition of ethical values and principles, which have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization when they were known as the Seven Noahide Laws, transmitted through God to Moses on Mount Sinai.”

Today, Noahidism does in fact welcome communities from around the world, namely Latin America, Great Britain, the Philippines, Russia, Nigeria as well as the United States. According to Rabbi Michael Schulam, who hosts the website AskNoah.org, the Philippines has the most developed Noahide community, with more than 1,000 adults and their children residing in a grouping of agricultural towns, running Hebrew schools, organizing community meetings as well as a national summit.

The group that Strauss visited was called Netiv – a bustling 40-person community located in Humble, Texas. In the United States, Texas serves as the center of Noahide life. Some people travel more than two hours each way, twice or thrice a week, for lessons in Noahidism. Not only do these people abide by Noahide laws, but they also aspire to obey other mitzvot in their attempt to be true to Judaism.

At this particular gathering, adults kept themselves occupied, laying out a potluck while young children ran around the premises. The man with tattoos flaunted a Kabbalistic painting he made while trying to auction it to the crowd. But the main attraction of the day was Rod Bryant’s lecture on the parasha, in which Moshe strikes down an Egyptian for causing hurt to a Jew.

Even though this one is a familiar story, Bryant added a Noahide twist to it, emphasizing how Moshe stood up for what he believed to be right despite those around him agreeing with the status quo. Like Moshe, Bryant explained, Noahides struggle to stand up for their religious beliefs, often finding themselves surrounded by Christian families and friends. Unlike these individuals, Noahides do not refer to themselves as Christians, as their thoughts on Christianity and Christ range from respect for all religions to utter disdain. Noahides have surrendered what they call idol worship to practice Judaism.

Bryant, himself, did not always preach the Torah. During the First Gulf War, he served as a Pentecostal chaplain in the army. He initially organized a small group study at his residence that grew so large that it had to be shifted to a church. Around the same time, he started discovering inconsistencies within the Christian scripture, which is why he decided to dig deep into its historical records.

“It was like archeology,” Bryant recalled.

The bigger his group became, the less comfortable he felt, since he was responsible for the spiritual knowledge of all these individuals and he was still teaching principles that he did not completely believe in. When his students asked him to explain passages about Christ, he often cooked up an excuse to avoid such a session.

“He was like, ‘It’s too long,’ ” remembered one former Christian group member. “I was like, ‘I’ll bring food.’ ”

Soon after, he started teaching the Torah from a Jewish perspective to another small group of students. Arilio Navarro, who was experiencing similar doubts about Christianity, decided to attend one of Bryant’s lectures.

Navarro pulled Bryant aside and told him quietly, “I don’t think Jesus is God.”

Navarro was quite sure that he would be thrown out of the group but to his surprise, Bryant replied that he did not either.

It eventually became clear that Bryant could no longer be part of the church and so he found himself jobless before even realizing it.

“OK, Hashem, funny sense of humor,” he remembered thinking. “Now I really have to trust you.”

At this point, he started talking to rabbis who had been inspired by Schneerson. That is how he was introduced to the concept of Noahides, Righteous Gentiles and the seven laws of Noah. In 2010, he finally founded Netiv, which has only been growing since.

Like Bryant, others too have discovered Noahidism while not identifying as Jew, and they seem to love the religion. They believe that they can raise questions rather than blindly accept a priest’s word. They also find the various traditions, intellectual rigour and importance laid on family relations rather fascinating though the one unifying factor for most of them is a newfound sense of peace.

“It gives me a new way to breathe before God,” said Irene Griffin, a Netiv regular.

Even though Richard Waer and his wife Jackie are practicing Noahides today, the former was nonreligious in the past.

“He wouldn’t let me baptize my babies!” pouted Jackie, who was raising their children Catholic up until a few years ago.

Waer’s friend Navarro was the one that invited him to a Netiv class, and the former found himself immediately drawn to it.

“I felt like I’d been taken out of the Matrix,” he said. “And I felt a little lost.”

His wife was onboard almost instantaneously; something about Judaism appealed to her right from the start. But what was most striking were the ways in which her husband started to change. He had been struggling with alcoholism for years but Noahidism seemed to set him free.

“Seeing alcoholism not as the devil, and not as me, but as something in me was what did it,” Waer said.

Even though Judaism did not demonize alcohol, it encouraged him to think about yetzer hara, an evil inclination, which somehow made sense to him.

“God speaks to people how they listen,” he said. “I just had to get out of my own way.”

Today, Jackie covers her head with colourful wraps, which she purchases on Wrapunzel.com, an online store for Orthodox Jews. She diligently tries to make her Native Mexican food kosher but cholent still remains a challenge.

“A lot of us are just fumbling in the dark,” she said.

Those around the Waers did not initially know what was happening when they suddenly turned to Noahidism, with some often confusing them for Muslims. Even their children seemed perplexed with the sudden change but they chose to focus on the happiness that the religious shift was bringing to the family.

Noahides tend to elicit mixed responses from religious Jews. When Strauss first started researching about the religion, one rabbi emailed, warning her against a Noahide leader, who was allegedly throwing teachings like pasta at a wall to find out what sticks and what does not. According to some rabbis, Noahides should not follow any mitzvot that have been designated for only Jews. They cite interpretations of Genesis 8:22 to argue that it is prohibited for non-Jews to observe Shabbat.

While Navarro understands these arguments, he does not necessarily abide by them.

“There are a lot of blessings that come with Shabbat, and I don’t want to leave them on the table,” he said. “I spent most of my life doing that; I don’t want to do that anymore. I have a Jewish soul.”

All the rabbis and Noahides that Strauss has talked to agree that adherents of Noahidism do not have any obligation to observe more than the seven laws. But, they also believe the kind of people who embark on spiritual journeys that eventually lead them out of Christianity are not the sort that are typically content with so much. They usually want to do more.

“We left Egypt and can feel the warmth of Judaism,” said Bryant. “We don’t want to just keep wandering through the desert.”

Like several others at Netiv, the Navarros too wish to convert to Judaism but what has held them back is not the lack of conviction, it is plain and simple logistics. The Navarros are of the opinion that it is difficult to maintain an Orthodox lifestyle alone. As there are no shuls in the vicinity and the closest Orthodox Jews reside in downtown Houston, moving doesn’t seem like an feasible idea, especially since housing costs twice as much in the city. That is the reason many members of Netiv want to start an Orthodox Jewish community of their own, one that would be closely connected with Noahidism.

Understandably, Noahides do not feel the need to convert, they seem to like the flexibility of not being tied down by religion to follow certain laws.

The best way to understand how Noahidism spread is to take into account time and not space. Some decades ago, Noahides felt isolated as lone individuals or small groups of four or five that decided to follow Noahide commandments on their own.

“No one knew each other existed,” explained Bryant.

But ever since the Internet started to boom, Noahides realized that they were not alone. The religiously curious were suddenly able to seek information of all kinds, including questions related to Judaism. That is how Noahide-specific websites, such as aish.com and chabad.org emerged. Bryant referred to these web servers as the headquarters of Noahidism.

He regularly gets emails saying, “I’m so happy I found your video. I thought I was the only person in the world who lived this way.”

Photo Credits: Wikimedia