Rabbinic Texts Regulating Engagement with Idolaters

Other rabbinic texts focus on the gentile as an Other differentiated by religion. Idolatrous gentiles pose a moral threat because they may corrupt the Jew by promoting worship of another god and concomitant acts of immorality. A series of rabbinic regulations in m. Avodah Zarah enables the observant Jew to engage in commercial, business, legal, and social interactions with gentiles without violating biblical prohibitions against supporting or deriving any benefit from idolatry. Elsewhere in m. Avodah Zarah (2:1, placed at the end of this series of texts), however, the gentile appears as a particularly dangerous figure—violent, bloodthirsty, lustful, bestial, and irrational. The rabbis urge Jews to protect themselves from these brutal figures.

Although the rabbis recognize that scripture prohibits marriage with some gentiles, they do not approve of sexual relations—marital or non-marital—with a gentile who might lead the Jewish partner to abandon the covenant. Marriage with unconverted foreigners is prohibited by rabbinic decree (b. Shabbat 17b), lest it lead to unmentionable sins such as idolatry or certain sexual violations. Marriage with converts, however, is permitted, even, according to some authorities, for priests, who traditionally have stricter regulations concerning their allowed marriages (y. Kiddushin 4:6, 66a). While the gentiles portrayed here have literary characteristics, including stereotyped and generalized attributes, the rabbinic guidelines nonetheless reflect some amount of real-world interactions between Jews and non-Jews.