The Rebbe's Call to the Nations

For most of the last two thousand years, Jews did not teach non-Jews. Not because the Torah forbade it — the opposite, as we will see — but because it was mortally dangerous. A Jew in medieval Europe or Persia who publicly taught gentiles about the One God and His covenant was risking the safety of his entire community.

Then came a leader who declared that the era of silence was over.

Who was the Rebbe?

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), known simply as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, led the Chabad movement from New York for over four decades and became one of the most consequential religious leaders of the twentieth century. He took a people shattered by the Holocaust and sent its sons and daughters to every corner of the earth — today there are thousands of Chabad Houses on six continents, including the one in Dharamsala that runs this website. His guiding conviction: no place and no person is too far from God.

The call of 1983

On his 81st birthday — 11 Nissan 5743 (April 1983) — the Rebbe devoted a public address to a teaching of Maimonides that had sat quietly in the law books for eight centuries:

“Moses our teacher was commanded from the mouth of the Almighty to convince all the inhabitants of the world to accept the commandments given to the children of Noah.” (Maimonides, Laws of Kings 8:10)

The Rebbe’s message was direct: this law is addressed to us, now. Jews may no longer keep the universal covenant as a family heirloom; every Jew has an obligation to see that all the peoples of the world know the Seven Laws — and in the free world of today, nothing stands in the way. In earlier generations, he explained, any attempt to influence the nations in matters of faith was fraught with mortal danger — but that excuse has expired. He returned to this campaign in talk after talk for the rest of his life, insisting that “to convince” means exactly that: persuasion, explanation, and love — never force — showing every person that the seven laws are the foundation of a healthy, just humanity.

And he tied it to the horizon: teaching the nations is the direct preparation for the promised era when, in Maimonides’ words, the Messiah “will perfect the entire world, motivating all the nations to serve God together” (Laws of Kings 11:4). Redemption is not a Jewish party the nations may watch; it is a world the nations help build.

A campaign heard in the halls of power

The call carried remarkably far. In 1991, the Congress of the United States passed a joint resolution — signed into law by the President as Public Law 102-14 — declaring an annual “Education Day, U.S.A.” in honor of the Rebbe, and stating in its official text that the ethical values underlying civilization “have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization, when they were known as the Seven Noahide Laws.” A movement was born: today there are Noahide communities and study circles across the Philippines, Latin America, Africa, Europe, North America — and India.

The part of the call that reached the Himalayas

One more piece of the Rebbe’s vision belongs especially on this site. Already in the late 1970s, watching a generation of young seekers stream into Transcendental Meditation and Eastern movements, the Rebbe did something surprising. He did not merely warn against the idolatrous packaging — mantras that are names of deities, veneration of gurus — which the covenant indeed forbids. He validated the thirst, acknowledged the genuine value in meditation as a technique, and personally initiated and funded efforts to develop meditation free of any foreign worship. The seekers, he insisted, were not to be mocked; they were to be answered.

DharmaTorah is built on both halves of that instruction: honest boundaries about what the covenant forbids, and a real, deep, practical answer — the Torah’s own path of contemplation — for the seekers of the most seeking nation on earth.

The Rebbe searched the map for places where the wellsprings had not yet reached, and taught his emissaries to say: this abandoned corner is Yours — decree that it be rebuilt. From the Chabad House of Dharamsala, this website is our way of saying it over India: a billion seekers, and the covenant that was always theirs.

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Sources: Maimonides, Laws of Kings 8:10–11; 11:4. The Rebbe’s address of 11 Nissan 5743 (1983), published in English as “Educating Mankind: The Seven Noachide Commandments” (chabad.org); Torat Menachem — Hitva’aduyot 5743. Public Law 102-14 (H.J.Res. 104, signed March 20, 1991), 105 Stat. 44. On the kosher-meditation initiative: the Rebbe’s 1978 memorandum and correspondence with Dr. Yehuda Landes, published in B’Or HaTorah vol. 25. Further reading: “To Perfect the World: The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Call to Teach the Noahide Code to All Mankind” (Ask Noah International).