A student wearing a “Jesus is King” shirt stepped up to the microphone at the University of Iowa and asked Ben Shapiro a question he has fielded on college campuses for years: why he doesn’t become a Christian. The event was a stop on Turning Point USA’s “America: Love It or Leave It” tour, and Shapiro’s answer ran several minutes. Days later, a 30-second slice of it was circulating on X under a caption accusing him of ordering Christians to obey Jewish law. Within a week, the clip had drawn Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens into a public war over the seven Noahide laws, an ancient Jewish teaching most Americans had never heard of.
The clip captured Shapiro explaining the Jewish view of the afterlife. “As a Jew – I mean just Jewish belief – we don’t believe that you have to be Jewish in order to get into heaven,” Shapiro said. “If you’re not Jewish all you have to do is fulfill seven basic rules. They’re called the Noahide laws.” He ran through the list, naming prohibitions on murder, kidnapping, sexual immorality, theft, eating flesh from a living animal and blasphemy, and summed it up plainly: “If you do those things you’re in heaven.”
A second clip from the same appearance had Shapiro laying out his own position. “I’m a Jew. Definitionally, this means I do not believe that Jesus is divine,” he said. “Judaism, unlike Christianity or most other major world religions, does not encourage people to convert to it. In fact, in Judaism, you’re supposed to actively discourage people from becoming Jewish.”
Chris Menahan of the far-right site Information Liberation posted the first clip on October 11 with the caption “Ben Shapiro urges TPUSA crowd to abide by the Noahide Laws.” According to Menahan, the video passed three million views.
Shapiro responded the following day on X, directing readers to the full video. “Watch the whole exchange, linked below,” he wrote. “I was asked why I don’t convert to Christianity. In the course of that explanation, I explained that from the Jewish perspective, Christians don’t need to convert to Judaism to go to heaven. That’s the context.”
He then quoted the conclusion of his answer to the student, the portion the viral clip omitted: “I think you’re doing a great job by believing in Jesus. I think that’s great. I think you should continue to go to church, I think you should continue to speak out about your faith, I think that Christianity in America needs a resurgence, and that’s the greatest factor that will lead to a revitalized America.”
The Iowa remarks were the second time this year Shapiro made the point before a young conservative audience. At a Young America’s Foundation event in April, he told students, “I’m a Jew. That means I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus. I also believe, as an Orthodox Jew, that Judaism is not the only path to heaven.” He continued: “Judaism as a religion is not exclusive. Meaning, that as long as people who are not Jewish follow seven basic Noahide Laws, and this includes Christians and Muslims, they too have a share in the world to come.”
At that same April event, a student asked what it would take for him to convert. “The truth is that I believe strongly in my religion. It’s not that I just don’t believe in Christianity,” Shapiro answered. “It wouldn’t just be a matter of convincing me of the divinity of Jesus, it would be a matter of convincing me that fundamental doctrine of Judaism is actually just wrong.” He closed with a line that drew laughs: “At the end, when this is all over, I will have been very, very right or I will have been very, very wrong. In which case, I will regret all of those meals that I didn’t eat and all of those commandments that I had to keep.”
Shapiro applied the same teaching to one of America’s best-known evangelical pastors. Paying tribute to John MacArthur after his death, Shapiro praised him as a preacher who “was never shy about biblical values, which is absolutely useful in a time when moral relativism runs rampant,” and predicted his work “is going to be read for generations.” He then explained what Jewish theology says about MacArthur’s fate. “In Judaism if you are not Jewish and you fulfill seven basic rules, the Noahide laws, which are things like no blasphemy, no adultery, no murder and things like this, then you do indeed have a spot in heaven,” Shapiro said. “So it doesn’t conflict with my faith to say that John MacArthur is with God right now, and that is something that he always longed for.”
As the Iowa clip spread, the accusations escalated. Candace Owens sided with Tucker Carlson, accusing Shapiro of holding a hostile view of Christians. On October 14, Shapiro posted, “Tucker Carlson is apparently out there saying I want to kill Christians because of the Noahide laws or something.”
The Christian Backlash
The sharpest Christian criticism focused on the first of the Noahide laws, the prohibition of idolatry. LifeSiteNews, a Catholic outlet, ran the story on October 16 under the headline “Ben Shapiro sparks backlash after pushing anti-Christian Noahide laws.”
Protestant pastor Joel Webbon laid out the theological objection on X. “One of the Noahide Laws is Do Not Blaspheme. But Jews believe Jesus claiming to be God was blasphemy,” he wrote. “Surely, Christians believing Jesus is God would be blasphemy too. So you don’t have to be a Jew to go to heaven… But it sure sounds like you have to stop being a Christian.”
Catholic activist Carrie Prejean Boller, a former Miss California and an outspoken critic of Israel, aimed her criticism at Turning Point USA for hosting Shapiro at events carrying the legacy of its slain founder. She wrote that Charlie Kirk “said he wanted to be remembered for courage for his faith,” and asked why his widow, Erika Kirk, would allow “one of Charlie’s enemies – who hates Christ, up on stage trying to convince people to become Jewish.” She added: “Replacing Charlie’s pro-Christ message with Ben’s anti-Christ message says it all.”
Boller then pressed Shapiro directly: “If a Christian says Jesus is God, is that blasphemy under the Noahide laws? And does the Talmud say the penalty is death?”
LifeSite built its case on a passage from Maimonides’ Laws of Kings (8:10), which states that Moses was commanded to compel the inhabitants of the world to accept the Noahide commandments, and that one who refuses is put to death. The outlet presented the ruling as a threat to Christians today. Maimonides himself limited the enforcement of such laws on non-Jews to a time when “the hand of Israel is strong” (Laws of Idolatry 10:6), and capital cases in Jewish law require a functioning Sanhedrin, the Great Court that ceased judging capital cases nearly two thousand years ago. No Jewish court in the modern era has claimed authority to enforce the Noahide laws on anyone.
The outlet also quoted Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, an Israeli outreach lecturer known for inflammatory statements, who once declared that “a goy who bows down to an idol, who believes in J.C. (Jesus Christ), deserves the death penalty.” LifeSite editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen went further, linking the Noahide laws to visions attributed to the 12th-century Catholic mystic Hildegard of Bingen about the coming of the Antichrist. “So, it’s a naturalist religion which denies Christ and His revelation, or at least treats Him as a mere man, while also being similar to Christianity in superficial, minimalist ways,” Westen said.
Rich Bitterman, a pastor in the Missouri Ozarks, offered the evangelical objection in its plainest and most respectful form. Writing on October 14, he acknowledged that Shapiro was answering a sincere question about Judaism and that he afterward encouraged the student to keep believing in Jesus and attending church, details Bitterman said belong in any honest account. His objection centered on the claim that heaven can be reached through obedience to commandments. Bitterman argued that the Bible teaches salvation as a gift received by faith, pointing to Abraham, whose belief God counted as righteousness in Genesis 15:6, and to the blood of the Passover lamb that protected the Israelites in Egypt. He summed up his position in a single line: “Seven laws can instruct the conscience. Only Christ can cleanse it.”
Bitterman drew a firm boundary on how Christians should respond. He wrote that believers can respect Shapiro’s right to explain Judaism while maintaining that salvation is found in Jesus alone, and warned that criticism of a doctrine must never turn into contempt for the Jewish people. He also pushed back against the outrage directed at Turning Point USA, noting that Charlie Kirk himself welcomed Shapiro as a speaker at AmericaFest in 2024, that the organization states its speakers express their own views, and that its faith division runs a campus tour that calls students to repentance and faith in Jesus.
The Covenant With Noah
The Noahide laws, known in Hebrew as sheva mitzvot B’nei Noach (the seven commandments of the children of Noah), are the Jewish tradition’s moral code for all of humanity. Every human being descends from Noah and his sons, the only family to survive the Flood, and the Sages taught that God bound all of Noah’s descendants to a basic covenant of faith and morality. A non-Jew who keeps these laws is called a Ben Noach (son of Noah).
The Talmud lists the seven laws in tractate Sanhedrin (56a) and derives all of them from a single verse in Genesis, God’s first command to Adam in the Garden of Eden:
“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat.’” (Genesis 2:16)
Rabbi Yochanan, one of the leading Sages of the Talmud, read each word of this verse as a hint to one of the seven laws, matching it to another verse in the Bible where the same word appears (Sanhedrin 56b).
The word vayetzav, “commanded,” teaches the obligation of dinim, establishing courts of justice. The same word appears when God says of Abraham, “For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19). Every society is obligated to set up a legal system to enforce the other six laws and protect its people from lawlessness.
The words “the Lord,” God’s four-letter name, teach the prohibition on birkat Hashem, a euphemism meaning “blessing God,” which, in fact, forbids blasphemy. The Sages linked it to the verse “And he that blasphemes the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 24:16).
The word Elohim, “God,” teaches the prohibition of avodah zarah, literally “foreign worship,” meaning idolatry. The Sages connected it to the commandment “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). This is the foundation of the entire code: belief in the one God who created heaven and earth and a ban on worshipping any other power in His place.
The words al ha’adam, “the man,” teach the prohibition of shefichut damim, the shedding of blood. The source is God’s declaration to Noah as he emerged from the ark:
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God He made man.” (Genesis 9:6)
The word leimor, “saying,” teaches the prohibition of gilui arayot, forbidden sexual relations. The Sages tied it to the prophet Jeremiah’s words, “Saying, if a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s” (Jeremiah 3:1). The category includes adultery, incest, homosexual relations, and bestiality, establishing the family as the bedrock of a moral society.
The words “of every tree of the garden” teach the prohibition of gezel, theft. Adam was permitted to eat from the trees God gave him, which implies that taking what belongs to another is forbidden. The Sages understood this law broadly to cover robbery, fraud, and kidnapping, which explains why Shapiro listed kidnapping among the seven in his Iowa answer.
The words achol tochel, “you may freely eat,” teach the prohibition of ever min hachai, eating a limb torn from a living animal. Man may eat, within limits. This is the one commandment given specifically to Noah, when God permitted humanity to eat meat after the Flood with a single condition: “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat” (Genesis 9:4). According to the Sages, Adam received the first six laws, and Noah received the seventh.
The laws are also understood to be enumerated in later verses in Genesis:
1. Prohibition against murder – B’reshit / Genesis 4:23-24, 9:6
2. Prohibition against idolatry – B’reshit / Genesis 4:26
3. Prohibition against blasphemy – B’reshit / Genesis 4:26
4. Prohibition of sexual misconduct – B’reshit / Genesis 1:28, 4:22, 6:3, 6:12
5. Prohibition against failure to establish courts – B’reshit / Genesis 1:28, 9:6
6. Prohibition against theft – B’reshit / Genesis 6:11
7. Prohibition against eating live meat (e.g. tearing the limb off of a living animal and eating it) – B’reshit / Genesis 9:4
Maimonides, the 12th-century legal authority, codified the Noahide laws in the final section of his Mishneh Torah, the Laws of Kings. He ruled that a non-Jew who accepts these seven commandments and observes them carefully “is one of the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the World to Come,” with the condition that he keep them because God commanded them in the Bible.
The concept appears in Christian scripture as well. The Book of Acts describes a council in Jerusalem, led by James, convened to decide what to require of non-Jews who had become followers of Jesus. James delivered the ruling: “Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood” (Acts 15:19-20). The council freed the gentile believers from the full Law of Moses and bound them to a short list of obligations. The prohibitions on idolatry, sexual immorality, and eating blood or improperly killed meat track closely with the Noahide laws, and many scholars, Jewish and Christian, have identified the Jerusalem council’s ruling as an early application of the Noahide framework to non-Jews who worshipped the God of Israel.
The Noahide laws explain why Judaism discourages converts. A Jew is bound by 613 commandments; a non-Jew is bound by seven. The Jewish tradition holds that a righteous non-Jew stands before God as a full participant in the divine plan, free of the obligations God placed on the Jewish people, and part of the Noahide covenant made with God after the floodwaters receded, as symbolized by the rainbow.
A Place in the World to Come
The Jewish concept Shapiro invoked is Olam Haba, the World to Come. The term covers the eternal reward of the righteous soul and the age following the resurrection of the dead, when God’s justice is fully revealed. When Jews speak of “heaven,” Olam Haba is what they mean.
The central text is the opening of the final chapter of tractate Sanhedrin, a chapter so well known that it carries its own name, Perek Chelek, the “Chapter of the Portion.” The Mishnah begins:
“All Israel have a portion in the World to Come, as it is said: ‘Your people shall all be righteous, they shall inherit the land forever; the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, wherein I glory.’” (Isaiah 60:21)
The Mishnah then turns to the exceptions, naming those who forfeit their share: one who denies the resurrection of the dead, one who denies that the Bible was given from Heaven, and the apikoros, the heretic who scorns God’s law. It names three kings of Israel, Jeroboam, Ahab and Manasseh, and four private individuals: Balaam, Doeg, Ahithophel and Gehazi.
Balaam stands out on that list. He is the only non-Jew named, the prophet hired by the king of Moab to curse Israel. The Sages understood his inclusion as decisive. By singling out one wicked gentile for exclusion, the Mishnah teaches that other gentiles stand to inherit a place.
The Talmud records the debate directly (Sanhedrin 105a), centered on a verse from Psalms:
“The wicked shall return to the netherworld, all the nations that forget God.” (Psalms 9:18)
Rabbi Eliezer read the verse as excluding all non-Jews from the World to Come. Rabbi Yehoshua answered that the verse itself sets the limit: it condemns “the nations that forget God,” and the righteous among the nations, who remember Him, have a share. Jewish law follows Rabbi Yehoshua. Maimonides ruled in his Laws of Repentance (3:5) that “the pious of the nations of the world have a portion in the World to Come.”
Judaism measures a person’s place in eternity by deeds and faith in the one God. A Jew earns it through the 613 commandments, a non-Jew through the seven, and the gate stands open to both.
Is Christianity Idolatry?
The critics who accused Shapiro of condemning Christians built their case on the prohibition of avodah zarah, arguing that Judaism classifies Christian worship as idolatry. That classification is one opinion in a centuries-long debate among Jewish legal authorities, and a long line of major authorities ruled the opposite.
Maimonides held the strictest position. In his commentary on the Mishnah and in his legal code, he classified Christianity as avodah zarah because of the doctrine of the Trinity and the worship of Jesus as divine. Yet Maimonides himself wrote in the same Mishneh Torah that Christianity and Islam serve God’s purpose by preparing the world for the Messiah, spreading knowledge of the Bible and its commandments to the far corners of the earth. He cited the prophet Zephaniah:
“For then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent.” (Zephaniah 3:9)
In one of his responsa, Maimonides permitted Jews to teach the Bible to Christians because they accept the text of the Hebrew Bible as the word of God.
It should be noted that Maimonides lived from 1138 to 1204 CE, more than three centuries before the Protestant Reformation, and never ruled on Protestant worship. The Christianity he described was the medieval church of statues, icons, and the veneration of saints, practices the iconoclasts and Protestant churches of most American evangelicals rejected outright.
The opposing position centers on the concept of shittuf, meaning “partnership” or “association”: the worship of the Creator of heaven and earth together with another figure. The Tosafot, the medieval Talmudic commentators of France and Germany, ruled that non-Jews are not commanded against shittuf (Sanhedrin 63b). A Jew who associates any being with God violates the Bible’s commandments, while a non-Jew who worships the God of Israel through the figure of Jesus remains within the bounds of the Noahide covenant.
The original Tosafot passage dealt with a practical question: whether a Jew could accept a sworn oath from a Christian business partner. The Tosafists permitted it, reasoning that even when Christians mention “the name of Heaven” while intending Jesus, the oath is not in an idolatrous name, because non-Jews were not commanded regarding this.
That ruling became the mainstream of Ashkenazi Jewish law. Rabbi Moshe Isserles, the 16th-century authority whose glosses on the Shulchan Aruch define Ashkenazi practice to this day, codified it. He was followed by Rabbi Shabbetai Cohen, known as the Shach (Yoreh Deah 151:7), Rabbi Moshe Rivkash, author of the Be’er HaGolah, Rabbi Yair Bachrach in his responsa Chavot Yair, and Rabbi Alexander Ziskind in Tevuot Shor. The same position appears in the writings of the Ran, the Meiri, and Rabbeinu Yerucham.
Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, head of the Har Bracha yeshiva in Samaria and author of the widely used Peninei Halacha series, summarized the state of the debate: according to most halachic authorities, while it is preferable for non-Jews to believe in pure monotheism, only the nation of Israel is obligated to do so, and non-Jews are not prohibited from worship involving shittuf. Rabbi Melamed, one of the preeminent Halachic authorities of our time, explained the distinction this way: God revealed Himself to Israel and commanded them specifically to believe in His oneness, as it is stated: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
Rabbi Menachem Meiri, the 13th-century sage of Provence, wrote that Christians are “nations bound by the ways of religion,” people who worship the Creator and live by moral law, and he ruled that the Talmud’s harsh statements about idolaters do not apply to them.
The 18th-century German authority Rabbi Yaakov Emden offered the warmest assessment of all. He described the Christian church as a “congregation for the sake of Heaven” destined to endure. Emden wrote that the founders of Christianity brought a double benefit to the world: they strengthened the Bible of Moses in the eyes of the nations, and they turned the gentiles away from idolatry and bound them to the seven Noahide commandments. Emden pointed to the same ruling of the Jerusalem council recorded in Acts 15 as evidence that the early apostles intended exactly that.
The debate continues among Orthodox rabbis today. Some authorities, including the Pitchei Teshuva (Yoreh Deah 147:2), concluded that shittuf is forbidden to gentiles as well, and the son of the Noda BiYehuda argued vigorously against the lenient reading of Tosafot. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, in handwritten notes on a letter, described Christianity as avodah zarah in contrast to the seven Noahide laws.
In 2015, a group of Orthodox rabbis in Israel, the United States and Europe issued a public statement titled “To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven: Toward a Partnership between Jews and Christians,” published by the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Efrat, drawing directly on the Meiri and Rabbi Emden to affirm Christianity as a partner to Judaism in bringing the world to recognize the God of Israel.
The Christian believer who worships the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, keeps the moral law and studies the Hebrew Bible stands, according to the Tosafot, Rabbi Isserles, the Meiri and Rabbi Emden, as a Ben Noach with a share in the World to Come. That is the tradition Shapiro was drawing on when he told a student in a “Jesus is King” shirt that he was “doing a great job by believing in Jesus,” and when he said of John MacArthur that he “is with God right now.”
“What Are the Jews Up To?”
Rabbi Moshe Chaim, a Jewish educator at Yeshiva Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem, addressed the uproar directly in a class on Genesis 9, the chapter describing God’s covenant with Noah. “People were very [worked up] with Ben Shapiro talking about this. It became like a very big thing,” he said. “Now the whole world is talking about this, and I think people are just misunderstanding a lot of it.”
Rabbi Chaim framed the question the critics were asking and answered it plainly. “It’s becoming obviously just world discussion: what are the Jews up to? And the answer is that we want to help all of humanity have a relationship with God. Simple as that,” he said. “Every single human being has the ability to connect to the Creator, Sustainer of heaven and earth.”
He emphasized that the Noahide covenant with humanity predates God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that it carries no missionary mandate. “You don’t have to go out there and say, like, ‘heard the good news,’” he said.
Rabbi Chaim described each of the seven laws as carrying a positive principle alongside its prohibition. The ban on eating a limb from a living animal, he explained, “is really telling you to respect nature, to respect animal life.” He summarized the entire code: “All of these Noahide mitzvot are really about bringing ethical monotheism to the world and about moving humanity in the right direction. Helping humanity come to a place of blessing.”
On the prohibition of murder, he pointed to the reason God gave Noah. “Murder is wrong because that person is in the image of God. He’s removing the image of God from the world,” Rabbi Chaim said. “Within the seven Noahide laws, what we’re presenting to humanity is understanding the sanctity of life.”
He also noted a calendar detail connecting the controversy to the First International Congress of Noahides, scheduled for November 2-6 at Jerusalem’s Seven Arches Hotel, with delegates expected from roughly twenty countries. Noah left the ark, Rabbi Chaim explained, on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, a date Noahides around the world celebrate as their own holiday, the day Noah “received the full, clear brit, covenant.” This year, that date falls on the Sabbath immediately following the congress. “It’s fascinating to me that it happens to coincide with the Noahide conference here in Jerusalem,” he said, describing Noahide leaders “from around the world coming here to Jerusalem to be connected” before returning home, “each with their own cultures, flavors, spices,” to share the covenant in their communities.
“Humanity is getting ready to understand what the Jewish people are really all about,” Rabbi Chaim said, “which is to help humanity have love and peace and goodness in the world.”
The Open Gate
Shapiro’s critics accused him of slamming the gates of heaven on Christians. The Jewish tradition he described flung those gates open three thousand years before Turning Point USA existed, teaching that any human being who serves the Creator and lives by His moral law inherits eternity alongside Israel. The religion accused of excluding Christians is the one that never required them to convert.
The prophets saw where this would lead, and they placed the scene in Jerusalem:
“Thus saith the Lord of hosts: In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, shall even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying: We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” (Zechariah 8:23)
Next month, men and women from twenty nations will gather in Jerusalem to take hold of that covenant, on the week Noah stepped out of the ark onto a washed and waiting world. A student in a “Jesus is King” shirt asked a Jew why he wouldn’t join his faith. The Jew answered that the student never needed to join his.
