[Avodah] Mitzvot That A Non-Jew Cannot Do

[Michael Makovi]

>> Liron Kopinsky wrote: Long story short, the question arose "Why
can't non->>Jews keep Shabbat?".

> See H. Melachim 10:9.  Basically the Rambam understands this to be a
> prohibition against inventing your own religion (what we might call
> cafeteria-style religion).
> David Riceman

The way I've always understood it, is that Shabbat is davka an oth
between us and Hashem. Thus Rambam forbids non-Jews to keep Shabbat
and study Torah, but explicitly permits them all other mitzvot, in
10:10.

But the thing that I've never been able to understand, and this is a
question on the Gemara itself:

Hashem blessed the Shabbat and declared it holy, long before Am
Yisrael existed. Furthermore, Shabbat testifies to the creation of the
world - should not gentiles acknowledge this too?

There is no problem understanding our obligation to keep Shabbat and
the gentiles' (hypothetical) exemption. What I cannot understand is
their (in reality) prohibition.

It is thus all the more surprising when Rav Hirsch (somewhere around
the end of chapter one of Bereshit or the beginning of two) and Rav J.
H. Hertz (in his essay at the end of Sefer Bereshit) both say that
Shabbat applies to all of humanity. This fits very well with logic
that Shabbat's testifying to God's creation applies to all of
humanity, but it doesn't fit well with the Gemara.

The only thing I can think of that Ravs Hirsch and Hertz can intend,
is that the Gemara, when it says that gentiles cannot keep Shabbat,
does not really intend this as a prohibition, but only as a polemic
against Christians who want to copy/replace/imitate Am Yisrael. But
there is no prohibition per se, for a gentile to keep Shabbat. This is
based on A. Cohen's Everyman's Talmud, which is certainly not a
halachic authority.

Does anyone else have a solution on why gentiles should be prohibited
to acknowledge God's creation, and what Ravs Hirsch and Hertz intend?

Mikha'el Makovi