In the Haftarah of Shabbat Nahamu, the prophet declares:
The nations are but a drop in a bucket
Reckoned as dust on a balance;
The very coastlands He lifts like motes (Isaiah 40:15).

Do “the nations” include Jews, or does the phrase only denote non-Jews? Is this a verse illustrating the intrinsic difference between Jews and non-Jews? Or is the matter more complicated than that?

Remarkably, a halakhic dispute between Rambam and Rabad may be germane to the matter. Rabad, in his critique of Rambam, Hilkhot She’ar Abot Ha-Tum’ah 2:10, uses this verse to dispute a Maimonidean contention. Rambam had claimed that that when a non-Jew slaughters an animal (in a halakhically correct manner), from the standpoint of Biblical law the animal does not impart the impurity (tum’ah) associated with a carcass (nevelah), that is, an animal that had not been slaughtered but died of its own accord. It only becomes impure, according to the Rambam, from the standpoint of rabbinic law (mi-divrei soferim). In other words, according to the Rambam, the slaughter of the animal by the non-Jew accomplishes something. (For sure, according to the Rambam, one may not eat the animal even from a biblical perspective, but that is another matter.) According to the Rabad, however, the nations are but a drop in a bucket. i.e., the halakhic acts of a non-Jew are meaningless; one must surely conclude that the impurity is indeed contacted on a biblical level. Hence, the slaughter of meat by a non-Jew, not just with respect to the permissibility of eating, but with respect to issues of tum’ah as well, is indeed completely tantamount to a case where there was no slaughter at all, and the animal died of its own accord. In both cases, the impurity of nevelah is biblical. The non-Jew in this case accomplishes nothing.

The full contours of the halakhic dispute between Rambam (who nonetheless apparently assumes that with respect to eating prohibitions, the meat slaughtered by a non-Jew is defined as nevelah min-Ha-Torah) and Rabad will not be discussed here. I wish to address one small point. Do we know how the Rambam interpreted the verse in Isaiah that Rabad used to fortify his contention that the acts of a non-Jew are meaningless? The answer is yes!

Rambam, in the Guide of the Perplexed, apparently understood that the verse refers not to the “nations of the world” as opposed to the children of Israel, but to all of humanity, Jews as well as non-Jews, as opposed to God. He writes:

Thus we are obliged to believe that all that exists was intended by Him, may He be exalted, according to His volition. And we shall seek for it no cause or other final end whatever. Just as we do not seek for the end of His existence, may He be exalted, so do we not seek for the final end of His volition, according to which all that has been and will be produced in time comes into being as it is. Hence, be not misled in your soul to think that the spheres and the angels have been brought into existence for our sake. For it has been explained to us what we are worth: The nations are but a drop in a bucket (Isaiah 40:15) (Guide, III:13. Pines ed., p. 455).

Clearly, according to the Rambam, the point of the prophet is to express that all human beings are meaningless, in comparison with God. Hence, the verse in Isaiah cannot be used as a proof (even in a rhetorical sense) for a halakhic distinction between a Jew and a non-Jew.

This universalistic interpretation of the verse in Isaiah has an old pedigree. One can even find it in sources from the Talmudic era. In his presentation of the Tower of Babel narrative, pseudo-Philo, in his Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (Biblical Antiquities), VII:3, clearly uses the verse from Isaiah in the fashion that the Rambam was later to do as well.

Therefore, lo, I will divide their speech, and scatter them over all countries, that they may not know every man his brother; neither every man understands the speech of his neighbor. And I will deliver them to the rocks, and they shall build themselves tabernacles of stubble and straw, and shall dig themselves caves and shall live therein like beasts of the field, and thus shall they continue before My face forever, that they may never devise such things. And I shall esteem them as a drop of water, and like them unto spittle: and unto some of them their end shall come by water, and other of them shall be dried up with thirst.

It is clear that in this context, the first clause of his citation, an obvious quote of Isaiah 40:15, describes all of humanity.

Of course, both aspects of our self definition as Jews, as a specific nation chosen by God to the exclusion of all others, and as part of humanity standing before God, exist. Twice daily we recite the Shema, Hear O Israel, the L-RD our God, the L-RD is One (Deuteronomy 6:4). Rashi (ad loc.) writes: “ ‘The L-RD,’ who is ‘our God’ now, and not the God of the (other) nations, He will be in the future ‘One L-RD,’ as it is stated: (Zephaniah 3:9): For then I will make the peoples pure of speech, So that they all invoke the L-RD by name, And serve Him with one accord. And it is stated (Zechariah 14:9): And the L-RD shall be king over all the earth, in that day there shall be one L-RD with one name.”

This notion expresses both the particularistic aspect of the Jewish relationship to God, and the fervent longing that God will be all day universally recognized. As Jews, we must never forget that we are God’s treasured possession (segulah) among all the peoples (Exodus 19:5). But we must also remind ourselves that all human beings, Jews and non-Jews, stand equally before God on Rosh Ha-Shanah, as we pray for another year of life. Le-Shanah Tovah .