Judaism

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Judaism is the religion and culture of the Jewish people. The tenets and history of Judaism constitute the historical foundation of many other religions including Christianity and Islam.

Judaism does not characterize itself as a religion. Rather, Jews have traditionally thought of Judaism as a culture with its own history, language (Hebrew), ancestral homeland, liturgy, philosophy, set of ethics, religious practices, and the like.

The subject of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is an account of the Israelites (also called Hebrews) relationship with God as reflected in their history from the beginning of time until the building of the second temple (approx. 350 BCE).

Judaism has always affirmed a number of other Jewish Principles of Faith. A number of formulations of Jewish beliefs have appeared, most of which have much in common with each other, yet they differ in certain details. In the last two centuries the Jewish community has divided into a number of denominations which have greatly different understandings of these principles; most of Orthodox Judaism generally holds that the principles are unchanging and mandatory, non-Orthodox forms of Judaism generally hold that these principles have evolved over time, and thus allow for more leeway in what individual adherents believe. These topics are discussed more fully in the article on Jewish Principles of Faith.

Table of contents

1 Jewish denominations 2 The Traditional Jewish Bookshelf 3 Principles of Faith 4 What makes a person Jewish? 5 Jewish philosophy 6 The Torah and Jewish law 7 Excommunication 8 Holidays 9 Life cycle events 10 Other topics, each with its own entry 11 History of Judaism Timeline 12 Jewish sects and denominations before the Enlightenment 13 Development of Hasidic Judaism 14 Development of modern denominations in response to the Enlightenment 15 The state of Judaism among Jews today 16 Christianity and Judaism 17 Islam and Judaism 18 References 19 External links

Jewish denominations

Judaism is commonly divided into the following denominations:

• Orthodox Judaism (includes Hasidic Judaism, Ultra-Orthodox Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism)
• Conservative Judaism (Outside of the USA it is known as Masorti Judaism)
• Reform Judaism (Outside of the USA also known as Progressive Judaism and in the U.K. as Liberal Judaism)
• Reconstructionist Judaism

The Traditional Jewish Bookshelf

Some of these categories overlap, and some books have features that pertain to more than one category. Therefore, in order to make make this outline as useful as possible, the link to some individual books may appear under more than one category.

• The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and Jewish Biblical Exegesis
• Rabbinic Literature
  • The Mishnah and its Commentaries
  • The Jerusalem Talmud and its Commentaries
  • The Babylonian Talmud and its Commentaries
  • The Tosefta and Minor Tractates
  • Halakhic Midrash
  • Aggadic Midrash
• Halakhic Literature (Jewish Law and Custom)
  • The Major Halakhic Codes
    • The Mishneh Torah and its Commentaries
    • The Tur and its Commentaries
    • The Shulhan Arukh and its Commentaries
  • Halakhic Works (other than the major codes)
  • Responsa Literature
• Jewish Thought and Ethics
  • Jewish Philosophy
  • Jewish Ethics (Mussar)
  • Kabbalah
  • Hasidic Works
• Classical Jewish Poetry (Piyyut)
• Jewish Liturgy

Principles of Faith

A number of formulations of Jewish beliefs have appeared, most of which have much in common with each other, yet they differ in certain details. A comparison of several such formulations demonstrates a wide array of tolerance for varying theological perspectives. Below is a summary of Jewish beliefs. A more detailed discussion of these beliefs, along with a discussion of how they developed, is found in the article on Jewish principles of faith.

• Monotheism - Judaism is based on strict unitarian monotheism, the belief in one God. God is conceived of as eternal, the creator of the universe, and the source of morality.

• God is one - The idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical for Jews to hold; it is considered akin to polytheism. Interestingly, while Jews hold that such conceptions of God are incorrect, they generally are of the opinion that gentiles that hold such beliefs are not held culpable.

• God is all powerful (omnipotent), as well as all knowing (omniscient). The different names of God are ways to express different aspects of God's presence in the world. See the entry on The name of God in Judaism.

• God is non-physical, non-corporeal, and eternal. All statements in the Hebrew Bible and in rabbinic literature which use anthropomorphism are held to be linguistic conceits or metaphors, as it would otherwise be impossible to talk about God.

• To God alone may one offer prayer. Any belief that an intermediary between man and God could be used, whether necessary or even optional, has traditionally been considered heretical.

• The Hebrew Bible, and much of the beliefs described in the Mishnah and Talmud, are held to be the product of divine Revelation. How Revelation works, and what precisely one means when one says that a book is "divine", has always been a matter of some dispute. Different understandings of this subject exist among Jews.

• The words of the prophets are true.

• Moses was the chief of all prophets.

• The Torah (five books of Moses) is the primary text of Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism holds that the Torah is the same one that was given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. Orthodox Jews believe that the Torah that we have today is exactly the same as it was when it was received from God by Moses with only minor scribal errors. Due to advances in biblical scholarship, and archeological and linguistic research, most non-Orthodox Jews reject this principle. Instead, they may accept that the core of the Oral and Written Torah may have come from Moses, but the written Torah that we have today has been edited together from several documents.

• God will reward those who observe His commandments, and punish those who violate them.

• God chose the Jewish people to be in a unique covenant with God; the description of this covenant is the Torah itself. Contrary to popular belief, Jewish people do not simply say that "God chose the Jews." Jews believe that they were chosen for a specific mission; to be a light unto the nations, and to have a covenant with God as described in the Torah. This idea is discussed further in the entry on the chosen people. Reconstructionist Judaism rejects the concept chosenness as morally defunct.

• The messianic age. There will be a moshiach (messiah), or perhaps a messianic era.

• The soul is pure at birth. People are born with a yetzer ha'tov, a tendency to do good, and with a yetzer ha'ra, a tendency to do bad. Thus, human beings have free will and can choose the path in life that they will take.

• People can atone for sins. The liturgy of the Days of Awe (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) states that prayer, repentance and tzedakah (charity) atone for sin. A more detailed discussion of the Jewish view of sin is available in the entry on sin.

What makes a person Jewish?

Jewish law considers someone born of a Jewish mother, or converted in accord with Jewish Law, Jewish. (Recently, American Reform and Reconstructionist Jewish people have included those born of Jewish fathers and gentile mothers if the children are raised following the Jewish religion.)

A Jewish person who ceases practicing Judaism and becomes a non-practicing Jew is still regarded as Jewish. A Jewish person who does not accept Jewish principles of faith and becomes an agnostic or an atheist is also still considered to be Jewish.

However, if a Jew converts to another religion, such as Buddhism or Christianity, that person loses standing as a member of the Jewish community and becomes known as an apostate. Traditionally, his family and friends will mourn over him, for since he has left the religion, it is if he has died. However, while the person is outside the Jewish community and has views non-Jewish views, that person is still Jewish by most authorities in Jewish law.

Jewish philosophy

Jewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy and Jewish theology. Early Jewish philosophy was influenced by the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle and Islamic philosophy. Major Jewish philosophers include Solomon ibn Gabirol, Saadia Gaon, Maimonides and Gersonides. Major changes occurred in response to the enlightenment (late 1700s to early 1800s) leading to the post-Enlightenment Jewish philosophers, and then the modern Jewish philosophers.

See the article on Jewish philosophy for more details.

The Torah and Jewish law

The basis of Jewish law and tradition is the Torah (the five books of Moses). According to rabbinic traditional there are 613 mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah. Some of these laws are directed only to men or to women, some only to Kohanim and Leviyim (members of the priestly tribe), some only to those who practice framing within the land of Israel, and many laws were only applicable when the Temple in Jerusalem existed. Less than 300 of these commandments are still applicable today.

While there have been Jewish groups which were based on the written text of the Torah alone (the Sadducees, the Karaites), most Jews believed in what they call the oral law. These oral traditions originated in the Pharisee sect of ancient Judaism, and were latter recorded in written form and expanded upon by the Rabbis.

Rabbinic Judaism has always held that the books of the Tanakh (called the written law) have always been transmitted in parallel with an oral tradition. They point to the text of the Torah, where many words are left undefined, and many procedures mentioned without explanation or instructions; this, they argue, means that the reader is assumed to be familiar with the details from other, oral, sources. This parallel set of material was originally transmitted orally, and came to be known as "the oral law". Some of the methods by which it is derived can be found in halakhic Midrash. However, by the time of Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi (200 CE) much of this material was edited together into the Mishnah. Over the next four centuries this law underwent discussion and debate in both of the world's major Jewish communities (in Israel and Babylon), and the commentaries on the Mishnah from each of these communities eventually came to be edited together into compilations known as the two Talmuds. These have been expounded by commentaries of various Torah scholars during the ages.

Halakha, the rabbinic Jewish way of life, then, is not based on a literal reading of the Torah, but on the combined oral and written tradition, which includes the Tanakh, the Mishnah, the halakhic Midrash, the Talmud and its commentaries. These have been summarized into codes of Jewish law by various Torah scholars, such as Rabbis Alfasi, Maimonides, Ya'akov ben Asher, Karo etc.

Halakha is developed slowly, through a precedent based system. The literature of questions to rabbis, and their considered answers, is referred to as responsa (in Hebrew, '"Sheelot U-Teshuvot".) Over time, as practices develop, codes of Jewish law are written that are based on the responsa.

Excommunication

Cherem is the highest ecclesiastical censure in the Jewish community. It is the total exclusion of a person from the Jewish community. Except in rare cases in the Ultra-Orthodox community, cherem stopped existing after the enlightenment, when local Jewish communities lost their political autonomy, and Jews were integrated into the greater gentile nations which they lived in. A fuller discussion of this subject is available in the cherem article.

Holidays

Jewish life is bound up with religious tradition, and is celebrated in an annual cycle of Jewish holidays.

Life cycle events

Life-cycle events occur throughout a Jew's life that bind him/her to the entire community.

Brit milah - Welcoming male babies into the covenant through the rite of circumcision.

Bar mitzvah and Bat mitzvah - Celebrating a child's reaching the age of majority, becoming responsible from now on for themselves as an adult for living a Jewish life and following halakha.

Marriage

Mourning - Judaism has a multi-staged mourning practice. The first stage is called the Shiv'ah (observed for one week), the second is the shloshim (observed for one month) and for those who have lost one of their parents, there is a third stage, avelut yud bet chodesh, which is observed for one year.

Other topics, each with its own entry

• The entry on Rabbis discusses the role of the rabbi, and provides links to entries on many imporant rabbis.
• The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible, Old Testament} sets up a distinction between regular Israelites and a priestly caste called the Kohanim. A discussion of the Jewish priesthood may be found in its own entry, Kohen.
• Rabbinic literature - discusses the many works of classical Judaism
• Kosher aka Kashrut - The Jewish dietary laws; this entry deals with the rationale for the existence of these laws, describes which foods are and aren't Kosher.
• Shabbat - This entry is about the Jewish view of the Sabbath, the role that it plays in Judaism, and the rules governing its observance.
• There is an entry on the Role of women in Judaism.
• There is an entry on the Rabbi, the spiritual leader in Jewish communities
• The Temple in Jerusalem is no longer extant, but it still plays an imporant part in the Jewish faith.
• There is a description of the Jewish services, which describes the daily prayer services, and offers a guide for visitors to the synagogue (also: Temple).
• The Role of the cantor in Judaism discusses the role of the cantor (hazzan) as an emissary of the congregation.
• The tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl.
• Jewish eschatology - Jewish views of the messiah and the afterlife.
• A summary of Jewish views of homosexuality can be found here.
• The entries on Jewish ethics and the Mussar Movement concern the ethical teachings of Judaism.
• Holocaust theology
• Halakha (Jewish law and custom) and the responsa literature.
• The article on Jewish views of religious pluralism describes how Judaism views other religions; it also describes how members of each of the Jewish religious denomination view the other denominations.

History of Judaism Timeline

There is a separate entry which has Jewish history timeline.

Jewish sects and denominations before the Enlightenment

Rabbinic Judaism at one time was related to Samaritanism; however Samaritans no longer refer to themselves as Jews, and both groups view themselves as separate religions.

Around the first century A.D there were several large sects of Jewish leadership, generally each differently seeking a messianic salvation as national autonomy from the Roman Empire: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots and Essenes. Of these, only the Pharisees survived ideologically; their ideological offshoot, the Rabbis, soon took control over the religion, and from this all modern sects are descended. Christianity at one point was related to a Jewish faction that believed in Jesus as messiach, but through preaching to the Roman masses, this sect of Jewish Christians, rejected by Jews and Christians alike, disappeared.

Some Jews in the 8th century adopted the Sadducees' rejection of the oral law of the Pharisees / Rabbis recorded in the Mishnah (and developed by later Rabbis in the two Talmuds), intending to rely only upon the Tanakh. Interestingly, they soon developed oral traditions of their own which differ from the Rabbinic traditions. These Jews formed the Karaite sect, which still exist to this day, though they are much smaller than the rest of Judaism. Rabbinic Jews hold that Karaites are Jews, but that their religion is an incomplete and erroneous form of Judaism.

Over time Jews developed into distinct ethnic groups: the Ashkenazi Jews (of Eastern Europe and Russia); the Sephardi Jews (of Spain, Portugal and North Africa) and the Yemenite Jews, from the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula. This split is cultural, and is not based on any doctrinal dispute.

Development of Hasidic Judaism

Hasidic Judaism was founded by Israel ben Eliezer (1700-1760), also known as the Ba'al Shem Tov, or the Besht. His disciples attracted many followers; they themselves established numerous Hasidic sects across Europe. Hasidic Judaism eventually became the way of life for many Jews in Europe; it came to the United States during the large waves of Jewish emigration in the 1880s.

Early on, there was a serious schism between the Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews. European Jews who rejected the Hasidic movement were dubbed by the Hasidim as mitnagdim, (lit. "opponents"). Some of the reasons for the rejection of Hasidic Judaism were the overwhelming exuberance of Hasidic worship; their untraditional ascriptions of infallibility and alleged miracle-working to their leaders, and the concern that it might become a messainic sect. Since then all the sects of Hasidic Judaism have been subsumed into mainstream Orthodox Judaism, particulary Ultra-Orthodox Judaism.

See the articles on Hasidic Judaism and Mitnagdim for more detailed information.

Development of modern denominations in response to the Enlightenment

In the late 18th century Europe was swept by a group of intellectual, social and political movements known as the Enlightenment. Judaism developed into several distinct denominations in response to this unprecedented phenomenon: Reform Judaism and Liberal Judaism, many forms of Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and a number of smaller groups as well.

This subject is covered in more depth in the article on Jewish denominations.

The state of Judaism among Jews today

In most western nations, such as the USA, England, Israel and South Africa, many secularized Jews have long since stopped participating in religious duties. Many of them recall having religious grand-parents, but grew up in homes where Jewish education and observance was no longer a priority. They have developed ambivalent feelings towards their religious duties. On the one hand they tend to cling to their traditions for identity reasons; on the other hand the influences of western mentality, daily life and peer-pressure tears them away from Judaism. Recent studies of American Jews indicate that many people who identify as being of Jewish heritage no longer identify as members of the religion known as Judaism. The various Jewish religious denominations in the USA and Canada perceive this as a crisis situation, and have grave concern over rising rates of intermarriage and assimilation in the Jewish community. Since American Jews are marrying at a later time in their life than they used to, and are having fewer children than they used, the birth rate for American Jews has dropped from over 2.0 down to 1.7 (the replacement rate is 2.1). (This is My Beloved, This is My Friend: A Rabbinic Letter on Intimate relations, p.27, Elliot N. Dorff, The Rabbinical Assembly, 1996)

In the last 50 years all of the major Jewish denominations have experienced a resurgence in popularity, with increasing numbers of younger Jews participating in Jewish education, joining synagogues, and becoming (to varying degrees) more observant. There is a separate article on the Baal teshuva movement, the movement of Jews returning to observant Judaism. However, this gain has not offset the demographic loss due to intermarriage and acculturation.

Meanwhile, Christianity has inspired sects such as Jews for Jesus and Messianic Judaism, and people discontented with mainstream Judaism have founded Judeo-Paganism. Because those movements incorporate religions other than Judaism along with Judaism, mainstream Jewish movements don't consider the Jews for Jesus, Messianic Judaism, or Judeo-Paganism to be part of the Jewish religion. Some adherents to those movements identify themselves as Jews nonetheless.

Christianity and Judaism

There are a number of articles on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. These articles include:

• Comparing and contrasting Judaism and Christianity
• The Judeo-Christian tradition
• Christianity and anti-Semitism

Since the Holocaust, there has been much to note in the way of reconciliation between some Christians groups and the Jewish people; the article on Christian-Jewish reconciliation studies this issue.

Jews for Jesus is an evangelical Christian religious movement, self-identified as Jewish, that believes that Jesus is God, and the messiah. Some other Messianic Jews, though without any official organization, accept Jochanan ben Zakkari (the Baptist) and Jeshu the Nazarene as reformistic rabbis between the times of Hillel and Gamaliel, struck from the lists by traditionalists; not all of these groups conform to catholic beliefs concerning the deity of Christ, or identify themselves with the Christian church. Even though many Messianic Jews are ethnically Jewish, they are naturally not considered part of the Jewish community by mainstream Judaic and other Jewish religious groups. As a result they tend to keep their beliefs quiet and interact as common Jews in whichever communities they belong to.

Islam and Judaism

There is a separate article on the relationship between Islam and Judaism and the Judeo-Islamic tradition. A separate article, The Bible in Islam discusses the way that Muslims have traditionally understood the Bible.

There are articles on Islam and anti-Semitism and Projects working for peace among Israelis and Arabs.

See also: Jews, Abrahamic religions, Israel, Zionism, Anti-Semitism, Siddur, History of the Jews in Russia and Soviet Union

References

• Living Judaism: The Complete Guide to Jewish Belief, Tradition and Practice Wayne Dosick.
• Conservative Judaism: The New Century, Neil Gillman, Behrman House.
• American Jewish Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective Jeffrey S. Gurock, 1996, Ktav.
• Philosophies of Judaism Julius Guttmann, trans. by David Silverman, JPS. 1964
• Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts Ed. Barry W. Holtz, Summit Books
• A History of the Jews Paul Johnson, HarperCollins, 1988
• A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America, Jack Wertheimer. Brandeis Univ. Press, 1997.
• Encyclopaedia Judaica, Keter Publishing, CD-ROM edition, 1997
• The article on "The American Jewish Identity Survey" by Egon Mayer, Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar; a sub-set of The American Religious Identity Survey, City University of New York Gradute Center. An article on this survey is printed in The New York Jewish Week, November 2, 2001.

External links

General

• The Various Types of Orthodox Judaism
• What is Orthodox Judaism? Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
• The origin of Reform Judaism
• Reform Judaism: Official website
• The development of Conservative Judaism
• The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
• What is Reform Judaism? Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

Organisations/Newsgroups

• [insert item]

Critics

• Judaism and Jewish Apologetics - Analysis of the moral aspects of the Jewish religion from Infidels.Org