Judaism
Judaism is a religion that originated in ancient Israel. It has no one single founder, no central leader or group making theological decisions. "Judaism" and "Jew" can mean several things to different people, from a religion to an ethnic identity.
The ancient Israelites did not create monotheism. Rather, that belongs to the ancient Egyptians during the reign of Akhenaten (Amenophis IV) in the 14th millennium BCE. However, the Israelites refined the notion of one God and created ethical monotheism, a belief in which God makes a covenant with humankind in which both God and humankind are bound to ethical conduct.
Covenant (b'rith)
A covenant is a contract that binds two parties: God and humankind. It confers duties and obligations on both sides. God has obligations to humankind, and humankind to God. These obligations are ethical in nature; they guide the actions of both God and humankind.
God makes several covenants with humankind: the covenant of the rainbow with Noah (Gen. 9:13); the covenant of circumcision with Abraham (Gen. 17:11); the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) with Moses (Ex. 20:1-17).
The covenant with Moses is ethically the most important. The commandments define vertical and horizontal relationships. The vertical commandments define the relationship between God and humankind (Commandments 1-4: no other gods, idolatry, false swearing, Sabbath). The horizontal commandments define the relationship between humankind (Commandments 5-10: honor father and mother, murder, adultery, theft, false witness, coveting).
Adherence to the vertical and horizontal commandments puts one in a state of shalôm, peace. Such a person seeks justice (mishpat) and is righteous before God. Worshiping God without respecting others makes one wicked.
Text and History: The Hebrew Bible
The Israelites preserved their sacred history in the Hebrew Bible (what Christians refer to as the "Old Testament," a term that has no meaning to Jews, and is in fact demeaning). As sacred history, the Hebrew Bible is not "history" as an historian defines history. Rather, the Hebrew Bible is composed of traditional history--sagas, myths, and folktales--that is the result of the Israelite experience of history filtered through the lens of the covenant relationship.
Jews call the Hebrew Bible the Tanakh, a non-word created from three separate words: Torah (Law), Nevi'îm (Prophets), and Kethuvîm (Other Writings). The names of the books of the Tanakh arise from the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek c. 200 BCE (and later into the Latin Vulgate in 382 CE).
The Tanakh consists of separate works of literature (scrolls), written independently and set within a particular historical milieu. A knowledge of the social and archaeological history of ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East provides a framework to ask the questions: who wrote these various scrolls and for what purpose? and what is their continued importance?
When studying Judaism, one must always see the Tanakh as a Jewish document that interprets history as Jews have experienced it--both then and now. The Tanakh is not "history" as we understand History to be an academic discipline. The Tanakh is a living document that helps Jews live a Jewish life where ever they find themselves in the world. Most importantly, as a Jewish document, nothing in the Hebrew Bible points to, reveals, or prophesizes about Jesus of Nazareth or relates directly to Christianity. That is a later, Christian view of the Tanakh through the lens of further historical experiences.
The Torah: Traditional History
Ancient Israel must be seen within the context of the great ancient powers that surrounded it: Egypt to the south-west, and Assyria / Babylonia to the north-east, all of whom were Semitic peoples. The Israelites--originally mountain herders of the Transjordan range--shared the land with the Canaanites, the settled agricultural peoples of the valley who practiced fertility rites in honor of Baal and Asherah.
Canaanites and Israelites shared many religious practices. Politically the Israelites formed a loose confederation of 12 tribes whose leaders, called judges, periodically met to solve disputes. Landless priests, the Levites, performed the necessary rituals to convene and adjourn such meetings, the decisions of which were vouchsafed by God.
The scrolls that recount Israel's traditional history are the product of interpreting their experiences through the lens of the covenant relationship: If Israel is righteous, Israel will prosper through God's agency; if Israel is wicked, Israel will suffer through God's agency. Righteousness and wickedness are determined by adherence to (or violation of ) the covenant. This belief is often referred to as the Doctrine of Divine Retribution.
Primeval History The books of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers narrate the traditional history of the Israelites from creation, the covenant with Abraham, Egyptian bondage and exodus, and the wilderness experience before entry into the Promised Land.
The stories combine traditions from the northern kingdom of Israel with its ties to the bedouin Semites in Assyria and Babylonia (the so-called E-source), with the traditions from the southern kingdom of Judah with its ties to the Semites in ancient Egypt (the so-called J-source).
United Monarchy As a response to the Philistine (Mycenaean Greeks) presence on the Levantine coast, Saul was elected as king to lead a united force against them.
David succeeds Saul. He unites the two kingdoms of Israel (10 tribes in the northern kingdom) and Judah (2 tribes in the southern kingdom) with Jerusalem (in Judah) as capital.
Solomon succeeds David. First Temple built. Priests assemble an account of priestly rites (Leviticus) within the context of the Primeval History (the so-called P-source).
Succession dispute arises after Solomon's death. The two kingdoms split. The temple and official cult of Yahweh, however, was in Judah. Israel created its own religious institutions, which was viewed by the Jerusalem priests as abominations and violations of the covenant.
Kingdom of Judah In 722 BCE the Assyrians destroy Israel and deport its population ("10 lost tribes of Israel"). Israel is renamed Samaria by the Assyrians.
The Assyrians were unable to breach the walls of Jerusalem, which is spared (after heavy tribute is paid).
Judeans see this event as validation of covenant and history: Israel is destroyed due to their wickedness; Judah (Jerusalem) is spared by God because of their righteousness.
Judah receives refugees from Israel. J and E is redacted to create one text, JE.
David-Zion covenant articulated: there will always be a descendant of David on the throne in Jerusalem and God will always reside in the Jerusalem temple.
In 621 BCE King Josiah begins a period of religious reform in response to growing hostilities between Judah and Assyria, and Assyria and Egypt.
The book of Deuteronomy is "found" in one of the walls of the Temple. This book is the first in a series (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) that chronicles the history of the Israelites from entry into the Promised Land to the reign of Josiah (the so-called D-source).
The history of the Israelites in the Promised Land is interpreted through the lens of the David-Zion covenant, set against the backdrop of Canaanite culture and religion that was centered around the fertility rites of Ba'al and Asherah.
Exile and Restoration Favoring Egypt, Josiah broke with the Assyrians, who invade Judah; Josiah dies in battle at Megiddo (Armageddon) in 609 BCE.
In 598/7 BCE, after destroying Assyria, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar sacks Jerusalem. In 587 BCE he destroys Jerusalem, the temple, and deports the population to Babylon: the "Babylonian Captivity."
David-Zion covenant invalidated; the Jews (i.e. Judeans) are forced to reexamine their religious beliefs while still maintaining their faith in the covenant.
Two ideas emerge:
1. The Jews have sinned greatly and God has delivered them into the hands of the ungodly. God is a stern, yet just Father, who will restore his people if they repent and return to righteousness.
2. God's purpose for the Jews is not to be a people with land and a temple, but to be a moral people among the Gentiles to bring the Gentiles to God. Without a temple, Jews met congregationally in a synagogue (Greek for "community center"), led by a rabbi ("teacher") who studied the Torah and commented on it in such a way as to make the experiences of their forebears meaningful to the lives of the expatriate community.
Both of these rationales provided a theodicy--the justification of the Goodness of God in spite of their suffering and the existence of evil in the world.
In 539 BCE the Persian king Cyrus (Greek/Persian for "LORD-GOD") destroys Babylonia and repatriates 40,000 Jews. He authorizes the rebuilding of the Temple. In the eyes of the repatriated Jews, Cyrus is the anointed of the Lord (Hebrew "Messiah"--a Davidic term originally used to describe a kingship ritual of anointing the king's head with oil). Cyrus was seen by the Jews as the agent of the Lord, a cosmic God who lords over all, the "King of kings, and Lord of lords" (Deutero-Isaiah and Ezekiel).
Many Jews remained in Babylonia where they prospered. During the captivity, Judaism was influenced by Zoroastrian practices, especially cosmic dualism, resurrection of the dead, and an apocalyptic vision of the world.
In 458 BCE 17,000 more Babylonian Jews returned to Judea (now a client state of the Persian Empire). Nehemiah becomes governor and creates a theocratic state.
The scribe (scholar of the Torah) Ezra arrives with a complete Torah (J, E, P and D redacted to create Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy--5 scrolls known in Greek as the Pentateuch).
Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah complete the Deuteronomistic History).
Nevi'îm: The Prophets
Prophesy in ancient Israel, and other cultures as well, was not future-telling. Humans do not desire to know what will happen in 20 years, 200 years, or 2000 years. Rather our concern is for the near future: the now and the soon to be. Prophesy tends toward fore-telling what will happen soon so that we can prepare for it, whether good news or bad.
Prophets are not priests. Whereas priests were sanctioned by the monarchy and the institution of the Temple, enforcing regulations of worship and sacrifice in the temple, hygiene and diet, prophets spoke for God, reminding Israel of the covenant relationship and its individual duties to God and social responsibilities to fellow Israelites (at this time "love thy neighbor" excluded Gentiles).
The Israelites did not develop practices such as astrology or divination, nor did they engage in ecstatic forms of prophesy common to the Greeks. Rather, they perfected "message prophesy": God speaks in plain language to humans through His prophets.
Israelite prophesy was unique among other forms of prophesy: it was delivered with the hope that it would not come true. That is, the prophet's message was to constantly remind the king, priest and scribes, and the people of their covenant relationship with God and each other. If they failed to live up to both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the covenant, disaster would follow. God speaks through prophets to help humans ward off divine punishment. The best example comes from the book of Jonah. Should destruction come, it was the fault of the monarchy for not heeding the warnings of the prophet.
Since the king stood collectively before God for the sins of the people as a whole, the pronouncements of the prophets were directed against the king directly, and the aristocracy indirectly (there was no individual or personal responsibility before God at this time, as we see in Job who sacrifices each day for himself and his entire family, including his slaves). As a result, prophets engendered resentment from the aristocracy, and conversely were held in high esteem by the populace who lived impoverished under the burden of high taxation to subsidize the lifestyles of the wealthy.
The prophetic books consist of the early (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) and later (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) major prophets that form much of the Deuteronomistic History. To this is added the 12 minor prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
Kethuvîm (Other Writings)
This label describes a loose collection of books written throughout Israel's history that include folktales, didactic stories, philosophical writings, and religious hymns. They were the last of the writings to be accepted as canonical.
Wisdom Literature: Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes (although the latter was later ascribed to the Festive Scrolls). Unlike the priests who instructed the community regarding the covenant, and the prophets who conveyed Yahweh's words, the sage provided wise advice. Although the prophets were sometimes critical of the sages--as they were of the priests, sage literature outlasted the prophetic line and became the dominant literary type in the Pseudepigrapha (Old Testament writings not accepted into the canon).
Job. A book that explores the relationship between covenant and personal suffering, thus challenging the Doctrine of Divine Retribution.
Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. Collections of proverbial wisdom. The tone from one work to another ranges from optimistic to pessimistic views of the human condition.
Festival Scrolls (Megillot): Ruth, Song of Songs (or of Solomon), Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Esther were used respectively at the five principle festivals of the Jewish Liturgical year (Pentecost, Passover, Booths, Fast of the 9th of Ab, Purim). They are placed together in the Hebrew Bible, but are scattered in the English translations (from the Septuagint). These scrolls present a multifaceted view of human nature, ranging from the elegant cynicism of Ecclesiastes to the lover story of Ruth. Except for Lamentations, God is seldom mentioned in these books; in Esther he is not referred to at all. There are no legalistic absolutes about God's will. Each book offers a different suggestion for handling life's problems. In each, in spite of the various crises and sorrows, there is the affirmation that life is good.
Lamentations. Written during the exile this book consists of admissions of sinfulness and prayers of forgiveness that will bring about restoration of land and temple.
Psalms. After the building of the Temple, hymns of worship (psalms) were written for liturgical purposes. The Psalms are attributed to David to provide a sense of antiquity and authority. However, few date that early and most display signs of multiple authorship.
Ruth and Esther. Two folktales of the oppressed liberated or saved by the folk hero. These arose out of political situations when minority groups feel threatened politically & religiously by the majority culture. Ruth calls into question the exclusion of foreigners from the covenant community, as mandated by Ezra and Nehemiah; Esther shows that the survival of the Israelites in a hostile world will not come through divine intervention but by their own efforts.
Song of Songs (or of Solomon). The only erotic love poetry in the Bible, this book is a frank celebration of physical passion. Later embarrassment over its contents led to interpretations that the characters were allegorical of a "higher truth." To Jews it became an allegory of Yahweh's love for his chosen people; for Christians it became an expression of Christ's love for his "bride," the spiritual Church.
Apocalyptic Literature are writings concerned with eschatology--the "last days," a revelation of things to come, typically a preview of the end of an age and the beginning of a new world order. Daniel is the only apocalyptic book in the Tanakh. Although there are apocalyptic elements in Isaiah 24-27, Ezekiel 37, Zechariah 9-14, and Joel 9, apocalyptic literature found its greatest expression from about 200 BCE to the 200 CE, centuries that were very tumultuous for the Judeans. All apocalyptic books are written in highly symbolic language, using sometimes bizarre images of beasts, birds, idols, dragons or other monsters. This secret code, understood by the believer but not by his or her oppressors, protected the writer from charges of treason.
Daniel was written during the persecutions of the Macedonian-Syrian ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (167-164 BCE) which led to the Maccabean revolt and the purification of the Temple. He is a latter-day Joseph, who uses the story of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar as a back-drop for foretelling the destruction of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
Inter-Testamental History: Post-Exilic Sectarian Writings
Judea was a client-state of the Persians, the Greeks, and finally the Romans. Since few Jews could read Hebrew (Aramaic was the common tongue of Palestinian Jews, Greek for the educated), circa 250 BCE the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the Septuagint.
During this time, foreign religious ideas crept into Judaism, especially important are the concepts of (the) Satan, an angelic hierarchy, bodily resurrection, and a coming Day of Judgment. A whole corpus of literature began to arise:
Pseudepigrapha: philosophical and apocalyptic literature, legends, folk wisdom and other religious works
Apocrypha: history of the Inter-Testamental period written in Greek
Dead Sea Scrolls: writings dating between 250 BCE and 68 CE found in 1947 in 11 caves at the site of Qumran near the Dead Sea. These scrolls attest to the plurality of Jewish religious thought during the Hellenistic and Roman periods up to the time of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans in 70 CE.
Central to the books of the Apocrypha is the Maccabean revolt and the establishment of the Hasmonean Dynasty. The Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes began a program of Hellenization, assimilating all the diverse peoples of his kingdom into Greek ways of social, political, and religious life. The Jews, led by Judas Maccabeus, revolted and engaged in a long and protracted guerilla war against the Greeks until Judea was recognized as a semi-independent temple-state.
The Maccabean period, however, was filled with political and religious strife as several forms of Judaism began to compete for political and religious power. Four main groups emerged:
Pharisees: priests and lay priests who were proponents of the Torah and the prophetic and literary works of Judaism. They enforced purity rituals of sacrifice and diet, anticipated a Messianic Kingdom of God, and believed in the resurrection of the dead.
Sadducees: ultraconservatives who accepted only the Torah and denied Pharisaic beliefs of resurrection and Messianic kingdom, favoring instead an aristocracy controlling the priesthood and temple.
Essenes: shared many religious ideas with the Pharisees, but preferred a semi-ascetic life in the desert along the Dead Sea to the tyrannical rule of the Hasmonaeans and the sectarian religious strife in Judea.
Zealots: Urban guerilla fighters (not unlike Hamas or Islamic Jihad in modern-day Palestine) who sought a forceful overthrow of the Roman government.
Roman Domination and Diaspora
Hasmonean rule of Judea ended in 63 BCE when civil war broke out between the Jewish parties. Rome intervened and later made Judea a Roman province in 37 BCE. The Romans installed Herod, the governor of Galilee (a non-Judean / Jewish state) as King.
Herod was unpopular and his kingship led to both anti-Roman and anti-Herodean movements that were both nationalistic and apocalyptic in nature: that God would send a Messiah (a legitimate king of the Davidic line) to destroy His enemies and restore Judea. The Romans eventually marched on Judea, destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, and sold many Jews into slavery.
Three generations later, a "false messiah" named Simeon Bar Kokhba, led a final revolt at Masada in 132 CE that was crushed by the Romans. All Jews were dispelled from Judea, which was renamed Palestine.
Rabbinic (Talmudic) Judaism
Judaism could have disappeared altogether as its people were dispersed throughout the Mediterranean and the Near East. Two groups survived: the rabbis, inheritors of the Pharisean tradition, and the messianic movement that grew up around Jesus of Nazareth.
By about 90 CE the books of the Hebrew Bible had been assembled into the Tanakh. But there was also a large body of unwritten "law" and commentaries by rabbis that was compiled as well: the Midrash ("interpretation"). Interpretation of the Torah to daily life continued over the next hundred years or so until these were in turn codified and added to the Midrash to form the Mishnah. added to the was compiled.
In Babylonia the scholars there had their own tradition of interpretation which was divided into two types:
halakhah: legal decisions based directly on the Torah
haggadah: non-legal teachings, based on folklore, theological disputations, sermons, sociological/historical knowledge, and mystical teachings.
These formed the Gemarah. Over time the Gemarah and the Midrash were combined to form the Babylonian Talmud ("study"), a process completed sometime around 485 CE. "Judaism" arose from the ashes of the Jerusalem Temple to unite a diaspora people.
Rabbinic Judaism has no priests or Temple sacrifices. Jews meet in synagogues (meeting places) to read the Torah and worship communally. Each synagogue elects its own rabbi, who need not be someone ordained by an outside authority. He must only be held in high esteem by his peers in his knowledge of the Torah.
Although Judaism has no centralized rabbinate to determine orthodoxy, over time certain theological principles developed that defines most forms of Judaism. These have been well articulated by the great modern rabbi, Leo Trepp:
The Jewish God is One (not a Trinitarian one as in Christianity)--as articulated in the Shema (Deut. 6:4-9): "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone (in Hebrew: "The LORD our God is One").
God is formless and will never assume form (especially human, as in Jesus)
No human will ever be divine
No human will ever be perfect. Even the patriarchs and Moses had human limitations and frailties
Jews believe that everyone has direct access to God (as opposed to priestly mediation)
Judaism does not have sacraments
Jews believe the soul come to humans morally neutral, with free will to choose between good and evil (in contrast to Christian ideas of original sin and predestination)
Judaism insists on obedience to the Commandments in the Torah (as opposed to Christian notion of salvation by faith alone)
Jews believe that all righteous people of the world have a share in the world to come (in contrast to Christian exclusivism)
Jews hold that the ethics advanced by Jesus are Jewish ethics (Christians believe the teachings of Jesus are somehow "advanced" over the "Old Testament)
Jews hold that the New Testament is not divinely revealed because it is written in Greek, compiled well after Jesus died, and laced with anti-Jewish statements made by Christians in their early attempts to distinguish themselves from other Jewish groups
Jewish Beliefs and Practices
Circumcision is the sign of the covenant with Abraham. Infant boys are circumcised when they are eight days old.
Kosher refers to the strict dietary laws, means and manner of ritual slaughter of animals, and the ritual cleanliness of eating utensils for ritual meals. Kosher meats are those of warm blooded animals with cloven hooves who chew their cud. Poultry is kosher, save for wild game. Shellfish is not kosher. Meat and milk products cannot be eaten together. Most of these rules are set forth in the book of Leviticus.
Sabbath, the day of rest, begins sundown Friday evening and ends sundown Saturday. During the Sabbath, no work is performed, and one must stay within walking distance of one's house. The Sabbath dinner includes wine, challah, a special braided bread, and a blessing of the children by the father.
Prayers are made while wearing a talit over the shoulders and head. For weekday morning prayers men put on t'fillin, small leather boxes containing biblical verses about the covenant with God. One is tied to the forearm, the other on the forehead. During intense prayer one may the sway the body back and forth until a meditative state is reached (davening).
Bar (Bat) Mitzvah (literally son/daughter of the commandment) is a ceremony of coming of age, at age 13. The boy/girl may undertake some religious instruction, including learning how to pronounce Hebrew--if not always to understand it. At the synagogue, the young person is called to read a portion of the Torah scroll and recite a passage from one of the books of the prophets, and then perhaps give a short teaching about a topic from the reading.
Holy Days
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year celebrated around the fall equinox and begins a time of spiritual renewal. For thirty days prior to Rosh Hashanah the synagogue service begins with the blowing of the shofar--a ram's horn--to remind the people that they stand before God.
Yom Kippur follows 10 days after Rosh Hashanah. It is the "Day of Atonement" in which each individual comes before God and asks forgiveness for the year's past transgressions and asks for a blessing for the coming year in return for keeping and remembering God's commandments. Congregations also ask for forgiveness of sins communally.
Sukkot (Booths) is a fall harvest festival in which a simple outdoor booth is built and decorated as a dwelling place of sorts for seven days. It is a reminder of the wilderness experience and that the true "home" of the Jews is God. The last day of the celebration is Simhat Torah (Joy of/for the Torah), ending the yearly cycle of reading of the Torah from Genesis to Deuteronomy.
Hanukkah is a winter solstice celebration in which eight candles are lit in sequence in a menorah. Originally a celebration of lights made on the shortest day of the year, Hanukkah later became a festival of rededication of the Temple after the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes who attempted to have Zeus worshiped in the Jerusalem Temple. Many Jewish families practice the exchange of small gifts on each night. Children play with a dreidel, a spinning top with the four Hebrew letters for four words that read "A great miracle happened there."
Purim is a festival on the full moon before the spring equinox in which the normal social restraints are lifted and people can dress in costume, mock life's seriousness, and parody sacred Jewish practices (cf. Catholic Feast of the Ass, and April Fool's Day). The festival is linked to the folktale of the book of Esther.
Pesach (Passover--originally a celebration of the winter barley harvest) is the celebration of the liberation from Egyptian bondage by Moses as told in Exodus. Passover is observed with a commemorative meal, a seder, that consists of a lamb--to remind the Israelites of the sacrifice that saved them, unleavened bread (matzah)--to remind them of how quickly they had to leave Egypt, and bitter herbs--to remind them of the bitterness of slavery. There is an offering of wine and a place setting is offered to Elijah who left the earth and is believed to return to earth someday to announce the coming of the Messiah
Divergent Forms of Judaism
Although all forms of Judaism share the beliefs and principles of the Rabbinic tradition, many forms have arisen from the cultural and historical complexity of the Jewish Diaspora. From these diverse forms of Judaism has also sprung Jewish philosophy, which began early in the 6th century BCE at the time of the wisdom literature.
Philosophical Judaism, which can be traced back to the 6th century BCE and the wisdom tradition (Job and Ecclesiastes, for example), has had a long and far reaching impact on all aspects of Jewish life. First there was Philo of Alexandria (30 BCE to 50 CE), who tried to synthesize Jewish and Greek learning using the allegorical method of Biblical interpretation. Then there were the great medieval Sephardic philosophers, like Moses Maimonides, who lived in Muslim Spain and Egypt and wrote in Arabic. Lastly were the great Enlightenment philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn who lay the groundwork not only for Reform Judaism but also influenced much modern western thought.
Kabbalism is a medieval form of Jewish mysticism, theosophy, and thaumaturgy marked by belief in creation through emanation (a hierarchy of forms from the Godhead) and a cipher method (numerology) of interpreting Scripture. Kabbalism was ascetic and secretive, and its knowledge forbidden to the uninitiated/unlearned. The best known text is the Zohar, believed to have been written by Moses de Leon. Like all forms of mysticism, it is imbued with nuances of sexuality as spiritual union with the Godhead (cf. the Kama Sutra of Hinduism). This is especially true of the later writings of Isaac Luria, also from Spain.
Hasidism is a form of Ashkenazi (Yiddish speaking Jews central/eastern Europe) Jewry that arose in the ghettos of Poland in the 18th century. It is mystical in its practice (its roots lie in Kabbalism--here the secretive knowledge is shared with the community as a whole), and stresses ritual purity and opposes assimilation. Like the ethos of the Babylonian Captivity, it sees itself as the righteous oppressed whose Messiah will come someday, destroy the enemies of righteousness, and restore Israel and institute a theocracy on earth. Lubovitcher is a contemporary form.
Orthodox Judaism stands by the belief that the Hebrew Bible is the revealed word of God and the Talmud is the legitimate oral law. Orthodox Jews adhere strictly to the Torah and traditional rabbinical law (halakhah). Although Orthodox Jews are free to participate as citizens in modern society, they are never to compromise their Jewish faith or practice.
Conservative Judaism attempts to adapt Judaism to modern life by using principles of change within traditional Jewish law (halakhah) while still preserving a Jewish religious identity. The Torah and Talmud are followed, as are the mitzvot (commandments), and laws of kashrut (kosher food laws). The degree of adaptation to modern life is specific to the individual congregation. Services are in Hebrew and English.
Reform Judaism is the Jewish response to the 18th century Enlightenment that sees Judaism as a living cultural legacy. The Torah is binding only in its moral teachings. Most halakhic observances were abandoned, such as dietary laws and ceremonial purity. The liturgy of the synagogue was modernized in English and references to Zion (Israel as homeland) were taken out in order to give Jews the feeling that they were part of the larger community in which they lived and not seen as outsiders. Reform Judaism allows intermarriage between faiths and accepts converts to Judaism with few requirements. Women can be ordained as rabbis.
Reconstructionism is the most recent form of Judaism founded by Mordecai Kaplan in the mid-20th century, shortly after World War II and the Holocaust. Kaplan sought to revitalize Judaism for the scientific and philosophical Jewish community in Europe and America who realized that no form of traditional Judaism could explain the Holocaust. Based on Enlightment principles and secular humanism, Kaplan stressed the ethical values of Judaism and the importance of realizing them in the contemporary world. All other elements of Judaism, from diet to dress to observing holidays, is a personal matter.
Judaism is a religion that originated in ancient Israel. It has no one single founder, no central leader or group making theological decisions. "Judaism" and "Jew" can mean several things to different people, from a religion to an ethnic identity.
The ancient Israelites did not create monotheism. Rather, that belongs to the ancient Egyptians during the reign of Akhenaten (Amenophis IV) in the 14th millennium BCE. However, the Israelites refined the notion of one God and created ethical monotheism, a belief in which God makes a covenant with humankind in which both God and humankind are bound to ethical conduct.
Covenant (b'rith)
A covenant is a contract that binds two parties: God and humankind. It confers duties and obligations on both sides. God has obligations to humankind, and humankind to God. These obligations are ethical in nature; they guide the actions of both God and humankind.
God makes several covenants with humankind: the covenant of the rainbow with Noah (Gen. 9:13); the covenant of circumcision with Abraham (Gen. 17:11); the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) with Moses (Ex. 20:1-17).
The covenant with Moses is ethically the most important. The commandments define vertical and horizontal relationships. The vertical commandments define the relationship between God and humankind (Commandments 1-4: no other gods, idolatry, false swearing, Sabbath). The horizontal commandments define the relationship between humankind (Commandments 5-10: honor father and mother, murder, adultery, theft, false witness, coveting).
Adherence to the vertical and horizontal commandments puts one in a state of shalôm, peace. Such a person seeks justice (mishpat) and is righteous before God. Worshiping God without respecting others makes one wicked.
Text and History: The Hebrew Bible
The Israelites preserved their sacred history in the Hebrew Bible (what Christians refer to as the "Old Testament," a term that has no meaning to Jews, and is in fact demeaning). As sacred history, the Hebrew Bible is not "history" as an historian defines history. Rather, the Hebrew Bible is composed of traditional history--sagas, myths, and folktales--that is the result of the Israelite experience of history filtered through the lens of the covenant relationship.
Jews call the Hebrew Bible the Tanakh, a non-word created from three separate words: Torah (Law), Nevi'îm (Prophets), and Kethuvîm (Other Writings). The names of the books of the Tanakh arise from the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek c. 200 BCE (and later into the Latin Vulgate in 382 CE).
The Tanakh consists of separate works of literature (scrolls), written independently and set within a particular historical milieu. A knowledge of the social and archaeological history of ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East provides a framework to ask the questions: who wrote these various scrolls and for what purpose? and what is their continued importance?
When studying Judaism, one must always see the Tanakh as a Jewish document that interprets history as Jews have experienced it--both then and now. The Tanakh is not "history" as we understand History to be an academic discipline. The Tanakh is a living document that helps Jews live a Jewish life where ever they find themselves in the world. Most importantly, as a Jewish document, nothing in the Hebrew Bible points to, reveals, or prophesizes about Jesus of Nazareth or relates directly to Christianity. That is a later, Christian view of the Tanakh through the lens of further historical experiences.
The Torah: Traditional History
Ancient Israel must be seen within the context of the great ancient powers that surrounded it: Egypt to the south-west, and Assyria / Babylonia to the north-east, all of whom were Semitic peoples. The Israelites--originally mountain herders of the Transjordan range--shared the land with the Canaanites, the settled agricultural peoples of the valley who practiced fertility rites in honor of Baal and Asherah.
Canaanites and Israelites shared many religious practices. Politically the Israelites formed a loose confederation of 12 tribes whose leaders, called judges, periodically met to solve disputes. Landless priests, the Levites, performed the necessary rituals to convene and adjourn such meetings, the decisions of which were vouchsafed by God.
The scrolls that recount Israel's traditional history are the product of interpreting their experiences through the lens of the covenant relationship: If Israel is righteous, Israel will prosper through God's agency; if Israel is wicked, Israel will suffer through God's agency. Righteousness and wickedness are determined by adherence to (or violation of ) the covenant. This belief is often referred to as the Doctrine of Divine Retribution.
Primeval History The books of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers narrate the traditional history of the Israelites from creation, the covenant with Abraham, Egyptian bondage and exodus, and the wilderness experience before entry into the Promised Land.
The stories combine traditions from the northern kingdom of Israel with its ties to the bedouin Semites in Assyria and Babylonia (the so-called E-source), with the traditions from the southern kingdom of Judah with its ties to the Semites in ancient Egypt (the so-called J-source).
United Monarchy As a response to the Philistine (Mycenaean Greeks) presence on the Levantine coast, Saul was elected as king to lead a united force against them.
David succeeds Saul. He unites the two kingdoms of Israel (10 tribes in the northern kingdom) and Judah (2 tribes in the southern kingdom) with Jerusalem (in Judah) as capital.
Solomon succeeds David. First Temple built. Priests assemble an account of priestly rites (Leviticus) within the context of the Primeval History (the so-called P-source).
Succession dispute arises after Solomon's death. The two kingdoms split. The temple and official cult of Yahweh, however, was in Judah. Israel created its own religious institutions, which was viewed by the Jerusalem priests as abominations and violations of the covenant.
Kingdom of Judah In 722 BCE the Assyrians destroy Israel and deport its population ("10 lost tribes of Israel"). Israel is renamed Samaria by the Assyrians.
The Assyrians were unable to breach the walls of Jerusalem, which is spared (after heavy tribute is paid).
Judeans see this event as validation of covenant and history: Israel is destroyed due to their wickedness; Judah (Jerusalem) is spared by God because of their righteousness.
Judah receives refugees from Israel. J and E is redacted to create one text, JE.
David-Zion covenant articulated: there will always be a descendant of David on the throne in Jerusalem and God will always reside in the Jerusalem temple.
In 621 BCE King Josiah begins a period of religious reform in response to growing hostilities between Judah and Assyria, and Assyria and Egypt.
The book of Deuteronomy is "found" in one of the walls of the Temple. This book is the first in a series (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) that chronicles the history of the Israelites from entry into the Promised Land to the reign of Josiah (the so-called D-source).
The history of the Israelites in the Promised Land is interpreted through the lens of the David-Zion covenant, set against the backdrop of Canaanite culture and religion that was centered around the fertility rites of Ba'al and Asherah.
Exile and Restoration Favoring Egypt, Josiah broke with the Assyrians, who invade Judah; Josiah dies in battle at Megiddo (Armageddon) in 609 BCE.
In 598/7 BCE, after destroying Assyria, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar sacks Jerusalem. In 587 BCE he destroys Jerusalem, the temple, and deports the population to Babylon: the "Babylonian Captivity."
David-Zion covenant invalidated; the Jews (i.e. Judeans) are forced to reexamine their religious beliefs while still maintaining their faith in the covenant.
Two ideas emerge:
1. The Jews have sinned greatly and God has delivered them into the hands of the ungodly. God is a stern, yet just Father, who will restore his people if they repent and return to righteousness.
2. God's purpose for the Jews is not to be a people with land and a temple, but to be a moral people among the Gentiles to bring the Gentiles to God. Without a temple, Jews met congregationally in a synagogue (Greek for "community center"), led by a rabbi ("teacher") who studied the Torah and commented on it in such a way as to make the experiences of their forebears meaningful to the lives of the expatriate community.
Both of these rationales provided a theodicy--the justification of the Goodness of God in spite of their suffering and the existence of evil in the world.
In 539 BCE the Persian king Cyrus (Greek/Persian for "LORD-GOD") destroys Babylonia and repatriates 40,000 Jews. He authorizes the rebuilding of the Temple. In the eyes of the repatriated Jews, Cyrus is the anointed of the Lord (Hebrew "Messiah"--a Davidic term originally used to describe a kingship ritual of anointing the king's head with oil). Cyrus was seen by the Jews as the agent of the Lord, a cosmic God who lords over all, the "King of kings, and Lord of lords" (Deutero-Isaiah and Ezekiel).
Many Jews remained in Babylonia where they prospered. During the captivity, Judaism was influenced by Zoroastrian practices, especially cosmic dualism, resurrection of the dead, and an apocalyptic vision of the world.
In 458 BCE 17,000 more Babylonian Jews returned to Judea (now a client state of the Persian Empire). Nehemiah becomes governor and creates a theocratic state.
The scribe (scholar of the Torah) Ezra arrives with a complete Torah (J, E, P and D redacted to create Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy--5 scrolls known in Greek as the Pentateuch).
Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah complete the Deuteronomistic History).
Nevi'îm: The Prophets
Prophesy in ancient Israel, and other cultures as well, was not future-telling. Humans do not desire to know what will happen in 20 years, 200 years, or 2000 years. Rather our concern is for the near future: the now and the soon to be. Prophesy tends toward fore-telling what will happen soon so that we can prepare for it, whether good news or bad.
Prophets are not priests. Whereas priests were sanctioned by the monarchy and the institution of the Temple, enforcing regulations of worship and sacrifice in the temple, hygiene and diet, prophets spoke for God, reminding Israel of the covenant relationship and its individual duties to God and social responsibilities to fellow Israelites (at this time "love thy neighbor" excluded Gentiles).
The Israelites did not develop practices such as astrology or divination, nor did they engage in ecstatic forms of prophesy common to the Greeks. Rather, they perfected "message prophesy": God speaks in plain language to humans through His prophets.
Israelite prophesy was unique among other forms of prophesy: it was delivered with the hope that it would not come true. That is, the prophet's message was to constantly remind the king, priest and scribes, and the people of their covenant relationship with God and each other. If they failed to live up to both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the covenant, disaster would follow. God speaks through prophets to help humans ward off divine punishment. The best example comes from the book of Jonah. Should destruction come, it was the fault of the monarchy for not heeding the warnings of the prophet.
Since the king stood collectively before God for the sins of the people as a whole, the pronouncements of the prophets were directed against the king directly, and the aristocracy indirectly (there was no individual or personal responsibility before God at this time, as we see in Job who sacrifices each day for himself and his entire family, including his slaves). As a result, prophets engendered resentment from the aristocracy, and conversely were held in high esteem by the populace who lived impoverished under the burden of high taxation to subsidize the lifestyles of the wealthy.
The prophetic books consist of the early (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) and later (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) major prophets that form much of the Deuteronomistic History. To this is added the 12 minor prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
Kethuvîm (Other Writings)
This label describes a loose collection of books written throughout Israel's history that include folktales, didactic stories, philosophical writings, and religious hymns. They were the last of the writings to be accepted as canonical.
Wisdom Literature: Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes (although the latter was later ascribed to the Festive Scrolls). Unlike the priests who instructed the community regarding the covenant, and the prophets who conveyed Yahweh's words, the sage provided wise advice. Although the prophets were sometimes critical of the sages--as they were of the priests, sage literature outlasted the prophetic line and became the dominant literary type in the Pseudepigrapha (Old Testament writings not accepted into the canon).
Job. A book that explores the relationship between covenant and personal suffering, thus challenging the Doctrine of Divine Retribution.
Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. Collections of proverbial wisdom. The tone from one work to another ranges from optimistic to pessimistic views of the human condition.
Festival Scrolls (Megillot): Ruth, Song of Songs (or of Solomon), Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Esther were used respectively at the five principle festivals of the Jewish Liturgical year (Pentecost, Passover, Booths, Fast of the 9th of Ab, Purim). They are placed together in the Hebrew Bible, but are scattered in the English translations (from the Septuagint). These scrolls present a multifaceted view of human nature, ranging from the elegant cynicism of Ecclesiastes to the lover story of Ruth. Except for Lamentations, God is seldom mentioned in these books; in Esther he is not referred to at all. There are no legalistic absolutes about God's will. Each book offers a different suggestion for handling life's problems. In each, in spite of the various crises and sorrows, there is the affirmation that life is good.
Lamentations. Written during the exile this book consists of admissions of sinfulness and prayers of forgiveness that will bring about restoration of land and temple.
Psalms. After the building of the Temple, hymns of worship (psalms) were written for liturgical purposes. The Psalms are attributed to David to provide a sense of antiquity and authority. However, few date that early and most display signs of multiple authorship.
Ruth and Esther. Two folktales of the oppressed liberated or saved by the folk hero. These arose out of political situations when minority groups feel threatened politically & religiously by the majority culture. Ruth calls into question the exclusion of foreigners from the covenant community, as mandated by Ezra and Nehemiah; Esther shows that the survival of the Israelites in a hostile world will not come through divine intervention but by their own efforts.
Song of Songs (or of Solomon). The only erotic love poetry in the Bible, this book is a frank celebration of physical passion. Later embarrassment over its contents led to interpretations that the characters were allegorical of a "higher truth." To Jews it became an allegory of Yahweh's love for his chosen people; for Christians it became an expression of Christ's love for his "bride," the spiritual Church.
Apocalyptic Literature are writings concerned with eschatology--the "last days," a revelation of things to come, typically a preview of the end of an age and the beginning of a new world order. Daniel is the only apocalyptic book in the Tanakh. Although there are apocalyptic elements in Isaiah 24-27, Ezekiel 37, Zechariah 9-14, and Joel 9, apocalyptic literature found its greatest expression from about 200 BCE to the 200 CE, centuries that were very tumultuous for the Judeans. All apocalyptic books are written in highly symbolic language, using sometimes bizarre images of beasts, birds, idols, dragons or other monsters. This secret code, understood by the believer but not by his or her oppressors, protected the writer from charges of treason.
Daniel was written during the persecutions of the Macedonian-Syrian ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (167-164 BCE) which led to the Maccabean revolt and the purification of the Temple. He is a latter-day Joseph, who uses the story of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar as a back-drop for foretelling the destruction of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
Inter-Testamental History: Post-Exilic Sectarian Writings
Judea was a client-state of the Persians, the Greeks, and finally the Romans. Since few Jews could read Hebrew (Aramaic was the common tongue of Palestinian Jews, Greek for the educated), circa 250 BCE the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the Septuagint.
During this time, foreign religious ideas crept into Judaism, especially important are the concepts of (the) Satan, an angelic hierarchy, bodily resurrection, and a coming Day of Judgment. A whole corpus of literature began to arise:
Pseudepigrapha: philosophical and apocalyptic literature, legends, folk wisdom and other religious works
Apocrypha: history of the Inter-Testamental period written in Greek
Dead Sea Scrolls: writings dating between 250 BCE and 68 CE found in 1947 in 11 caves at the site of Qumran near the Dead Sea. These scrolls attest to the plurality of Jewish religious thought during the Hellenistic and Roman periods up to the time of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans in 70 CE.
Central to the books of the Apocrypha is the Maccabean revolt and the establishment of the Hasmonean Dynasty. The Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes began a program of Hellenization, assimilating all the diverse peoples of his kingdom into Greek ways of social, political, and religious life. The Jews, led by Judas Maccabeus, revolted and engaged in a long and protracted guerilla war against the Greeks until Judea was recognized as a semi-independent temple-state.
The Maccabean period, however, was filled with political and religious strife as several forms of Judaism began to compete for political and religious power. Four main groups emerged:
Pharisees: priests and lay priests who were proponents of the Torah and the prophetic and literary works of Judaism. They enforced purity rituals of sacrifice and diet, anticipated a Messianic Kingdom of God, and believed in the resurrection of the dead.
Sadducees: ultraconservatives who accepted only the Torah and denied Pharisaic beliefs of resurrection and Messianic kingdom, favoring instead an aristocracy controlling the priesthood and temple.
Essenes: shared many religious ideas with the Pharisees, but preferred a semi-ascetic life in the desert along the Dead Sea to the tyrannical rule of the Hasmonaeans and the sectarian religious strife in Judea.
Zealots: Urban guerilla fighters (not unlike Hamas or Islamic Jihad in modern-day Palestine) who sought a forceful overthrow of the Roman government.
Roman Domination and Diaspora
Hasmonean rule of Judea ended in 63 BCE when civil war broke out between the Jewish parties. Rome intervened and later made Judea a Roman province in 37 BCE. The Romans installed Herod, the governor of Galilee (a non-Judean / Jewish state) as King.
Herod was unpopular and his kingship led to both anti-Roman and anti-Herodean movements that were both nationalistic and apocalyptic in nature: that God would send a Messiah (a legitimate king of the Davidic line) to destroy His enemies and restore Judea. The Romans eventually marched on Judea, destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, and sold many Jews into slavery.
Three generations later, a "false messiah" named Simeon Bar Kokhba, led a final revolt at Masada in 132 CE that was crushed by the Romans. All Jews were dispelled from Judea, which was renamed Palestine.
Rabbinic (Talmudic) Judaism
Judaism could have disappeared altogether as its people were dispersed throughout the Mediterranean and the Near East. Two groups survived: the rabbis, inheritors of the Pharisean tradition, and the messianic movement that grew up around Jesus of Nazareth.
By about 90 CE the books of the Hebrew Bible had been assembled into the Tanakh. But there was also a large body of unwritten "law" and commentaries by rabbis that was compiled as well: the Midrash ("interpretation"). Interpretation of the Torah to daily life continued over the next hundred years or so until these were in turn codified and added to the Midrash to form the Mishnah. added to the was compiled.
In Babylonia the scholars there had their own tradition of interpretation which was divided into two types:
halakhah: legal decisions based directly on the Torah
haggadah: non-legal teachings, based on folklore, theological disputations, sermons, sociological/historical knowledge, and mystical teachings.
These formed the Gemarah. Over time the Gemarah and the Midrash were combined to form the Babylonian Talmud ("study"), a process completed sometime around 485 CE. "Judaism" arose from the ashes of the Jerusalem Temple to unite a diaspora people.
Rabbinic Judaism has no priests or Temple sacrifices. Jews meet in synagogues (meeting places) to read the Torah and worship communally. Each synagogue elects its own rabbi, who need not be someone ordained by an outside authority. He must only be held in high esteem by his peers in his knowledge of the Torah.
Although Judaism has no centralized rabbinate to determine orthodoxy, over time certain theological principles developed that defines most forms of Judaism. These have been well articulated by the great modern rabbi, Leo Trepp:
The Jewish God is One (not a Trinitarian one as in Christianity)--as articulated in the Shema (Deut. 6:4-9): "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone (in Hebrew: "The LORD our God is One").
God is formless and will never assume form (especially human, as in Jesus)
No human will ever be divine
No human will ever be perfect. Even the patriarchs and Moses had human limitations and frailties
Jews believe that everyone has direct access to God (as opposed to priestly mediation)
Judaism does not have sacraments
Jews believe the soul come to humans morally neutral, with free will to choose between good and evil (in contrast to Christian ideas of original sin and predestination)
Judaism insists on obedience to the Commandments in the Torah (as opposed to Christian notion of salvation by faith alone)
Jews believe that all righteous people of the world have a share in the world to come (in contrast to Christian exclusivism)
Jews hold that the ethics advanced by Jesus are Jewish ethics (Christians believe the teachings of Jesus are somehow "advanced" over the "Old Testament)
Jews hold that the New Testament is not divinely revealed because it is written in Greek, compiled well after Jesus died, and laced with anti-Jewish statements made by Christians in their early attempts to distinguish themselves from other Jewish groups
Jewish Beliefs and Practices
Circumcision is the sign of the covenant with Abraham. Infant boys are circumcised when they are eight days old.
Kosher refers to the strict dietary laws, means and manner of ritual slaughter of animals, and the ritual cleanliness of eating utensils for ritual meals. Kosher meats are those of warm blooded animals with cloven hooves who chew their cud. Poultry is kosher, save for wild game. Shellfish is not kosher. Meat and milk products cannot be eaten together. Most of these rules are set forth in the book of Leviticus.
Sabbath, the day of rest, begins sundown Friday evening and ends sundown Saturday. During the Sabbath, no work is performed, and one must stay within walking distance of one's house. The Sabbath dinner includes wine, challah, a special braided bread, and a blessing of the children by the father.
Prayers are made while wearing a talit over the shoulders and head. For weekday morning prayers men put on t'fillin, small leather boxes containing biblical verses about the covenant with God. One is tied to the forearm, the other on the forehead. During intense prayer one may the sway the body back and forth until a meditative state is reached (davening).
Bar (Bat) Mitzvah (literally son/daughter of the commandment) is a ceremony of coming of age, at age 13. The boy/girl may undertake some religious instruction, including learning how to pronounce Hebrew--if not always to understand it. At the synagogue, the young person is called to read a portion of the Torah scroll and recite a passage from one of the books of the prophets, and then perhaps give a short teaching about a topic from the reading.
Holy Days
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year celebrated around the fall equinox and begins a time of spiritual renewal. For thirty days prior to Rosh Hashanah the synagogue service begins with the blowing of the shofar--a ram's horn--to remind the people that they stand before God.
Yom Kippur follows 10 days after Rosh Hashanah. It is the "Day of Atonement" in which each individual comes before God and asks forgiveness for the year's past transgressions and asks for a blessing for the coming year in return for keeping and remembering God's commandments. Congregations also ask for forgiveness of sins communally.
Sukkot (Booths) is a fall harvest festival in which a simple outdoor booth is built and decorated as a dwelling place of sorts for seven days. It is a reminder of the wilderness experience and that the true "home" of the Jews is God. The last day of the celebration is Simhat Torah (Joy of/for the Torah), ending the yearly cycle of reading of the Torah from Genesis to Deuteronomy.
Hanukkah is a winter solstice celebration in which eight candles are lit in sequence in a menorah. Originally a celebration of lights made on the shortest day of the year, Hanukkah later became a festival of rededication of the Temple after the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes who attempted to have Zeus worshiped in the Jerusalem Temple. Many Jewish families practice the exchange of small gifts on each night. Children play with a dreidel, a spinning top with the four Hebrew letters for four words that read "A great miracle happened there."
Purim is a festival on the full moon before the spring equinox in which the normal social restraints are lifted and people can dress in costume, mock life's seriousness, and parody sacred Jewish practices (cf. Catholic Feast of the Ass, and April Fool's Day). The festival is linked to the folktale of the book of Esther.
Pesach (Passover--originally a celebration of the winter barley harvest) is the celebration of the liberation from Egyptian bondage by Moses as told in Exodus. Passover is observed with a commemorative meal, a seder, that consists of a lamb--to remind the Israelites of the sacrifice that saved them, unleavened bread (matzah)--to remind them of how quickly they had to leave Egypt, and bitter herbs--to remind them of the bitterness of slavery. There is an offering of wine and a place setting is offered to Elijah who left the earth and is believed to return to earth someday to announce the coming of the Messiah
Divergent Forms of Judaism
Although all forms of Judaism share the beliefs and principles of the Rabbinic tradition, many forms have arisen from the cultural and historical complexity of the Jewish Diaspora. From these diverse forms of Judaism has also sprung Jewish philosophy, which began early in the 6th century BCE at the time of the wisdom literature.
Philosophical Judaism, which can be traced back to the 6th century BCE and the wisdom tradition (Job and Ecclesiastes, for example), has had a long and far reaching impact on all aspects of Jewish life. First there was Philo of Alexandria (30 BCE to 50 CE), who tried to synthesize Jewish and Greek learning using the allegorical method of Biblical interpretation. Then there were the great medieval Sephardic philosophers, like Moses Maimonides, who lived in Muslim Spain and Egypt and wrote in Arabic. Lastly were the great Enlightenment philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn who lay the groundwork not only for Reform Judaism but also influenced much modern western thought.
Kabbalism is a medieval form of Jewish mysticism, theosophy, and thaumaturgy marked by belief in creation through emanation (a hierarchy of forms from the Godhead) and a cipher method (numerology) of interpreting Scripture. Kabbalism was ascetic and secretive, and its knowledge forbidden to the uninitiated/unlearned. The best known text is the Zohar, believed to have been written by Moses de Leon. Like all forms of mysticism, it is imbued with nuances of sexuality as spiritual union with the Godhead (cf. the Kama Sutra of Hinduism). This is especially true of the later writings of Isaac Luria, also from Spain.
Hasidism is a form of Ashkenazi (Yiddish speaking Jews central/eastern Europe) Jewry that arose in the ghettos of Poland in the 18th century. It is mystical in its practice (its roots lie in Kabbalism--here the secretive knowledge is shared with the community as a whole), and stresses ritual purity and opposes assimilation. Like the ethos of the Babylonian Captivity, it sees itself as the righteous oppressed whose Messiah will come someday, destroy the enemies of righteousness, and restore Israel and institute a theocracy on earth. Lubovitcher is a contemporary form.
Orthodox Judaism stands by the belief that the Hebrew Bible is the revealed word of God and the Talmud is the legitimate oral law. Orthodox Jews adhere strictly to the Torah and traditional rabbinical law (halakhah). Although Orthodox Jews are free to participate as citizens in modern society, they are never to compromise their Jewish faith or practice.
Conservative Judaism attempts to adapt Judaism to modern life by using principles of change within traditional Jewish law (halakhah) while still preserving a Jewish religious identity. The Torah and Talmud are followed, as are the mitzvot (commandments), and laws of kashrut (kosher food laws). The degree of adaptation to modern life is specific to the individual congregation. Services are in Hebrew and English.
Reform Judaism is the Jewish response to the 18th century Enlightenment that sees Judaism as a living cultural legacy. The Torah is binding only in its moral teachings. Most halakhic observances were abandoned, such as dietary laws and ceremonial purity. The liturgy of the synagogue was modernized in English and references to Zion (Israel as homeland) were taken out in order to give Jews the feeling that they were part of the larger community in which they lived and not seen as outsiders. Reform Judaism allows intermarriage between faiths and accepts converts to Judaism with few requirements. Women can be ordained as rabbis.
Reconstructionism is the most recent form of Judaism founded by Mordecai Kaplan in the mid-20th century, shortly after World War II and the Holocaust. Kaplan sought to revitalize Judaism for the scientific and philosophical Jewish community in Europe and America who realized that no form of traditional Judaism could explain the Holocaust. Based on Enlightment principles and secular humanism, Kaplan stressed the ethical values of Judaism and the importance of realizing them in the contemporary world. All other elements of Judaism, from diet to dress to observing holidays, is a personal matter.
If anyone would like some info on Shinto, Taosim, Confucianism, or Zoroastrianism let me know. I found Confucianism to be quite interesting.