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Ju·da·ism (jū'dē-ĭz'əm)  |
[Middle English Iudaisme, from Old French Judaisme, from Late Latin Iūdaismus, from Greek Ioudaismos, from Ioudaios, Jew. See Jew.]
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| Political Dictionary: Judaism |
The religion of the Jews, characterized by: (1) its monotheism; (2) its belief in a special covenant with God making it his ‘chosen people’; (3) ethnic and territorial identity (the ‘promised land’); (4) specific laws and practices; and (5) Messianism.
Its origin dates either from Abraham's covenant with God or Moses' formulation of monotheism and of the laws attributed to him included in the Pentateuch. However, political Judaism is most closely associated with King David, who set up his capital in Judah and planned the temple of Jerusalem, built by his son Solomon. During the Babylonian captivity (586-538 bc) Judaism was consolidated and the Mosaic law was written down.
As befits a theocracy the distinction between divine and civil law is blurred. God is the supreme power and his command is law, be it religious or civil—a view shared by Islamic fundamentalists. Mosaic law (torah) was fixed by the fifth century BC. It was interpreted by the Talmud and the Midrash. The Talmud includes religious and civil laws not in the Torah proper, and gives explanations of them.
Unlike the Talmud, the Midrash keeps close to scripture and is exegetical. It covers a period from at least the second till the twelfth centuries ad. It consists of (a) the Halakah, a collection of traditional laws and minor precepts not in other written law, and (b) the Haggadah, free interpretation of scripture consisting of parable stories and other non-prescriptive material, used exclusively at Seder, the initial ritual of the Passover.
The high priest was usually the head of state and administered both religious and civil law, though, as in the Maccabean (Hasmonean) dynasty, there were kings. Rabbis were both interpreters of the law and civil judges. The scribes fixed the text of the law and recorded interpretations as they occurred through time. The Pharisees were a sect that devoted themselves to the exact observance of oral and written law. While the Babylonian captivity tended to unite the Jews, the Roman occupation of Palestine, the Herodian dynasty, and finally the destruction of the temple in ad 70 led to the dispersion of the Jews. Fragmentation accompanied dispersion, from the extremes of fundamentalism (Karaites who reject rabbinical tradition and rely on scripture alone) and orthodoxy, to rationalism, either purely philosophical or a mixture of philosophy and Talmudic and rabbinical tradition.
By the seventh century AD Palestine had been occupied by the Muslims. During the Middle Ages Jews spread throughout Europe, west, and east. For the most part they lived in enclaves (ghettos) and from time to time were persecuted, and at best tolerated and protected.
anti-Semitism became politically prominent 1894 when Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish army officer, was wrongly convicted of spying for the Germans and deported to Devil's Island. 1896 Theodor Herzl wrote a book, Der Judenstaat, advocating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 1897 he organized the first Zionist Congress to further this aim. 1917 the British minister Arthur Balfour promised the British Zionist Federation that when Palestine was liberated from the Turks limited quotas of Jews could settle there. From 1920 to 1948 Palestine was under British mandate. During this time increasing numbers of Jews availed themselves of the Balfour Declaration. This influx was accelerated during and after the Second World War as a result of the Nazi persecution of the Jews in occupied Europe. The state of Israel was established with the blessing of the UN in 1948. The Jews had returned to part of their homeland, but the state was secular, not a theocracy, and Jerusalem was divided.
— Cyril Barrett
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Judaism |
Two branches of Judaism emerged in the Middle Ages: the Sephardic, centred in Spain and culturally linked with the Babylonian Jews; and the Ashkenazic, centred in France and Germany and linked with the Jewish culture of Palestine and Rome. Elements of mysticism also appeared, notably the esoteric writings of the Kabbala and, in the 18th century, the movement known as Hasidism. The 18th century was also the time of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala). Conservative and Reform Judaism emerged in 19th-century Germany as an effort to modify the strictness of Orthodox Judaism. By the end of the 19th century Zionism had appeared as an outgrowth of reform. European Judaism suffered terribly during the Holocaust, when millions were put to death by the Nazis, and the rising flow of Jewish emigrants to Palestine led to the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. In the early 21st century there were nearly 15 million Jews worldwide.
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| Encyclopedia of Judaism: Judaism |
Judaism traces its origins to Abraham, according to Jewish tradition the first individual to have arrived independently at the idea of Monotheism: "For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment" (Gen. 18:19). From Abraham, the history of the Jewish people can be traced through the Patriarchs to the exile in Egypt, the subsequent Exodus and the giving of the Torah and fulfillment of the Covenant, the conquest of Canaan, the Judges, the monarchy and the later division into two kingdoms, the Babyloniam
In the 3,800 years since the birth of Abraham, two events shaped Jewish history and the Jewish people beyond all the rest: the Exodus from Egypt, in which the people gained their physical freedom and became a nation; and the giving of the Torah at Sinai, where, according to tradition, the laws which guide the Jewish people were received.
Judaism was the first purely monotheistic religion, where belief in the one God replaced the pantheon of gods believed in by the peoples of the ancient world, up to and including the Greeks and the Romans. Judaism is also the "mother" of two other world religions, Christianity and Islam.
Judaism regards itself as a universal religion, in that it sees its legislation as applicable to all mankind. It differentiates, however, between Jews and non-Jews, with traditional Judaism obligating Jews to observe the biblical
Judaism's fundamental orientation is practical and this-worldly. There is no officially recognized body of dogma (although certain beliefs are clearly essential). The Jewish Weltanschauung is discerned in Jewish law rather than in a systematic Theology. Concern with Reward and Punishment in an Afterlife is a relatively late development in Jewish literature. Asceticism and preoccupation with the afterlife are discouraged. Redemption is earned through right conduct rather than Faith, and man is believed to have an active role in the perfection of this world.
The practice of Judaism has never been confined to born members of the Jewish people. Although attitudes toward Conversion have varied in different periods and localities, it was always possible for non-Jews to be accepted into Judaism, and according to tradition some of Judaism's greatest individuals have been converts or descendants of converts. King David, progenitor of the ultimate Messiah, was a descendant of Ruth the Moabite. Since religion and peoplehood are inseparable in Judaism, acceptance of the precepts always entailed becoming a member of the Jewish people.
Since Judaism sees itself as universal, the Temple that was built by Solomon in Jerusalem was naturally open to Sacrifices by members of all nations, as seen in Solomon's remarks at its dedication: "Concerning a stranger, that is not of your people Israel ... when he shall come and pray toward this house ... hear You in heaven Your dwelling place" (I Kings 8:41-43).
Within the overall scheme of things, Israel has a defined role to play, as a "light unto the nations" (Isa. 49:6). It is in this sense that the Jews regarded themselves as the Chosen People, i.e., chosen for their mission. Some see Israel as having been instrumental in fulfilling this role to a certain extent in that its two "daughter religions," Christianity and Islam, have spread the idea of the One God to all corners of the globe. Ultimately, as the prophets see the millennium, all the world will come to appreciate Israel and its God, so that "in the last days, the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it" (Isa. 2:2) (see Eschatology). The Bible is based on a discernible but not systematized theology (systematization came only in the Middle Ages). Similarly, its distinctive Ethics is laid down primarily as case examples. The Bible is replete with demands to tend to the needs of the stranger, the Widow, and the
Jewish doctrine stresses that "all Jews are responsible for one another," and this led to the development of a strong sense of Community. No single Jew has the right to look nonchalantly on at the suffering of his fellow, but must make every attempt to alleviate the situation. Hebrew has no word for Charity as such. The word that is used, tsedakah, is derived from a root meaning Justice, implying that it is only just and proper for those who have to share with those less fortunate. The mutual responsibility of Jews for one another also extends to cases of violation of the law: a Jew who sees another violating the law is required to rebuke the wrongdoer.
Judaism lays great stress on elevating the profane to a state of Holiness. Thus, much of what would otherwise be considered mundane involves ritual elements meant to sanctify. Eating, for example, requires Benedictions both before and after the consumption of food, making, as the sages put it, "the table equivalent to the altar." Judaism has numerous laws which regulate the minutiae of daily life, the object of which is to transform man's actions into the service of God.
Along these same lines, Judaism regards the Torah's myriad restrictions upon the Jew's conduct as serving to elevate him. It sees the unbridled expression of man's appetites as animal-like and the restraints imposed upon him as serving to raise him to a higher level. Thus, the Jew must first consider whether the particular food he wishes to eat has met the requirements of the Dietary Laws, Tithes, etc.
At the same time, Judaism does not regard Asceticism as a virtue. The Midrash states that when each person accounts for himself after his death, he must also account for those permitted pleasures on earth which he refrained from enjoying.
Jewish law encompasses all aspects of life. A concept such as "rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God that which is God's" would thus be alien to the Jewish view of the world. Conduct toward one's fellow man is governed by the same Jewish law that requires the observance of the Sabbath and the keeping of the dietary laws. Judaism actually considers a violation of the law against one's fellow man as worse than a violation of ritual law, for the former encompasses a transgression against God's law as well.
Except for the hereditary monarchy and priesthood (see Priests), the former having lapsed and the latter having been reduced to a mere token of its former place in Jewish life with the destruction of the Second Temple, Judaism is very much a meritocracy, based on scholarship in Jewish law. The dominant role is played by the Rabbi. Originally an honorary title, since the Middle Ages the rabbi's position has been that of the salaried leader of the congregation, who educates the congregants, decides issues of Jewish law, and guides it in matters of morality.
Various attempts have been made at categorizing Jewish law and belief (see Codification). One of the earliest of these is the talmudic statement that the Pentateuch contains 613 commandments, 248 positive and 365 negative (Mak. 24a). The Talmud then goes on to say that David condensed all the demands made on the Jew into 11 principles, Isaiah into six, Micah into three ("to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God," Mic. 6:8), and Amos and Habakkuk into one ("Seek me and live," Amos 5:4; "The righteous shall live by his faith," Hab. 2:4). The medieval scholar Moses Maimonides enumerated 13 Principles of Faith in which the Jew must believe or be considered a heretic, which include the belief in the One God and in the coming of the Messiah.
Rabbinic Judaism, of which modern-day Orthodox Judaism is the direct lineal heir, takes as a fundamental principle that, alongside the Torah which was given at Sinai an Oral Law was given to Moses, to be passed on by word of mouth from one generation to the next. This Oral Law was eventually transcribed in the Mishnah and expounded in the Talmud and in later Talmudic Commentaries.
It was this principle of the Oral Law as accompanying the Written Law that marked the great divide between Judaism and various sects which broke off from the mainstream, including the Samaritans, the Sadducees, and later the Karaites. All three of these groups denied the authority of the Oral Law, relying purely on the Written Law, with their own interpretations of it.
Mainstream Judaism, which developed from the Pharisees, has also had various movements, but until modern times all began with an acceptance of the fundamental belief in the Divine origin of both the written and the oral laws. Thus, in the Middle Ages, in Europe, and especially later in Safed in Erets Israel, a school of Mysticism developed, based on an earlier mystical tradition, which was preoccupied with the study of the Kabbalah; in the 18th century, ḥasidism emerged to extend the concept of the truly righteous man from the learned to the less lettered individual who achieves religious heights through prayer and purity of intention.
With Jewish Emancipation from the late 18th century on, various Jewish movements arose, some along religious lines, others along national or political lines (for it was now possible for Jews to express their Jewish identity without accepting religious beliefs). Among the religious movements that arose, Reform Judaism, which began in Germany in the 18th century, spread to other countries, eventually taking solid root in the United States.
Reform Judaism does not recognize the absolute and literal Divine origin of either the written or the oral law. Rather, it views them both as a composite of Divinely inspired eternal values and ephemeral human elements.
Reform Judaism emphasizes the ethical and moral teachings of the prophets and the rabbis as taking precedence over many ritual practices. Reform liturgy, which is largely in the vernacular, has excluded traditional prayers for the restoration of the sacrificial cult and modified references to resurrection of the dead, a personal Messiah, and the chosenness of Israel. Reform Judaism has instituted full equality of the sexes in religious life. It encourages conversion to Judaism (though it does not "missionize"); and many Reform leaders recognize as Jewish the children of mixed marriages, provided they are raised as Jews and continue to identify with the Jewish people after achieving adulthood.
Whereas Reform Judaism views the totality of Jewish tradition as the heritage of the Jewish people, when applying it to contemporary Jewish life it scrutinizes the tradition in a critical-historical way, measuring particular beliefs and rituals against modern universal values. It rejects any fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible or of any other classical Jewish source.
The Reform movement believes in individual responsibility and autonomy, and as such delegates to each rabbi and community the right to determine which practices it regards as worthwhile and as enhancing Jewish life.
Conservative Judaism, which began as a movement in America at the beginning of the 20th century, is sometimes known as historical Judaism because its founders and leaders wished to underscore the character of Judaism as a civilization which has developed as a result of historical factors. The philosophy of the movement maintains therefore, firstly, that the halakhah of Judaism is dynamic: it grows, it changes, since life itself, which is dynamic, demands that the halakhah be made relevant. Secondly, Conservative Judaism emphasizes the ethical dimension of Judaism above all other values. Thirdly, its leaders have taught that reason is an important and even central feature of Jewish philosophy, so that there is little or no place for any practice regarded as anti-rational. Conservative Judaism became the largest Jewish religious group in the United States.
The Reconstructionist movement applies naturalism to Judaism, seeing it as an evolving religious civilization and spiritual nationalism, and believes the basis of Judaism to be the life of the group rather than a God-given set of doctrines and practices. The recent and small movement for Humanistic Judaism has developed a non-theistic Judaism.
The most prominent example of a Jewish movement along national lines was the Zionist movement (seeZionism), which regarded the conversion of the Land of Israel into a Jewish state as the solution to what was then known throughout the world as "the Jewish problem." Other movements sought other solutions to the "Jewish problem." Thus, for example, the pre-war Bund in Eastern Europe was a socialist party that maintained that Jews should remain in their countries of residence and be granted autonomy.
The main institutions within Jewish life have developed over the ages. At first, worship consisted of offering sacrifices at various High Places. Later, such worship was centralized in the Temple in Jerusalem. After the destruction of the Second Temple, its place was taken by the Synagogue (which had emerged as an institution a couple of centuries earlier), which served as the focus for Jewish Prayer. In addition to the synagogue, the Bet Midrash (the study hall for Torah studies) has been a staple in Jewish communities throughout the world, where Education has always played a prime role. Advanced rabbinic studies were carried out in the Yeshivah, the successor of the Academies of Erets Israel and Babylonia. In order to fulfill the laws of ritual purity, the ritual bath (the Mikveh) was considered an essential facility in the traditional Jewish community, its construction taking precedence over that of a synagogue.
Just as certain elements of space (the Temple, Jerusalem, the Land of Israel, the synagogue) were considered as endowed with special holiness, so elements of time were consecrated. First and foremost was the Sabbath, in commemoration of God's day of rest after creating the world. In the annual cycle of the Jewish year, the three Pilgrim Festivals of Passover, Shavu'Ot, and Sukkot, as well as the penitential season centering around Rosh Ha-Shanah and the Day of Atonement were regarded as holy days. In the course of time, further Festivals and Fasts were added to the Jewish Calendar.
The commandments prescribed to the Jew had to be observed in every situation, but their main focus was in the synagogue and in the home. The Jewish Home and Family life have been fundamentally integrated into Jewish practice and have constituted a basic Jewish value.
The basic religious statement in Judaism, known from its first Hebrew word as the Shema, is the verse from Deuteronomy: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One" (6:4).
| US History Encyclopedia: Judaism |
The first Jews in North America arrived from Holland in 1654, their ancestors having been expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century. The religion of these Sephardic (Spanish) Jews was different from that of the Ashkenazic Jews who arrived in the United States two centuries later from Central and Eastern Europe. Sephardic Jews followed a ritual different from their Ashkenazic counterparts and came from a region where, until the 1490s, they had enjoyed relative peace, security, and wealth under both Muslim and Christian rulers. They were eager to assimilate into American society and did so successfully. During the American Revolution, a Hessian mercenary serving in Newport, Rhode Island, commented that the Jews were "not distinguishable by their beards and attire … while their women wear the same French finery as the other faiths." The arrival of Ashkenazic Jews during the nineteenth century altered the character of Judaism in the United States. Although many gravitated toward the Re-form tradition, the majority remained Orthodox, especially those coming from Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Russia between 1880 and 1924. As a consequence, Orthodox Judaism in the United States became synonymous with Central and Eastern European Jewry.
Orthodox Judaism
By the 1820s three Orthodox Ashkenazic rite synagogues had been established in North America: the first in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1761, followed by Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia in 1802 and, in 1825, by B'nai Jeshurun in New York City. The first Orthodox rabbi, however, did not arrive in the United States until 1840 when Abraham Rice came from Germany to serve the Orthodox congregation in Baltimore.
Orthodox Jews strictly observe the Halachah (Jewish laws). Derived from the Torah, the Mishna (commentaries on the Torah), and the Gemara (commentaries on the commentaries), the laws make up the Talmud, the authoritative text of Judaism. Orthodox Judaism is preeminently a religion of laws and practices that direct and regulate every aspect of life for the faithful. Among Orthodox Jews, however, community is also essential. To worship, Orthodox Jews require only the presence often adult Jewish males, the minyan; they need no synagogue or rabbi. Such a community could theoretically be small and self-contained, having no formal connection with other Jews; in practice, however, such isolation has proven impossible to sustain. Complex issues involving ritual and law frequently compel adjudication from an outside authority. As a result, questions of, and disputes about, faith, law, and practice have linked one Jewish community to another.
The Retreat from Orthodoxy
The years between 1840 and 1880 were turbulent for the American Jewish community. Jews increasingly rejected the Halachi prescriptions as old-fashioned and inapplicable to their circumstances in the United States. Everywhere Orthodoxy was in retreat.
Reform Jews attempted to accommodate Judaism more completely to the modern world. From the 1840s until the turn of the twentieth century, Reform Judaism was the primary form of Judaism in the United States, losing its dominance to Conservative Judaism only in the 1920s. With roots in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Reform Judaism emphasized the ethical and moral aspects of religion at the expense of ritual and theology. Only in the United States, however, did Reform Judaism attract substantial numbers of adherents.
The first Reform organization in the United States began among members of the Congregation Beth Elohim of Charleston, South Carolina. They wanted briefer services, greater use of English, and the mixed seating of men and women. (Orthodox Jews separate men and women at worship.) When the majority of the congregation refused to yield, the dissidents withdrew and, in 1824, founded the Reformed Society of Israelites.
The principal impetus behind the growth of Reform Judaism in the United States came from German immigrants who created Reform Vereine (Reform Societies) that eventually developed into temples, as they called synagogues. In 1842 Temple Har Siani in Baltimore became the first first Reform temple in the United States, followed in quick succession by Temple Emanu-El in New York City (1845), and later by Sinai in Chicago (1858). During the second half of the nineteenth century, the efforts of Rabbis Isaac Mayer Wise, David Einhorn, and Kaufman Kohler gave institutional order and theological substance to Reform Judaism.
Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism radically altered Jewish belief, ritual, practice, and law. Meeting in Philadelphia in 1869, Re-form Jews, guided by the liberal David Einhorn, rabbi at Adath Jeshurun (later Beth-El) in New York City, rejected the hope for a restoration of Israel and a rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. Einhorn declared, alternately, that the "messianic aim" of Judaism was a union of all the children of God, not merely the Jews. He also downplayed the customary dietary restrictions and the ritual of male circumcision.
The Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, drafted by Kaufman Kohler, rabbi at Temple Beth-El in New York City and Einhorn's son-in-law, superseded the Reform statement of 1869 and repudiated all Jewish laws and practices not in keeping with "the views and habits of modern civilization." In the Pittsburgh Platform, which Isaac Mayer Wise called the "Jewish Declaration of Independence," Kohler asserted that the Jews were not a nation or people in exile, but a religious community. As such, Jews could anticipate "neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any laws concerning the Jewish state." Kohler and the signatories of the Pittsburgh Platform characterized Judaism as a "progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason."
Controversy and Antagonism
Relations between Reform and Orthodox Judaism could not have been more antagonistic. Reform Jews looked upon the Orthodox as ignorant rabble who had given themselves over entirely to vulgar superstitions. The Orthodox considered Reform Jews heretics and pagans. Yet the majority of the 2.5 million Jewish immigrants who came to the United States between 1880 and 1924, or at least their children, gradually abandoned Orthodoxy and embraced Reform Judaism. Although they accepted the tenets of Reform Judaism, Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe were unwilling to renounce their Jewish cultural heritage and ethnic identity. Many were ardent Zionists, and by the 1930s had compelled the Re-form movement to change its position on Zionism. Originally rejecting Zionism, by 1937 the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which Isaac Wise had founded in 1889 as one of the institutional centers of Reform Judaism, adopted a statement of principles that called for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Conservative Judaism
The effort to accommodate to American circumstances and concurrently to preserve Jewish tradition led to the emergence of Conservative Judaism. By the end of the twentieth century Conservative Judaism was the largest branch of American Judaism, consisting of 850 congregations that represented 1.5 million members.
Conservative Judaism originated from a breach that developed in the Reform movement. At a banquet held in 1883 to honor the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, the caterer, who was himself Jewish, served shrimp, one of the foods forbidden to Jews who follow kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws. Several members of the board of trustees along with a number of rabbis left the banquet in a rage, convinced that they could not make common cause with Reform Jews who apparently sought to ridicule them and to denigrate the customs and precepts they cherished. From this relatively minor incident Conservative Judaism was born.
Although the infamous "trefa (forbidden food) banquet" was the immediate cause of the Jewish division into Reform and Conservative factions, Conservative Judaism had more significant antecedents. Not all Jews in the United States endorsed the radical break with tradition that the reformers espoused in the Pittsburgh Platform. Under the direction of Isaac Lesser, Sabato Morais, Henry Pereira Mendes, Marcus Jastrow, and Benjamin Szold, Conservative Jews sought to perpetuate the Jewish dietary laws, which Isaac Wise had disparaged as "Kitchen Judaism," the identity of Jews as a people in exile, and the unity of American Jews with their brethren scattered throughout the world. The Conservatives did not oppose change—surely God had not sanctioned all elements of the tradition; some were the work of men and thus men could and, when necessary, should alter them.
Conservatives maintained, however, that Reform Jews encouraged purely utilitarian modifications. They opposed the attitude that the law needed to be replaced not because it had been tried and found wanting but because it had been tried and found impractical and difficult. Conservative Jews did not wish to impugn the tradition but to infuse it with new life. Rabbi Alexander Kohut of Ahavath Chesed in New York City expressed the ideals of Conservative Judaism in a sermon delivered in 1885: "I desire a Judaism full of life … a Judaism true to itself and its past, yet receptive of the ideas of the present."
Reconstructionist Judaism
Conservative Jews saw their movement as a compromise between the iconoclasm of Reform Judaism and the rigidity of Orthodox Judaism. They emphasized klal Yisrael (universal Israel), and aspired to unite Jews everywhere into a single community as the chosen people of God. In that larger purpose Conservative Jews failed; their commitment, moreover, alienated liberals, some of whom created a fourth American denomination, Reconstructionist Judaism.
A continuation of the ideas of Mordecai M. Kaplan, who urged American Jews to "reconstruct the Jewish civilization," Reconstructionist Judaism dispensed with belief in the supernatural while retaining some commitment to the Jewish tradition in an effort, as Kaplan wrote, "to maintain the historic continuity of the Jewish people and to express, or symbolize, spiritual values or ideals which can enhance the inner life of Jews." Most Reconstructionist Jews, however, emphatically reject the idea of Jews as the chosen people of God. Although not an independent movement until the 1960s, Reconstructionist Judaism, by the 1990s, boasted a membership of fifty thousand, with sixty congregations and one hundred and fifty rabbis.
American Judaism in the Twenty-First Century: Problems and Prospects
In the two decades between 1945 and 1967 Jews in the United States, though internally divided, enjoyed a peace and security that enabled them to pursue their version of the American dream. That tranquil period ended with the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Although the Israelis prevailed, the threat to the existence of Israel brought Jewish history, including the Holocaust, to the forefront of Jewish concerns. Since the late 1960s, the preservation of Jewish traditions, the maintenance of Jewish identity, and the survival of the Jewish people have come to be of paramount importance to American Jews, including many in the Re-form and Reconstructionist movements.
Common concerns notwithstanding, relations have not been cordial among Jews in the United States. No issue inspired greater conflict than the debate over the role of women. The introduction of integrated seating at worship, a practice that both Reform and some Conservative Jewish congregations adopted, ignited a terrible quarrel. From the Orthodox perspective, though, the worst violation of Jewish tradition and law were changes authorizing greater participation of women in religious services. The first alteration came in 1973, when the law committee of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly issued a takhana (legislative enactment) that permitted women to be counted in the minyan. A ten-year conflict also ensued over whether to admit women to the rabbinate. The dispute ended in 1983 when the faculty of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City voted thirty-four to eight to accept female students. Reform Jews had voted even earlier, in 1972, to ordain women; the Reform decision to consider ordaining homosexuals increased tensions with Orthodox and Conservative Jews.
Predictably, Orthodox Jews have been the most resistant to making concessions. Their defiance strengthened Orthodoxy, which since the 1970s has been the most dynamic and vibrant Jewish denomination. By 2000 the United States had 1,075,000 Orthodox Jews. As young Jews feel increasingly alienated from the secular world and as many seek to rediscover their cultural and religious heritage, Orthodox Judaism has become more attractive. The dramatic and often salutary alternative that Orthodox Judaism presents to those who have grown weary of the degeneracy of modern American society explains, at least in part, its continued appeal. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, however, Orthodox Jews have had to consider whether, and to what extent, their community can maintain it insularity and protect itself from the contamination of the modern world and how much its survival depends upon adaptation to American life.
Bibliography
Davis, Moshe. The Emergence of Conservative Judaism: The Historical School in Nineteenth Century America. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1963.
Eisen, Arnold. The Chosen People in America: A Study of Jewish Religious Ideology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
Glazer, Nathan, ed. American Judaism. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
Goldsmith, Emanuel S., Mel Scult, and Robert M. Seltzer, eds. The American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan. New York: New York University Press, 1990.
Herberg, Will. Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. New York: Doubleday, 1955.
Libowitz, Richard. Mordecai M. Kaplan and the Development of Reconstructionism. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1983.
Neusner, Jacob, ed. Sectors of American Judaism: Reform, Orthodoxy, Conservatism, and Reconstructionism. New York: Katv, 1975.
Olitzky, Kerry M., Lance J. Sussman, and Malcolm A. Stern, eds. Reform Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993.
Plaut, W. Gunther. The Rise of Reform Judaism. 2 vols. New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1963–1965.
Rosenblum, Herbert. Conservative Judaism: A Contemporary History. New York: United Synagogue of America, 1983.
Sachar, Howard M. A History of Jews in America. New York: Knopf, 1992.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Judaism |
The Early Period
The history of Judaism predates the period to which the term itself actually refers, in that Judaism formally applies to the post-Second Temple period, while its antecedents are to be found in the biblical “religion of Israel.” The Bible is no longer considered a homogeneous work; the many traditions represented in it demonstrate variance and growth. While the historicity of the patriarchs' existence and of Moses as the giver of all laws is under question, certain dominant themes can be seen developing in this early period that have importance for later Judaism.
Central to these themes is the notion of monotheism, which most scholars believe to have been the outgrowth of a process that began with polytheism, progressed to henotheism (the worship of one god without denying the existence of others), and ended in the belief in a single Lord of the universe, uniquely different from all His creatures. He is compassionate toward His creation, and in turn humans are to love and fear (i.e., stand in awe of) Him. Because God is holy, He demands that His people be holy, righteous, and just, a kingdom of priests to assist in the fulfillment of His designs for humankind and the world.
Israel's chosenness consists of this special designation and the task that accompanies it. God promises the land of Canaan to Israel as their homeland, the place in which the Temple will be built and sacrificial worship of God carried out. The holy days were the Sabbath, Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkoth; and circumcision, dietary laws, and laws pertaining to dress, agriculture, and social justice characterized the structure of the biblical religion. Three types of leaders existed during this period: the priest (kohen), who officiated in the Temple and executed the laws; the prophet (navi), to whom was revealed God's messages to His people; and the sage (hacham), who taught practical wisdom and proper behavior. There was developing already in this early period a belief in the ultimate coming of God's kingdom on earth, a time of peace and justice. To this was added, after the destruction (586 B.C.) of the First Temple and the Babylonian captivity (which many saw as the consequence of idolatry and which may have been responsible for the final stage of the development from polytheism to monotheism), the expectation of national restoration under the leadership of a descendant of the Davidic house, the Messiah.
The Postexilic Period
It was after the Babylonian captivity (not later than the 5th cent. B.C.) that a compilation of earlier texts and oral traditions was made, forming the canon of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. Subsequently 34 other books were added to form the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, though the canon was not finalized until perhaps as late as the 2d cent. A.D. The Torah was traditionally attributed to Moses, and study of the Torah was accompanied by expositions and explanations in which the Oral Law, as distinct from the Written Law (the Torah text), is rooted. While it is widely held that the Pharisees further developed the Oral Law, in opposition to the literalness of the Sadducees, it is inconceivable that the latter group could have administered the biblical laws without reinterpreting them in accordance with a changing world, or in the face of a lack of specificity in the text.
The Babylonian exile had exposed the Israelites to new ideas, and it is to that period that the notions of identifiable angels (such as Michael and Raphael), of the personification of evil (Satan), and of the resurrection of the dead can probably be traced. The conquests of Alexander the Great once again brought the Jews into contact with new ideas, most significantly that of the immortality of the soul. Conflict arose within the community of Israel concerning the level of Hellenization acceptable, out of which came the revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucid rulers of Syria and their Judean sympathizers. The resulting martyrdom of many gave added impetus to the belief in collective resurrection of the dead and the immortality of the soul after the body's death. These concepts were wed in such a way that while the body awaited its resurrection, the soul was seen as living on in another realm. This new development in no way supplanted the earlier notion of earthly reward; life on earth, however, was viewed by many as preparatory for the next.
As the conditions of life deteriorated, apocalyptic beliefs grew—national catastrophe and the messianic kingdom were seen as imminent events. Some groups (see Essenes; Qumran) fled into the desert to lead righteous lives in anticipation, while others followed claimants to the mantle of Messiah (most notably Jesus). Out of these numerous ingredients came both Christianity and classical, or rabbinic, Judaism.
After the Destruction of the Second Temple
Developing over a period of five centuries (until c.A.D. 500), rabbinic Judaism completed the process already underway, which saw the replacement of the Temple by the synagogue (the Second Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70), of the priest by the rabbi, and of the sacrificial ceremony by the prayer service and study. Basic to these changes was the redaction and codification of the Oral Law (see Mishna; Talmud) and the Midrash, which, as outgrowths of the biblical religion, centered on the relationships between God, His Torah, and His people, Israel. Emphasis was placed upon study of the Torah (in its broadest sense) as the most important religious act, leading to an understanding of the proper way of life; upon the growing need for national restoration in the face of continued Exile from the Promised Land; and upon the function of this world as preparatory for the World to Come (Olam ha-Bah), while not devaluing the importance of life in this world.
Daily life was sanctified by the emphasis in Jewish law (halakah) on the ritual fitness of foods (kashrut), the recitation of blessings for a variety of mundane acts, and the daily, weekly, monthly and annual cycles of prayer. Rites for the personal life cycle came to include circumcision of male infants at the age of eight days, signifying their induction into the covenant between God and Israel; the recognition of thirteen years as the age of majority for religious responsibilities (see Bar Mitzvah); marriage; and funeral rites. During the medieval period, these trends continued and were basic to the several important codifications of the legal material and to the many biblical and Talmudic commentaries that were composed at this time (most notably by Rashi and Maimonides).
The Middle Ages
The kabbalah flowered during the Middle Ages, combining older trends in Jewish mysticism with Neoplatonism and other ideas. The kabbalists retained the idea that the totality of God's nature is ultimately beyond human grasp (“Ein Sof” [Heb., literally,=without end] as the “Nothing”), yet, in keeping with tradition, held to a vision of a personal God who exists as the active, creative, and sustaining force within the cosmos (“Ein Sof” as the “Everything”). Spain was a major center of kabbalistic thought, which after the expulsions and forced conversion in 1492, spread and became more central to Jewish life in the Mediterranean world. Palestine then became the center of kabbalism, especially as it was developed by Isaac Luria and others.
A Jewish philosophy developed in answer to the questions raised by the exposure to Greek thought as distilled through the Islamic natural philosophy and metaphysics. Central to these issues was the conflict between reason and revelation: whether revelation was necessary if all could be ascertained through reason, or whether reason was imperfect and revelation was God's assisting humans to know the truth. Maimonides argued that one can say nothing positive about the personal nature of God, which is beyond human comprehension; one can only indicate what He is not (thus, the statement that God is wise says only that God is not ignorant, not how wise He actually is).
While the Jewish Middle Ages is usually defined by scholars as extending at least into the 18th cent., there was a Jewish counterpart to the general European Renaissance of the 15th and 16th cent., and figures such as Judah Abravanel were influenced by contemporary European philosophic currents. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 led to the Jews of N Italy, S France, and the Levant coming under Sephardic influence (see Sephardim), and these events provoked much messianic and kabbalist speculation, culminating in the spectacular career of the self-proclaimed Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi.
The Amsterdam community of Marranos (those Jews forced by the Inquisition to adopt Christianity, but who continued to practice Judaism in secret, and many of whom later emigrated and returned to the Jewish fold) often provided a liberalizing influence on Orthodox Judaism, most significantly in the person of Baruch Spinoza, a Jew excommunicated for his unsparing critique of Rabbinic Judaism. The reaction to Sabbatianism and philosophical liberalism caused a hardening of rabbinic orthodoxy, but the Jewish world of the 18th cent. remained turbulent. It produced both the great traditionalist rabbinic figure Elijah ben Solomon and the untraditional figures of Baal-Shem-Tov, the founder of Hasidism (which Elijah himself fought against), and Moses Mendelssohn, the spiritual progenitor of later reformers whom Elijah's spiritual descendants repeatedly condemned.
The Reform Movement and Zionism
The emancipation of European Jews in the early decades of the 19th cent. brought with it the problem of maintaining claims of distinctiveness, of being “chosen,” and at the same time wishing to participate in the general society. First dealt with by the Reform leaders of Germany (most notably Abraham Geiger), this problem was met directly in Eastern Europe, giving rise to the Haskalah movement, whose members (e.g., Nachman Krochmal) sought to revitalize Jewish life by recreating it along the lines of the best in European culture. In the late 19th cent., Zionism promised a return to the Holy Land. This again created problems for the traditionalists whose religious ideas were rooted in the Diaspora, and many of whom opposed any movement to build a secular Jewish state in the Holy Land. Eventually, an Orthodox wing of Zionism did emerge. For many Jews still unanswered is the question of whether a full Jewish life is possible in exile, or whether residing in Zion is essential. Theologically, Zionism posed the problem of whether Jews can work for the messianic return or whether this would be counter to another traditional belief that saw humanity awaiting the divine intervention.
Modern Judaism
Ultimately, it was the halakah (the law) that divided Judaism in the 19th cent. The Orthodox hold both the written law (Scriptures) and the oral laws (commentaries on the legal portions of the Scriptures) as authoritative, derived from God, while the Reform do not see them as authoritative in any absolute sense, but binding only in their ethical content. While Orthodox Jews maintain the traditional practices, Reform Jews perform only those rituals that they believe can promote and enhance a Jewish, God-oriented life. In 1999, however, leaders of American Reform Judaism reversed century-old teachings by encouraging but not enforcing the observance of many traditional rituals. The “historical school,” or Conservative movement, attempts to formulate a middle position between Orthodox and Reform, maintaining most of the traditional rituals but recognizing the need to make changes in accordance with overriding contemporary considerations. Conservative Jews believe that the history of Judaism proves their basic assumptions: that tradition and change have always gone hand in hand and that what is central to Judaism and has remained constant throughout the centuries is the people of Israel (and their needs), not the fundamentalism of Orthodoxy nor what they consider the abandonment of traditions by Reform. The related Reconstructionist movement of Mordechai M. Kaplan holds Judaism to be a human-centered rather than a God-centered religious civilization.
Also part of contemporary Judaism are the several Sephardic traditions maintained in Israel, France, Canada, and the United States by immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa and by European Sephardim in Europe and the Americas; the several Hasidic groups in Israel and the United States; the religious and secular Zionists in Israel and the Diaspora; the unorganized secular Jews, who maintain an atheist's or agnostic's adherence to Jewish values and culture; and those unorganized Jews who seek a religious life outside the synagogue. These many positions represent the most recent attempts at defining the “essence of Judaism,” a process that has been continuous throughout the ages, variously emphasizing one of the three major components of Judaism (God, Torah, Israel) over the remaining two.
Bibliography
See J. L. Blau, Modern Varieties of Judaism (1966); M. M. Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization (2d ed. 1957, repr. 1967); J. Neusner, There We Sat Down (1972); R. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought (1980); A. Eisen, The Chosen People in America (1983); M. Idel, Kabbalah (1988); M. A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement (1988); G. Robinson, Essential Judaism (2000).
| Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Judaism |
The religion of the Jewish people.
Judaism developed out of scripture (the Torah) and an oral tradition of legal and ethical conduct as inscribed in the Talmud, codes, mystical literature, and rabbinic commentaries. Although traditional Jews assume that Judaism has remained unchanged from the revelation at Sinai to the present, most scholars agree that it has been transformed by the vicissitudes of Jewish history since the days of the Bible.
A significant turning point in Judaism occurred when the wandering Israelites entered into the Promised Land and later when they built their Holy Temple in Jerusalem. For much of this time, the religion was essentially a temple cult, organized around regular ritual sacrifices and a series of three pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and practiced by a people ruled by kings, guided by prophets, and ministered to by priests.
After the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. and even more so following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., Judaism became a religion of exile. Replacing the temple and temple rites were synagogues, regular prayer, and an emphasis on the lifelong study of sacred texts in the Torah. Rabbis and teachers replaced the priests and prophets, and Jewish community leaders, the kings. This new Judaism was a more portable religion, appropriate to a wandering people. Moral and ethical laws became central, but ritual praxis, governed by strict codes and guided by rabbinic interpretation of the law, was also crucial. The Torah became the focus of Judaism, the yeshiva its most important sanctuary, and a return to the Promised Land Zion and a rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem remained abiding hopes and part of the promise of messianic redemption.
The Diaspora has led to a nuancing of Jewish tradition into distinct customs. Among the most outstanding have been the custom variations between Sephardic Jews, whose expatriation occurred in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula, and Ashkenazic Jews, who trace their origins to France and the German-speaking countries but who emigrated ultimately to almost all of Europe and later to the Americas. Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazic Jews share a belief in Scripture and a dependence on the Talmud, but they have evolved variations in custom and ritual praxis based upon their varying ethnic experiences and the disparate rabbinic authorities by whom they have been guided over the years. Nevertheless, many of the rabbis and their commentaries have, through time, acquired a religious legitimacy that supersedes these differences. Thus, for example, Rashi, an eleventh-century Ashkenazic exegete, and Maimonides, a twelfth-century Sephardic rabbinic codifier, are recognized by all Jewish traditions to be authoritative interpreters of Judaism.
By and large, Judaism defines a Jew as someone born of a Jewish mother or someone who has submitted to religious conversion. Although there is debate about what constitute the minimal requirements of conversion, the halakhic ( Judeo - legal) minimum requirement consists of circumcision for males, immersion in the waters of a ritual bath (mikveh), a period of Torah study, and a commitment to be bound by all the laws of Judaism. During the twentieth century, some non-Orthodox Jews expanded this religious definition to include children of either a Jewish father or mother and do not require a commitment to keep all the laws. The definition is a crucial one in Israel, which guarantees full citizenship rights to all Jews.
Through most of the period of the Diaspora, Judaism has tended to focus on matters of praxis more than on principles of faith, because, it was argued, the former better guaranteed the religion's continuity while ensuring the integrity of belief. Since the eighteenth century and especially in the twentieth century, however, a large-scale move away from praxis has occurred. A result of religious reform and social changes that brought Jews out of their status as pariahs and into the mainstream of Western societies, this development has led to a Judaism that focuses more on its moral and ethical principles and on some vague notions of ethnicity than it does on ritual praxis. Accordingly, in contemporary Judaism, those who strictly maintain traditions, ritual praxis, and time-honored Jewish codes of conduct now constitute a growing minority.
Although the principles of Jewish faith have been the subject of much discussion and debate among Jewish philosophers and rabbinic commentators, among the most commonly cited essentials are thirteen principles listed by Maimonides. These include a belief in a single Creator, a unique and everlasting God, who is incorporeal, who existed before time began and will last after it has passed, and who alone is worthy of worship. It also includes a belief in the utterances of the prophets, and especially the words of Moses; a conviction that the entire Torah was divinely revealed to Moses at Sinai and passed on intact to the Jewish people, who may not replace it with another set of teachings; and a belief that God is omniscient and that He creates all life, rewards the good, and punishes the bad. Finally, it includes a faith in the promise of messianic redemption. In the same way that only a minority of Jews today abide by all the rules of Jewish law and praxis, so is it likely that only a few Jews today hold all of the thirteen beliefs.
Although Judaism has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to survive the vicissitudes of Jewish history and the vagaries of existence in the Diaspora, including persecution and pogrom (most recently during the European Holocaust), some observers are anxious about its future in the context of an open society like America's and that of a secular state like Israel, the two largest population centers of Jewry today. Pointing to a decline in numbers of Jews in America as well as a diminution of Jewish education, practice, and faith, these observers argue that Judaism's days as a vital religion are numbered in America and throughout the Diaspora. On the other hand, looking at Israel's large-scale redefinition of Jews as secular Israelis, other observers worry no less about the future of the religion in the Jewish homeland. To some of these observers, the answer to these anxieties is to press for the coming of the Messiah. To others, the answer is a revitalization of Jewish education and a return to Jewish tradition.
Bibliography
Finkelstein, L., ed. The Jews: Their History, 4th edition. New York: Schocken Books, 1970.
Glatzer, Nahum N., ed. In Time and Eternity: A Jewish Reader. New York: Schocken Books, 1946.
Heilman, Samuel C., and Cohen, Steven M. Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
— SAMUEL C. HEILMAN
| Food & Culture Encyclopedia: Judaism |
The phenomenon of fasting in the variegated history of Judaism has its roots in the biblical text. Though it is not entirely clear why and when this practice arose, it is certain that in ancient Israel, abstaining from food and drink on both the individual and communal level was considered an act of piety that one would (in most cases spontaneously) undertake as a means of entreating God's compassion or in the hope of averting divine punishment ( Judges 20:26; 1 Kings 21:9, 27; 1 Sam. 7:6; 2 Sam. 12:16, 22; Jer. 14:12, 36:6, 9; Joel 1:14, 2:12, 15; Jonah 3:5; Ps. 35:13, 69:11–12; Esther 4:16; Dan. 9:3; Ezra 8:21, 23; Neh. 1:4; 2 Chron. 20:3) or as a sign of mourning and lament (1 Sam. 31:13; 2 Sam. 1:12; 12; Zech. 7:5; Esther 4:3; Ezra 10:6; Dan. 10:2–3; 1 Chron. 10:12).
Fixed Fasts
The four fixed fast days mentioned by the post-exilic prophet Zechariah relate to calamities centered about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple (Zech. 8:19): the fast of the fourth month corresponds to what is celebrated as the seventeenth of Tammuz, which marks the breaching of the walls of the city (in 2 Kings 25:4 and Jer. 39:2 the date is the ninth); the fast of the fifth month, the ninth of Av when the Temple was destroyed (in 2 Kings 25:8 and Jer. 52:12–13 the date is the tenth); the fast of the seventh month, the third of Tishrei when Gedaliah, the Babylonian-appointed governor of Judah, was murdered (2 Kings 25:25, Jer. 41:1–2); and the fast of the tenth month, the tenth of Tevet, which marks the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (2 Kings 25:1–2, Jer. 52:4). The custom to fast on the thirteenth of Adar, the day before the holiday of Purim, which celebrates the downfall of Haman and the redemption of the Jewish people, does not commemorate a tragedy in Jewish history but rather stands as a reminder of a precarious moment when disaster was averted (Esther 4:16).
By contrast, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur (celebrated on the tenth day of the seventh month, which is enumerated as the first month of the new year), the one fast specified in the Pentateuch, is part of the afflicting of the body—according to later rabbinic law this comprises five forms of self-denial: abstention from eating, washing, anointing, wearing shoes, and cohabitation; Mishnah Yoma 8:1—that is a means of purification from transgression (Lev. 16:29–34, 23:27–32; Num. 29:7–11). From other verses we can deduce that refraining from eating and drinking was considered one of various methods of abstinence by which one could afflict the body, acts that were often accompanied by oaths and vows (Num. 30:2–16; Dan. 10:12). There is evidence to suggest that fasting was also practiced as preparation for communing with the spirits of the dead (1 Sam. 28:20). The narrative about Moses being with God for the forty days in which he wrote the tablets of law specifies that during that time he neither ate bread nor drank water, indicating that he was in a transformed state wherein the normal physical needs could be discarded (Exod. 34:28; Deut. 9:9, 18), a theme that is applied as well to Elijah when he had the theophany on Horeb, the mountain of God (1 Kings 19:8–12). In the case of Daniel as well, acts of prayer, which included fasting, were answered with a vision of the divine (Dan. 9:20–27, 10:7–21).
Abstention from food was considered one of the several typical acts of humbling oneself, which may have included renting one's clothes, lying in sackcloth, walking about in a subdued posture, sleeping on the floor, and not washing, anointing, or changing one's clothes (2 Sam. 1:11–12, 12:16–20; 1 Kings 21:27; Jonah 3:5; Ps. 35:13, 69:12; Esther 4:3; Dan. 9:3; Neh. 9:1). Fasting could also accompany weeping and the offering of sacrifices ( Judges 20:26; Joel 2:12) or the confession of one's iniquities (1 Sam. 7:6; Neh. 9:2; Dan. 9:4), but on occasion it takes the place of the sacrificial cult ( Joel 1:13–14). The purpose of fasting as a ceremonial expression of remorse and supplication is underscored in the prophetic pronouncements against those who would fast without the proper intent as if God demanded of the Israelites external forms of self-affliction without commitment to act justly (Isa. 58:3–7; Jer. 14:12). Indeed, according to the messianic declaration of Zechariah, the fast days in Israel commemorating past suffering centered around the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple would be transformed into occasions for joy provided there would be love of honesty and integrity (Zech. 8:19).
Fasting without repentance is of no value. In the Second Temple period, abstaining from eating and drinking continued to serve as a primary means of atonement, but in addition we have evidence that on occasion it functioned as an ascetic regimen that served to purify the heart and bring one closer to God, and even in some cases to induce an ecstatic state wherein a supernatural vision was granted (2 Bar. 12:5, 20:5–6, 43:3; 4 Ezra 5:13–20, 6:35–36). There is evidence from the rabbinic corpus that select individuals similarly fasted excessively in order to have visionary experiences (Palestinian Talmud, Kil'ayim 9:4, 32b), a phenomenon attested as well in the Heikhalot literature, the magical and mystical texts that began to take shape roughly during the time that Judaism and Christianity began to emerge as distinct liturgical communities. We know little about the social background of the individuals responsible for these texts, but we can conclude with some degree of certainty that they adopted ascetic practices, primarily fasting and sexual renunciation, as preparation for dream-vision, angelic adjuration, or heavenly ascent. In the tenth century, a leading rabbinic figure, Hai Gaon, summarized these older practices by saying that anyone who wished to gaze at the chariot must "sit fasting for a specified number of days, place his head between his knees, and whisper to the earth many prescribed songs and hymns." It is likely that fasting or even a restricted diet (together with sexual abstinence) was viewed as means by which the human could be transformed into an angelic being, a prerequisite for the attainment of the visionary encounter with an angel or the glory.
Perhaps some of the rabbis developed a critical stance vis-à-vis fasting as an appropriate form of piety to combat such individuals and their anomian customs. Thus, a dictum is transmitted in the name of R. Yose: "An individual is not permitted to torment himself in fasting lest he fall upon the community and they will need to support him" (Tosefta, Ta'anit 2:12). According to another statement attributed to Samuel, "Whoever sits in a fast is called a sinner" (Babylonian Talmud, Ta'anit 11a). In the words of a maxim ascribed to Reish Laqish, "the scholar is not permitted to sit and fast for it diminishes the work of heaven" (Babylonian Talmud, Ta'anit 11b). Finally, Rav reportedly declared that "in the future a man will have to give an account for everything that his eye saw but he did not eat" (Palestinian Talmud, Qiddushin 4:12, 66b).
An especially interesting concern for the rabbis was the abstinent woman whose constant fasting "causes her to lose virginity" (Palestinian Talmud, Sotah 3:4, 19a). Indeed, on account of the reduced intake of food she is called the "fasting virgin," a term that suggests that the challenge such a woman posed was that she disrupted the societal expectations by abdicating the domestic responsibility of child bearing. In contrast to early Christianity where virginity and fasting were considered virtuous acts of piety, the rabbinic sages castigated the woman who adopted an ascetic lifestyle with regard to sexuality and eating. According to one rabbinic ruling, the ascetic woman is enumerated among those who bring destruction to the world (Mishnah, Sotah 3:4), an expression meant to convey that female celibacy results in the breakdown of marital life and the bearing of progeny.
Additional Fasts
The basic approach to fasting was continued by the rabbis who, in their characteristic fashion, codified specific regulations to fashion the biblical references into binding rituals. In addition, the rabbis decreed additional fasts in the course of the calendar, generally associated with the fixed fasts and other calamitous events in biblical and postbiblical history. Yet, the rabbinic authorities were opposed to extreme forms of abstinence, including fasting, as we find, for instance, in the Therapeutaue community described by Philo, early Christian communities, and the individuals whose experiences are preserved in the Heikhalot texts. It must be pointed out, however, that the rabbinic sources themselves yield proof that some members of the academies were more positively disposed toward voluntary abstinence as a way to cultivate the highest form of piety. Thus, there is substantial textual evidence to indicate that sages (many from the third and fourth centuries) undertook excessive fasts as part of an ascetic lifestyle, to attain an extraordinary experience (usually of a visual nature), or for penance (Palestinian Talmud, Kil'ayim 9:3, 32b, Ta'anit 2:13, 66a, Nedarim 9:2, 40d; Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 68b, Hagigah 22b, Qiddushin 80b, Baba Metsi'a 85a, Nazir 52b).
Additionally, there is verification that some rabbis preserved an ancient custom, apparently initiated in the land of Israel, to fast every week on Monday and Thursday (Palestinian Talmud, Ta'anit 1:6, 64c; Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 24a, Ta'anit 12a), and there is as well confirmation of the fact that some considered fasting appropriate for Sabbath (Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 68b, Beitsah 15b) even though others clearly thought the opposite and prohibited fasting on Sabbath (Palestinian Talmud, Ta'anit 3:13, 67a, Nedarim 8:10, 40d), maintaining that Sabbath is a day of joy and rest, the sanctification of which involves physical pleasure, encompassing eating and drinking (Palestinian Talmud, Shabbat 15:3, 15a; Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 32b). A residue of the former orientation is found in the ruling that fasting because of a troubling dream (ta'anit halom) is allowed even on Sabbath (Genesis Rabbah 44:12; Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 31b, Ta'anit 12b). Interestingly, the routine of fasting on Sabbath was revived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by figures like Judah he-Hasid, the leader of the Rhineland German Pietists (Hasidei Ashkenaz), who adopted an ascetic form of devotion, and we even have a report by Avigdor ben Elijah ha-Kohen that Judah fasted on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, a practice followed by other rabbis connected to this group, such as Abraham Haldiq of Bohemia, though by no means accepted by everyone. Finally, there are rhetorical flourishes in rabbinic literature that assign supreme theurgical significance to fasting as a means of atonement. Perhaps the best illustration of this approach is the prayer offered by Rav Sheshet before God, which is predicated on the symbolic equation of fasting and sacrifices: "May it be your will to account my fat and blood, which have been diminished, as if I sacrificed them before you on the altar, and you should find favor with me" (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 17a).
In spite of the admonitions against excessive fasting, it must be said that an ascetic tendency is well entrenched in the classical rabbinic corpus, an orientation that served as the foundation for pietists and mystics at later stages of Jewish history. In particular, the Rhineland Pietists and the Provençal and Spanish kabbalists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries cultivated ascetic practices to attain a state of holiness and removal from the bondage of the corporeal world, in part based on earlier mystical tracts. An especially important part of the pietistic regimen was fasting, which, together with sexual abstention, was viewed as the mechanism by which the mortal being could be transmuted into an angel. For example, Eleazar of Worms, another leading member of the Hasidei Ashkenaz, chronicles an elaborate ceremony for the transmission of the divine name, which involved ritual immersion, being clad in white clothes, and fasting. Acts of self-denial and self-affliction were considered to be the way of fulfilling the hidden will of God.
Kabbalistic Piety
In kabbalistic literature as well we find a central concern with fostering an ascetic piety predicated on acts of behavior that transform the human into an angel. Moreover, kabbalists articulated a contemplative goal of union with God, which is often described as the merging of the finite and infinite will, as we find in Azriel of Gerona, Jacob ben Sheshet, and the authors of the Zohar. The rabbinic analogy comparing fasting to sacrifice played a crucial role in shaping the mystical sensibility of offering one's heart fully to God and subjugating desire (Zohar 2:20b, 119b, 153a). From the symbolic vantage point endorsed by kabbalists, fasting is the instrument by which one becomes a sacrifice and is submerged thereby in the Godhead. In somewhat different terminology, but expounding a similar ascetic ideal, in zoharic literature the members of the mystical fraternity engaged in Torah study are said to partake of the spiritual food that angels eat, the "bread of the mighty" (lehem 'abirim) (Ps. 78:25), the overflow of divine wisdom, rather than the coarse food of this world (Zohar 2:61b). With this idea we reach the paradoxical reversal characteristic of mystical insight: abstention is genuine consumption.
Utilizing an older midrashic gloss (Leviticus Rabbah 20:10) on the verse "And they saw the God of Israel, and they ate and drank" (Exod. 24:11), the kabbalists affirm that this refers to an "actual eating," which does not entail physical ingestion, but deriving sustenance from basking in the visual presence of God, a state applied to the righteous and angels in the world to come (Zohar 1:104a, 2:126a). By fasting the kabbalist anticipates that condition in this world and thus has a foretaste of the food that is perpetually fulfilling.
Bibliography
Fraade, Steven. "Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism." In Jewish Spirituality from the Bible to the Middle Ages, edited by Arthur Green, pp. 253–288. New York: Crossroad, 1986.
Hecker, Joel. "Eating Gestures and the Ritualized Body in Medieval Jewish Mysticism." History of Religions 40 (2000): 125–152.
Kanarfogel, Ephraim. Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000.
Swartz, Michael D. Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Weinstein, Sara E. Piety and Fanaticism: Rabbinic Criticism of Religious Stringency. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1997.
Wolfson, Elliot R. "Eunuchs Who Keep the Sabbath: Becoming Male and the Ascetic Ideal in Thirteenth-Century Jewish Mysticism." In Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, edited by Jeffrey J. Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, pp. 151–185. New York: Garland, 1997.
—Elliot R. Wolfson
| The Dream Encyclopedia: Judaism |
Judaism has a rich tradition of dream interpretation. The interest of Jews in dreams was particularly stimulated during their captivity in Babylon, where dream divination was a widespread practice. The Jews, like other peoples in this region, distinguished between good and evil dreams.
The Babylonian Talmud, the largest collection of Jewish sacred writings, is full of references to dreams, rules for interpreting dreams, and means of avoiding evil dreams. The Berakhot section of the Babylonian Talmud contains a number of rabbinic stories, teachings, and reflections on dream interpretation. One common theme is that dream interpretation represents an important but very difficult and complex matter, since dreams are always enigmatic. Thus, interpreters must be very careful to distinguish meaningful and revelatory dreams from worthless ones ("just as there is no wheat without straw, so there is no dream without worthless things").
Several Jewish prophets gave warnings against false dreams and false interpreters, recognizing that religious heresy might arise from bad interpretation. Rabbinic Judaism laid considerable emphasis on interpretation. According to the rabbis, a dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not read, and without conscious elaboration, a dream's meaning is lost. Many dreams are linked to Jewish Scripture, relating words in dreams to important passages from the Torah.
The Jews had become worshipers of the one God rather than of many special gods, and this idea was reflected in their view of dreams. God alone could be the source of the divine revelations that came in dreams. And, since he was the God of the Jews, they believed he usually spoke clearly to them. In some cases, when the wishes of Jehovah are communicated by an angelic messenger, it is hard to distinguish between dreams and waking visions. In other cases, the dreamer hears the voice of God, or may like Solomon in Gideon, see the Lord himself.
Almost all symbolic dreams in the Old Testament are dreamed by Gentiles. Important examples are the enigmatic messages sent to non-Jews, such as Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar, that only Jews were able to interpret (in these cases, Joseph and Daniel, respectively). Although the Jews had begun to give special emphasis to dream theory, they continued to classify dreams in much the same way as the peoples in neighboring territories.
| Wikipedia: Judaism |
Judaism (from the Greek Ioudaïsmos, derived from the Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, "Judah";[1] in Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת, Yahedut, the distinctive characteristics of the Judean ethnos)[2] is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts. Judaism presents itself as the covenantal relationship between the Children of Israel (later, the Jewish nation) and God. It is considered either the first or one of the first monotheistic religions, and is among the oldest religious traditions still being practiced today. Many of its texts and traditions are central to the other Abrahamic religions, with Jewish history and the principles and ethics of Judaism having influenced Christianity and Islam, as well as some non-Abrahamic religions. As the foundation of Western Christianity, many aspects of Judaism also correspond to secular Western concepts of ethics and civil law.
Followers of Judaism, whether converts or born into the Jewish nation (including seculars), are called Jews. The Jewish collective is regarded as an ethnoreligious group, for reasons derived from the sacred texts that define them as a nation, rather than followers of a faith. In 2007, the world Jewish population was estimated at 13.2 million people, 41% of whom lived in Israel[3] and 40% of whom lived in the United States.
In modern Judaism, central authority is not vested in any single person or body, but in sacred texts, religious law, and learned rabbis who interpret those texts and laws. According to Jewish tradition, Judaism begins with the Covenant between God and Abraham (ca. 2000 BCE), the patriarch and progenitor of the Jewish nation. Throughout the ages, Judaism has adhered to a number of religious principles, the most important of which is the belief in a single, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, transcendent god, who created the universe and continues to govern it. According to most branches, God established a covenant with the Israelites and their descendants, and revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah. However, Karaite Judaism holds that only the Written Torah was revealed. Judaism has traditionally valued Torah study and the observance of the commandments recorded in the Torah and expounded in the Talmud.
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13 Principles of Faith:
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Judaism is a monotheistic religion based upon principles and ethics embodied in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), as further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts. According to Jewish tradition, Judaism begins with the Covenant between God and Abraham.
While Judaism has seldom, if ever, been monolithic in practice, it has always been fiercely monotheistic in theology - although the Tanakh records significant periods of apostasy, among many Israelites, from Judaism's beliefs.
Historically, Judaism has considered belief in the divine revelation[4] and acceptance of the Written and Oral Torah as its fundamental core belief, but Judaism does not have a centralized authority dictating religious dogma. This gave rise to many different formulations as to the specific theological beliefs inherent in the Torah and Talmud. While some rabbis have at times agreed upon a firm formulation, others have disagreed, many criticizing any such attempt as minimizing acceptance of the entire Torah.[5] Notably, in the Talmud some principles of faith (e.g., the Divine origin of the Torah) are considered important enough that rejection of them can put one in the category of "apikoros" (heretic).[6]
Over the centuries, a number of formulations of Jewish principles of faith have appeared, and though they differ with respect to certain details, they demonstrate a commonality of core ideology. Of these formulations, the one most widely considered authoritative is Maimonides' thirteen principles of faith, formulated in the XII century. These principles were controversial when first proposed, evoking criticism by Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo. Maimonides thirteen principles were ignored by much of the Jewish community for the next few centuries.[7] Over time two poetic restatements of these principles ("Ani Ma'amin" and "Yigdal") became canonized in the Jewish prayer book, and eventually became widely held.
According to Maimonides, any Jew to reject even one of his 13 principles would have to be considered an apostate and a heretic.[8][9] Although many Jewish scholars have held points of view diverging in relatively minor ways from Maimonides' 13 principles,[10] and Judaism has never known any one normative and binding creed of faith,[10][11][12] these 13 principles as formulated by the Rambam are the closest anyone has ever come to creating a widely-accepted list of Jewish beliefs.[13][14]
Joseph Albo and the Raavad have criticized Maimonides' list as containing too many items that, while true, were not fundamentals of the faith, and thus placed too many Jews in the category of "heretic", rather than those who were simply in error. Many others criticized any such formulation as minimizing acceptance of the entire Torah (see above). As noted however, neither Maimonides nor his contemporaries viewed these principles as encompassing all of Jewish belief, but rather as the core theological underpinnings of the acceptance of Judaism. Along these lines, the ancient historian Josephus emphasized practices and observances rather than religious beliefs, associating apostasy with a failure to observe Jewish law and maintaining that the requirements for conversion to Judaism included circumcision and adherence to traditional customs.
Judaism has at all times valued Torah study, as well as other religious texts. The following is a basic, structured list of the central works of Jewish practice and thought. For more detail, see Rabbinic literature.
The basis of Jewish law and tradition (halakha) is the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses). According to rabbinic tradition there are 613 commandments in the Torah. Some of these laws are directed only to men or to women, some only to the ancient priestly groups, the Kohanim and Leviyim (members of the tribe of Levi), some only to farmers within the land of Israel. Many laws were only applicable when the Temple in Jerusalem existed, and fewer than 300 of these commandments are still applicable today.
While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were claimed to be based on the written text of the Torah alone (e.g., the Sadducees, and the Karaites), most Jews believed in what they call the oral law. These oral traditions were transmitted by the Pharisee sect of ancient Judaism, and were later recorded in written form and expanded upon by the rabbis.
Rabbinic Judaism has always held that the books of the Torah (called the written law) have always been transmitted in parallel with an oral tradition. To justify this viewpoint, Jews 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, i.e., oral, sources. This parallel set of material was originally transmitted orally, and came to be known as "the oral law".
By the time of Rabbi Judah haNasi (200 CE), after the destruction of Jerusalem, 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 Babylonia), 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 based on a combined reading of the Torah, and the oral tradition - the Mishnah, the halakhic Midrash, the Talmud and its commentaries. The Halakha has 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; the most important code, the Shulchan Aruch, largely determines Orthodox religious practice today.
Jewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy and Jewish theology. 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. Modern Jewish philosophy consists of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox oriented philosophy. Notable among Orthodox Jewish philosophers are Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Yitzchok Hutner. Well-known non-Orthodox Jewish philosophers include Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Emmanuel Lévinas.
Related Topics
According to Daniel Boyarin, the underlying distinction between religion and ethnicity is foreign to Judaism itself, and is one form of the dualism between spirit and flesh that has its origin in Platonic philosophy and that permeated Hellenistic Judaism.[16] Consequently, in his view, Judaism does not fit easily into conventional Western categories, such as religion, ethnicity, or culture. Boyarin suggests that this in part reflects the fact that most of Judaism's 4,000-year history predates the rise of Western culture and occurred outside the West. During this time, Jews have experienced slavery, anarchic and theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile; in the Diasporas, they have been in contact with and have been influenced by ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment (see Haskalah) and the rise of nationalism, which would bear fruit in the form of a Jewish state in the Levant. They also saw an elite convert to Judaism (the Khazars), only to disappear as the centers of power in the lands once occupied by that elite fell to the people of Rus and then the Mongols. Thus, Boyarin has argued that "Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension."[17]
In contrast to this point of view, practices such as Humanistic Judaism reject the religious aspects of Judaism, while retaining certain cultural traditions.
According to traditional Jewish Law, a Jew is anyone born of a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism in accord with Jewish Law. American Reform Judaism and British Liberal Judaism accept the child of one Jewish parent (father or mother) as Jewish if the parents raise the child with a Jewish identity. All mainstream forms of Judaism today are open to sincere converts, although conversion has traditionally been discouraged. The conversion process is evaluated by an authority, and the convert is examined on his or her sincerity and knowledge.[18] Converts are given the name "ben Abraham" or "bat Abraham", (son or daughter of Abraham) and in Judaism conversion may be likened to adoption into the family.
Traditional Judaism maintains that a Jew, whether by birth or conversion, is a Jew forever. Thus a Jew who claims to be an atheist or converts to another religion is still considered by traditional Judaism to be Jewish. However, the Reform movement maintains that a Jew who has converted to another religion is no longer a Jew,[19][20] and the Israeli Government has also taken that stance after Supreme Court cases and statutes.[21]
The question of what determines Jewish identity in the State of Israel was given new impetus when, in the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion requested opinions on mihu Yehudi ("who is a Jew") from Jewish religious authorities and intellectuals worldwide in order to settle citizenship questions. This is far from settled, and occasionally resurfaces in Israeli politics.
The total number of Jews worldwide is difficult to assess because the definition of "who is a Jew" is problematic; not all Jews identify themselves as Jewish, and some who identify as Jewish are not considered so by other Jews. According to the Jewish Year Book (1901), the global Jewish population in 1900 was around 11 million. The latest available data is from the World Jewish Population Survey of 2002 and the Jewish Year Calendar (2005). In 2002, according to the Jewish Population Survey, there were 13.3 million Jews around the world. The Jewish Year Calendar cites 14.6 million. Jewish population growth is currently near zero percent, with 0.3% growth from 2000 to 2001. Intermarriage and the declining birthrate have influenced Jewish population figures, although conversion to Judaism may help to offset this slightly.[citation needed]
It has been noted by some writers that the apparent prominence of Jews is disproportionate to the size of their population. One example, Mark Twain comments:
If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?[22]
In the late Middle Ages, when Europe and western Asia were divided into Christian and Islamic countries, the Jewish people also found themselves divided into two main groups. Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, namely in Germany and Poland, were called Ashkenazi. Sephardic Jews can trace their tradition back to the Mediterranean countries, particularly Spain and Portugal under Muslim rule. When they were expelled in 1492, they settled in North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, the Far East, and northern Europe. The two traditions differ in a number of ritual and cultural details, but their theology and basic Jewish practice are the same.
Over the past two centuries the Ashkenazi Jewish community has divided into a number of Jewish denominations; each has a different understanding of what principles of belief a Jew should hold, (although belief plays a lesser role than practice and observance in Judaism) and how one should live as a Jew. To some degree, these doctrinal differences have created schisms between the Jewish denominations. Nonetheless, there is some level of Jewish unity. For example, it would not be unusual for a Conservative Jew to attend either an Orthodox or Reform synagogue. The article on Relationships between Jewish religious movements discusses how different Jewish denominations view each other. Many non-Ashkenazi Jews, especially in the United States, are members of congregations affiliated with the various movements, although they may not specifically identify themselves as members of that denomination. They frequently do so out of convenience, and are likely to describe their religious practice as "traditional" or "observant", as opposed to "Orthodox" or "Conservative".
Even though all of these denominations exist in Israel, Israelis tend to classify Jewish identity in ways that are different than diaspora Jewry. Most Jewish Israelis classify themselves as "secular" (hiloni), "traditional" (masorti), "religious" (dati) or Haredi. The term "secular" is more popular as a self-description among Israeli families of western (European) origin, whose Jewish identity may be a very powerful force in their lives, but who see it as largely independent of traditional religious belief and practice. This portion of the population largely ignores organized religious life, be it of the official Israeli rabbinate (Orthodox) or of the liberal movements common to diaspora Judaism (Reform, Conservative).
The term "traditional" (masorti) is most common as a self-description among Israeli families of "eastern" origin (i.e., the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa). This term, as commonly used, has nothing to do with the official Masorti (Conservative) movement.
There is a great deal of ambiguity in the ways "secular" and "traditional" are used in Israel. They often overlap, and they cover an extremely wide range in terms of ideology and religious observance.
The term "Orthodox" is not popular in Israeli discourse, although the percentage of Jews who come under that category in Israel is far greater than in the diaspora. Various methods of measuring this percentage, each with its pros and cons, are the proportion of religiously observant Knesset members, the proportion of Jewish children enrolled in religious schools, and statistical studies on "identity."
What would be called "Orthodox" in the diaspora includes what is commonly called dati (religious) or haredi (ultra-Orthodox) in Israel. The former term includes what is called "Religious Zionism" or the "National Religious" community, as well as what has become known over the past decade or so as haredi-leumi (nationalist haredi), or "Hardal," which combines a largely haredi lifestyle with nationalist ideology. (Some people, in Yiddish, also refer to observant Orthodox Jews as frum, as opposed to frei (more liberal Jews)).
Haredi applies to a populace that can be roughly divided into three separate groups along both ethnic and ideological lines: (1) "Lithuanian" (non-hasidic) haredim of Ashkenazic origin; (2) Hasidic haredim of Ashkenazic origin; and (3) Sephardic haredim. The third group is the largest, and has been the most politically active since the early 1990s.[citation needed]
Other expressions of Jewish identity fall outside of this conservative-liberal continuum.
Unlike the above denominations, which were ideological reactions that resulted from the exposure of traditional rabbinic Judaism to the radical changes of modern times, Karaite Judaism did not begin as a modern Jewish movement. The followers of Karaism believe they are the remnants of the non-Rabbinic Jewish sects of the Second Temple period, such as the Sadducees, though others contend they are a sect started in the 8th and 9th centuries. The Karaites (or "Scripturalists") accept only the Hebrew Bible and what they view as the Peshat: "Plain or Simple Meaning"; and do not accept non-biblical writings as authoritative. Some European Karaites do not see themselves as part of the Jewish community, while most do. It is interesting to note that the Nazis often did not associate Karaites with Jews, and therefore several Karaite communities were spared in WWII and exist to this day even in places such as Lithuania where Jewish communities were completely devastated. In other areas, such as Greece, the Nazis deemed Karaites as belonging to a greater Jewish tradition and abused them accordingly.
Another historical division among ethnic Jews are the Samaritans, who maintain a distinct cultural and religious identity from mainstream Judaism, and are located entirely around Mount Gerizim in the Nablus/Shechem region of the West Bank and in Holon, near Tel Aviv in Israel.
A kippah (Hebrew: כִּפָּה, plural kippot; Yiddish: יאַרמלקע, yarmulke) is a slightly-rounded brimless skullcap worn by many Jewish men while praying, eating, reciting blessings, or studying Jewish religious texts, and at all times by some Jewish men. In non-Orthodox communities, some women have also begun to wear kippot. Kippot range in size from a small round beanie that covers only the back of the head, to a large, snug cap that covers the whole crown.
Tzitzit (Hebrew: צִיציִת) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tzitzis) are special knotted "fringes" or "tassels" found on the four corners of the tallit (Hebrew: טַלִּית) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tallis), or prayer shawl. The tallit is worn by Jewish men and some Jewish women during the prayer service. Customs vary regarding when a Jew begins wearing a tallit. In the Sephardi community, boys wear a tallit from bar mitzvah age. In some Ashkenazi communities it is customary to wear one only after marriage. A tallit katan (small tallit) is a fringed garment worn under the clothing throughout the day. In some Orthodox circles, the fringes are allowed to hang freely outside the clothing.
Tefillin (Hebrew: תְפִלִּין), known in English as phylacteries (from the Greek word φιλακτέριον, meaning fortress or protection), are two square leather boxes containing biblical verses, attached to the forehead and wound around the left arm by leather straps. They are worn during weekday morning prayer by observant Jewish men and some Jewish women.[25]
A kittel (Yiddish: קיטל), a white knee-length overgarment, is worn by prayer leaders and some observant traditional Jews on the High Holidays. It is traditional for the head of the household to wear a kittel at the Passover seder, and some grooms wear one under the wedding canopy. Jewish males are buried in a tallit and sometimes also a kittel which are part of the tachrichim (burial garments).
Traditionally, Jews recite prayers three times daily, with a fourth prayer added on Shabbat and holidays. At the heart of each service is the Amidah or Shemoneh Esrei. Another key prayer in many services is the declaration of faith, the Shema Yisrael (or Shema). The Shema is the recitation of a verse from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4): Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad—"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God! The Lord is One!"
Most of the prayers in a traditional Jewish service can be recited in solitary prayer, although communal prayer is preferred. Communal prayer requires a quorum of ten adult Jews, called a minyan. In nearly all Orthodox and a few Conservative circles, only male Jews are counted toward a minyan; most Conservative Jews and members of other Jewish denominations count female Jews as well.
In addition to prayer services, observant traditional Jews recite prayers and benedictions throughout the day when performing various acts. Prayers are recited upon waking up in the morning, before eating or drinking different foods, after eating a meal, and so on.
The approach to prayer varies among the Jewish denominations. Differences can include the texts of prayers, the frequency of prayer, the number of prayers recited at various religious events, the use of musical instruments and choral music, and whether prayers are recited in the traditional liturgical languages or the vernacular. In general, Orthodox and Conservative congregations adhere most closely to tradition, and Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues are more likely to incorporate translations and contemporary writings in their services. Also, in most Conservative synagogues, and all Reform and Reconstructionist congregations, women participate in prayer services on an equal basis with men, including roles traditionally filled only by men, such as reading from the Torah. In addition, many Reform temples use musical accompaniment such as organs and mixed choirs.
Jewish holidays celebrate central themes in the relationship between God and the world, such as creation, revelation, and redemption.
Shabbat, the weekly day of rest lasting from shortly before sundown on Friday night to shortly after sundown Saturday night, commemorates God's day of rest after six days of creation.[26] It plays a pivotal role in Jewish practice and is governed by a large corpus of religious law. At sundown on Friday, the woman of the house welcomes the Shabbat by lighting two or more candles and reciting a blessing. The evening meal begins with the Kiddush, a blessing recited aloud over a cup of wine, and the Mohtzi, a blessing recited over the bread. It is customary to have challah, two braided loaves of bread, on the table. During Shabbat Jews are forbidden to engage in any activity that falls under 39 categories of melakhah, translated literally as "work." In fact the activities banned on the Sabbath are not "work" in the usual sense: They include such actions as lighting a fire, writing, using money and carrying in the public domain. The prohibition of lighting a fire has been extended in the modern era to driving a car, which involves burning fuel, and using electricity.
Jewish holy days (haggim), celebrate landmark events in Jewish history, such as the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah, and sometimes mark the change of seasons and transitions in the agricultural cycle. The three major festivals, Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot, are called "regalim" (derived from the Hebrew word "regel," or foot). On the three regalim, it was customary for the Israelites to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices in the Temple.
The High Holidays (Yamim Noraim or "Days of Awe") revolve around judgment and forgiveness.
Hanukkah, חנוכה, also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight day Jewish holiday that starts on the 25th day of Kislev (Hebrew calendar). The festival is observed in Jewish homes by the kindling of lights on each of the festival's eight nights, one on the first night, two on the second night and so on.
The holiday was called Hanukkah meaning "dedication" because it marks the re-dedication of the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Spiritually, Hanukkah commemorates the "Miracle of the Oil". According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days - which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate new oil.
Hanukkah is not mentioned in the Bible and was never considered a major holiday in Judaism, but it has become much more visible and widely celebrated in modern times, mainly because it falls around the same time as Christmas and has national Jewish overtones that have been emphasized since the establishment of the State of Israel.
Purim (Hebrew: פורים Pûrîm English: "Lots") is a joyous Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Persian Jews from the plot of the evil Haman, who sought to exterminate them, as recorded in the biblical Book of Esther. It is characterized by public recitation of the Book of Esther, mutual gifts of food and drink, charity to the poor, and a celebratory meal (Esther 9:22). Other customs include drinking wine, eating special pastries called hamantashen, dressing up in masks and costumes, and organizing carnivals and parties.
Purim is celebrated annually on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar, which occurs in February or March of the Gregorian calendar.
The core of festival and Shabbat prayer services is the public reading of the Torah, along with connected readings from the other books of the Tanakh, called Haftarah. Over the course of a year, the whole Torah is read, with the cycle starting over in the autumn, on Simchat Torah.
Synagogues are Jewish houses of prayer and study. They usually contain separate rooms for prayer (the main sanctuary), smaller rooms for study, and often an area for community or educational use. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. The Reform movement mostly refer to their synagogues as temples. Some traditional features of a synagogue are:
In addition to synagogues, other buildings of significance in Judaism include yeshivas, or institutions of Jewish learning, and mikvahs, which are ritual baths.
The laws of kashrut ("keeping kosher") are the Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with Jewish law is termed kosher, and food not in accord with Jewish law is termed treifah or treif. The Torah cites no reason for the laws of kashrut, but the rabbis have offered various explanations, including ritual purity, teaching people to control their urges, and health benefits. Kashrut involves the abstention from consuming birds and beasts that prey on other animals, and creatures that roam the sea floor eating the excretions of other animals. Major prohibitions exist on eating pork, which is considered an unclean animal, and seafood. Meat is ritually slaughtered, and meat and milk are not eaten together, based on the biblical injunction against cooking a kid in its mother's milk.
Although hygiene may have been a factor, the deeper purpose of kashrut is to lend a spiritual dimension to the physical act of eating. The idea is that Jews should not put anything into their mouths that involves spiritual "negatives" such as pain, sickness, uncleanliness, or cruelty to animals.
The laws of niddah ("menstruant", often referred to as "family purity") and various other laws regulating the interaction between men and women (e.g., tzniut, modesty in dress) are perceived, especially by Orthodox Jews, as vital factors in Jewish life, though they are rarely followed by Reform or Conservative Jews.
One of the laws governing sexual relations is that sexual intercourse cannot take place from the time a woman begins a menstrual flow until she counts seven days from its end and immerses in a ritual bath.
Life-cycle events, or rites of passage, occur throughout a Jew's life that serve to strengthen Jewish identity and bind him/her to the entire community.
See also:-Yetzer harah
The role of the priesthood in Judaism has significantly diminished since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, when priests attended to the Temple and sacrifices. The priesthood is an inherited position, and although priests no longer have any but ceremonial duties, they are still honored in many Jewish communities. Many Orthodox Jewish communities believe that they will be needed again for a future Third Temple and need to remain in readiness for future duty.
From the time of the Mishnah and Talmud to the present, Judaism has required specialists or authorities for the practice of very few rituals or ceremonies. A Jew can fulfill most requirements for prayer by himself. Some activities—reading the Torah and haftarah (a supplementary portion from the Prophets or Writings), the prayer for mourners, the blessings for bridegroom and bride, the complete grace after meals—require a minyan, the presence of ten adults (Orthodox Jews and some Conservative Jews require ten adult men; some Conservative Jews and Reform Jews include women in the minyan).
The most common professional clergy in a synagogue are:
Jewish prayer services do involve two specified roles, which are sometimes, but not always, filled by a rabbi and/or hazzan in many congregations. In other congregations these roles are filled on an ad-hoc basis by members of the congregation who lead portions of services on a rotating basis:
Many congregations, especially larger ones, also rely on a:
The three preceding positions are usually voluntary and considered an honor. Since the Enlightenment large synagogues have often adopted the practice of hiring rabbis and hazzans to act as shatz and baal kriyah, and this is still typically the case in many Conservative and Reform congregations. However, in most Orthodox synagogues these positions are filled by laypeople on a rotating or ad-hoc basis. Although most congregations hire one or more Rabbis, the use of a professional hazzan is generally declining in American congregations, and the use of professionals for other offices is rarer still.
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At its core, the Tanakh is an account of the Israelites' relationship with God from their earliest history until the building of the Second Temple (c. 535 BCE). This relationship is often a contentious one, as the Israelites struggle with their faith in God and attraction to other gods. Among the larger-than-life figures we meet in the Bible are the Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who wrestled with their beliefs —- and Moses, who led the Israelites out of Egypt.
Abraham, hailed as the first Hebrew and the father of the Jewish people, rejected the idolatry that he saw around him and embraced monotheism. As a reward for this act of faith in one God, he was promised many offspring: "Look now toward heaven and count the stars/So shall be your progeny." (Genesis 15:5) Abraham's first child was Ishmael and his second son was Isaac, whom God said would continue Abraham's work and inherit the Land of Israel (then called Canaan), after having been exiled and redeemed. God sent the patriarch Jacob and his children to Egypt, where after many generations they became enslaved. God later commanded Moses to redeem the Israelites from slavery, leading to the Exodus from Egypt. The Israelites gathered at Mount Sinai in 1313 BCE (Jewish Year 2448) and received the Torah - the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books, together with Nevi'im and Ketuvim are known as Torah Shebikhtav: literally the "Written Torah," as opposed to the Oral Torah, which refers to the Mishna and the Talmud. Eventually, God led them to the land of Israel.
God designated the descendants of Aaron, Moses' brother, to be a priestly class within the Israelite community. They first officiated in the tabernacle (a portable house of worship), and later their descendants were in charge of worship in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Once the Israelites had settled in the land of Israel, the tabernacle was planted in the city of Shiloh for over 300 years during which time God provided great men, and occasionally women, to rally the nation against attacking enemies, some of which were sent by God as a punishment for the sins of the people. This is described in the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges. As time went on, the spiritual level of the nation declined to the point that God allowed the Philistines to capture the tabernacle in Shiloh.
The people of Israel then told Samuel the prophet that they had reached the point where they needed to be governed by a permanent king, as were other nations, as described in the Books of Samuel. Samuel grudgingly acceded to this request and appointed Saul, a great but very humble man, to be their King. When the people pressured Saul into going against a command conveyed to him by Samuel, God told Samuel to appoint David in his stead.
Once King David was established, he told the prophet Nathan that he would like to build a permanent temple, and as a reward for his actions, God promised David that he would allow his son to build the temple and the throne would never depart from his children (David himself was not allowed to build the temple because he had been involved in many wars, making it inappropriate for him to build a temple representing peace). As a result, it was David's son Solomon who built the first permanent temple according to God's will, in Jerusalem, as described in the Books of Kings.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the details and interpretation of the law, which are called the Oral Torah or oral law, were originally an unwritten tradition based upon what God told Moses on Mount Sinai. However, as the persecutions of the Jews increased and the details were in danger of being forgotten, these oral laws were recorded by Rabbi Judah haNasi (Judah the Prince) in the Mishnah, redacted circa 200 CE. The Talmud was a compilation of both the Mishnah and the Gemara, rabbinic commentaries redacted over the next three centuries. The Gemara originated in two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Palestine and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud. It was compiled sometime during the fourth century in Israel. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled from discussions in the houses of study by the scholars Ravina I, Ravina II, and Rav Ashi by 500 C.E., although it continued to be edited later.
Critical scholars (who may or may not be observant Jews), reject the claim that sacred texts, including the Hebrew Bible were dictated by God; some reject the claim that they were divinely inspired. Instead, they see these texts as authored by humans and meaningful in specific historical and cultural contexts. Many of these scholars accept the general principles of the documentary hypothesis and suggest that the Torah consists of a variety of inconsistent texts edited together in a way that calls attention to divergent accounts.[27][28][29]
These scholars have various theories concerning the origins of the Israelites and Israelite religion. Most agree that the people who formed the nation of Israel during the First Temple era had origins in Mesopotamia and in Egypt, although some question whether any or all of their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt. Many suggest that during the First Temple period, the people of Israel were henotheists, that is, they believed that each nation had its own god, but that their god was superior to other gods.[30][31] Some suggest that strict monotheism developed during the Babylonian Exile, perhaps in reaction to Zoroastrian dualism.[32]
In this view, it was only by the Hellenic period that most Jews came to believe that their god was the only god (and thus, the god of everyone), and that the record of his revelation (the Torah) contained within it universal truths. This attitude reflected a growing Gentile interest in Judaism (some Greeks and Romans considered the Jews a most "philosophical" people because of their belief in a god that cannot be represented visually), and growing Jewish interest in Greek philosophy, which sought to establish universal truths, thus leading - potentially - to the idea of monotheism, at least in the sense that "all gods are one." It was also at this time that the notion of a clearly bounded Jewish nation identical with the Jewish religion formed.[33] According to one scholar, the clash between the early Christians and Pharisees that ultimately led to the birth of the Christian religion and Rabbinic Judaism reflected the struggle by Jews to reconcile their claims to national particularism and theological universalism.[34]
According to Prof. Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University, monotheism, as a state religion, is probably "an innovation of the period of the Kingdom of Judea, following the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel." Herzog states that "The question about the date at which monotheism was adopted by the kingdoms of Israel and Judea arose with the discovery of inscriptions in ancient Hebrew that mention a pair of gods: Jehovah and his Asherah. At two sites, Kuntiliet Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and at Khirbet el-Kom in the Judea piedmont, Hebrew inscriptions have been found that mention "Jehovah and his Asherah," "Jehovah Shomron and his Asherah, "Jehovah Teman and his Asherah." The authors were familiar with a pair of gods, Jehovah and his consort Asherah, and send blessings in the couple's name."[35]
The origins of Yahweh himself may be rooted in earlier Canaanite religion, which was centered on a pantheon of gods much like the Greek pantheon. Ba’al is the most recognized of this pantheon, mentioned over sixty times in the Bible.[36] Ba’al was the storm-god and the god of fertility to whom worship is repeatedly forbidden in the Tanakh.[37] In a society focused on survival, fertility represented the ultimate good. He was not, however, the head of the pantheon. That title belonged to El, the Compassionate. According to a theory originally posited by Mendenhall, a group of oppressed and self-marginalized people, the ‘apiru (a term for people who stood outside the established order, also possibly the origin of the word Hebrew) began to worship El as their primary deity.
The worship of the god known as Yahweh, not originally a Canaanite god, was probably developed in south of the Levantine region, in Midian[38] and brought to the region of the Levant by a group of nomads from the south (slaves from Egypt, according to biblical tradition). The foreign god Yahweh is believed to have become amalgamated with the native god El and taken on many of his characteristics: an aged god; a wise god; even the creator god.[39] As further evidence for the amalgamation, the Tanakh uses the word “El” for God. Notably, the Priestly source uses the term “El-Shaddai” for God. El-Shaddai most likely means “El, the mountain one,” in reference to El’s terrestrial dwelling.[40]
Israel as a new, established ethnic group is generally thought to have consolidated in the twelfth century BCE,[41] although some archaeologists, notably Israel Finkelstein, reject the claim that Israel was a coalition of oppressed peoples, arguing that the emergence of the Jewish people as a distinct ethnos did not occur until the ninth or eighth century BCE.[42]
Eventually, Judaism dropped all associations with other gods and goddesses of the Canaanite pantheon and become monotheistic. When exactly this occurred, however, is also debated. Plausible cases have been made for the continued worship, or veneration, of Asherah by the Israelites, as Yahweh’s consort, well after the amalgamation of Yahweh and El and the official orthodoxy of that preached Yahweh-alone. Asherah, El’s consort in the Canaanite pantheon, is mentioned over forty times in the Tanakh,[43] usually within the context of a condemnation of the worship of her or the use of her cult symbol, believed to be that of a stylized tree.[44] Not quite a graven image, it is believed to have been generally-tolerated (amongst the people if not the official orthodoxy) as a common tool of worship among Israelite women.[45]
Inscriptions from Kuntillet‘Ajurd and Khirbet el-Qom refer to “Yahweh and his Asherah”.[46] It is debated whether the inscriptions refer to Asherah the goddess or “the Asherah,” a symbol of Asherah’s cult. In either case, Yahweh is undoubtedly associated with Asherah. Just as Yahweh took up many traits of El’s; it is perceived as likely that he also took up El’s consort.
A likely influence on the final purge of Asherah and all Canaanite gods from Israelite religion was Josiah’s reformation, believed to have taken place in 621 BCE.[47]
The United Monarchy was established under Saul and continued under King David and Solomon with its capital in Jerusalem. After Solomon's reign the nation split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel (in the north) and the Kingdom of Judah (in the south). The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian ruler Sargon II in the late 8th century BCE with many people from the capital Samaria being taken captive to Media and the Habor valley. The Kingdom of Judah continued as an independent state until it was conquered by a Babylonian army in the early 6th century BCE, destroying the First Temple that was at the center of ancient Jewish worship. The Judean elite were exiled to Babylonia and this is regarded as the first Jewish Diaspora. Later many of them returned to their homeland after the subsequent conquest of Babylonia by the Persians seventy years later, a period known as the Babylonian Captivity. A new Second Temple was constructed, and old religious practices were resumed.
During the early years of the Second Temple, the highest religious authority was a council known as the Great Assembly, led by Ezra of the Book of Ezra. Among other accomplishments of the Great Assembly, the last books of the Bible were written at this time and the canon sealed. Hellenistic Judaism spreads to Ptolemaic Egypt from the 3rd century BC, and becomes a notable religio licita throughout the Roman Empire, until its decline in the 3rd century parallel to the rise of Gnosticism and Early Christianity.
After a Jewish revolt against Roman rule in 66 CE, the Romans all but destroyed Jerusalem. Following a second revolt, Jews were not allowed to enter the city of Jerusalem and most Jewish worship was forbidden by Rome. Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple, prayer took the place of sacrifice, and worship was rebuilt around rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities (see Jewish diaspora).
Around the first century CE there were several small Jewish sects: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes, and Christians. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, these sects vanished. Christianity survived, but by breaking with Judaism and becoming a separate religion; the Pharisees survived but in the form of Rabbinic Judaism (today, known simply as "Judaism"). The Sadducees rejected the divine inspiration of the Prophets and the Writings, relying only on the Torah as divinely inspired. Consequently, a number of other core tenets of the Pharisees' belief system (which became the basis for modern Judaism), were also dismissed by the Sadducees.
Like the Sadducees who relied only on the Torah, some Jews in the 8th and 9th centuries rejected the authority and divine inspiration of the Oral Law as recorded in the Mishnah (and developed by later rabbis in the two Talmuds), relying instead only upon the Tanakh. These included the Isunians, the Yudganites, the Malikites, and others. They soon developed oral traditions of their own, which differed from the rabbinic traditions, and eventually formed the Karaite sect. Karaites exist in small numbers today, mostly living in Israel. Rabbinical and Karaite Jews each hold that the others are Jews, but that the other faith is erroneous.
Over time Jews developed into distinct ethnic groups—amongst others, the Ashkenazi Jews (of central and Eastern Europe), the Sephardi Jews (of Spain, Portugal, and North Africa), the Beta Israel of Ethiopia and the Yemenite Jews, from the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. This split is cultural, and is not based on any doctrinal dispute, although the distance did result in minor differences in practice and prayers.
Antisemitism arose during the Middle Ages, in the form of persecutions, pogroms, forced conversion, expulsions, social restrictions and ghettoization.
This was different in quality to any repressions of Jews in ancient times. Ancient repression was politically motivated and Jews were treated no differently than any other ethnic group would have been. With the rise of the Churches, attacks on Jews became motivated instead by theological considerations specifically deriving from Christian views about Jews and Judaism.[48]
Hasidic Judaism was founded by Yisroel ben Eliezer (1700-1760), also known as the Ba'al Shem Tov (or Besht). It originated in a time of persecution of the Jewish people, when European Jews had turned inward to Talmud study; many felt that most expressions of Jewish life had become too "academic", and that they no longer had any emphasis on spirituality or joy. 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. Waves of Jewish immigration in the 1880s carried it to the United States.
Early on, there was a serious schism between Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews. European Jews who rejected the Hasidic movement were dubbed by the Hasidim as Misnagdim, (lit. "opponents"). Some of the reasons for the rejection of Hasidic Judaism were the overwhelming exuberance of Hasidic worship, its untraditional ascriptions of infallibility and alleged miracle-working to their leaders, and the concern that it might become a messianic sect. Since then differences between the Hasidim and their opponents have slowly diminished and both groups are now considered part of Haredi Judaism.
In the late 18th century CE, Europe was swept by a group of intellectual, social and political movements known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment led to reductions in the European laws that prohibited Jews to interact with the wider secular world, thus allowing Jews access to secular education and experience. A parallel Jewish movement, Haskalah or the "Jewish Enlightenment," began, especially in Central Europe, in response to both the Enlightenment and these new freedoms. It placed an emphasis on integration with secular society and a pursuit of non-religious knowledge such as reason. The thrust and counter-thrust between supporters of Haskalah and more traditional Jewish concepts eventually led to the formation of a number of different branches of Judaism: Haskalah supporters founded Reform Judaism and Liberal Judaism, while traditionalists founded what is called Orthodox Judaism, and Jews seeking a balance between the two sides founded Masorti and Conservative Judaism. A number of smaller groups came into being as well.
In most industrialized nations with modern economies, such as the United States, Israel, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina and South Africa, a wide variety of Jewish practices exist, along with a growing plurality of secular and non-practicing Jews. For example, according to the 2001 edition of the National Jewish Population Survey, in the United States' Jewish community—the world's second largest—4.3 million Jews out of 5.1 million had some sort of connection to the religion. Of that population of connected Jews, 80% participated in some sort of Jewish religious observance, but only 48% belonged to a synagogue.
Religious (and secular) Jewish movements 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 later in life, and are having fewer children, the birth rate for American Jews has dropped from over 2.0 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). Intermarriage rates range from 40-50% in the US, and only about a third of children of intermarried couples are raised as Jews. Due to intermarriage and low birth rates, the Jewish population in the US shrank from 5.5 million in 1990 to 5.1 million in 2001. This is indicative of the general population trends among the Jewish community in the Diaspora, but a focus on total population obscures growth trends in some denominations and communities, such as Haredi Judaism.
The Baal teshuva movement is a movement of Jews who have "returned" to religion or become more observant.
Historians and theologians regularly review the changing relationship between some Christian groups and the Jewish people; the article on Christian-Jewish reconciliation studies one recent issue.
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Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religion and to administer their internal affairs, but subject to certain conditions.[49] They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to Muslims.[49] Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims.[50] Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The most degrading one was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Qur'an or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic.[51] Jews rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and they were mostly free in their choice of residence and profession.[52] Indeed, the period 712-1066 under the Ummayads and the Abbasids has been called the Golden Age of Jewish culture in Spain. The notable examples of massacre of Jews include the killing or forcibly conversion of them by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century.[53] Notable examples of the cases where the choice of residence was taken away from them includes confining Jews to walled quarters (mellahs) in Morocco beginning from the 15th century and especially since the early 19th century.[54] There were some forced conversions in the 12th century under the Almohad dynasty of North Africa and al-Andalus as well as in Persia.[55]
Standard antisemitic themes have become commonplace in the propaganda of Arab Islamic movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Refah Partisi."[56]
There are some organizations that combine elements of Judaism with those of other religions. The most well-known of these is the Messianic Judaism, a Christian movement which was developed as a better attempt at evangelizing Jews, it members include ethnic Jews, but mostly gentiles (non-Jews), historically sponsored and funded almost exclusively by Christian Evangelical organizations, who promote the belief that Jews have to accept Jesus as the Messiah, for Second Coming of Jesus to occur. These groups typically combine Christian theology and Christology with a thin veneer of Jewish religious practices. The most controversial of these groups is the American Jews for Jesus which actively proselytizes ethnic Jews through numerous missionary campaigns in major American cities.
Other examples of syncretism include Judeo-Paganists, a loosely-organized set of Jews who incorporate pagan or Wiccan beliefs with some Jewish religious practices, like Messianic Judaism; Jewish Buddhists, another loosely-organized group that incorporates elements of Asian spirituality in their faith; and some Renewal Jews who borrow freely and openly from Buddhism, Sufism, Native American religion, and other faiths.
The Jewish mystical practice of Kabbalah has given rise to a movement, represented by the Kabbalah Centre. This center uses teachers from multiple religions.
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| Translations: Judaism |
Français (French)
n. - judaïsme
Deutsch (German)
n. - Judentum
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ιουδαϊσμός
Italiano (Italian)
ebraismo, giudaismo
Português (Portuguese)
n. - judaísmo (m)
Русский (Russian)
иудаизм, еврейская религия
Español (Spanish)
n. - judaísmo
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - judendom(en), judaism(en)
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
犹太教, 犹太文明
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 猶太教, 猶太文明
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 유대교 , 유대정신, 유대인
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ユダヤ教, ユダヤ主義, ユダヤ人
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) الديانه اليهوديه
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - הדת היהודית, היהודים
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