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History of Judaism
The History of Judaism is the history of the Jewish people, their religion and culture, tracing back to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob of the 18th c. BCE. The earliest mention of Israel as a people was discovered in an inscription on the Merneptah Stele from the 1200s BCE.
1,396 Questions
What is the name of the Jewish God that starts with Y?
YHWH. Also known as the ineffable name of God. Traditionally not supposed to be
said out loud; or replaced with a gong, cymbal crash or other drum hit to emphasize
that the name of God is beyond our grasp/understanding.
Today it is pronounced "yahweh" pron. yah'weigh ... and has been copted by some
Christian religions as Jehovah.
Comment (by another contributor)
Pretty good, except for the gong part. If we're talking about the Jewish concept ...
and that's how the question was posed ... then it must be mentioned that you'll never
encounter a gong, cymbal crash, or the like during any Jewish worship. I'm pretty sure
that part must have leaked into the first Answer from some central Asian studies.
Where can I buy beef dripping from like you useto buyin the 1940s?
Up until a year or so ago you could buy lard from a supermarket - however they all seem to have stopped stocking it. Perhaps because they are on a healthy diet drive?
I use it to feed the wild birds!!!
What is the significance of the various elements of the Seder meal to Jewish history and tradition?
Here is the symbolism of the items on the Seder plate:
The bitter herbs (maror) symbolize the harsh slavery which the Israelites suffered in Egypt. Either horseradish or romaine lettuce is traditionally used for maror.
Charoset - A sweet mixture representing the mortar used by the Jewish slaves to build the storehouses of Egypt. In Ashkenazi Jewish homes, charoset is traditionally made from chopped nuts, grated apples, cinnamon, and sweet red wine.
Karpas - A vegetable other than bitter herbs, traditionally parsley, which is dipped into salt water at the beginning of the Seder. The dipping of a simple vegetable into salt water (which represents tears) recalls the pain felt by the Jewish slaves in Egypt.
Beitzah - A hard-boiled egg, symbolizing the korban chagigah (festival sacrifice) that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and roasted and eaten as part of the meal on Seder night. Although both the Pesach sacrifice and the chagigah were meat offerings, the chagigah is commemorated by an egg, a symbol of mourning.
Z'roa - A roasted lamb or goat shank-bone, chicken wing, or chicken neck; symbolizing the korban Pesach (Pesach sacrifice), which was a lamb that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, then roasted and eaten as part of the meal on Seder night.
Pesach (Passover) is important to us since in it we relive the Exodus from Egypt and our birth as a nation, both of which were preparations for receiving the Torah from God.
The highlight of Passover is the Seder meal. This meal is of great importance in Judaism. It is a 3325-year old continuous tradition that began on the night of the Exodus from Egypt (see Exodus chapter 12), and is fully detailed in our ancient Oral Traditions (Talmud, chapter Arvei Pesachim).
The Seder meal is one of those occasions, like Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, that Jews all over the world, Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike, observe in common. During the Seder, we keep the essential mitzva and customs of handing Jewish traditions down to the next generation, with the traditional Seder foods and the ceremony of reading the Passover Haggadah which retells the events of the Exodus.
During the Seder meal, other traditional foods are eaten in addition to the matzah: bitter herbs, parsley, wine and haroset (see below). Salt water, a roasted egg, and a bit of roasted meat are also on the table.
During all the days of Passover, matzah (unleavened bread) is eaten; while leavened foods such as bread, cake, cookies, cereal and pasta are forbidden. Certain prayers are added in the synagogue services, and the Torah is read each day.
What was the middle passage and what was it was about?
The middle passage is part of the triangle trade. it was the middle leg of the Triangular Trade route used by the European merchants. The African slaves were viewed as cargo by the merchants and were packed into the ships with no regard to their basic human rights.
Slave ships could be either 'tight pack' or 'loose pack'. A 'tight pack' could hold many more slaves than the 'loose pack' because the amount of space allocated to each slave was considerably less, but more slaves would die on route to America so there would be less slaves to sell .
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It is when the slaves were taken by Europe and america from the African traders. Crossing the Atlantic on large boats, they were chained to the floor and had very little room to move. There would often be hundreds kept just on the deck of the ship. Slaves on the ships had as little as a 40% chance of actually making the journey alive to be sold as slaves.
Many slaves became seasick or developed diarrhea. Unable to move because they were chained into their positions, the slave's deck became a stinking mass of human waste. Slaves who had developed sores where their chains had rubbed their skin, had festering wounds often with maggots eating away their flesh.
Conditions on the slave ships were so bad that many slaves decided they would prefer to die, and tried to starve themselves by refusing to eat or try to jumping overboard. However, slaves that would not eat were whipped or force fed and the traders and ship owners began fixing nets to the sides of the boat so that the slaves could not jump overboard. Slaves had no choice but to endure the horrific conditions.
In the Jewish view why is the Exodus unproven?
The Ipuwer papyrus describes Egypt's experiencing the Plagues: "Pestilence is throughout the land....the river is blood, death is not scarce...there is no food...neither fruit nor herbs can be found...barley has perished...all is ruin...the statues are burned" (Professor John van Seters, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology no. 50).
The plagues were also described by ancient historians, including Herodotus and Diodorus. The Exodus is mentioned by Strabo, Berosus, Artapanus, Numenius, Justin, and Tacitus.
But in any case, few nations are content to record embarrassing setbacks honestly. Even today, British and American textbooks describe the American Revolution in very different ways.
An example of the above principle:
The destruction of Sennacherib's army at the walls of Jerusalem was denied by secular theorists, because the Assyrians made no mention of it. But then it was found that Berosus and Herodotus both state that Sennacherib's military campaign in Judea ended in plague and defeat. It should not surprise us that the Assyrians themselves didn't record their own losses.
It is only the Hebrew Bible, because of its Divine origin, that exposes the faults of its own people and even magnifies them.
In no other religious text can one find such openness. None of the Israelites were immune to strong criticism: Abraham (Genesis 16:5), Reuben (Gen.ch.35), Simeon and Levi (Gen.ch.34 and 49), Judah (Gen.ch.38), Joseph's brothers (Gen.ch.37), Moses (Numbers ch.20), Aaron (Exodus 32:2-4), Samson (Judges 14:1-3), Eli's sons (1 Samuel 2:12), Samuel's sons (1 Samuel 8:1-3), Saul (1 Samuel ch.15), David (2 Samuel ch.11-12), Solomon (1 Kings ch.11), and many others.
Who had more rights in Israelite society men or women?
Contrary to popular belief the mosaic law took great care to look out for women. Men by number may have had more "rights" but thats aside the point women were well cared for for the most part, and in ordinary times always had everything they needed taken care of them. The israelite culture why by and large a familistic culture, as man near eastern cultures of its time were. Their laws namely reflected the values of the people, protecting and propagating house, hearth, and healthy offspring.
No one, not even the king, was above the law.
Why did some African Americans hate Jews in the 20th century?
Prejudiced Blacks exist, just like prejudiced Jews exist.
How has the religion of Judaism influenced and contributed to Zionism?
When Zionism was first debated, it was debated outside of the Jewish religious circles. It came exclusively from members of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and it was created to mirror the various nationalisms of Europe, such as German and Italian nationalism. Zionism described the Jews as a nation or people, with the particular work Judensvolk - Jewish people. Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Jabotinsky, Trumpeldor, and Weizmann and other leading Zionists were all (1) Atheist or Agnostic, (2) never used scriptural references when discussing the Jewish State - except as evidence that Jews used to live in the Holy Land and their longing for it, (3) never sought rabbinical or community approval, and (4) wished to create a democratic state in violation of Halakha (which provides for the theocratic monarchy). Zionism only used Judaism in the most general sense, such as using Jewish symbols such as the blue and white from the tallit to form a flag or using the Jewish star as a national symbol.
In fact, only a small minority of religious Jews accepted Zionism before Israeli independence, led by Rav. Avraham Kook in the 1930s. He claimed that Zionism was supportable as an intermediate stepping stone to an eventual Jewish religious state. However, Rav Kook and the Religious Zionist movement did have increasing sway in Israel after 1967 when it became tied with Israeli government initiatives to populate the West Bank and Judaize East Jerusalem (in response to the Jewish depopulation during the Jordanian Occupation). The Religious Zionists use the religious narrative from Rav Kook, but take it one step further. In many cases, any Israeli national policy which would controvert the rise of the theocratic Jewish state in all of Mandatory Palestine should be opposed.
Most Orthodox Jews do not consider Israel to be a Jewish State, but rather a non-religious state run by Jews. It is worth noting that religious Judaism has also critiqued Zionism and sees the state apparatus as something designed to remove the uniqueness of the Jewish mission. Some take this to its farthest extreme and declare Israel to be a blasphemy without having a Messiah.
Liberal Judaism also has mixed opinions on Zionism. Some Jews have replaced devotion to God and religion with a strong patriotism to Israel and Zionism as its founding ideology and history. Other Liberal Jews take a view that Judaism supports liberal thought and development and so supporting a democracy like Israel is worth doing. Still others reject Zionism as a valid political avenue for Jewish self-realization and development.
How did the Holocaust affect Zionism?
Zionism did not affect the Holocaust. The Nazis were anti-Jewish in a racist sense. They didn't draw any distinction between practising and non-practising Jews, or between Zionists and non-Zionists. On the other hand, it is often said that the Holocaust had the effect of strengthening Zionism.
What horrific event led to an increase in Zionism?
The Holocaust. This made many more non-Jews sympathetic to Zionism as well as convincing the more religious Jews of the necessity of the Jewish State.
What is Nazism in simple terms?
Nazism is the pervasive belief that one race has the right and privilege to expand militarily into its neighbors to create living space for the desirable race and to ethnically cleanse all those who do not belong to the desirable race.
Jews in Germany and Austria, before WW2, spoke German. Most Jews in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, and some in Western Europe as well, spoke Yiddish, a language derived from an older form of German, with many Hebrew and Slavic loan words. German is written in a variant of the Latin Alphabet. Yiddish is written in the Hebrew Alphabet.
Many Jews living in other parts of the world, who had migrated from central and Eastern Europe, also spoke German or Yiddish as well as the languages of their new countries.
On the other hand, Jews with long roots outside that region did not speak Yiddish. Jews in the Mediterranean world descended from the Spanish expulsion in 1492 often spoke, and still speak, an old form of Spanish written with Hebrew characters called Ladino. And Jews in the Arab lands had Arabic, sometimes written with Hebrew characters.
What responsibility did the Judenrat have?
The judenrats had to keep an eye over the Jews in the area they kept on, then they made them stay away from running from ghetto and let them some food and medicine when needed.
What did the ancient Roman Emperor Hadrian do to cause a Jewish revolt?
The ancient Roman emperor Hadrian tried to create a new Roman colony which caused a Jewish revolt.
Jewish answer:
As bad as the other Roman caesars and governors were with their crushing taxation (Talmud, Yoma 8b), Hadrian was one of the worst. He decreed against the practice of Judaism altogether and killed some of the leading Torah sages. See the attached Related Link (in Hebrew).
What problems did Jewish people experience when they left the ghettos and entered Christian society?
That depended largely on how tolerant 'Christian society' was.
Minorities targeted by pogroms in Russia in the late 1800s?
The pogroms were directed specifically against Jews.
How did ancient Hebrews literature influence ancient Egypt literature?
Ancient Hebrew literature had no impact on Ancient Egyptian literature. The Egyptians were thoroughly not interested in Hebrew literature.
Russian Jews are Jews who lived in Russia, usually meaning the Russian Empire, which included many now independent countries in central and Eastern Europe.
How many gods did the Jews worship?
From the time of Abraham, one God. Abraham worshiped "the Lord God of Heaven and Earth" (Genesis 14:22 and 24:3) and complained about the Philistines' lack of fear of God (Genesis 20:11).
Jacob confiscated the idolatrous images taken from Shechem (Genesis 35:2) and got rid of them (Genesis 35:4); and refrained from invoking the gods of Nahor (Genesis 31:53). Rachel pilfered Laban's statue-images (Genesis 31:19) in order to prevent him from idolatry (Rashi commentary, ibid.). Joseph placed his hope in the God of the Forefathers (Genesis 50:24).
At the time of the Exodus, God wrecked the Egyptian idols (Exodus 12:12) and warned against idolatry (Exodus 22:19). Later, Moses characterized the Golden Calf as "a great sin" (Exodus 32:21, 30) and punished the worshipers (Exodus ch.32). During the rest of his lifetime and that of Joshua (Judges 2:7), no incidents of Israelite idolatry were reported.
There were times when some (or many) of the Israelites went astray after foreign gods (Judges ch.2), but that is not Judaism - it's the abandonment of Judaism.
Was Pseudepigrapha the most important literature produced in the intertestamental period?
No, the Septuagint was.
What is King Solomon's Grand Mother's Name?
We do not know what King Solomom's grandmother's name was.
Which laws served as the first steps in Hitler's plan to eliminate Germany's Jewish community?
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, were the first major steps in stripping the Jews' civil rights in Germany.
