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JUDAISM, a brief HistoryI’m not Jewish. The members of the Nauset Fellowship hold many views but tend towards secular humanism. I put together this talk and the longer online document for our mutual enlightenment. It’s based on the books in the online bibliography and a number of web resources. Its only claim to accuracy is that much of the information is repeated in more than one source, and I got some advice from a few people who know more about it than I do. JUDAISM
Judaism is the religious culture of the Jews, one of the world’s oldest religious traditions. There i’s no one way to understand contemporary Judaism and no one way to live the Jewish life.
The term Judaism didn’t exist in pre-modern Hebrew. The Jews spoke of Torah, God’s instructions to Israel, a world view and a way of life, and of Halakhah (Hebrew for “the way”), which included Jewish law, custom, and practice. These guided and still guide all of their individual and communal existence.
HOW DOES JUDAISM DIFFER FROM CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM?
Humanists tend to see all religions as well-intentioned and as having some members we might all look up to. How is Judaism different from Christianity and Islam? We could make a comparison chart, but there would be much overlap and many exceptions. For me, Islam represents top-down authority. Christianity is largely about personal salvation through Jesus Christ. Judaism is about a people, the people perhaps, but by extension all people. Jews think less of the salvation of an individual soul than of building spiritual life in a community. Love for God has to lead to a love for others. God's plan to bring redemption to both Jews and the non-Jewish world. Love for God has to lead to a love for real people. The revelation of the Torah shows God’s belief in the human capacity to know Him and to obey his Laws without divine intermediaries. And God's plan is to bring redemption to both Jews and the non-Jewish world.
“It is not because you were greater than any people that the Lord set His love upon you and chose you, for you were the smallest of peoples.” Deut. vii. The idea of the chosen people is universal; it invokes duties rather than bestows privileges.
THE ORIGIN OF JUDAISM The first religion was animism, acknowledging the spirits in the woods and the stones. Hindusim elevated the spirits to Gods. The religion of ancient Israel was much like that of its Middle Eastern neighbors. Abraham worshiped El or Yahweh, athe High God of Canaan. Temples associated with the patriarchs existed on various hilltops, and Moses’s Ark of the Covenant was carried from one place to another. The Israelites were not monotheists until the 6th century. They worshipped a chief god, Yahweh, who ruled over lesser gods. The Mosaic Commandment says, “You shall have no other Gods before me.” A modern preacher might say that means money or power, but for Moses it meant Gods. Judaism originated in Palestine, but there are now Jewish communities throughout the world as a result of migration and exile there are Jewish communities throughout the world. The estimated world Jewish population in the year 2000 was 13.2 million, of whom 5.7 million lived in the United States and 4.8 million in Israel. None of the great religions is monolithic, but Judaism has been less divided and, in historical times, less violent than Christianity and Islam. A passage of Midrash says, the divine fire burned brightly in the Jewish soul without destroying itself by seeking to destroy others. The nature of Judaism, as more a religion of practice rather than of beliefs, and the constant pressure of persecution, have helped keep it relatively united. Persecution of the Jews has been almost unrelieved from the beginning of the Common Era until the Nazi Holocaust, the Shoah and beyond. It is impossible to understand Judaism without understanding anti-Semitism. The best source for the Christian persecution of the Jews is Constantine’s Sword, by the Roman Catholic author James Carroll. THE BIBLICAL LEGEND
The Orthodox rabbi, scholar, and novelist, Chaim Potok, in the Introduction to his book Wanderings, Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews, summarizes Jewish history in a single packed paragraph:
“In the schools that served me as daytime homes during the early decades of my life, I was taught my father’s Judaism and Jewish history: the taken-for-granted obligation to observe the commandments of God; the story of the creation and the eating of the apple and the first murder and the Flood;
I learned of Abraham and the covenant with God; a son was nearly sacrificed by a father in a gesture of ultimate faith (I remember how I trembled the first time I read that chilling story); patriarchs roamed a promised land; strong-willed women loved, quarreled, and connived; brothers fought, and one was sold into slavery and became second in command to the great pharaoh of Egypt;
then the long enslavement and the coming of Moses; plagues; freedom; the crossing of a miraculously parted sea and the Revelation of the Law on a desolate mountaintop; the wandering in the wilderness; the deaths of Aaron and Moses;
the conquest of Canaan by Joshua; tribal military chieftains called “Judges”; aged Samuel; tragic Saul; heroic David conquering Jerusalem; wise Solomon building the first Temple; evil Israelite kings and fearless spokesmen for God called prophets; the destruction of Jerusalem because of our own sins; exile to Babylon; return;
Ezra and a new covenant with God; Nehemiah and a new Jerusalem; the age of Alexander and the Hellenizing Syrians; the brave Maccabee rebels; then Rome and rabbis and blood and death and the long exile in which my father and mother and sisters and brother and I were now a link in the chain of generations leading to the Messiah.” The covenant (or berith) between God and the Jewish people is a major concept in Judaism. After failing to establish a covenant with all of rebellious humanity God turned to the people of Israel. If they would acknowledged Him as their Godking and legislator and agreed to obey His laws, he would make Israel His particular people. This agreement would be a model for the entire human race. At Mt. Sinai, the Israelites became a nation living under a Law, the Torah, given through Moses as the word of God, rather than a tribe held together by faith in a high God.. After the conquest of Canaan and thea brilliant monarchy, the Kingdom of Solomon and David, the nation lost hold of their religion and slid into idolatry, political collapse, and and destructionsevere scolding by the prophets. A remnant would survive exile and hope eventually to return to Israel to live there by the Law of Moses and be a light to the nations. HISTORY
Many dates have been assigned to these events, but the archaeological consensus is that the early chapters of the bibleical story areis not historical. TheyIt reflects the archaeological record of seventh century BCE Palestine and later, the period during which the Torah began to be written down. This isIt is an epic saga compounded of history, legend, folk tale, anecdote, propaganda, prophecy, and poetry, which was intended to create a national identity.
But whether the Biblical narrative to this point is accurate history, just merely reflects some historical events, or is purely mythological, its religious value is the sameunaffected. This is the Judeo-Christian story, and it has meaning and value for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, for theists and humanists. THE BABYLONIAN EXILE By the 6th century BCE we enter recorded history. When King Zedekiah of Judah rebelled against Babylon in 587 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and carried off much of its population, leaving Jerusalem desolate. We never again hear of the Ark of the Covenant, except in the movies. The exile of the Israelites to Babylon in 586 BCE was a major turning point in their religion . which lay the foundation for the traditional biblical Pentateuch, the prophets, the later historical books and forms of worship. In Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah told the captives that God would make a new covenant with them, writing the Law in their hearts, and that each individual must take personal responsibility for its obedience. As a substitute for serving the divine presence in the Temple, the Israelites created a community in which God would be present whereever they lived according to His Law. The Book of Second Isaiah, written around this time, contains the first clear assertion of monotheism, the belief that only the God of Israel exists and rules universal history and the destiny of all nations.
From now on, the majority of Jews would lived outside of Palestine. With no state and no temple, they turned to their writings, the laws and records from the past. The individual must study and know the Law to obey it.
During the exile, ordinary Jews first practiced the chief elements of their religion: circumcision set them apart, the Sabbath became the focus of their week, regular feasts were held through the year, and the rules of purity, diet, and cleanliness were followed.
The Jews were the first society to create a linear history for the explanation of their destiny and of God’s intentions and wishes for them. They didn’t believe in the impersonal forces of nature except as a part of the divine-human drama. God was the sole cause of all things.
They Jews were among the first people to find words for the deepest human emotions, for suffering, spiritual despair, and anxiety. They were observant of human nature and ethically consistent and believed in the equality and dignity of every human being.
THE PERSIAN PERIOD
Under Persian rule from 500 to 300 BCE many Jews returned to Palestine andJews were generally free to practice their religion. This period saw the emergence of the Jewish scriptures in almost their modern form, the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. Thea new covenant was now based not on revelation or preaching but on study of the written texts.
THE GREEKS From 320-168 BCE, with the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Jews were under the reign of the Greek Ptolemies & Seleucids. The Greeks offered a universal culture. An individual was a Greek, a “Helene”, not by inheritance but by choice. Some Jews wanted to eliminate the from Jewish Law any elements laws and customs that kept them from participation in Greek culture, such as the food laws and the prohibition against nudity. A Jewish-Greek culture developed, particularly in Alexandria in Egypt. As the influence of Greek culture increased in Judah, other Jews resisted and wished to keep or recapture the Mosaic traditions.
THE HASMONIANS
The introduction into the Middle East of Greek culture put the other cultures of the region on the defensive. he Selucid King Antiochus Epiphanes banned certain Jewish rites and traditions in an effort to reduce this conflict. The HasmonMaccabean revolt of 1685 to 142 BCE began as a civil war between Jewish Hellenizers and conservatives. It resulted in 80 years of Judean political independence from Syria. Between the isolationists and the Hellenizers and the nativists there was a broad group of pious Jews, the Pharisees (meaning “those who separated themselves”), who in the tradition of Josiah, Ezekiel, and Ezra, hadn’t objected to the Persians, and thought religion flourished best when pagans ran the government. The Pharisees repudiated the Hasmonean royal religious establishment, translated scripture into Greek, and made converts. They developed the Oral Torah, traditionally considered to have been revealed to Moses at Sinai..
Pharisiism was based on popular education. The synagogue appeared during this period as a place to study the Torah. It was the prototype of the church and the mosque. Judaism was far more homogeneous now, with a puritanical and fundamentalist flavor. The synagogue idea spread. All Jewish boys were taught the Torah. Phariscism was based on popular education.
THE ROMANS The Jewish kingdom of the Hasmonians forcibly converted neighbors to their demanding and intolerant faith. This was not acceptable to the multicultural Romans. In 63 BCE, Rome made Judea a client state. King Herod ruled in Palestine under Roman authority from 37 BCE until his death in 4 BCE. There were various responses to Roman rule, ranging from armed revolt (the Zealots), to withdrawal from the world (the Essenes), integration with Greek society (the Sadduccees), and preserving tradition in a new situation (the Pharisees). Herod exterminated the Hasmoneons, separated church and state, and reduced the power of rigorist Judaism. He spent and built generously. He intended to show the world that the Jews were a gifted and civilized people. He supported Jews already out in the Diaspora. He built a new and bigger Temple but. He downgraded the Saduceean high priest. The death of his grandson Herod Agrippa, known as Herod the Great, in 44 CE ended the last phase of stable Jewish rule in Palestine until the founding of the State of Israel in the mid-twentieth century. Many Jews in the Diaspora and in Palestine accepted Roman rule, but many didn’t, and there were protests. Clashes between Roman/Greek and Jewish culture were reflected in Hebrew apocalyptic writings which predicted the end of the empire and the rise of the Son of Man and preached xenophobia, and martyrdom, the last judgment, the elect, the coming of the Messiah as a political leader, and the Kingdom of God. Many of these ideas were already present in the book of Isaiah and were seized on by the Pharisees and later adopted by Christianity.. Most assumed the Messiah would be a political leader.
THE PHARISEES
The Pharisees were the most progressive Jews at the beginning of the the first century CE and had developed an advanced spirituality. They believed that all of Israel was called to be a holy nation of priests and that God could be experienced in the humblest home as well as in the Temple. He was present in the smallest details of daily life and could be approached without elaborate ritual. Worshippers could atone for their sins by acts of loving kindness rather than by animal sacrifice. Charity was the most important commandment of the law.
The Pharisaic Rabbi Hillel (80 BCE – 30 CE) said the essence of the Torah was not its letter but its spirit, which was summed up in the Golden Rule: “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah. ,” he said, “the rest is commentary.”
REVOLT, DEFEAT, DIASPORA
The Romans had been allies of the Jews and had allowed them priveleges such as not working on the Sabbath. Roman hostility began towards the end of the first millennium BCE because of the Jews’ refusal to practice state worship. Relations deteriorated rapidly from the death of Nero onward.
There were other points of contention. The Greco-Roman world thought circumcision was barbarous. The Jews’ diet and cleanliness laws prevented social relations with non-Jews. Jews kept to themselves and were felt by the Romans to be enemies of their multi-racial, multi-national society. Many libels were spread about the Jews, such as that they were wanderers and had no home in Palestine and that they worshipped asses and even made secret human sacrifices. The Romans’ destruction of Herod’s Temple in CE 70 and their suppression of a second Jewish revolt from 132 to 135 CE led by Simon Bar Kokhba were catastrophes for Judaism. The priestly leadership was decisively discredited. In this context, the rabbinic movement fully emerged. Because the Jewish people had lost political control, the rabbis emphasized community and spiritual life. They taught that by conformity to the Torah in daily life through study, prayer, and observance, the individual Jew could improve the world while waiting for God to bring about the messianic redemption of all Israel. Some rabbis believed that if all Jews conformed to the Torah, the Messiah would be compelled to come. Institutionally, the synagogue and the rabbinic study house replaced the Temple that had been destroyed. The first century C.E. Jewish Revolt against Roman occupation ended with the destruction of Herod’s Temple and the fall of Jerusalem. During the three-year Roman siege of Jerusalem, the inhabitants of the Holy City were divided. Some were wearied from the hopelessness of the situation. Others, although refusing to surrender, fought among themselves. The Pharisees wanted only to live peacefully so they could study and transmit the Torah. Tradition says that Hillel’s student, the Pharisaic rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, deputy head of Sanhedrin, had himself smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin during the rebellion with the connivance of the Romans. He had opposed the revolt. He believed God and faith were better served under a secular state. He set up a center for the regulation of Jewish religion in a vinyard at Javna around 66-70 C.E. Here Rabbinic Judaism truly began. The rabbi and the synagogue became the principle institutions of Judaism, which was now, in effect, a congregationalist faith. Ben Zakkai established the calendar, the standard prayers, and the rules for fasting and ceremonies. The details of daily worship were very important to him. He said, “If you are planting trees, and someone tells you the Messiah has come, put the saplings in first, then go and welcome the Messiah.” He also said, “Grieve not, we have an atonement equal to the Temple, the doing of loving deeds, for it is said, ‘I desire love and not sacrifice.” Jews must turn away from violence and create a united community. When two or three Jews studied harmoniously together, the divine presence was with them. To show disrespect to any human being who had been created in God’s image was seen by the rabbis as a denial of God. Destroying one human life was equivalent to annihilating the world, while to save a life redeemed the whole of humanity. To humiliate anyone was equivalent to murder.
Yavneh became a major center of Torah learning, the first of several such cities where Torah was the focus of Jewish life. Here Jewish spiritual leaders prepared for a long and difficult exile. The precedent of moving the Torah center from Jerusalem to Yavneh, and then to other cities in the Diaspora, Babylon in particular, (lands outside of Eretz Israel) sustained the Jewish people in the centuries that followed.
THE RABBINIC TRADITION
The Rabbinical Judaism developed out of the Pharasiac movement and in response to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. Concepts and practices were reinterpreted for a people in exile. Judaism is not simply the religion of the Hebrew Bible. Modern Judaism is ultimately derived from the rabbinic movement of the first centuries of the Christian era in Palestine and Babylonia. Rabbi, in Aramaic and Hebrew, means “my teacher.” The rabbis were experts in studying Jewish Scripture and tradition. Rabbinic Judaism maintained that God had revealed a two-fold Torah to Moses on Sinai. In addition to the written Torah, he revealed an Oral Torah which was then faithfully transmitted by word of mouth in an unbroken chain from master to disciple and preserved now among the rabbis themselves. For the rabbis, the oral Torah was written down in the Mishnah (“that which is learned”). This was the earliest document of rabbinic literature, edited in Palestine at the turn of the 3rd century C.E. Subsequent rabbinic study of the Mishnah in Palestine and Babylonia generated the Talmuds (“that which is studied”), wide-ranging commentaries on the Mishnah. The Babylonian Talmud, edited about the 6th century C.E., became the foundation document of rabbinic Judaism
In Rabbinic Judaism, study was as important as meditation in other traditions. It was a spiritual quest, not so much for intellectual grasp as in pursuit of new insights. Rabbinic exegesis (midrash) could go even further than the original text. It was said, “Matters that were not disclosed to Moses, were disclosed to Rabbi Akiba and his generation.” The full truth of the Golden Rule, for instance, could be found only by putting it into practice in daily life. Study was a dynamic encounter with God. -- This can be seen clearly in the novels of Chaim Potok about contemporary hasidic Judaism. -- Revelation was renewed every time a Jew confronted the text and applied it to his own situation. There were no orthodox beliefs, only orthodox practices. Rabbinic exegesis (midrash) could go even further than the original text. It was said, “Matters that were not disclosed to Moses, were disclosed to Rabbi Akiba and his generation.” The full truth of the Golden Rule, for instance, could be found only by putting it into practice in daily life.
Not even the voice of God could tell a Jew what to think. The teaching of God had been given on Mt. Sinai and was the possession of every Jew. Ultimate reality was transcendent and ineffable. Jews spoke little of God directly. Each Jew had a different experience of God.
TALMUDIC TIMES (1st to 6th CENTURY) Conditions were harsh In the first millenium of the Common Era cin Talmudic times. Rabbinic onditions were harsh for Jews. Rabbinic Judaism was the product of defeat and exile. But there was enough stability for Jews throughout the Roman world for the. It was said that there is no reward in the world for observing the commandments. Natural events don’t reflect the moral relationship between humans and God. The only reward for performing a mitzvah is the performance of the mitzvah itself. Talmud, the Oral Torah and its commentaries, the principal sacred Jewish text besides the Torah, to be composed and written down. Most of the Jewish sacred texts are still studied today.
THE JEWISH SACRED TEXTS
Tanakh – Torah, Neviim (prophets), Ketuvim (writings) 7th-2d c. BCE,
(the Hebrew Bible)
Talmud – the Oral Torah, written down 1st-6th c. CE, including:
Mishna - to 200, the 1st compilation of Oral Torah
Gemara – commentary on Mishna to 6th c.
Midrash – interpretation, (in sermons, poetry, etc.) from the beginning
to the present.
Responsa – case law
Zohar – book(s) of mystical Kabbalah, 13th C.
Codes and compilations (e.g., the 16th c. compilation of halakah, the Shulchan Arukh of Joseph Caro and the 12th c. Guide
for the Perplexed of Maimonides), and many modern explanations and compilations.
JUDAISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES (7th to– 14th CENTURY)
Rabbinical Judaism is essentially a method whereby ancient laws are adapted to changing conditions. During the Middle Ages most Jews were forced to be town dwellers. They became in effect the first Europeans. The social influence of Jews in the Middle ages was more important than their numbers. Most Rabbis had professions as merchantsbusiness men and traders. They were a major link between cities and towns and became in effect the first Europeans.
Barred from owning lands, Jews were forced into trade and finance. Money lending was forbidden for Christians but not for Jews, and this became was both a solution and a problem for themJews.
Jews were often protected by the state, particularly in Arab-Muslim territories, and by many of the popes, because they were useful and productive citizens.
Trouble came when they were seen as economic rivals to non-Jews and when waves of Christian or Islamic religious enthusiasm overrode the state. With the Crusades and the Inquisition, exile, persecution and pogroms became common.
Jews were driven out of England in 1290, France 1394 Germany and Italy between 1350 and 1450 and went mainly to the Slavic kingdoms in the East..
15TH CENTURY and BEYOND
Jews were expelled from Spain and North Africa in 1492. The remaining European Jews were forced into ghettos.
Under this kind of pressure, currents which rivaled the Mosaic tradition arose in Medieval Jewry, such as supersition among the poor and rationalism and mystical kaballah among the rich.
KABBALAH
Kabbalah is the theory and practice of Jewish mysticism which involves the supposed inner, secret meaning of the Jewish religious writings and culture. The main text is the Zohar and the teachings of Isaac Luria (1534-1572). Kaballah is studied by many Jews today and is of particular importance to Hasidic Jews.
HASIDIC JUDAISM Hasidism arose from kabala, magic, mysticism, and poetry. Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (1698 -1760), the Baal Shem Tov or BESHT, "master of a good name" a term usually applied to a saintly Jew, who was also a wonder-worker, was a man of great learning. He inspired a romantic revival within Judaism, an approach to God through meditation and fervent joy. He taught that man's relationship with God depended on immediate religious experience, in addition to knowledge and observance of the details of the Torah and Talmud. Everyone could please god with the offering of love, the a service of the heart, joy, song, and fervid worship in company, under a rebbe, a beloved and holy leader with cabalistic powers. Hasidism spread in the ghettos, emphasizing angels, miracles, and secret incantations. Men rose to fill the role of rRebbe all throught the pales and ghettos of Eastern Europe. The rebbes founded dynasties. To this day, Hasids maintain the dress and manners of the 18th century polish upper-classesghetto. They were committed to learning. Many came to the US in force to escape thefrom Nazis germany. Hasidism has yet to meet the shock of the Enlightenment which the rest of Judaism has met and moved beyond. The Ba'al Shem Tov and his disciples attracted many followers, and established numerous Hasidic sects, such as the Lubavitch, the Breslover, and the Satmar. The rapid spread of Hasidism in the second half of the eighteenth century greatly troubled many traditional Jewish rabbis. They feared that it was another case of the recent false-messiah movement of Sabbatai Zevi (1626 - 1676) that had led many Jews astray from mainstream Judaism.. Shabbetai Zevi had been believed by many to be the Messiah and Jews expected the end of time. But in 1666 Shabbati converted to Islam under threat. He died in 1676, although his sect continued for some time. The European Jewish opponents of the Hasidim, known as Mitnagdim (“opponents”), argued that one should follow a more scholarly approach to Judaism. Rabbi Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman of Vilna (1720 - 1797), commonly known as the Vilna Gaon or GRA, was a prominent Misnaged opponent. But by the mid-1800s most of non-Hasidic Judaism had discontinued its struggle with Hasidism and had reconciled itself to the establishment of the latter as a fact. Gradually the Mitnagdim and the Hasidim began to intermarry, which practice had formerly been strictly forbidden. Modern Hasidism can be rigidly traditional (see again the novels of Chaim Potok) or joyous as with Martin Buber’s neo-Hasidism. Elements of hasidism have entered contemporary Judaism. HASKALAH (ENLIGHTENMENT) ) MOVEMENT
During the 17th century, many Jews were able to return to Western Europe. The Haskalah (or Jewish enlightenment) was largely the creation of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), a brilliant German Jewish scholar and a friend of Emanuel Kant. He believed in reason before faith, the separation of church and state, and the privatization of religion. Besides joining in the intellectual life of the Enlightenment, some of the Jewish Maskilim (“the enlightened ones”) began to study their own heritage from a secular point of view.
Mendelsohn tried to end to the isolation of the Jews so that they could take part the culture of the Western world and be accepted by gentiles as equals. The Haskalah opened the door for the development of all the modern Jewish denominations and the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, but it also paved the way for many Jews who wished to be fully accepted into Christian society to converted to Christianity.
Through the dark ages, the ghetto was bright with literacy in the Jewish Law. With Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes, Newton and Voltaire, there was light outside the ghetto. The Jews’ first reaction was to seal it out. Emancipation and the end of the Ghetto caused a swift rebellion. Germany was a center of apostacy. Emancipation was delayed in Poland and Russia, because tyrants kept Jews in the “pale.” From 70 CE to the 18th century, nearly all Jews lived in separate enclaves in Europe, N. Africa, and the Middle East. In the 19th century, with the European Enlightenment and gradual Jewish emancipation, Jews had to learn to operate inside the larger society and to become a religious denominations among the many.
SECULAR ANTI-SEMITISM
With the reduction of religious anti-Semitism in the 19th century came the rise of secular, race-based anti-semitism, which continues today.
JEWISH DENOMINATIONS Orthodox Most Jewish practice could be called “orthodox” before the 19th century, although the term wasn’t used. Orthodoxy is not a single movement or school of thought Today’s othodox congregations intend to continue the full Mosaic tradition, characterized by belief that the written and oral Torahs are Divine, were transmitted by God to Moses, are eternal, and are unalterable.
Congregations considered Modern Orthodox maintain this tradition but also attempt to be relevant in the modern world. Reform The Reform movement, which began in Germany, discarded much of traditional Judaism, including Hebrew and even Saturday worship, in order to assimilate to German society. Considerable traditional belief and practice has been restored to contemporary American Reform Judaism. Conservative Conservative Judaism was a reaction to Reform and maintains most traditional practice and belief while attempting to adapt to modern society. Various views on monotheism are accepted, possibly including pantheism and process theology while attempting to avoid the extremes of both anthropmorphism and de-personalization. God is more than personality, not less. Solomon Schechter says, “Judaism never objected to ascribing human qualities to God, only to ascribing divine qualities man.” Obedience to moral law is obedience to God. Working for social justice is doing God's work. God wants man to cooperate with him and be a partner in the work of creation.
There is no ‘official’ version of the exact manner in which God speaks to man. A belief in verbal revelation is not required. The experience of God’s presence is sufficient. Modern biblical criticism is accepted.
Will Herberg, a Conservative Jew, writes, “Revelation is not the communication of infallible information, as the fundamentalists claim, nor is it the outpouring of inspired sages and poets, as the moderninsts conceive it. Revelation is the self-disclosure of God in his dealings with the world. Scripture is not itself revelation but a humanly mediated record of revelation.”
Most Conservative worship is in Hebrew. A Jew must have a Jewish mother or become converted. Mixed marriages are not performed. Men and women worship together, and women can be rabbis. Haridi Haridi or ultra-orthodox Judaism tries to maintain complete separation from the non-orthodox world. Reconstructionist Reconstructionist Judaism emphasizes the entire cultural legacy of the Jewish people. Mordecai Kaplan said that modern man cannot conceive of God as a person, but belief in God can still function as an affirmation that life has value. Traditionalists ask, however, how can you worship an impersonal force? They would say that God is more than personality, not less.
Ira Eisenstein, a leader of the Reconstructionist movement, writes:
"In the patriarchal age they used to think that God would appear to this one or that one in dreams and visions. Later on, they believed that God revealed Himself once, and once only, to the whole people on Mt. Sinai. Still later, they believed that God had transmitted an unwritten tradition that was equally His word. In the philosophic age they used to believe that God was not to be defined except in negatives. He became a kind of philosophic principle. To the cabalists He was a sort of object of magic. To the Hasidim he was a jolly father, kindly and protective. To the mystics he was one thing; to the rationalists He was another; and modern Jewish philosophies have a score of different conceptions of God. Conceptions of God differ, belief in God must be constant in Judaism. Belief in God I think we must all have, because belief in God in the final analysis, means believing in two things -- believing that the ideals we cherish are real, that such things as justice and peace and brotherhood and mercy and compassion and honesty are not merely convenient arrangements which society somehow works out, but that these actually correspond to the very structure of the universe. This is the way the universe was put together. To believe in God means to believe in the reality of these spiritual ideals. To believe in God means, secondly, to have faith that these ideals can win out in the end. It means believing that no matter what obstacles, no matter what discouragements we may face, eventually, these ideals are bound to be realized, if we work together and continue to inspire one another."
"Herein," writes Louis Jacobs, author of We have reason to believe, "lies the distinction between the traditional Theistic view and the Reconstructionist. For the traditional Theist, the ideals of which Eisenstein speaks are real and they will win out in the end because God exists. For Eisenstein and those who think like him, the conclusion seems to be that the ideals themselves and the process of winning out are God and nothing more is God."
Humanist Humanist Judaism goes farther of course. Humans are the source of meaning and value. Havurah A Havurah, like Am ha Yam of Cape Cod is a small group of Jews from various traditions, who meet for worship and fellowship.
There are much longer descriptions of all these groups in the online document.
CONTEMPORARY JEWISH WORSHIP AND PRACTICE Worship and practice are by far the most important aspects of Judaism. You can see the online document and many books for more details, but I don’t think practice and worship can be explained well in words. You have to go to the services and observe or take part in them. I’ll say just this: For the religious Jew, all of life is an act of divine worship. A verse from Psalm 16, “I keep the Lord always before me,” (Psalms 16:8) is inscribed on the front wall of many synagogues and characterizes Judaic piety. Stephen Wise, Reform Rabbi and Zionist, said that when a Jew says the Shema, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” he is not just saying a theological formula but is reliving the experience of his forbears. The Synagogue and the Rabbi
Synagogues are not consecrated spaces, nor is a synagogue necessary for worship. Jewish worship can be carried out wherever ten Jews (a minyan) gather. Rabbis are not priests but scholars and teachers, and nowadays administrators and counselors as well. A synagogue does not replace the long-since destroyed Temple in Jerusalem although Reform and some Conservative congregations in the U.S. use the word "temple." Prayer In prayer, Jews praise God for the marvels of life,, to they ask to be spared its terrors, and to they give thanks for health, family, and work. In Judaism, praying for benefits is only a small part of the liturgy. Study and Torah Readings The study of Torah is considered an act of worship in rabbinic Judaism, a religious duty, “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” and so linking the human mind with the divine. The public reading of Scripture constitutes a significant part of synagogue worship. This appears originally to have been the primary function of the synagogue as an institution. The word Torah is often used to include all of Jewish religious teaching. Dietary Laws Many of these dietary laws relate to the ancient Temple cult. They are kept now because God has required them. The Sabbath (Hebrew: Shabbat) The Jewish liturgical calendar reflects the divisions of time prescribed in the Torah and observed in the Temple cult. The Sabbath is the center of Jewish religious life. Every seventh day no work is performed and the Jew returns the world to God, acknowledging that humans live in it only on His sufferance. The Sabbath is the most distinctive holy day of Judaism. It is spent in prayer, study, rest, and family Festivals
Holidays and Life Events The Jewish year includes five major festivals and two minor ones. Some of theThree of the major festivals were originally agricultural and are tied to the seasons in the land of Israel. From an early date, all theese festivals came to be associated with events in Israel’s historical memory. Significant events in the life cycle of the Jews also are also observed in the community: Circumcision, Bar mitzvah, Bat mitzvah, Marriage, and death. Judaism rejects both extreme other-worldliness and an atheistic denial of an After-life. |