essay about judaism religion

Judaism, an introduction

Judaism is a monotheistic religion that emerged with the Israelites in the Eastern Mediterranean (Southern Levant) within the context of the Mesopotamian river valley civilizations . The Israelites were but one nomadic tribe from the area, so named because they considered themselves to be the descendants of Jacob, who changed his name to Israel.

The Levant (underlying map © Google)

Judaism stems from a collection of stories that explain the origins of the “children of Israel” and the laws that their deity commanded of them. The stories explain how the Israelites came to settle, construct a Temple for their one God, and eventually establish a monarchy—as divinely instructed—in the ancient Land of Israel. Over centuries, the Israelites’ literature, history, and laws were compiled and edited into a series of texts, now often referred to as the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh ). Although the Hebrew Bible was compiled by the end of the first (or possibly second) century C.E., many of the stories it contains may be much older. The Hebrew Bible contains three major sections: the Torah (Five Books of Moses) the Prophets, and the Writings.

Hebrew Bible, Italy, 13th century, decorated opening to the Book of Isaiah, Harley 5711, f.1r. ( The British Library )

An oral tradition emerged alongside the written Bible. Sometimes called the “Oral Torah,” the Mishnah is a minimalistic set of debates attributed to the great religious scholars, or Rabbis, transcribed and published in the second century C.E. The Rabbis’ intellectual descendants recorded and expounded upon the Mishnah in a series of writings called the Gemara and later generations compiled the Mishnah and Gemara into the Talmud.

Relief depicting a triumphal procession into Rome with loot from the temple, including the menorah, panel in the passageway, Arch of Titus , Rome, c. 81 C.E., marble, 6’–7” high (photo: Jebulon , CC0 1.0)

While the Hebrew Bible is Judaism’s most sacred text, many of the laws it delineates concern the practice of Temple sacrifice and priestly behavior. But when the Roman Emperor Titus sacked Jerusalem in response to a revolt of the Israelites in 70 C.E., his armies demolished the Temple of Jerusalem and brought the spoils back to Rome (an event recorded in a relief on the Arch of Titus in Rome, see image above). The loss of the Temple resulted in the end of ritual sacrifice and the priesthood; Judaism became a religion based on the interpretive discussions and practices that were eventually compiled into the Talmud. Sometimes, Judaism is referred to as “rabbinic Judaism,” since centuries of rabbinic interpretation, rather than the Bible, informs Jewish practice.

Judaism and time

Jewish law, called Halakhah , having been interpreted and re-interpreted over millennia, has changed over time. Even so, religious Judaism operates cyclically, and the linear way that modern historians view history does not correspond to this worldview. As historian Yosef Yerushalmi explained, the Rabbis “seem to play with time as though with an accordion, expanding and collapsing it at will.”[1] Major holidays, such as the weekly Sabbath or the annual Jewish New Year, provide a rhythm in order to structure a distinction between the sacred and the mundane. Other festivals rehearse ancient events, connecting modern Jews to the ancient Israelites. For instance, they mark the reception of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, the exodus from Egypt , the fall harvests, and the Maccabee victory over the Hellenistic Persian kingdom.

Isidor Kaufmann, Friday Evening , c. 1920, oil on canvas, 72.7 × 91.1 cm ( The Jewish Museum , New York)

A collection of essays about Jewish cultures around the world opens with the phrase, “culture is the practice of everyday life.”[2] Judaism is a way of life that honors the cycle of days, weeks, months, years, and lives.  Shabbat, the Sabbath, serves as the ultimate reminder of the Jewish cycle of time. Based on the idea that on the seventh day of Creation God rested, Shabbat is a marker of sacred time. Religious Jews refrain from all types of work on the Sabbath, and spend the day with their families and communities, praying, listening as a portion of the Torah is chanted (readings are determined by a fixed schedule), and eating luxurious meals. A great twentieth-century rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, described the Sabbath as “a cathedral in time.”

The debate continues

Despite the authority of the rabbinic voice in the Talmud, Judaism is non-hierarchical. There is not—nor has there ever been—a single authority; the religion is embodied by a collection of learned voices, which often disagree. We tend to conceive of Judaism as an ancient religion—based out of the Levant where God gave the Israelites the Torah. But an essential piece of the religious tradition was the fact that rabbinical scholars continued to debate, discuss, and re-conceive ancient laws.

Torah Case, Iraq, 19th–early 20th century, silver overlaid on wood, with coral set cresting ( The Jewish Museum , London)

Ancient tribal divisions, as well as later sectarian movements, including early Christianity , set a precedent for Jewish cultural diversity. But the religion is unified under the umbrella of the library of sacred texts, beginning with the Hebrew Bible, through the Talmud, and on to various ritual prayer books and mystical tracts. Judaism the religion, however, is distinct from the Jewish people. While it is clear that not all Jews practice Judaism, all those who practice Judaism consider themselves Jews. In other words, there are Jews without Judaism, but there can be no Judaism without Jews.

While the library and calendar unite Jews across the world, there are deep cultural and political divides. Jewish foods, music, literature, language, and interpretive practices vary immensely depending on a community’s ancestry. American Judaism, for example, is divided into movements, or denominations, much like American Christianity. These denominations have committees of rabbis who vote to determine the philosophy and types of observance their communities will uphold. But internal disputes are not only a standard feature of the denominations, they are part of the longstanding tradition of Jewish debate.

[1] Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (New York: Schocken Books, 1989).

[2] David Biale, Cultures of the Jews: A New History (Schocken, 2002).

Additional resources

Anatomy of a Talmudic page (BBC)

David Biale, ed. Cultures of the Jews: A New History ( New York: Schocken, 2006).

Nicholas De Lange, An Introduction to Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

John Efron, et al. The Jews: A History (Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall, 2008).

Abraham Joshua Heschel,  The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951).

Barry W. Holtz, ed. Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1984).

Robert Seltzer,  Jewish People, Jewish Thought  (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1980).

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (New York:Schocken Books, 1989).

Opening up the Hebrew Manuscript Collection at The British Museum

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How Judaism Became a Religion

• Leora Batnitzky

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How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought

A new approach to understanding Jewish thought since the eighteenth century

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Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality—or a mixture of all of these? In How Judaism Became a Religion , Leora Batnitzky boldly argues that this question more than any other has driven modern Jewish thought since the eighteenth century. This wide-ranging and lucid introduction tells the story of how Judaism came to be defined as a religion in the modern period—and why Jewish thinkers have fought as well as championed this idea. Ever since the Enlightenment, Jewish thinkers have debated whether and how Judaism—largely a religion of practice and public adherence to law—can fit into a modern, Protestant conception of religion as an individual and private matter of belief or faith. Batnitzky makes the novel argument that it is this clash between the modern category of religion and Judaism that is responsible for much of the creative tension in modern Jewish thought. Tracing how the idea of Jewish religion has been defended and resisted from the eighteenth century to today, the book discusses many of the major Jewish thinkers of the past three centuries, including Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Zvi Yehuda Kook, Theodor Herzl, and Mordecai Kaplan. At the same time, it tells the story of modern orthodoxy, the German-Jewish renaissance, Jewish religion after the Holocaust, the emergence of the Jewish individual, the birth of Jewish nationalism, and Jewish religion in America. More than an introduction, How Judaism Became a Religion presents a compelling new perspective on the history of modern Jewish thought.

Awards and Recognition

• Honorable Mention for the 2011 PROSE Award in Theology & Religious Studies, Association of American Publishers

"As Batnitzky points out, Judaism doesn't fit any modern mold especially well. Her book adds both shrewdness and humility to the search for modern Jewish identity and the claims often made about the purity of these identities."—Edward Ruehle, Jewish Voice and Herald

"Superb and thought-provoking."—Adam Kirsch, Tablet Magazine

"An excellent introduction to the key philosophers and writers who influenced modern Jewish thought."—Wallace Greene, Jewish Book World

"It has been decades since a broad, synthetic volume addressing the major issues and thinkers in modern Jewish thought has been published. How Judaism Became a Religion fills a lacuna in the field, and this book will no doubt serve as the authoritative secondary source on the topic for some time. Leora Batnitzky offers an eminently readable overview of a large number of complicated, even esoteric thinkers in terms that are manageable, indeed inviting, for nonspecialists and lay readers alike. (Helpfully, she also offers such readers a well-chosen list of suggested readings at the end of each chapter.) In doing so, she renders an invaluable service to the field."—Mara Benjamin, H-Net Reviews

"Leora Batnitzky's How Judaism Became a Religion is a bold new interpretation of modern Jewish thought by one of the leading scholars in the field."—Micah Gottlieb, Jewish Review of Books

"Batnitzky devotes her book to differentiating the array of responses to the modern notion of Judaism as a sheer religion. She presents meticulously the disparate positions of figures as varied as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geigel, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Abraham Kook and his son, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Emil Fackenheim and Mordecai Kaplan. She also presents the altogether 'premodern' views of Eastern European Jews such as the Hasidim. She shows that even resolute Reform Jews such as Geiger failed to work out a clean separation between politics and religion. With the Holocaust and with the founding of Israel, any divide seemed refuted by history."—Robert A. Segal, Times Higher Education Supplement

"This book is lucidly written and can be read by the scholar and general interested reader alike."—David Tesler, Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews

"In [ How Judaism Became a Religion ], Batnitzky provides a useful introductory map of this diverse, centuries-long story. In nine brief chapters, she explains the different responses Jews have made to the challenges of modernity and where each choice leads vis-à-vis both the people of Israel and the individual Jew. The simple design of the book provides an overview of the whole complex issue that will help beginners grasp the essential details. Libraries serving Judaica and religion collections will want to purchase this volume."— Choice

"The book uses the combined rubric of religion, nation, and culture as the key to understanding the past two centuries of Jewish thought. This sweeping construct illuminates scholars and their debates, revealing ironies that have heretofore gone largely unnoticed."—Lawrence Grossman, Jewish Ideas Daily

"What historical analysis cannot tell us, however, is whether the truth about the Jews is found in the more or the less traditional versions of Judaism, in the more communal or the more individualistic thinking, or in the religious or in the secular understandings of Jewishness. To answer that question, one must step outside the constraints of historical description and venture into the world of constructive thought. For anyone who wishes to understand the history of the question and the answers that have already been proposed, Leora Batnitzky's stimulating book is an excellent place to start."—Jon D. Levenson, Commonweal

"Leora Batnitzky's How Judaism became a Religion is an enlightening text, orderly, insightful and quite cogent. . . . Batnitzky's main thesis is deceptively simple and is presented with enviable lucidity and transparency."—S. Parvez Manzoor, Muslim World Book Review

"More than an introduction, How Judaism Became a Religion presents a compelling new perspective on the history of modern Jewish thought."— World Book Industry

"The book does a good job in bringing the subject closer to beginners in this field. . . . Future research . . . will take its starting point from this book, and further engagement on the ideas expounded here will certainly sharpen our assessment of each of these thinkers."—Sebastian Musch, Journal of Religion in Europe

"[H]er book is an undoubted success: in a manner both fascinating and potentially controversial, it broadens the scope of what is defined as ‘thought' by including literary and political figures, rabbis, and academic scholars in the conversation."—Hanoch Ben-Pazi, Studies in Contemporary Jewry

"Batnitzky deserves our thanks for undertaking this project—a comprehensive philosophical examination that is guided as well by historical and biographical thinking. A careful reading of How Judaism Became a Religion invites the reader into the world of Jewish thought in the modern world, in which the spirit of creativity and activism are manifestly evident."—Hanoch Ben-Pazi, Studies in Contemporary Jewry

"Modernity and emancipation challenged the religious, political, legal, and cultural wholeness of diasporic Jewry—and seemed to require Jews to choose whether they were members of a religion, or a nation, or a culture, or a civilization. Leora Batnitzky provides a fascinating and illuminating account of the resulting debates and of those who defended the different options. Since the choice is still open, this is a necessary book."—Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study

"Leora Batnitzky's wonderful overview of modern Jewish thought is also strikingly novel. She shows that modern Jewish philosophy and culture are always responses to a single question: Is it desirable—or even possible—to make Judaism the religion it had never been before? This book is an outstanding achievement that will consolidate Batnitzky's reputation as the most incisive and remarkable scholar of modern Jewish thought of our time."—Samuel Moyn, Columbia University

" How Judaism Became a Religion takes a highly original approach to the whole field of modern Jewish thought, presenting it in a new and fascinating light. This book will interest scholars of Judaism and modern religious thought, but it is also an excellent introduction to modern Jewish thought for nonspecialists."—David Novak, University of Toronto

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Why Choose Judaism?

By Ruth Abusch-Magder | October 18, 2012

Rabbis Without Borders

Rabbis Without Borders is a dynamic forum for exploring contemporary issues in the Jewish world and beyond. Written by rabbis of different denominations, viewpoints, and parts of the country, Rabbis Without Borders is a project of Clal – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

This is a question I hear often. In my work helping to celebrate the racial and ethnic diversity that is endemic to the Jewish community, I also have the privilege of connecting with many people who have chosen to become Jewish. In Jewish tradition, when someone becomes Jewish the community is meant to accept them as they are, not to dwell on their status as a convert. Yet often, converts are met with curiosity or worse, suspicion. From Jews by choice, I hear that this can often feel like personal rejection.

Whenever I am asked about why people choose Judaism, I recall late night dorm conversations I had as a college student. A good friend was studying to be a cantor. He had grown up in Europe, in a country without a strong Jewish past, in a family that had no Jewish past. A chance encounter with Jews on Purim pulled him into the Jewish orbit and eventually he made the choice to make Judaism his own. We spent many hours talking about Judaism, I did not for a minute doubt his commitment or his place in the Jewish people. Nonetheless, time and again, I repeatedly returned to ask him why he had  chosen Judaism.

At the time, I was struggling. I had not chosen Judaism and it felt like a burden that I could not escape. While I went through the motions of observance and community, I was pained by so much in our tradition particularly as it related to women’s roles, hierarchy and power. Israel, which had once been the idealized center of my Jewish identity, had given way to the complex realities of adult understanding. My awareness of the legacy of anti-Semitism robbed me of the ability to imagine true security. Why, I wondered, would anyone  choose the very thing that on some level I wished I could escape?

There is nothing more that I love about being a rabbi, than hearing those who  choose Judaism explain their choice –which they do as part of the conversion process. Jews by choice come to Judaism without the baggage that Jews from birth carry. Time and again, I hear that the ambiguities of Judaism, the very thing that was so challenging for me as young woman, are among the things that newcomers value in Judaism. Just like Jews by birth, they struggle with difficult issues like women’s rights or the State of Israel, but they feel confident that whatever struggles they have fit into the flexible but enduring Jewish framework. Among Jews by birth, I often hear that learning Hebrew was the bane of Jewish childhood. And yet as the member of a conversion board, I’ve heard grown men wax eloquently about the power of learning an ancient language and unlocking timeless wisdom by studying it in the original. In Uganda, where Rabbi Gershom Sizomu has officiated at hundreds of conversions, it is the magic of Shabbat- which allows people to stop work, come together with other, focus on the finer things- which is the most powerful draw. Those choosing Judaism see joy and possibilities. They accept the complexities as part of the beauty of the system they are entering into. Judaism through their eyes never fails to inspire me.

I know that for some portion of the Jewish by birth population it is hard to accept that a person from Scandinavia, the mountains in Peru, or plains of Africa- who does not know about gefilte fish, did not have ancestors forced to leave a homeland, and knows not from Woody Allen- can or should be part of the Jewish people. And this is highly problematic. But often, I think that the questions to converts or to me, as a rabbi who often has the privilege of working with individual converts as well as communities of converts, speak to deep seated ambivalence and struggles, even shame about our own Jewishness. I did in the end emerge from my struggles and find my own answers, but not before I inflicted my own ambivalence and doubt on my friend. Our own challenges and doubts need to be addressed, but not at the cost of making newcomers feel unwelcome.

This summer I had a conversation with a group of sixth grade students at a Jewish school in Buenos Aires . Discussing diversity of Jews  around the world, they fixed on the concept of conversion. They wanted to know what conversations rabbis have with a conversion student when they sit at the biet din, “court” for conversion.I explained that each conversation is unique but then turned the question back at them. Forced to consider what they might say, they came up with some pretty compelling answers: peoplehood, ritual, customs, Israel. But more important than the content was the realization that they had answers for themselves. Ultimately, no matter how inspiring, someone else’s answer about why they have chosen Judaism will never take the place of each Jew finding his or her own reasons to be Jewish.

What are yours?

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Guest Essay

Train Yourself to Always Show Up

By Sharon Brous

Rabbi Brous is the founding and senior rabbi of Ikar , a Jewish community based in Los Angeles, and the author of “The Amen Effect.”

A somewhat obscure text, about 2,000 years old, has been my unlikely teacher and guide for the past many years, and my north star these last several months, as so many of us have felt as if we’ve been drowning in an ocean of sorrow and helplessness.

Buried deep within the Mishnah, a Jewish legal compendium from around the third century, is an ancient practice reflecting a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit: When your heart is broken, when the specter of death visits your family, when you feel lost and alone and inclined to retreat, you show up. You entrust your pain to the community.

The text, Middot 2:2 , describes a pilgrimage ritual from the time of the Second Temple. Several times each year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning to the right en masse, circling counterclockwise.

Meanwhile, the brokenhearted, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn to the left and circle in the opposite direction: every step against the current.

And each person who encountered someone in pain would look into that person’s eyes and inquire: “What happened to you? Why does your heart ache?”

“My father died,” a person might say. “There are so many things I never got to say to him.” Or perhaps: “My partner left. I was completely blindsided.” Or: “My child is sick. We’re awaiting the test results.”

Those who walked from the right would offer a blessing: “May the Holy One comfort you,” they would say. “You are not alone.” And then they would continue to walk until the next person approached.

This timeless wisdom speaks to what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year, you walk the path of the anguished. Perhaps next year, it will be me. I hold your broken heart knowing that one day you will hold mine.

I read in this text many profound lessons, two particularly pertinent in our time, when so many of us feel that we are breaking. First, do not take your broken heart and go home. Don’t isolate. Step toward those whom you know will hold you tenderly.

And on your good days — the days when you can breathe — show up then, too. Because the very fact of seeing those who are walking against the current, people who can barely hold on, and asking, with an open heart, “Tell me about your sorrow,” may be the deepest affirmation of our humanity, even in terribly inhumane times.

It is an expression of both love and sacred responsibility to turn to another person in her moment of deepest anguish and say: “Your sorrow may scare me, it may unsettle me. But I will not abandon you. I will meet your grief with relentless love.”

We cannot magically fix one another’s broken hearts. But we can find each other in our most vulnerable moments and wrap each other up in a circle of care. We can humbly promise each other, “I can’t take your pain away, but I can promise you won’t have to hold it alone.”

Showing up for one another doesn’t require heroic gestures. It means training ourselves to approach, even when our instinct tells us to withdraw. It means picking up the phone and calling our friend or colleague who is suffering. It means going to the funeral and to the house of mourning. It also means going to the wedding and to the birthday dinner. Reach out in your strength, step forward in your vulnerability. Err on the side of presence.

Small, tender gestures remind us that we are not helpless, even in the face of grave human suffering. We maintain the ability, even in the dark of night, to find our way to one another. We need this, especially now.

Here’s the second lesson from that ancient text. Humans naturally incline toward the known. Our tribes can uplift us, order our lives, give them meaning and purpose, direction and pride. But the tribal instinct can also be perilous. The more closely we identify with our tribe, the more likely we are to dismiss or even feel hostility toward those outside it.

One of the great casualties of tribalism is curiosity. And when we are no longer curious, when we don’t try to imagine or understand what another person is thinking or feeling or where her pain comes from, our hearts begin to narrow. We become less compassionate and more entrenched in our own worldviews.

Trauma exacerbates this trend. It reinforces an instinct to turn away from one another, rather than make ourselves even more vulnerable.

There is another important lesson from that ancient text. On pilgrimage, those who enter the sacred circle and turn left when nearly everyone else turns right are grieving or unwell. But the text offers that there is another who turns to the left: the person sentenced to ostracization — in Hebrew, the menudeh.

Ostracization was a punishment used sparingly in ancient times. It only applied to people who were believed to have brought serious harm to the social fabric of the community. The ostracized were essentially temporarily excommunicated. They had to distance themselves from their colleagues and loved ones, they were not counted in a prayer quorum, and they were prohibited from engaging in most social interactions. And incredibly, they, too, entered the sacred space, where they, too, were asked: “Tell me, what happened to you? What’s your story?” And they, too, were blessed.

This is breathtaking. The ancient rabbis ask us to imagine a society in which no person is disposable. Even those who have hurt us, even those with views antithetical to ours must be seen in their humanity and held with curiosity and care.

We desperately need a spiritual rewiring in our time. Imagine a society in which we learn to see one another in our pain, to ask one another, “What happened to you?” Imagine that we hear one another’s stories, say amen to one another’s pain, and even pray for one another’s healing. I call this the amen effect: sincere, tender encounters that help us forge new spiritual and neural pathways by reminding us that our lives and our destinies are entwined. Because, ultimately, it is only by finding our way to one another that we will begin to heal.

Sharon Brous is the founding and senior rabbi of Ikar , a Jewish community based in Los Angeles, and the author of “The Amen Effect,” from which this essay was adapted.

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Judaism: Basic Beliefs

Jewish people believe in the Torah, which was the whole of the laws given to the Israelities at Sinai. They believe they must follow God's laws which govern daily life. 

How did Judaism begin?

Judaism began about 4000 years ago with the Hebrew people in the Middle East. Abraham, a Hebrew man, is considered the father of the Jewish faith because he promoted the central idea of the Jewish faith: that there is one God. At the time many people in the Middle East worshipped many gods. It is said that Abraham and his wife Sarah, who were old and childless, were told by God that their children would be as plentiful as the stars in the sky and that they would live in a land of their own -- the Promised Land. This gradually came true.

Abraham's son, Isaac had a son, Jacob, also called Israel. In this way the descendants of Abraham came to be known as the Israelites. God promised the Israelites he would care for them as long as they obeyed God's laws. While still traveling, the Hebrews lived in Egypt where they were enslaved. Moses, a Hebrew, was chosen by God to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt. Moses led the Hebrew people out of the Sinai Desert toward the promised land. At Mt. Sinai, God gave Moses the Law which would guide the Israelites to today. The laws were called the Ten Commandments and form the basis of the Torah, the book of Jewish law.

It took many years for the Israelites to finally get to what they thought was the Promised Land - Canaan. After some fighting the Jews established the Israelite kingdom. After many years, Canaan was conquered by the Assyrians, the Babylonians and then eventually the Romans. The Israelites once again found themselves enslaved, this time by Babylonians. The Israelites were then taken over by Romans who destroyed much of what had been built in Jerusalem by the Israelites. Most of the Jews were scattered all over the region and eventually moved from place to place to avoid persecution which continues to this day. The dispersion of the Jews is called the Diaspora.

The worst persecution of the Jews was during World War II by the Nazis who murdered more than six million Jews or a third of the world's Jewish population. This was called the Holocaust. Beginning in the 1880's Jews began returning to their homeland in growing numbers, this time to avoid persecution where they lived. After World War II, many Jews believed that for the Jewish people and culture to survive, Jews needed to live in their own country where all Jews from anywhere in the world would have the right to live and be citizens. In 1948, Palestine was divided up and a Jewish state of Israel was formed in the land that was once called Canaan, surrounded by countries with predominantly Muslim populations. Since Muslims also claimed rights to the land where the Jews were living, there was conflict, which continues to this day in the Middle East.

Today nearly fourteen million Jewish people live all over the world. Approximately half of them live in the United States, one quarter live in Israel, and a quarter are still scattered around the world in countries in Europe, Russia, South America, Africa, Asia and other North American and Middle Eastern countries. Anyone born to a Jewish mother is considered a Jew.

What do Jewish people believe?

Jewish people believe in the Torah, which was the whole of the laws given to the Israelities at Sinai. They believe they must follow God's laws which govern daily life. Later legal books, written by rabbis, determine the law as it applies to life in each new place and time.

The Ten Commandments, as written in the Torah, are:

• Worship no other God but Me.
• Do not make images to worship.
• Do not misuse the name of God.
• Observe the Sabbath Day (Saturday). Keep it Holy.
• Honor and respect your father and mother.
• Do not murder.
• Do not commit adultery.
• Do not steal.
• Do not accuse anyone falsely. Do not tell lies about other people.
• Do not envy other's possessions.

There are three basic groups of Jewish people who have a different understanding of the interpretation of the Torah.

Orthodox Jews believe that all of the practices in the Torah which it is practical to obey must be obeyed without question.

Conservative and Reform Jews believe that the ancient laws and practices have to be interpreted for modern life with inclusion of contemporary sources and with more concern with community practices than with ritual practices.

Reform Jews also allow everyone to sit together, men and women, and both Hebrew and the local language are spoken in services.

What are the sacred texts of the Jewish people?

The Tenakh is the ancient collection of writings that are sacred to the Jews. They were written over almost a thousand years from 1000 to 100 BCE. The word Tenakh comes from the three first letters of the three books included in this text: the Torah, plus the Nev'im (prophets) and the Ki'tuvim (writings, which include histories, prophecies, poems, hymns and sayings).

The Torah is written on scrolls and kept in a special cabinet called the aron hakodish, the holy ark, in synagogues. The Torah is read with a pointer called a yad (hand) to keep it from being spoiled. Each week, one section is read until the entire Torah is completed and the reading begins again.

The Talmud is also an important collection of Jewish writings. Written about 2000 years ago, it is a recording of the rabbis' discussion of the way to follow the Torah at that time. Later texts, the Mishnah Torah and the Shulhan Aruch, are recordings of rabbinic discussions from later periods.

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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

Overview Essay

Interreligious: Religious Diversity and Ecology

Sam Mickey , University of San Francisco

Introduction

In the broadest sense of the word, “interreligious” describes any interactions between or across different religious traditions, communities, or individuals. That could include interactions that religions have with one another and with other ways of being and knowing that are not directly affiliated with a religion (e.g., secularism, humanism, and sciences).

Some terms that are somewhat synonymous with “interreligious” include “interfaith” and “interbelief,” which tend to be used more narrowly in reference to interactions within one group of religions, typically the Abrahamic religions, such that the word applies primarily or exclusively to relations between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is important to notice that the specific meanings of these terms vary considerably depending on the specific person or organization using them. For example, the word “interfaith” can be used in multiple ways. Most generally, like the word “interreligious,” “interfaith” can refer to relations between any religions. It can apply more narrowly to interactions within Abrahamic religions, and it can be used even more specifically to refer to connections between different sects or schools in one religion, such as Lutheran, Methodist, and Catholic branches of Christianity, or Soto and Rinzai sects of Buddhism, or the Shia and Sunni denominations of Islam.  

Interactions across religions are common in contemporary society, as human communities from around the world become increasingly interconnected through processes of globalization, including international trade, migration, urbanization, and the development of information and communication technologies. However, while interreligious phenomena are unique in the specific way they show up in globalized societies, they are not new. Throughout history, religious communities have had some engagement with people whose religious expressions (e.g., rituals, doctrines, narratives, politics, etc.) appear different, strange, or other, perhaps representing a different faction within a religion or even a different religion entirely. For example, encounters with Egyptian, Babylonian, and Roman religions were part of the development of Judaism before the Common Era. In China, so many sects, schools, and styles of life emerged between the sixth and third century BCE, including Daoism and Confucianism, they became known collectively as the Hundred Schools of Thought. Trade and migration connected various communities of indigenous peoples in the Americas during the pre-Columbian era. In short, all religions have an interreligious dimension.  

Every religion provides some ways of responding to difference and otherness, some ways of engaging in cooperative or competitive exchanges, and some ways of negotiating multiple and even apparently contradictory claims. Sometimes a religion is held up as the best (triumphalism) or as the only true path (exclusivism), and sometimes multiple and even all religions are considered as true paths (pluralism) or as different manifestations of an ideal truth (universalism). Sometimes elements from two or more religions coexist in hybrid forms, and sometimes they are integrated and synthesized into a new religion (syncretism). Responses to religious difference range from hostility and opposition to tolerance and hospitality. To be sure, interreligious contact is not always beneficial to the parties involved. Many individuals and institutions are working toward interreligious dialogue, cooperation, and peace, including sustainable and regenerative responses to environmental degradation and the climate emergency. However, interreligious dynamics often involve conflict, violence, and war. Alongside several factors, such as resource scarcity and political instability, religious narratives and affects can contribute to motivations or justifications for interreligious conflict. Interreligious interactions are matters of war and peace. They are matters of shared survival, and that survival cannot be fully understood without considering the material conditions of survival—the life, land, air, and water without which religious communities cannot exist, and indeed, without which humankind cannot exist.

Throughout history, there are several instances of interreligious cooperation, with political leaders or religious communities organizing around inclusivity and acceptance toward multiple religions, from at least as early as Ashoka the Great (the Indian emperor who, during his rule in the third century BCE, promoted Buddhism while also promoting nonviolence and attitudes of acceptance toward all religions) up to modern examples, like the Baha’i Faith, which emerged in the nineteenth century and is oriented around an acceptance of the truth of all religions. Increasingly, as environmental concerns have become more urgent and large-scale throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, scholars and practitioners of religion have become engaged with ecology and environmentalism, and so too have advocates of interreligious dialogue.

The development of the academic field of religious studies, beginning in the nineteenth century with historical and comparative analyses of religions, contributed scholarly support for events and organizations dedicated to interreligious dialogue, such as the Parliament of the World’s Religions, which began in 1893 as an event oriented toward interreligious dialogue. More recently, the field of religion and ecology and related areas of inquiry (e.g., spiritual ecology, religion and nature, eco-theology) have contributed scholarly support for interreligious engagements with environmental issues. Accordingly, as the Parliament of the World’s Religions continues to hold meetings, increasing attention is devoted to religious responses to environmental issues. This is indicated by the Parliament’s Climate Commitments Project . Interreligious perspectives inform numerous ecologically engaged projects that are currently active in local and international milieus, and several organizations have released interreligious statements that call for allied multicultural responses to the climate emergency and other environmental issues.

Interreligious cooperation is crucial for negotiating collective responses to environmental problems that impact people of different faiths. This is evident in transboundary environmental problems (e.g., acid rain, air pollution, and climate change), which move across regional and national boundaries and thus impact diverse religious groups. Cases like climate change and mass extinction require responses at a global scale and thus involve the religious diversity of the entire human population. At that scale, the very idea of “world’s religions” undergoes a profound transformation, shifting away from an emphasis on the most populous or most politically influential religions of the modern world, and shifting toward an understanding of the planetary context of religious diversity.

Bibliography

Cornille, Catherine, ed. The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue (Oxford and Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

Ingram, Paul O. You Have Been Told What Is Good: Interreligious Dialogue and Climate Change (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2016).

Meister, Chad V., ed. The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Willis Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, eds. Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (New York: Routledge, 2017).

Header photo credit: Faith in Future Meeting, Bristol, UK; Courtesy of ARC, © Katia Marsh

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Introduction to Judaism

Judaism is a monotheistic religion, believing in one god. It is not a racial group. Individuals may also associate or identify with Judaism primarily through ethnic or cultural characteristics. Jewish communities may differ in belief, practice, politics, geography, language, and autonomy.  Learn more about the practices and beliefs of Judaism.

Jews have lived in many different countries around the world through the centuries.

Major events in the history of Judaism include the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

Judaism in the 21st century is very diverse, ranging from very Orthodox to more modern denominations.  

• Jewish communities before the war

Jewish Life and Religious Practices

There is a wide variety of acceptance and observance of the following practices by denominations and individual Jews.

Jewish life is guided by its annual and life cycle calendars. The annual calendar is a lunar calendar with approximately 354 days in one year on a 12-month cycle, with an extra month (Adar II) added occasionally to compensate for the difference between the lunar and solar calendars.

The Torah is read ritually in synagogue three times a week, on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, following a yearly cycle through the entirety (or a third, depending on community) of the Five Books of Moses. Additionally, on holidays, special sections are read in synagogue that tie to the themes or origin story of the holiday being observed.

Jewish prayer services are conducted in the Hebrew language in the more traditional denominations of Judaism, and include varied levels of English (or the native language of the community’s Jews) in denominations such as Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal. A rabbi can lead services but is not required. On weekdays, daily prayers are recited three times—morning, afternoon, and evening—with a fourth prayer service added on the Sabbath and holidays. While many prayers can be recited individually, certain prayers and activities, such as the reading of the Torah, the mourner’s prayer (the kaddish ), require a minyan or quorum of ten Jewish adults. As with the distinctions regarding English in the prayer service, some traditional denominations only count male adults in a minyan , while others count all adults.

Other central aspects of Jewish ritual observance include the dietary laws (laws of kashrut ) which forbid consumption of certain foods (like pork or shellfish), prohibit the mixing of milk and meat, and prescribe special rules for the slaughter of meat and poultry. Denominations and individual Jews may or may not follow these dietary laws strictly.

Major life-cycle events in Jewish tradition include the brit milah (ritual circumcision on the eighth day of a Jewish boy’s life), Bnai Mitzvah (a ceremony marking the passage from childhood to adulthood, at 12 years for a girl and 13 for a boy), marriage, and death.

Following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the synagogue (derived from a Greek word meaning “assembly”), or Jewish prayer and study house, became the focal point of Jewish life. The role of the priesthood, so central to the Temple service, diminished, and the rabbi (literally, “my master”), or scholar versed in Jewish law, rose to a position of prominence in the community.

After the Holocaust

Before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, Europe had a vibrant and mature Jewish culture.

By 1945, after the Holocaust , most European Jews—two out of every three—had been killed. Most of the surviving remnant of European Jewry decided to leave Europe. Hundreds of thousands established new lives in Israel , the United States , Canada, Australia, Great Britain, South America, and South Africa.

As of 2016, there were approximately 15 million Jews around the world. About 85% of world Jewry lives in Israel or the United States.

Critical Thinking Questions

• Investigate the wide range of observances and traditions in the Jewish communities before, during, and after the Holocaust.
• Learn about the history of the Jewish community in your country.

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