JUDAISM

Judaism

Judaism

Introduction

The term Judaism generally connotes the religion practiced by the Jewish people. Many, however, ascribe to it a much broader definition, most accurately as “a way of life” encompassing the expressed heritage of wisdom and creativity of the Jewish people, and subsuming such modes of expression as literature, music, and graphic art. Here we will limit our discussion of Judaism to the religion of the Jewish people, speaking of it on both the horizontal (more or less contemporary) plane and on the vertical plane of its historical evolution. Judaism might more properly be called the Religion of Israel (as did the renowned scholar of Judaism, Ezekiel Kaufman, in his magnum opus by that title). The term Judaism more accurately refers to a later title for the religion of an ethnic group that was the majority population in the geographic region that first became called Judah in Hebrew Scriptures, that area having been designated by Moses as the divine allotment for the tribe of Judah. (Kirschenbaum, 2004)

Belief System

Judaism professes the belief in one God, who calls on believers to practice a system of ethics emanating from a body of wisdom called Torah. Belief and practice originated about 4,000 years ago in the lives of the patriarch Abraham and his wife, Sarah, whom God called to venture forth from their home in Mesopotamia to go to “the Land that I will show you”—the land of Canaan, which has been known ever since as “the Promised Land.” God soon brought Abraham into a covenant, calling on him to rear his not-yet-born offspring in righteous ways; thus was initiated an ever-accumulating spiritual heritage, which has come to be known as ethical monotheism.(Hecht, 1996)

The next major stage of religious development took place a half millennium later, in the time of Moses, when, according to the Biblical record, God rescued Abraham's descendants—who had lately been fruitful and multiplied—from Egyptian servitude. Once free, God brought the entire people—by scriptural estimates, some 2 million souls—into a new covenant at Mt. Sinai, revealing Himself while giving the Ten Commandments, which He later inscribed on stone tablets and gave to Moses to bestow on the people. Kirschenbaum, 2004)

Sacred Literature

One often hears Jews referred to as “People of the Book.” Justifiably. From its inception, Judaism has been a “book religion.” Its earliest collection of sacred literature is, of course, the Bible. Fundamentally, Judaism teaches that the Bible is the word of God. Many Jews, albeit the minority nowadays, believe every word of the Bible is divine in a literal sense. Others hold that the Bible as it stands is propositional—that is, divinely inspired.(Hecht, 1996) Others still would refrain from claiming any supernatural involvement in the Bible, describing it as the product purely of human creativity. No matter, all agree that it represents the earliest written collection of sacred literary accounts stemming from the Israelite/Jewish religious impulse to seek the Divine.

The Hebrew Bible consists of some two dozen separate books, varying according to the historical context, voice, and ...