Jewish Beliefs

Jewish Mysticism: Kabbalah

2009-04-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

By the middle ages, different techniques were employed to achieve superior knowledge deemed unattainable for natural processes. For instance, some people resorted to meditating on divine names as a means of achieving some contact with the deity. The most famous system of mystical contemplation in Judaism is known as Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is the Hebrew word for “tradition”. Whereas the rabbis employed the word Kabbalah to mean the legal tradition, going back to Moses, the mystics opted this phrase to suggest a more hidden tradition. This tradition was passes on to the worthy, not to everyone.

Kabbalah addresses the nature of the deity. It distinguishes between God as He is, what we would call the essence of God; and God as he manifests himself in this world. Kabbalah would say is that the essential God is unknowable. The phrase that they use in Hebrew is the Ein Sof, the limitless. This is something beyond human comprehension.

God’s manifestations descend to us through a series of powers from within the Godhead.These ten powers are known as Sefirot. These Sefirot serve as a sort of bridge between the limitless aspect of God and our imperfect reality. Each of the Sefirot has a name corresponding to the various attributes of God. The attributes are named:

Crown
Wisdom
Understanding
Loving kindness
Strength
Beauty
Victory
Glory
Power
Kingdom

These are frequently laid out in diagrams. There are sexual overtones to the relationship between the various Sefirot. Some of them are of male nature and others of a female nature. They create a completeness.

The Zohar

The classic Kabbalistic text is called the Zohar. It appears to be a commentary to the Torah, but it is way beyond that. This book has a very strange history to it. No one really knew when it was written. It appears in 13th century Spain for the first time. Traditionalists would claim that it was written by the rabbis of Galilee in the second century C.E. In particular by one rabbi, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai.

Ultimately, the Zohar was printed in the 16th century and it became an extremely influential work, although many Kabbalists were actually unhappy with that. They thought that the dissemination of the Zohar among the masses was very dangerous. This is a sort of secret knowledge that should not be accessible to everyone.

Kabbalistic teaching received a further stimulation through the teaching and influence of a rabbi known as Isaac Luria. He is commonly referred to as the Ari. He was a man who lived his final years in 16th century Safed, in Galilee. Luria introduced new ideas into Kabbalah, primarily connected to the nature of the cosmos. God, he claimed, originally had withdrawn into himself, leaving a void, out of which primordial man and the Sefirot were created.

What would ensue now is an ongoing process of God’s withdrawal and emanation. This ongoing process would have practical implications in the nature of the world and the vicissitudes taking place within the Jewish world. They would link the historical development of Israel with the theological development of the deity.

A New Hope in Kabbalah

In the aftermath of the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, many Jews accepted a mystical explanation of their recent catastrophe. This Kabbalistic teaching offered them, if it was presented properly, some sort of hope. The spread of Kabbalah had major social repercussions among Jewish communities.

Kabbalah offered an alternative system of spirituality. What was the existing one? The traditional commitment to Rabbinic studies. For many people that was not satisfying. They were looking for a spiritual, inner link to the truth. This alternative later encouraged the appearance of different communal contexts. Most notably, the emergence of Hasidism. This movement was based on the notion that God is pervasive and that he requires a constant attachment to him through constant prayer. This cleaving is a behavioral phenomenon, it is not an intellectual study. This intellectual study was the main occupation of the traditional Rabbinic world.

Some scholars have also drawn connections between the political ramifications of a Lurianic Kabbalah and the appearance of a false messianic figure, Sabbatai Zevi. He claimed that at certain times one has to go to the depth of sinning, and then, from there, arise and bring about a certain redemption.

We find that there are two parallel worlds: the philosophical-intellectual world and the mystical-Kabbalistic world. These two are operating simultaneously. Clearly, different people plugged in to one or another of these disciplines.

Historians' History

As we enter modernity, we find scholars choosing sides. At different stages of modern Jewish scholarship, one or the other of these two worlds has the upper hand. In the 19th century, when histories of Judaism were being produced in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, the hero of Judaic scholars was Maimonides. When you read the histories that were produced for the first time, you find that, for them, intellectual Judaism was the standard. They felt that this was the norm. This was the proper presentation of Judaism. They considered mysticism and Kabbalah, and the results of that type of activity, primitive and superstitious.

When we enter the 20th century, things change radically. One of the great scholars of Judaism of the 20th century was named Gershom Scholem. He was a professor of Mysticism and Kabbalah at the Hebrew University. Scholem uncovered a whole world of mystical texts that had never been studied systematically.

Scholem claimed that Kabbalah was far more central that what people ever imagined. He claimed it was a dominant force within mainstream Judaism, and not just something that a few mystics attached themselves to. He managed to convince many scholars that maybe we’ve been reading the wrong texts. Maybe, to really understand Jewish history, we have to address these elements of Jewish theology.

These last 50 years, people began addressing all of Jewish literature. For instance, we know today that Jews were involved in magic throughout history. This was the type of activity that the Talmud would had frowned at. Clearly, this was part of some Jewish behavior.

I think the conclusion is that there is no one normative type of Judaism. We should look at it from each point of view.

Great Jewish Philosophers

2009-04-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

Throughout history, Jews addressed the nature of their religion. Frequently, this search was the result of a perceived need to confront other intellectual or religious groups. At other times, it was inspired by attempts to reconzile between the surrounding world of intellectual inquiry and the world of Jewish thought.

We will discuss the outstanding Jewish philosophers from a a variety of ages and cultural environments. Greek philosophy introduced a revolutionary way of thinking about the world. It represented a challenge to Judaism at diverse times and places. Philosophers investigated the nature of things hoping to arrive at new truths that would explain the order of the world, the nature of change and even aspects of the human soul.

Jews, both in antiquity and in the middle ages, believed that they possesed these truths as part of their religious tradition. Nevertheless, the abstract and conceptual nature of Greek thinking had enormous effects throhout the Greco-Roman world. At least some Jews living in that world adopted aspects of these thought processes.

Philo: Philo tried to reconcile his Greek philosophical training with a comprehensive knowledge of Jewish religious tradition.

Saadia Gaon, Revelation and Reason Reconciled: Saadia argues that one should employ philosophical thought in trying to achieve a deeper understanding of all the aspects of Jewish religion. He is using the Greek mode of thought and applying it to his own world. He did not consider this as undermining a belief in the Bible. He argues that this supports the belief in the Bible.

Maimonides: Greek philosophy spread throughout the world and Jews became very well-versed in scholarship. They felt a need to reply. The greatest of these presenters of Jewish philosophy, and maybe the greatest thinker in all of Jewish history, was Moses Maimonides.

Maimonides

2009-04-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

Greek philosophy spread throughout the world and Jews became very well-versed in scholarship. They felt a need to reply. The greatest of these presenters of Jewish philosophy, and maybe the greatest thinker in all of Jewish history, was Moses Maimonides. Maimonides was born in Cordoba, Spain, in 1135. At the age of 13, his family was forced to leave Spain, and they traveled through North Africa. Ultimately, they arrived in he old city of Cairo, known as Fustat. It is in that city that Maimonides would live until his death.

When he arrives in Cairo, he becomes one of the leaders of the community. He had studied medicine and was appointed the official physician of the local Grand Vizier of Saladin. As a result, he became a very prominent man, not just in the Jewish community, but in the general community as well.

He wasn’t only a great philosopher. Maimonides was also one of the outstanding Rabbinic legal scholars in all of Jewish history. His masterwork in the field of law was a codification of Jewish law in fourteen books, known as the Mishneh Torah. His genius here was in going through all previous Rabbinic literature and thematically organize them.

It is clear, however, that it was his vast knowledge of philosophy and science that contributed enormously to his work. He deals in his legal texts with the basis of belief and the understanding of God’s role in this world. When he discusses God, you can see that he is setting up a system based on the principles of metaphysics. His legal code was written in beautiful Hebrew. It is clear and anyone can understand it. This probably contributed to its wide distribution.

As a philosopher, Maimonides is best known for his work “The Guide for the Perplexed”, Moreh Nevuchim. His philosophical training came to him through Arabic authors who were trained in Aristotelian philosophy. This became a basis for his work.

Who are the perplexed? These are his Jewish readers who, while they were well versed in their religious tradition, were also exposed to rational thought, and consequently, had many difficulties with major portions of the Bible, in particular, the various anthropomorphic allusions to God. God having a body, and having all sorts of visual attributes. This was very perplexing to people.

This led to Maimonides ascribing a spiritualized meaning to many of the biblical descriptions of God. From here, he was not far from attempting to find what we can and can’t know about God. How can God be one and yet have so many different attributes in the Bible? The essence of God’s unity and his existence was a major problem in Maimonides’ thinking.

Another topic that he addressed was the issue of prophecy. For him, prophecy is a result of a highly developed human intellect that receives a sort of emanation from God.

Maimonides, as great as he was, was not accepted by all Jews. Certainly, not by all rabbis. Some considered him to be on the very edge of heresy, because of his rationalistic approach and interpretation of major aspects of Jewish religion.

Saadia Gaon: Revelation and Reason Reconciled

2009-04-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

Saadia Gaon lived from 882 to 942. He was born in Egypt, but he moved to Babylonia and he became a very prominent leader of the Rabbinic movement. Saadia encountered a number of challenges that confronted Judaism in the 10th century. One of them was the challenge of Karaism. This was a group that raised serious challenges to the authority of the rabbis and Rabbinic Judaism, specially to what was called the “oral Torah”. They claimed that a loyalty to the text alone is what is required. Everything else has absolutely no basis in the Bible itself.

Some Karaists went even further by raising questions regarding the role of God in creation. They suggested some kind of mediation of angels even in the process of creation. This, of course, was a very dangerous idea for the rabbis, because it suggested all sorts of other powers that existed, it was no longer man and God. By removing God from an active interest in this world, they possibly might have been conjuring a Sadduceean teaching.

Saadia had another challenge that he had to address. That was the discovery by Arab thinkers of his day of the Greek philosophical discourse and their application of rational thought processes to the examination of religious truths. This Islamic scholastic theology was known as Kalam. It served as the background for Saadia’s major philosophical work, which is a book known as the Emunoth ve-Deoth, meaning “Beliefs and Opinions”. He wrote it in Arabic and was later translated into Hebrew.

This is the first philosophical defense of Judaism that we have in our possession. In many ways, it is the earliest example of a systematic Jewish theology. Saadia distinguished between those beliefs that are the fruits of rational thinking and those truths that can only be achieved through revelation. For Saadia, this two, revelation and reason, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are complementary.

Saadia argues that one should employ philosophical thought in trying to achieve a deeper understanding of all the aspects of Jewish religion. He is using the Greek mode of thought and applying it to his own world. He did not consider this as undermining a belief in the Bible. He argues that this supports the belief in the Bible.

He tells a parable of a man who is shown a pile of coins. He was told by the person showing him the coins “the number of coins here is such and such”. We have no reason to disbelieve that person. Why would he make up a lie? But if we count the coins ourselves, we would achieve a degree of certainty that we did not have prior to this.

He is suggesting that we have an inherited belief, but what’s wrong with examining that belief using logic? He is convinced that we can support that belief through philosophical contemplation. He was clearly responding to fears that rational argumentation could challenge faith.

Philo

2009-04-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

Philo was an observant Jew. He kept the commandments as they are described in the Bible. He lived in Alexandria in the 1st century C.E. Philo was one of the few Jews of the Hellenistic and Roman world whose works survive relatively intact, although they were preserved not by the Jewish community, but by the Christian Church.

This was the case for most Jews who wrote in Greek, such as the historian Josephus. The Jewish community, for one reason or another, did not embrace these works. They did not include them not only in their canon, but even in the Jewish library. We were fortunate enough to have them preserved by the Christian Church.

A New Interpretation of the Bible

Philo tried to reconcile his Greek philosophical training with a comprehensive knowledge of Jewish religious tradition. He read the Bible most probably not in its original Hebrew. He probably read the Bible in its Greek translation known as the Septuagint. This was the standard Greek translation that would be used by Jews in the Hellenistic world and would be also ultimately be embraced by the Church.

Much of Philo’s writings are in the form of a commentary to the Bible. He employed, as he was explaining the Bible, an allegorical approach as a means of presenting the laws, and even the stories, with a far deeper meaning that it would appear at face value. For instance, if Abraham was told to migrate from his land, for Philo this is not simply a physical migration, but it came to symbolize the soul departure from bodily confinement. This is clearly a well-known Greek idea, in particular part of Stoic philosophy. The soul is within a sort of a jail and is constantly yearning to brake away.

In Abraham’s case, his soul was yearning to brake away from the confinement of an idolatrous world. Abraham comes from Ur of the Chaldeans. The word Chaldean in the Greek mind always represented astrology. This is a spiritual migration for Philo. This is the type of interpretation that Philo uses as he reads the Bible. In other words, there are stories but these have a spiritual meaning to them .

Rabbis could live with that type of interpretation were they only used to interpret the story parts of the Bible. Philo, however, employed allegory to show that the laws of the Bible also posses a deeper and more profound meaning than what meets the eye.

Spiritualizing Law?

Philo knows that the signs of a kosher animal, an animal that may be eaten, are two: a cloven hoof and a chewing of the cud. For instance, a pig has a split hoof, but it does not chew its cud, so it may not be considered a kosher animal. Philo say that these are the signs that are in the Bible as you read it, but they really come to suggest spiritual traits that all of mankind should strive for. The split hoof symbolizes the capability of distinction between good and evil. The chewing of the cud is the power of constantly going over things, rethinking things. Here he is spiritualizing the Bible. He is attributing to it a far deeper meaning.

Rabbinic Judaism would frown at such exercises. The rabbis would be very uncomfortable with this, because if there is a deeper meaning to the text and things are not quite how they appear, where will that leave us with he practical face value imperative? Maybe once I derive the deeper meaning, the practical is no longer imperative. The potential for doing away with the practical keeping of the religious law was obvious. Philo, however, never drew those conclusions. He continued to keep the law.

It is not surprising that it was the Christian Church and not the rabbis that would preserve his writings.

Beliefs of Judaism

2009-04-24T15:16:00.000-07:00

A 15th century Jewish philosopher said: “if I knew God, I would be God”. As with so many aspects of Judaism, even the basic perception of the deity, as well as the nature of God’s relationship to man, cannot be reduced to one all-embracing mandatory and universally accepted creed. Some scholars are fond of saying that Judaism has no dogma or creed in the Christian sense. Rabbinic Judaism, medieval philosophers, Jewish mystics and modern theologians have all tried to formulate a definitive statement about what a Jew is expected to believe. The very profusion of such attempts points to their futility.

Here we will touch on some major issues of faith that appeared on the Jewish scene throhout history. Issues of free will, fate, determinism, reward and punishment, individual afterlife and the world to come. If you want to know what some people consider to be the basic tenets of Judaism, go to the article: What is Judaism.

Fate and Free Will in Judaism. Pharisee, Sadducees and Essenes: During the last centuries B.C.E., Judaism seems to have experienced a certain diversification. Different groups with widely varied beliefs regarding the essence of God and God’s role in this world appeared on the scene.

The Afterlife in Judaism: By the Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers, such as Maimonides, claimed that there is reward and punishment after death. They considered belief in reward and punishment to be a major article of faith. They, too, had no doubts that these rewards are primarily connected to a future existence.

Messianic Judaism: The idea of the Messiah has wielded an enormous influence in Jewish history, but the nature of the belief always was in constant flux. There seems to be a tension between varying perceptions of the Messianic phenomenon.

Messianic Judaism

2009-04-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

The idea of the Messiah has wielded an enormous influence in Jewish history, but the nature of the belief always was in constant flux. There seems to be a tension between varying perceptions of the Messianic phenomenon.

The word Messiah comes from the Hebrew word that means to anoint. This already suggest or alludes to the monarchal aspect of the Messianic figure. Kings of Israel were anointed. If you call someone a Messiah, you are suggesting that he is part of a dynastic leadership that once existed and will exist in the future.

The Two Opposing Views of Messianism: Restorative and Futuristic

At some point in time, this was understood to allude not merely to an existing historical dynasty, but to a future heir to the throne that would appear. He would be the Messiah. We refer to this as the coming of the personal Messiah. This idea understands the Messianic figure as being a particular person.

The nature of the future reestablishment of a son of David was also interpreted to mean different things at different times. At times, there was emphasis on the belief in a return to the old glory of Israel. When you talk about the Messianic king, you talk about a king that would recover Jerusalem and restore the grandeur of Israel to what it was.

At other times, this expresses an utopian vision of the future as an age of perfect peace. The restorative vision is far more Judaic-centered and it looks to the past as its model. The futuristic utopian image not only looks to the future, but is far more universal. It encompasses all the nations.

There is another important difference between these two perceptions of the Messianic phenomenon. In the restorative account, the process would be apparently this-worldly. That is to say, the Messianic phenomenon would take place in a world whose laws of nature are those that are in practice in our world today. Whereas the utopian image suggests almost by definition a total revision of the laws of nature. Animals that were natural enemies would now be friendly neighbors and lie down peacefully one near the other.

These two visions did not always alternate and replace one another, but they probably coexisted at times among different sections of Jewish society. History played a role in determining when the restorative would have the upper hand and when the more spiritualized view would.

For example, the last military attempt by Jews to remove Roman rule from Palestine occurred in the years 132 to 135 under the leadership of Simon bar Kosiba. Simon bar Kosiba appears to have had Messianic aspirations. He was actually described by rabbi Akiva as the potential Messiah. When you examine his image, you note that he is not a rabbi nor a spiritual figure, he is a military commander. His one aim in life was to kill Romans and kick them out of the land.

Bar Kosiba failed. With his failure, something very interesting happens. The pendulum of Messianic thought turned to the totally opposite direction. From a military this-worldly Messianic figure that would restore the grandeur of Israel, now comes a much more spiritualized hope.

Messianic Pretenders in the Middle Ages

As we head into the Middle Ages, messianism becomes much more spiritualized. At the same time, there is a downplaying of activist messianism.

By the 12th century, Maimonides could categorically state that the Messianic age was not about politics. It was a period that would enable the study of Torah in preparation for the coming world.

Messianism would constantly appear on the scene in Jewish history. The medieval period knew a number of Messianic pretenders. One of them, called Sabbatai Zevi, appeared in the mid 17th century, and vast numbers of Jews, both in Europe and in the Middle East, embraced this figure as being a potential Messianic leader. The only problem was that this fellow was influenced by all sorts of mystical teachings. As strange as it may sound, in the end, this Messiah actually converted to Islam. This brought about a tremendous devastation within Jewish communities. It was one of the great tragedies of the late medieval period.

Zionism: Secular Messianism?

Many would argue that the appearance of Zionism in modern times was a result of Messianic aspirations. It also thrived for restoration by returning to the land. The only problem was that Zionism is a secular movement. In many ways, we encounter here something that can be called secular messianism. Many people would claim that Zionism is in fact a secular Messianic movement.

The issue that constantly came up in Zionism was about “can you haste the coming of the Messiah?”. There seemed to have been two strands within Judaism. There were those who believed it was totally in God’s hands. According to them, there is no way of hastening the process. It is fixed in a future time. In fact, this people thought that if you try to haste the Messianic age, you show a lack of faith. In other words, you do not believe in the promises that were made for a restoration.

Others believed that you have to take the first step. There were some Zionist leaders who tried to put these two movements together. They tried to combine religiosity with activist Zionist mentality, creating something that some people referred to as Religious Zionism.

In the recent generation, there were groups of Jews that actually believed that their rabbi was an image of the Messiah. In their lifetime they were convinced that he was the ultimate Messianic figure. Even upon his death, many of them still believed that he was a potential Messianic figure that somehow never came to ultimate flourishing.

I think that all this tells us what a potent force the belief in a restorative process was. Many people actually consider it to be the dominant force in Jewish history. That might be an exaggeration, but not by very much.

The Afterlife in Judaism

2009-04-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

By the Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers, such as Maimonides, claimed that there is reward and punishment after death. They considered belief in reward and punishment to be a major article of faith. They, too, had no doubts that these rewards are primarily connected to a future existence. The great advantage of this is, of course, that you cannot judge God simply by seeing how people thrive in this world. There is no way of denying God’s ultimate truthful dealing with mankind just by looking at this world.

Some medieval thinkers, nevertheless, had problems with this doctrine of reward and punishment, whether in this world or in the next. Claiming that God would reward and punish is not that simple. First of all, God appears to be vindictive. Does a real God take offence if someone does not pray to him eight times during the day or something like that? Maybe even more critical, how can the suffering of children be justified by the sins of their parents?

Some modern writers attempted to solve these issues by quoting Rabbinic statements that also seemed to suggest that good deeds are their own reward. That is to say, if one behaves properly, the reward is in the good deeds themselves. That sounds suspiciously close to what the Sadducees claimed.

Resurrection of the Dead

One of the rewards that became a staple in Jewish belief was a belief in resurrection. It could be that this is one of the ultimate rewards. While this was one of the main points of Jewish belief, the nature of resurrection is far from clear throughout Jewish history. I would venture to say that this continues to this very day.

First of all, there are very few biblical proof texts for the whole idea of resurrection of the death. There are a few. For instance, in the book of Isaiah, chapter 26 verse 19, we find “your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.”

A scripture like this is so difficult. From this, to a personal resurrection of the dead is a major leap of faith.

Post-biblical literature was not clear about how all of this would occur. One thing seems to be fairly obvious. This resurrection of the death does not appear to be an individual phenomenon, something to happen to each and every person separately. Rather, they slowly began to envision a sort of a general resurrection of the death. In some future time, this would be a national event.

On the other hand, another staple of Jewish belief which was just as crucial was the belief in the ongoing existence of the soul. That is to say, the soul does not perish with death. This, as opposed to resurrection, appears to be understood on an individual basis. Each and every person has a soul, and upon that person’s dead, that soul is removed or moved to some sort of celestial courthouse, where it will be judged to either perdition or reward.

By medieval times, there were already disputes not only about what happens to the soul, but also how that relates to resurrection. If the soul continues to exist, what would happen in the end? Would that soul then later be returned to the original body? Will the body rise up with another soul?

Indeed, some people accused philosophers such as Maimonides of denying the resurrection of the actual body. Maybe this resurrection of the death is a bit more spiritual that what we originally imagined. The dead souls should be resurrected, not the body. There is a book that was attributed to Maimonides where he claims “I do believe that the body will actually rise up, but I believe that even the resurrected body will ultimately die as well”. Then, again, he was attacked for not having total faith on the resurrection of the dead.

We must remember that resurrection of the dead was a staple of Jewish belief that was recited three times a day at the beginning of the Amidah prayer. The central prayer of the Jewish liturgy stresses that God resurrects the dead.

After a person’s death, the first stage would be the afterlife of the personal soul of that person. This would be followed by a Messianic era in this world on earth. The third stage would be some sort of a general resurrection of the dead.

Fate and Free Will in Judaism: Pharisee, Sadducees and Essenes

2009-04-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

During the last centuries B.C.E., Judaism seems to have experienced a certain diversification. Different groups with widely varied beliefs regarding the essence of God and God’s role in this world appeared on the scene. Our sources describe at least three different groups.

What is interesting is that the Jewish historian Josephus uses the Greek term for “philosophies” or “schools of thought” when he describes these groups.

These groups appeared on the scene in the last centuries B.C.E. One group, called the Sadducees, believed in a God who was totally removed from any active involvement in this world. God does not determine or preordain human affairs. There is no such thing as fate. Man has absolute control over his deeds. If there is something called reward and punishment, they would claim that these are the immediate results of human action. They are the direct consequence of how man behaves, not the retribution of an external all-powerful force. This group also denied any form of resurrection of the dead.

A second group, which Josephus calls the Essenes, frequently associated with the authors of some of the Death Sea Scrolls, maintained almost the total opposite of Sadducean teaching. At least regarding free will and fate. They claimed that everything was preordained by God. Man really has no choice or free will to act as he wishes.

The third group, also mentioned by Josephus, is called the Pharisees. They seemed to have chosen a middle path. For many of us, choosing the middle path sounds very pleasing to the ear, but in fact, the conclusions of this path are really the hardest to understand.

They believed that everything that occurs is the will of God, and nevertheless, man has free will to choose between evil and good. Any child who hears that statement is obviously going to ask the crucial question. If God knows everything, I obviously do not have free will. If he knows things in advance, they were all determined before I made any choice.

The Pharisees’ approach attempted to reconcile an omnipotent and all-knowing God with man’s power over his actions as the only justification for receiving either reward or punishment. If man has no free will, there is no justification for reward or punishment.

The attempt to reconcile these two was embraced by most mainstream Jewish thinkers. The rabbis of the Talmud put it in a very simple way: “All is in the hands of God, save the fear of God”.

There is a touching rabbinic legend that describes how at the moment of a child’s conception, the seminal crop which would develop into that child is brought by an angel. The angel brings this seminal crop before God and asks of God what would become of this crop. Would it be a person strong or weak? Wise or foolish? Rich or poor? The angel only refrains from asking one question: would this person be wicked or righteous? It is forbidden to ask that, because that is in the hands of the child himself.

The understanding of the nature of reward and punishment also seemed to cause problems for Jewish thinkers throughout history. The biblical book of Job realizes that the righteous frequently suffers, while the wicked thrives. By Second Temple times, this seems to have been partially resolved by assigning much of man’s reward to a future existence, a world to come. The evil man may thrive in this world and the righteous man may suffer, but this world is nothing compared to the world to come. In that ultimate world, true reward and punishment would be dispensed.

The Sadduceess probably found no overt allusion to a future life or a world to come in the Bible, so they denied the idea totally. For them, everything ceases in this world. With man’s death, there is no afterlife of the soul. This is very interesting, the Saduccean teaching, that God is removed from this world and that there is no afterlife, is very close to the Greek philosophy of the Epicureans. The Epicureans claimed that men should strive for wellbeing in this world, the phrase in Greek was ataraxia. You should strive for wellbeing in this world because there is nothing after this world.

I think that it is not by chance that the rabbis chose as the epitome of the heretic the name Epicurs. In fact, it was this Epicurean philosophy that denied almost all of the basic tenets of Pharisaism, which would develop into Rabbinic Judaism.

The Stages of Life in Judaism

2009-04-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

Judaism finds its expression throughout the year at all major stages of an individual’s life. Here we will present the major religious events in a Jew’s life, the rituals and the rights of passage that accompany men and women from birth to death.

Circumcision: Following the model of Abraham’s covenant through circumcision, all males are circumcised.

Coming of Age: After circumcision, the next right of passage for all Jewish children is the coming of age. That is, the assuming of all of the obligations of an adult.

Marriage: In Judaism, marriage is the normal and highly preferable state of life for adults. God’s love for Israel was commonly compared to marital relations.

Divorce in Judaism: The fact that the groom writes the Ketubah is really a reflexion of an asymmetric relationship between husband and wife in historical Judaism. It was the husband’s prerogative to divorce his wife. The wife could not equally divorce her husband.

Death and Burial Ceremonies in Judaism: Ideally, a dying person should recite the Shema and confess his or her sins before death.

Death and Burial Ceremonies in Judaism

2009-04-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

Ideally, a dying person should recite the Shema and confess his or her sins before death. That cannot always be the case. After a person dies, the corpse is cleansed and dressed in plain white shrouds. The idea being that we are all equal in death.

Men frequently have their tallit placed on them as their about to be buried. In Judaism, burying in the ground is the only system accepted by tradition. In ancient times, people might be buried in caves, family mausoleums also were used.

In antiquity, it was actually common to have burial carried up in two stages. At first, they would place a corpse in a cave. They would let that corpse decomposed for a period of a year. They believed that during that year the corpse was actually being purged of all its sins. After a year, the family would return to the cave and gather the bones. That was considered a holiday for the family. They then placed the bones in a small container. We have discovered over the years hundreds and hundreds of such containers throughout ancient Palestine. Some of them had beautiful artwork.

Quite frankly, one has to wonder whether that system would be introduced at some future stage in the State of Israel, since burial can only take place in the ground, and they are running out of ground. This is not a very economical system. The system of gathering bones together in a small container might be a solution.

In many places throughout Israel today no coffins are used. The death are placed directly in the ground. Cremation still is shunned by most Jews today. Some people consider it outright forbidden. Others say it is not a problem.

After burial, a series of mourning periods begin. The first period lasts for 7 days, hence the phrase shiva. Shiva in Hebrew is seven. During that period, mourners refrain from all everyday activities. They usually remain at home and receive condolence visits. It is customary to conduct daily prayers at a mourner’s house during those seven days.

The second stage lasts 30 days, when mourning ends for all except the immediate offspring of the dead, meaning the children of the death parent. A third stage lasts for one complete year. During that year after death, the child of the dead parent would recite a special prayer known as the kaddish. The word kaddish Aramaic means sanctification.

There is a misconception about his prayer. The prayer itself was not written as a prayer about the dead. It was a prayer that was recited originally at the end of prayer sessions and at the end of study sessions. It is a prayer that describes God’s kingdom in this world. It is just one long list of phrases for God. Beginning in medieval Germany, this prayer was assigned to be recited by mourners.

People would visit the cemetery one year after the death of parents. Very often, in some communities, a tombstone is only set up a year after death at the cemetery. Then they would visit the same cemetery on a yearly basis. On the anniversary of the death, the child again recites the kaddish.

Jewish Cemeteries

Jewish cemeteries have an interesting history to them. According to Jewish tradition, only Jews may be buried in a Jewish cemetery. As a result, some very distressing cases took place where people had doubtful Jewish pedigrees about them. All sorts of discussions and debates arose. Should this person be buried in the Jewish cemetery or not? In fact, in the modern State of Israel, the major debate that split the country into two, about who is and who is not a Jew, began with the question of burying in the cemetery.

Burial is obviously a very sensitive issue. Jews connect all sorts of beliefs with burial. One of them in particular has a fascinating history. Jews want to be buried in the land of Israel, even if they had never seen the land. This is a custom that probably goes back to the 2nd or 3rd century of the Common Era. This was due to all sorts of religious beliefs. Some believed that if you were buried in the land, your sins would be atoned for. Another belief was the dead who are buried in the land of Israel would rise up first when the Messiah comes.

We read stories of people having their coffins sent to Israel for burial. There is one Rabbinic story that describes two rabbis on the outskirts of the city of Tiberius. They see coffins coming for burial from the diaspora. One of them says, “now you come, in death. You had no need for God’s inheritance to Israel during your lifetime. Now, by sending your bones, you are contaminating the land”. This issue of burial was a very sensitive one throughout Jewish history.

Divorce in Judaism

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The fact that the groom writes the Ketubah is really a reflexion of an asymmetric relationship between husband and wife in historical Judaism. It was the husband’s prerogative to divorce his wife. The wife could not equally divorce her husband. Certain groups within Judaism have tried to restructure the Ketubah in such a way that it will equal the play field between husband and wife.

Judaism considers divorce to be an act taken by the parties involved. Divorce does not require a court’s ratification. If the husband and the wife go through the procedure properly, they are divorced. What is interesting is that this is not always considered a great tragedy. This was not to be and they should be divorced and get with life.

Divorce was of mutual consent, although the husband had the initiative. It was he who initiated the process. That was the unequal status. A husband gives the divorce document, which in Hebrew is called the get, of his own free will. The woman must receive it at her own free will. If this equal free will is not experienced, then the divorce is not valid.

Over the centuries, steps were taken to grant some greater leverage to the wife. The wife can petition a court to force her husband to divorce, based on a variety of claims, such as the husband’s improper behavior towards her. Unfortunately, if the husband refuses to offer the get, he place his wife in a situation of limbo. She cannot marry again because she is still technically married to him. The husband has to consent. If he refuses, for all sorts of reasons, he is imposing upon his wife a life of misery.

When the husband refuses to grant his wife the divorce, and the court believes that the wife’s claims are justified, it can enforce all sorts of coercion, even jail, to pressure the husband to grant the divorce.

The Rabbinic formulation consisted in pressuring him until he says “I conses”.

Marriage

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In Judaism, marriage is the normal and highly preferable state of life for adults. God’s love for Israel was commonly compared to marital relations. By the way, the same thing is to be found in the Catholic Church, where the relation between God and the Church is like a husband’s love for his wife. The rabbis frequently referred to God’s presense in a good marriage as sort of a third part. Today, Judaism is monogamous. Although nothing in the Bible or even in later Jewish law actually forbade men from having than one wife.

A decree was issued by one Rabbinic sage in Western Europe somewhere in the late 10th century, his name was Rabbeinu Gershom. The decree issued prevented Jews from Western Europe from having more than one wife. This was not accepted at the time by other Jews. There were other areas of the Jewish community where Jews continued to have more than one wife. Up until the 20th century, after the founding of the State of Israel, Jews were brought to Israel and many of them still had more than one wife. This, of course, is totally fordibben today. And today, it is fodbidden not only in the State of Israel, but no Jews today are permitted to marry more than one wife.

The Stages of Marriage

In ancient times, the marriage process and the ceremonies took place in stages. Today, all of these are concentrated and performed at one time, at the marriage ceremony. It used to be a much longer process.

The first stage of marriage was engagement, in Hebrew the word is kiddushin. At this time, the groom would give the bride an object of specific value. In front of two witnesses, he would declare that with this object, you are engaged to me. This ceremony created the initial bond between the two, so the woman could no longer look for a husband elsewhere. The marriage was not consumated. It was not complete yet until they reached a second stage.

The second stage, in antiquity, might had taken place only months later. At that stage, the groom would have written and signed a document known as Ketubah. The Ketubah is a marriage document, which is primarily a comittment to pay the wife a specific sum if he should divorce her in the future. This, of course, was the great guarantee for a woman. A husband would not want to dismiss his wife, because he knew this would cost him a significant amount of money.

The Ketubah also declared that if the husband should die before the wife, the heirs of the husband must continue to support the woman until she may remarry again. The Ketubah is crucial for the status and for the protection of a woman. As a result, it was considered totally unacceptable for a man and a woman to live together unless the woman possesed her Ketubah. Popular custom had it that, after received, the bride would immediately give the Ketubah to her mother.

What is fascinating is that in excavations that were carried out near the Death Sea in recent years, we we have actually discovered Ketubot. These marriage documents were written almost 2000 years ago. This is a practice that goes way back in Jewish history.

The wedding ceremony today puts all of these stages together. The engagement, the signing of the Ketubah, all of these takes place at the wedding ceremony. The Ketubah is signed, and after it is signed, the couple enters under a canopy, a huppah in Hebrew. This symbolizes the house into which the bride is being introduced.

A number of benedictions are recited. The groom performs the kiddushin ceremony to engage by giving his bride a ring, and reciting “behold, you are consacrated to me with this ring in acordance with the law of Moses and Israel”. The Ketubah is read. By the way, the Ketubah is read in the language in which it was written, in antiquity it was Arameic. The idea is that this is a commitment document that everybody should know what said. As a result, in subsequent generations, in the United States there are very often versions written in English.

After the Ketubah is read out loud, a glass is crushed underfoot by the groom. You break something in rememberance of the destruction of Jerusalem. This was an event that was not forgot even in the mometns of joy. In many ceremonies today, Psalm 137 is sung when the groom breaks that glass. Psalm 137 says “if I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill”.

Coming of Age

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After circumcision, the next right of passage for all Jewish children is the coming of age. That is, the assuming of all of the obligations of an adult. Girls are formally considered of age and required to keep all the religious laws pertinent to women at the age of 12. Boys, at the age of 13.

Upon reaching these ages, children are required to keep Mitzvoth, which means commandments. Hence, a boy is referred to as a Bar Mitzvah. Translated literally, that means son of a mitzvah or son of commandments. In essence, it means belonging to the commandments. A girl is a Bat Mitzvah, a daughter of commandments, but actually meaning belonging to the commandments.

Historically, the reaching of majority was not a cause for extraordinary celebration. The fact is that neither the Bible nor the Talmud really devotes any space to ceremonies when a person reaches that age. Today’s festivities are really a much more recent development

A Jewish boy who arrives at the age of Bar Mitzvah will now take an active part in all synagogue rituals. Women were precluded from actively participating in many of these rituals, so it was simply not that manifest that a girl had reached her majority.

Sensitivity towards sexual equality, however, has led both the reform and conservative communities to level up the religious playing field for girls. Bat Mitzvah ceremonies are now common in the synagogues. Orthodox Jews who also wish to celebrate a Bat Mitzvah, would usually do this in a manner unconnected or not connected directly to synagogue ritual.

I should really insert here that this is an issue that has being addressed the past few years by the modern orthodox elements within Judaism. They are constantly reassessing the role of women in ritual and in religious life. This is going to be one of the defining issues in future years in the development of Judaism: a reappraisal of the role of women.

The Education Process

A more informal right of passage, but not less significant than the technical reaching of majority, is the introduction of children into the education process. The study of Torah was historically considered one of the central religious obligations of Jews. In antiquity, male children were introduced into this context at the age of 6 or 7, and they would stay on as far as their intellectual talents or their family finances might carry them.

This was the situation in modern times as well in countries from Eastern Europe and North Africa. Although many children would enter the education process at its most elementary level, that is to say learning how to read the Torah, the fact is that very few stayed on for the higher levels of learning. Families that were wealthy or that recognized that their child was a young genius worth supporting through higher levels of academic pursuit could afford this. In only those cases a child would remain in some sort of academic framework.

Girls were usually left out of this process, not withstanding some frequently cited exceptions in Rabbinic literature. Those exceptions probably prove the rule.

In recent years, more and more women are becoming involved in higher levels of traditional education. Even among the ever-growing orthodox circles, women are now regularly being introduced into the entire corpus of Judaic learning. Women are now beginning to study and teach Talmud at the highest levels, and this is something almost totally not existent just one generation ago. This is a huge change in Jewish communal life, and its effects on future generations will be very significant.

Circumcision

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The birth of a child sets into motion a series of religious observances. Following the model of Abraham’s covenant through circumcision, all males are circumcised. The preferred age for circumcision is 8 days old. However, if the baby is not entirely healthy, the ceremony would be postponed as long as necessary. This is determined by a doctor, not necessarily by a rabbi. The idea of preservation of life is a medical issue to be determined by those who are capable of making the decision.

An adult Jew could had been not been circumcised as a child. This can happen in many contexts. One relatively recent would be the case of many Jews who were born and grew up in the former Soviet Union, were circumcision at times was not only not practiced but could actually be dangerous.

A grown-up Jew would be required to have himself circumcised. It is the preeminent right of entering Jewish life. As a result, converts are required to circumcise themselves.

All sorts of rationalizations for this ritual have been put forth. From claims of hygienic nature to the moderation of sexual desire. There is even a story in the Talmud that has a Roman official asking Rabbi Akiba “if your God really prefers men not to have a foreskin, why did he not create them without a foreskin?”. Rabbi Akiba answered that is exactly the purpose. Man was created imperfectly, and it is he that is required to strive towards perfection.

Nevertheless, Rabbinic Judaism usually kept a distance from this type of rationalization. The Torah requires circumcision and we follow its requirements.

In the early stages of reform Judaism, particularly in the 19th century, opposition was expressed to circumcision in Germany. The main reason was a general distaste for particularistic behavior by Jews. It set Jews apart.

The fact that the practice distinguished also between the sexes contributed to some of this opposition. Today, however, circumcision is almost universally practiced by all branches of Judaism.

Circumcision was historically considered the ultimate physical mark of a male Jew. Various persecutions often involved identifying Jewish males through this sign.

Jewish Holidays

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We will try to understand the significance of the holidays and to examine the nature of the Jewish calendar. A somewhat apocryphal story tells of a Jew who is about to be taken to a ghetto. He manages to ask the local rabbi the following question: if there might be the possibility of smuggling one book to the isolated labor camp, what book should that be?

We might imagine the rabbi suggesting a prayer book or possibly the Bible. Yet, the response was “take the Jewish calendar”. If you know that you are celebrating the various holidays and also keeping the days of communal mourning and fasting, together with the rest of the Jewish community dispersed throughout the world, you have maintained your identity.

The Jewish calendar is probably one of the best ways of studying Jewish history. The calendar itself is a reflection of ancient Jewish history and ongoing events up until modern times.

The Jewish Calendar: Judaism today has a fixed calendar that determines all of its holidays. This is arguably the most important unifying factor in what is otherwise a frequently fragmented religious community. Not withstanding all the disputes, the calendar is universally accepted by all practicing Jews.

The Sabbath: The only holiday in Judaism that is not determined by a particular day of a month is the Sabbath. The word in Hebrew is Shabbat, which basically means to rest.

High Holy Days in Judaism. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: The most solemn of Jewish holidays are known as the “High Holy Days”. They are the New Year and the day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.

Seasonal Holidays. Passover, Sukkot and Shavuot: Some Jewish holidays are considered seasonal. They signify the agricultural activity of the autumn and the spring, the harvest days and the days of sowing. All these three holidays have close associations with chapters of the biblical exodus story.

Post-biblical Holidays. Purim and Hanukkah: A third category of festivals was added after the Bible, in Second Temple times.

Mourning Holiday. The 9th of Ab: Numerous fast days commemorate the destruction of the two Jewish temples. The are a number of days throughout the calendar that are linked with the destruction of the temples, as well as other disasters that marked the saga of Judaism. The most solemn of these days is the 9th of the lunar month of Ab.

Modern Jewish Holidays: Events of the last few generations have aroused calls for an updating of the Jewish calendar. Numerous special dates have been added to the Jewish cycle of the yearly calendar.

Modern Jewish Holidays

2009-04-20T15:59:00.001-07:00

Events of the last few generations have aroused calls for an updating of the Jewish calendar. Numerous special dates have been added to the Jewish cycle of the yearly calendar.

For instance, since the ethnic and national aspect of Judaism is there, Israel’s day of independence is celebrated not only in the State of Israel, but by Jews outside of the State who identify with that State. Here something very interesting takes place. The extent of each community’s religious commitment determines to what degree that date would be celebrated as a religious holiday or as a secular one. For instance, in the State of Israel you would find that the religious community actually gathers at the synagogue and introduces a whole series of new prayers based on psalms and other portions of the Bible to celebrate that day of independence, whereas the secular community celebrates it as a secular holiday.

Obviously, there are those Jews who do not celebrate that day. These are those who never identify with the Zionist enterprise. In particular, members of the ultra-orthodoxy within the Jewish community never really supported the Zionist movement. They never celebrate that day.

One week after Passover, the tragic events of the holocaust are remembered on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. This day is a day commemorated in the State of Israel and throughout most Jewish communities.

Mourning Holiday: the 9th of Ab

2009-04-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

Numerous fast days commemorate the destruction of the two Jewish temples. The are a number of days throughout the calendar that are linked with the destruction of the temples, as well as other disasters that marked the saga of Judaism. The most solemn of these days is the 9th of the lunar month of Ab. It usually coincides with late July or early August. It is a day of fasting beginning in the evening and until the evening of the following day.

As it is in late July and early August, it means that days are longer. Some Jewish communities really suffer. The further North you go, the longer the day extends. People in certain parts of Russia and Scandinavia find themselves fasting until eleven at night, and it is really difficult.

This day, the 9th of Ab, commemorates not only the destruction of the two Jewish temples, but all sorts of other misfortunes, whether it took place on that day or another day. It is as if things were concentrated into one day that would be a conglomerate of difficult Jewish memories.

Post-biblical Holidays: Purim and Hanukkah

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A third category of festivals was added after the Bible, in Second Temple times. For instance, one feast known as Purim, is based on the events of the biblical book of Ester. It is celebrated a month before Passover. The nature of the story in the book of Ester is about an evil official in the Persian kingdom that wanted to annihilate all the Jews because there was one Jew that refused to bow down to him, his name was Mordecai. The official was thwarted, in the last minute everything was overturned. Clearly, this was a story that resonated deeply with Jews throughout their history.

Hanukkah: the Night of Candles

Another festival, lasting eight days, is the feast of Hanukkah. It is celebrated in December. Often it falls literally on the same days that Christians would celebrate Christmas, sometimes it is a little before Christmas. Its focus is on the cultural clash between Judaism and Hellenism in the Second Temple period. An attempt was made by a despotic king, Antiochus IV, to outlaw Jewish religious practice and to impose pagan rites in the Temple of Jerusalem. This led to a Jewish uprising, led by a family of priests, known as the Hasmoneans, sometimes referred to as the Maccabees.

Their victory in 164 B.C.E. symbolizes for many the principle of freedom of religion. On Hanukkah, candles are lit. Eight candles are lit, every day one more. The first night one candle, the second two, etc. The reason for lighting candles is very interesting. If you were to ask most Jews, they will tell you a well-known fable that appears in the Talmud. That is when the Hasmoneans defeated the Greeks and they entered the despoiled temple, they found no sacred oil with which to light the candelabrum, save for a tiny little portion that had enough for one night alone. They lit and the oil sufficed for eight days. So, we light the candles for eight days to remind us of that miracle.

People had, I think erroneously, pointed to that legend and claimed that it was an attempt to redirect Jewish history from the political and the military defeat of the Greeks to a more spiritualized aspect. The light, sort of a metaphor for the brilliance of the Torah. I think that it is a nice idea, but I have serious doubt whether that is the case. The rabbis themselves gave all sorts of other reasons, some of them stressing the military victory of the Hasmoneans. I think that the two components really come together.

Seasonal Holidays: Passover, Sukkot and Shavuot

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Some Jewish holidays are considered seasonal. They signify the agricultural activity of the autumn and the spring, the harvest days and the days of sowing. All these three holidays have close associations with chapters of the biblical exodus story.

Sukkot: Feast of Tabernacles

The first of these, if we are counting from Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is the festival Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles. It is just five days after Yom Kippur. One realized very quickly that the months of September and early October show probably the densest concentration of Jewish holidays. The fact is that Israel begins its classes only after all of the holidays.

On this festival of Sukkot, people leave their houses, because the holiday is connected to the Israelites who dwelt in huts as they traversed through the desert, following their exodus from Egypt. Just as they lived in these huts, today we will leave our houses and go outside of life, as a way of reexamining ourselves. Jews today build these huts and they eat in them for the entire holiday. Many Jews actually sleep in them as well.

The final day of the holiday marks the move into the coming winter. An special prayer is recited for rain on that day. This same day, the 8th one, is also when the reading of the Torah is finished and recommenced again. In diaspora communities, this happens on a 9th day. The reason for this is very interesting. This has to do with a problem in antiquity. When holidays were declared in Israel, it sometimes took weeks until some diaspora communities found out about this. As a result, in the diaspora it was customary to add another day of festival simply because they had a problem in knowing for sure which day was chosen in Israel as the day of festivities. This is an old custom that quite frankly could be obviated today. Yet, for purposes of tradition, has not been obviated. Many festivals in Israel today have one day less than in the diaspora.

Passover

Six months after Sukkot, the festival of Passover is celebrated. The first night is probably the most extraordinary one of the Jewish year. It is when the Seder takes place. This is no ordinary fest of dinner. Even the food is intended to recall memories of bondage in Egypt and the miraculous redemption. You eat an unleavened sort of cracker-like bread, it is called matzah. This symbolizes the haste with which our fathers were forced to flee from Egypt. They had no time to make bread, so, they ate this unleavened bread.

Jews eat bitter herbs on this night, to remind them of the bitterness of slavery. This is reliving the exodus not just through a retelling of the story, but actually eating food that would recount aspects of this deliverance.

Jews recite a text, the Haggadah, which recounts the exodus story by the recitation of biblical scripture, Rabbinic accounts and later medieval poetry. The poetry comes at the very end, and it is sung in a rather festive manner, because people already had drunk some coups and wine.

Children are payed special attention at the Seder. The whole elaborate procedure is intended to make them ask what is this all about. Part of the Haggadah has children asking questions. You are supposed to do everything to make them ask these questions.

Shavuot

Seven weeks after Passover, another festival takes place. We refer to it as Shavuot, literally “weeks”. While biblically this was linked to an agricultural feast, the rabbis determined that this was the day that commemorates the revelation at Sinai and the giving of the Torah. We read on that day the portion of the Torah that describes the revelation. Some Jews spend all night studying the Torah on the eve of Shavuot.

High Holy Days in Judaism: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

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The most solemn of Jewish holidays are known as the “High Holy Days”. They are the New Year and the day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Both fall in the month of Tishrei, which is just as the summer is about to end and autumn begins. Usually, these holidays would fall in the month of September, and sometimes early October.

Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, is considered the yearly Day of Judgement. God is projected as King of Judge of all mankind, not just of Israel. So, while Rosh Hashanah is a Jewish holiday, there is a universal aspect to this day. The prayers of Rosh Hasanah actually describe how all of mankind literally parades before God in some sort of a Judgement, and he deals with them.

Along with extended prayer, the most outstanding element of the service in the New Year, is the blowing of a ram’s horn. The Hebrew word is shofar. A ram’s horn is used to remember that story of Isaac’s binding on the altar and his almost sacrifice. At the last moment, Isaac was replaced by a ram. God chose a ram. So, we blow the ram’s horn on Rosh Hashanah, among other things, to remind God of Abraham’s faith.

The fact is that medieval Jewish scholars considered this blowing of the horn as a wake up call, arousing mankind from its moral slumber. This is the day of Judgement, this is the day when people should change their lives.

Ten days are counted from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. These are designated as the days of repentance. This is a period of personal introspection. The ideal being to take stock of your life, in particular behavior with others. These ten days of introspection reach their peak on the tenth day of Tishrei, which is the Day of Atonement. This is a day of total fast, from sunset on the day before until the end of the following day.

Yom Kippur is not intended as a sad day. People sometimes get this wrong. They assume that if you fast you must be sad. Not at all. It’s a solemn one, ending with one final blast of the ram’s horn, and affirming that God is the Lord. The whole day is taken up by ongoing prayer. Technically, you are only required to fast from the age 13. Women are required to fast from the age of 12. One of the great rights of passage is when a child for the first time begins fasting on Yom Kippur.

The Jewish Sabbath

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The only holiday in Judaism that is not determined by a particular day of a month is the Sabbath. The word in Hebrew is Shabbat, which basically means to rest. For many, it is the crowning jewel of the Jewish time cycle.

We should remember that Sabbath is the only sacred day mentioned outright in the Ten Commandments. Other holidays are not mentioned. The Sabbath is. The Ten Commandments actually appear twice in the books of Moses. In the book of Exodus, in chapter 20, the reason for resting on the 7th day is emulating God. Just as God created the world in six days and the rested on the 7th, so we should also rest on the 7th day.

However, in the second version of the Ten Commandments, which appears in Deuteronomy chapter 5, this is expressed far more as a social issue. On the 7th day you should not do any work. This phrase, “not to do work on Sabbath”, engenders and causes enormous discussions among the rabbis to define work. What does work mean? Whole books are written about it. But it goes on. Your son, your daughter, your servants, your cattle and the stranger that lives withing your gates may rest as you.

This is, when we think of the chronological context in which this was formulated, a tremendous advanced social awareness of the needs of people. They need to have a day of rest. If you did not get the point, the Ten Commandments continue, remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God took you out of there. You ought to know how a servant in fact requires a day of rest.

The Sabbath, like all days in the Jewish calendar, begins at sunset. It continues until the evening of the following day. It does not begin at midnight, it begins at sunset. This is based on the way the scriptures described creation. When God creates the world, every day of the creation is concluded by “and it was evening, and it was morning, day 1”; then, “it was evening, it was morning, day 2”, and so on.

The Jewish Calendar

2009-04-20T15:10:00.001-07:00

A somewhat apocryphal story tells of a Jew who is about to taken in Russia to the ghetto. He manages to ask the local rabbi the following question: if there might be the possibility of smuggling one book to the isolated labor camp, what book should that be? We might imagine the rabbi suggesting a prayer book or possibly the Bible. Yet, the response was “take the Jewish calendar”.

If you know that you are celebrating the various holidays and also keeping the days of communal mourning and fasting, together with the rest of the Jewish community dispersed throughout the world, you have maintained your identity.

Judaism today has a fixed calendar that determines all of its holidays. This is arguably the most important unifying factor in what is otherwise a frequently fragmented religious community. Not withstanding all the disputes, the calendar is universally accepted by all practicing Jews.

The Lunar Months

We have to understand how the calendar functions and what are its components. The basic characteristic of the Jewish calendar is its system for reckoning time and time cycles. The system is commonly described as lunisolar. In other words, it goes both by the moon and by the sun, which is rather complicated. The months of the Jewish calendar are lunar. Each new month is determined by the renewed conjunction of the moon with the sun. That is, the positioning of the moon precisely between the earth and the sun. In other words, the month begins when the moon is totally invisible.

This alignment of sun, moon and earth takes place every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds. As a result, the Jewish month would be always either 29 days or 30 days.

A lunar year, meaning twelve such lunar months, would extend for approximately 354 days. However, a solar year is the one that determines our seasons. The position of the Earth opposite to the sun is what determines our seasons. A solar year lasts for 365 days. There is an eleven days differential between a lunar year and a solar year. This is crucial for the Jewish calendar. The holidays of the year in the Jewish cycle commemorate, among other things, the seasons of the year. As a result, they are determined by the solar year. Passover, for instance, is, by biblical definition, a spring festival. If the yearly cycle were determined simply by counting 12 lunar months, something very interesting would happen to that Passover. Passover would slowly retreat back from the Spring into Winter.

The Added Month

The problem of the Jewish calendar was to align between the lunar year and the solar year. This was done by adding a 13th month every three years. So, let’s say that at every time that Passover started creeping back into the winter, we would add just prior to Passover a 13th month, moving it again back into spring.

In ancient times, the decision to proclaim such a leap year was taken by recognized authorities. These authorities might have been connected to the Temple in Jerusalem prior to its destruction, and afterwards connected to some sort of Rabbinic institutions. The problem was that different bodies and different persons or authorities often claimed the right to regulate the calendar. This led to some major clashes within the Jewish community.

For instance, the Jews of Babylonia and the Jews of Palestine a number of times clashed among themselves who has the right to determine the Jewish calendar.

The Calendar and the Christian Church

In the 4th century, pressure was placed on the Jewish calendar for the first time by an outside source. This was the young Christian Church. The reason for this was very interesting. Some Christian groups in the Eastern Roman Empire would wait until the Jews proclaimed their Passover to know when to celebrate Easter. Easter happened on Passover. This created a very uncomfortable situation. Does that mean that we have to wait until some rabbis gather together to proclaim their Passover for us to know when to celebrate Easter?

As a result, two things took place. On the one hand, the Church Council of Nicaea in 325 gathered, and one of its goals was to determine a fixed date for Easter that would not be dependent on the Jewish calendar anymore. They came out with that day, and it would be the first Sunday after a full moon in the Spring equinox. By doing this, of course, they dissolved any connection between Passover and Easter, because Passover always falls on the day of full moon.

The Fixed Calendar

There was a pressure being placed on the authorities that were involved not only in proclaiming the Jewish calendar, but then announcing it to the diaspora communities. This is a very interesting phenomenon. Once decisions were made in Palestine, how did the Jewish diaspora found out about this?

We know that, in antiquity, at least in those countries in the immediate vicinity of Palestine, they received words from a system of flares or flames that were lit at the tops of mountains. From Jerusalem towards Jericho. From Jericho up into the Jordan Valley. Then into Syria, then to Iraq.

Ultimately, that system changed for obvious reasons, and messengers were sent. We know that in the 4th century all sorts of interference was being run against these messengers.

Clearly, by the 4th century, there was a need within the Jewish community to establish a fixed calendar. This fixed calendar, according to tradition, was established by one of the heads of the Rabbinic community in Palestine, somewhere around the year 359 C.E. From that time on, Judaism had a fixed calendar. You knew in advance when it would be a leap year and so on. Some centuries later there were still some skirmishes between Babylonia and Palestine regarding the calendar. It is a very very crucial issue, because the calendar really manifests Jewish leadership. The official institutions that regulated the calendar, basically regulated Jewish life throughout the world.

In a normal year, it was decided that it would always be of 12 months, but every three years, a 13th month would be inserted as a leap year.

The names of the Jewish month all go back to the ancient Babylonian period. What is interesting is that these names were universally accepted by Jews until this very day.

Daily Practices of Judaism

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Here we will set out to describe the numerous ways in which Judaism manifests itself in the daily lives of its adherents. We are really going down into the field. Our aim would be two-fold. To provide a historical context for understanding the unique development of the institutions and practices of Judaism, and at the same time we would address contemporary religious behavior and frameworks. That is to say, how Judaism is practiced today. The goal is to provide us with an understanding of the daily and periodic practices of Judaism.

Here we will address the emergence of prayer as a major means of religious behavior and expression. We would note that prayer is removed from its biblical precursor, the offering of animal sacrifices. The questions we will ask are: what the Jewish prayers contain. When are they conducted? In what language are they recited? Are these texts fixed or they are constantly being changed? Can prayers only be recited in synagogues? This would lead us to an examination of the nature of the institution of synagogue. When did it begin. What are the physical designs. Are there requisite physical designs for a synagogue? How is the synagogue operated today?

In many ways, if we do look at the prayers, they tell us a tale. The constant prayer tells a tale of Jewish aspirations and hopes for a future. It is telling that the last blessing in the Amidah is a blessing to God who blesses his people with peace. We then look at those additional prayers that were added over the generations, they tell the sometimes sad tale of what happened and what Jews were forced to address in their synagogue liturgy over the years.

The Origins of Prayer: Prayer in the Bible: Turning to God in moments of need, what we call praying, definitely appears in the Bible. It was performed by private individuals as well as public figures. Prayer was not, however, the standard means of worshipping God in the Hebrew Bible.

Main Jewish Prayers: The destruction of the second temple in the year 70 C.E. required new modes of worship. Indeed it was then that prayer emerged almost universally as the substitute for sacrifice.

The Language of Jewish Prayer: In what language do Jews pray? Until the 19th century, the universal language of prayer in Judaism was Hebrew.

Jewish Public Prayer: Almost all prayers, specially the Amidah, are recited in the plural form. This is a communal expression. “We are praying to God, not I”.

The Jewish Synagogue: Today, synagogues are recognized as the main setting for prayer. This was not the case in the earliest synagogues of antiquity. First of all, there is absolutely no mention of synagogues explicitly in the Hebrew Bible.

The Jewish Synagogue

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Today, synagogues are recognized as the main setting for prayer. This was not the case in the earliest synagogues of antiquity. First of all, there is absolutely no mention of synagogues explicitly in the Hebrew Bible. When synagogues appeared for the first time, they carried all sorts of other functions, like the reading of the Torah, but not prayer.

The word synagogue, in fact, suggests that it serves a communal purpose. The word synagogue in Greek means “assembly”. The Hebrew equivalent is beyt knesset, literally “house of assembly”. I think this suggests that the role of early synagogues was that of a place for communities to gather for all sorts of reasons. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus describes a gathering in the synagogue of Tiberius in Galilee to prepare for an imminent war against the Romans. This is clearly not a function of worship.

Services in the Synagogue

The major function of synagogues before the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. was the public reading of Torah and its exposition through the delivery of a sermon. The New Testament, among other sources, describes Jesus and Paul delivering sermons in synagogues.

The Torah is regularly read in the synagogue as part of the service. Larger portions are read on the Sabbath and on the holidays. On weekdays, small portions are read. What is important is that the complete Torah is read in the course of one year. The day in which Jews reach the final portion of the Torah is the very same day in which they begin the new yearly cycle.

Prayer, Torah reading and a sermon would become the core of synagogue service in many synagogues today as well. The first two, prayer and Torah reading, are required. The sermon, on the other hand, is not.

Synagogue Architecture and Design

There is no required architecture for synagogues. In principle, a synagogue service can be conducted anywhere, even in a private house. In fact, this phenomenon occurred in recent generations, where young people have an aversion towards entering cathedral-like synagogues. They actually prefer much smaller and simpler surroundings in which to pray.

Certain common characteristics, nevertheless, appear in most synagogues. For instance, the scrolls of the Torah are usually deposited in an arc which stands at the front of the hall. Prayers are usually recited and directed while facing that arc. In fact, in religious law, one does not pray towards the Torah, one faces the city of Jerusalem while praying, in a manner similar to the Islamic direction of prayer towards a particular site.

Orthodox synagogues would have separate sittings for men and women. They have some kind of barrier between the two. Conservative and reform synagogues today have dismissed that separation completely.

Ancient synagogues were frequently designed in the manner of other public buildings of the surrounding culture. For instance, we have unearthed in the last few decades scores of ancient synagogues in Roman Byzantine Palestine. What is striking is that their architecture is very similar to the Christian churches that are to be found in the very same area.

Not only is the architecture similar. At times, the artistic motives that are found on mosaic floors are also very similar. For instance, depictions of Bible scenes are to be found in synagogues and the early Christian churches. One of the most popular Bible scene was the binding of Isaac, which was considered one of the great stories of ultimate faith.

There seems to be a common influence, or mutual influence between early synagogues and early Christian churches, certainly in the Middle East.

The Synagogue: Universal Symbol of Judaism

For much of Jewish history, throughout the last 2000 years, synagogues served as the most recognizable symbol of Judaism. In fact, it is interesting that opponents to Judaism usually would single out particular books and particular buildings in times of persecution. The Talmud, for instance, was the classic book to be burned if you wanted to get at the essence of Judaism. There were public burnings of the Talmud throughout the Middle Ages. The same is true regarding synagogues.

Synagogues would be singled out in times of persecution as the first structure to be destroyed. This has a history going to back to the Byzantine period. One of the law books describes how they should actually attack synagogues, destroy them or confiscate them and hand them off as a gift to the Church. What is interesting is that some early Roman emperors actually came out against this. There were times where there were tensions between the Roman emperor and the Catholic Church.

The destruction of synagogues has a very long and sad history, down to our generation. On the 9th and 10th of November 1938, hundreds of synagogues in Germany and Austria were destroyed within the period of 24 hours. This evening was known as Kristallnacht, the “the night of the shattered glass”. It was clear that the synagogue epitomized the essence of Judaism.

In many ways, if we do look at the prayers, they tell us a tale. The constant prayer tells a tale of Jewish aspirations and hopes for a future. It is telling that the last blessing in the Amidah is a blessing to God who blesses his people with peace. We then look at those additional prayers that were added over the generations, they tell the sometimes sad tale of what happened and what Jews were forced to address in their synagogue liturgy over the years.

Jewish Public Prayer

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Certain modern realities have found their way into Jewish liturgy. For instance, most diaspora communities, including those of the United States today, publicly recited a prayer asking for God’s guidance and protection for the officers of government. I remember myself seeing this in synagogues in the former Soviet Union. Clearly, it was important for Jews there to pray for the government. Whether they believed that God was listening or not, they knew that somebody else was listening. That was clearly the prudent thing to do.

Many synagogues today include prayers on behalf of the State of Israel. Here, again, we encounter that unique link in Judaism between religion and a particular land.

Almost all prayers, specially the Amidah, are recited in the plural form. This is a communal expression. “We are praying to God, not I”. Public prayer requires a quorum of ten, known as a minyan. Orthodox Jews today requires ten males, whereas conservative and reform Judaism expresses egalitarianism and consider men and women equal as part of the quorum of ten.

What is important, though, is that any ten people can constitute a quorum. No rabbinic or priestly officials are required for prayer. Although those blessed with a good voice and a knowledge of the traditional tunes would commonly requested to lead the service. Anybody, however, can do it.

The Language of Jewish Prayer

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In what language do Jews pray? Until the 19th century, the universal language of prayer in Judaism was Hebrew. The rabbis of the first centuries permitted prayer in other languages if Hebrew was unknown. For instance, we hear that Jews in the Greek city of Caesarea, actually said the Shema in Greek. The rabbis, however, always preferred Hebrew. This was the common language of Jewish as well as religious literature. In many ways, it was one of the most important unifying factors. Jews might not speak the same language on a daily basis, but they would pray in the same language.

When we arrived to the 19th century, this became an issue. In particular, among the reform movement in Germany, Jews raised the question of language. The issue was not only regarding prayer in Hebrew, but the sermon. In fact, this was even more important.

While most of traditional jury maintained Hebrew as primary language of prayer, other groups began to introduce some more portions of prayer in other languages. What is interesting is that in the 20th century, the revival of the Hebrew language as part of the Jewish national movement led to an enhanced use of Hebrew even among non-orthodox groups. In other words, Hebrew received some sort of renaissance in prayer.

Poetry and Prayer

Liturgy in Judaism has a basic structure to it. It was, however, constantly enhanced. In different periods of Jewish history, additions found their way into the liturgy. For instance, in the byzantine period, in Palestine and later in Muslim Spain, poets would write prayers. They would bring them into the synagogue and they would not just offer these to be read, they would actually recite them. I can almost say that they performed them.

Quite frankly, the community did not always understand these compositions. They required a very precise knowledge of Hebrew, what even more familiarity with the corpus of biblical and rabbinic literature. They are full of allusions to them. These are, however, some of the most beautiful prayers that we have today. Moreover, certain calamities throughout Jewish history, such as the destruction of European communities during the Crusades period, also encouraged the composition of poems that were recited on certain days of mourning.

Main Jewish Prayers

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The destruction of the second temple in the year 70 C.E. required new modes of worship. Indeed it was then that prayer emerged almost universally as the substitute for sacrifice, with the rabbis actually quoting scripture that would support this contention and transformation. They quote one of the prophets saying “instead of bulls, we will pay the offering of our leaps”. So, the offering of the leaps instead of the offering of an animal.

Rabbinic Judaism, beginning in the aftermath of the destruction, set up a foremost system of prayer. They never denied permission to individuals to pray when they desired, but the rabbis were intent on establishing a fixed framework that would determine when people prayed, where they prayed and what the major components of that prayer would include. The basic frameworks that were established in the first centuries of the common era exist until this very day.

In as much as the prayer took the place of sacrifice, originally there seems to have been two mandatory times for daily prayer. One in the morning and another in the afternoon. These two prayers replaced the two daily sacrifices that were offered up in the temple. There was a morning sacrifice and there was an afternoon sacrifice. At some later stages, a third evening prayer was also declared obligatory by the rabbis. Ultimately, they would tell us in a classic anachronistic style that it was the three patriots, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that established prayer. Abraham the morning prayer. Isaac the afternoon and Jacob the evening prayer.

The Amidah Prayer

All three daily prayer gatherings, as well as those of the Sabbath and the holidays, contained a central prayer comprised of 19 blessings. This major prayer is known in Hebrew as the Amidah, “the prayer said while standing”. It contains 19 blessings that detail God’s attributes. Reviver of the death, dispenser of wisdom, builder of Jerusalem, etc. The concluding one praises God for blessing the people of Israel with peace.

The Amidah projects prayer not merely as a list of praises and requests to God, but as a public declaration of the national and religious aspirations of the Jewish community. I think that a study of Jewish prayer would probably be the ideal way of examining Jewish self-identity. It is critical to know what people aspire to, what they are hoping for.

Shema Yisrael

In the morning and evening service, the Amidah was preceded by the recitation of three chapters from the Torah, from Deuteronomy chapters 6, 11 and 15. These chapters together frequently are considered the ultimate affirmation of the Jewish faith. The opening line of that first chapter from Deuteronomy that I mentioned says: “Hear, Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one.” The Hebrew words that open the scripture, Shema Yisrael, determine the name of the prayer. It is known as the Shema prayer.

This prayer assumed an importance far beyond daily prayer. It is possibly the ideal prayer that a person shall recite just as the soul is about to depart. There is a beautiful scripture in the Talmud that describes a rabbi about to be taken out to death. He is reciting the Shema and he gets to the scripture that says you shall love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. He expands the phrase with all your soul, adding “even if it takes your soul”. His disciples are in awe. The rabbi said: “all my life I used to recite this prayer in this way, and I used to ask myself when would this actually be required of me. Now that it is required of me, how can I resist?”. This became the prototype for martyrdom.

In an e-mail sent by the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon on the 12th day of his flight into space, he wrote to the President of Israel the following words: “From space, I can easily spot Jerusalem. While looking at Jerusalem, I pray just one short prayer.” And then he writes the Shema prayer.

The Garments of Prayer

The Shema prayer contains two chapters of the Bible that allude to particular articles. In Deuteronomy, chapter 11, verse 18 says “take these words of mine into your heart and soul. Bind them at your wrist as a sign, and let them be a pendant on your forehead.” The rabbis understood this scripture to refer to what is commonly known in Hebrew as tefillin. The Greek translation for tefillin is phylacteries, but that is a very unsatisfactory translation. The word phylac in Greek means something that guards, like an amulet that guards against demons. I don’t think that any Jew would be happy with the term phylactories. Tefillin would be much better.

These tefillin are really black leather boxes. Inside these boxes are parchments with bits of scripture from the Bible. One of these is attached to the arm, as the scripture says “you shall put on your arm”. The other one is placed on a person’s forehead.

The teffilin are worn every morning on weekdays at prayer. Together with teffilin, there is another article. Again, one of the chapters of the Shema says that you “shall make fringes on the borders of your garments for all of your generations”. So, a Jew would actually create a garment, which is known as tallit. It has fringes on it. The tallit is worn not only on weekdays. The teffilin are worn only on weekdays, the tallit is worn on every morning service, both on weekdays and holidays and Sabbath.

These are probably the two most outstanding garments that participate in all portions of Jewish prayer.

On a regular basis, there are a number of blessings that precede the Shema, and a number that appears between the Shema and the Amidah. Prior to the two first blessings there is a call to prayer: “Let us all bless God”. People respond. This response is the main portion of the prayer itself. On weekdays and in morning prayers in general, a number of psalms are also recited.

The Origins of Prayer: Prayer in the Bible

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Turning to God in moments of need, what we call praying, definitely appears in the Bible. It was performed by private individuals as well as public figures. Prayer was not, however, the standard means of worshipping God in the Hebrew Bible.

There are some beautiful examples of private people praying. In the beginning of the book of Samuel there is a story of a woman, Hannah, who prays for a child. She prays silently, in her heart. The description says she was weeping all the while only her leaps moved. Her voice could not be heard. This was apparently not that common a scene. So, the High Priest Eli, who sees her, assumes that she is drunk.

Individuals in the Bible sometimes turn to God requesting the cure of an illness. One of the earliest and most succinct prayers in biblical literature is the prayer of Moses on behalf of his sister Miriam. It is only four or five words long: “Oh God, please heal her”.

Prayer and Sacrifice

One of the first public scenes of prayer in the Bible takes place as the Temple of Solomon was completed. He gathers all the congregation of Israel to the site. Solomon acknowledges that he knows that God does not really dwell in this building. He says even the heavens cannot contain him. He knows that from this point onwards, people would pray to God as they turn towards that place. He knows this would happen at particular times. What is interesting is that although Solomon prayed and knew that in the future people would direct their prayers to the Temple, that story ends with Solomon himself offering up 22000 oxes and 120000 sheep as sacrifices of well-being to the Lord. In other words, this story expresses that prayer is all well and good, but we know how to worship. We sacrifice animals.

As long as the first and the second Jewish temple stood, prayer never displaced sacrifice as the primary mode of public worship. However, Jews lived in the diaspora without access to the temple. They may had developed some sort of alternative system of prayer. The earliest known synagogues to us were in Egypt in the third century B.C.E. Interestingly enough, they were called, in Greek, proselke, which means “place of prayer”. It could be that in the far off diaspora they were praying, whereas in Israel and the closer you got to the temple, they were still practicing worship through sacrifice.

We know that there might had been Jews in Palestine itself that developed systems of prayer. These would had been Jews who did not have access to the Temple, and possibly those who refused to enter the Temple. We know, for instance, that some of the sectarians who produced the Death Sea Scrolls refused to participate in worship at Jerusalem, and they probably had some hymn service in which they prayed.

Nevertheless, even if Jews in the diaspora prayed, at the same time, they sent funds to Jerusalem for the purpose of participating in the purchase of animals for sacrifice. They obviously thought that this was a religious requirement of all God-fearing Jews.

Prayer and the First Synagogue

The fact that prayer was a late-comer to the synagogue became evident when we discovered a dedicatory inscription from a first century C.E. synagogue in Jerusalem. In fact, this is probably the earliest physical evidence that we have of a synagogue in the land of Israel. In the inscription, the builder of the synagogue enumerates why he built the synagogue. His name was Theodotus the son of Betanas. The inscription is in Greek. It claims that he built the synagogue for the reading of the law and for the teaching of the commandments. Furthermore, he built a hospice and chambers, and a water installation for the lodging of needy strangers. What is striking is what is missing from the inscription. There is no mention of prayer.

If somebody were to approach this fellow and say “Theodotus, are you leaving something out? What about prayer?”, he would have said “prayer? You want to talk to God? You see that building on the hill over there? That is were you talk to God. On the way up there, with an animal, because that is the way it is done.”

The inscription here is not only fascinating in its antiquity, but I think it is very enlightening in what it tells us about the later appearance of prayer as an alternative system of worship.

Rabbinic Judaism

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Here we’re going to focus on a very particular stage in Jewish history. We’ll attempt to answer a basic question. If, as I said before, the faith and the behavior prescribed by Judaism derive primarily from the Bible, why is it that the Judaism we encounter today is so radically different from the biblical representation of that very same religious tradition?

The answer will lead us to a discussion on the origins and basic tenets of what we call Rabbinic Judaism. We will see the establishment of an alternative path of Jewish religious expression following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70 C.E. Here we’ll explain where the very notion of the Rabbinic model of leadership comes from, because it is conspicuously absent in the Bible. There are no rabbis in the Bible. There are priests, there are prophets and kings. We will be addressing here a very specific stage and development that would define Judaism until this very day.

The Origins of Rabbinic Judaism: We find that the Judaism practiced today is radically different from everything known to us in the Bible. For instance, how do Jews worship? These changes are just a few of the major adjustments that resulted from was arguably the most dramatic event in Judaism’s long history, maybe only the holocaust is equal in drama: the destruction of the second Jewish Temple in the year 70 C.E. by the Romans.
Rabbinic Judaism and the Synagogue: The Rabbinic period introduced a new system of daily public prayer. We know that synagogues existed even before the destruction of the temple. There, the Torah was read and a sermon was delivered. We have many sources that talk about this kind of activities, but not prayer. One of the main questions is when the prayer begins as a systematic daily Jewish expression of worship. Most probably, only in this post-temple period.
What Rabbinic Judaism Really Means: The message we get in Rabbinic literature is: “yes, we have created an alternative lifestyle (but hopefully that temple will be rebuilt)” The success of Rabbinic Judaism was precisely in this balancing between obvious innovation and the stress on continuity with the written Bible.

What Rabbinic Judaism Really Means

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The statement made by Yochanan ben Zakai, suggesting that acts of loving kindness could replace sacrifices, may resonate with Christian circles, as does the whole process of spiritualization of ritual. This is true because both Christianity in its early Judaic setting, as well as Rabbinic Judaism, survived the destruction precisely because neither group was temple-oriented.

There was a major difference between these two groups, and it was critical. For the early Church, the destruction of the temple was vindication or proof of Christianity’s earliest message. Jesus himself was quoted as prophetizing “no stone will be left unturned in Jerusalem”.

The Church preserved the writings of Josephus Flavius. If we read the Church fathers, it is obvious why. One Church father living in the city of Caesarea would quote Jesus as saying “no stone will be left unturned in Jerusalem”, and then he says “now let us see this came to be in the writings of Josephus”. The destruction was indeed considered vindication or proof of the veracity of the teachings of the early Church.

For the rabbis, that was not the case. On the one hand, they created an alternative Judaism. On the other hand, the destruction continued to pose a major theological as well as practical problem. The problem manifested itself in many ways, one of them being related to the question “do we want to build another temple?”.

A New Religion?

Was this Rabbinic Judaism presented as a system that superseded the Bible? In early Christianity, that will certainly be the case, were the Old Testament was superseded by the New Testament. Rabbis realized that this would be a very dangerous approach to take. On the one hand, they did create an alternative style of religious expression, but on the other hand, they never outwardly negated the earlier one. They never claimed that one ultimately takes the place of the other.

I said before that I would love to have a time machine and go back and ask Yochanan ben Zakai some very important questions. The one question I would probably ask him is: “Yochanan, please tell me, did you really intend to reform Judaism the way you did? To create an alternative system based on a spiritual decentralized mobile type of leadership? Prayer instead of sacrifice?”.

I wonder if I would get an answer out of him. The message we get in Rabbinic literature is: “yes, we have created an alternative lifestyle (but hopefully that temple will be rebuilt)”. There was never an outright negation of the earlier vestiges of Judaism by the rabbis who created an alternative system. There is a tremendous tension between continuity and innovation in the development of Rabbinic Judaism.

The success of Rabbinic Judaism was precisely in this balancing between obvious innovation and the stress on continuity with the written Bible.

Rabbinic Judaism establishes a new legal system, but it places an enormous importance on relations between human beings. One could almost claim that this was enhanced in the Rabbinic period even more than in earlier periods.

Earlier periods imagined that the whole world was a structure held up by three pillars. One of the three pillars is the Torah, meaning the teaching of the Bible. The second one was aboda, which in Hebrew means sacrificial worship. The third pillar is acts of loving kindness. If this is a structure that has three pillars underneath, what happens to that structure if I remove one of the pillars form underneath? The structure begins to tip over and ultimately falls.

When Yochanan ben Zakai says to his disciples Joshua weeping over the cessation of sacrificial worship “there is another atonement that takes its place, acts of loving kindness”, what is he doing? He is reinterpreting that ancient statement. We thought that all three are required to maintain Judaism. Legal texts, sacrificial worship and the human aspect of behavior among mortals. Yochanan comes and says that they are ideally the underpinning of Judaism, but when one is removed, the other picks up the slack.

The structures that were set up at Yavneh not only saved Judaism, they would be used in subsequent generations. Yochanan ben Zakai is probably up there in the pantheon of Jewish heroes. The right person at the right place at the very right time.

Rabbinic Judaism and the Synagogue

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The revitalized Judaism of the post-temple period, known to us as Rabbinic Judaism, would set the pattern of Jewish behavior for all subsequent generations. Here a few words are in order regarding the word “rabbi”.

The word itself means “master”. In the context of our discussion, it is really the designation of a sage, a teacher of Torah. The restructuring of Jewish religious expression after the destruction, in many ways can be defined as a sort of spiritualizing process, in which the rabbis were the main motivators.

Jewish religious expression was decentralized. It no longer required geography. It no longer required one temple on one mountain in one city. You can do it anywhere. The exclusivity of a temple was replaced by the synagogues, that could now function as minor sanctuaries. It is interesting because, ultimately, Jews would talk about synagogues as assuming status of sacred space. In many ways, the synagogue does become a new expression of what was once a temple.

Daily Public Prayer

The Rabbinic period introduced a new system of daily public prayer. We know that synagogues existed even before the destruction of the temple. There, the Torah was read and a sermon was delivered. We have many sources that talk about this kind of activities, but not prayer. One of the main questions is when the prayer begins as a systematic daily Jewish expression of worship. Most probably, only in this post-temple period.

The priests lost their major power base, the temple. The rabbis were slowly assuming a more central position within the community. We must remember that priests claimed to authority by virtue of lineage. They were born into the priesthood. The rabbis’ authority was earned through learning and individual charisma.

This charismatic or merit-oriented leadership, however, ultimately evolved into a standardized type of leadership, like those of the rabbis. This would happen much later in Jewish history. The rabbis still realized that they had something new to offer, and were very careful not to fall to the riff of priesthood and this idea of hereditary access to leadership.

A New Decentralized Religion

What is more important about rabbis is that they are mobile. They can attract disciples anywhere. They can establish local centers of learning throughout Judea proper, but ultimately, throughout the Jewish diaspora. Where there was a high concentration of Jews was in the land of Babylonia. We must remember that the Jews remained in Babylonia from the destruction of the first temple in the year 586 B.C.E. As long as the second temple stood, Jews in Babylonia, liking it or not, remained there, on the fringes of the Jewish community. Once Judaism was refashioned on a spiritually mobile context, Jews in Babylonia could now thrive.

Rabbis would make their way to Babylonia, and the study of Torah becomes a major phenomenon, not only within the land of Judea, but in Babylonia as well. Rabbinic Judaism stresses that the study of Torah is done not merely to know what God wants. You don’t read the Bible only to know how to behave. You read and study the Bible as a form of devotion.

I can almost venture to say that it was at this stage where education, through this tremendous Jewish stress on learning, really takes off. This idea of people devoting themselves to a learning of the texts for some people would become a career, for others it is a way of expressing some sort of religious devotion.

The new centers of Rabbinic activity embarked on an enhanced interpretation of all earlier religious traditions. By the third century there was a new compilation of legal works of the rabbis, the Mishnah. The Midrash, on the other hand, was the exegetical interpretation of the Bible. These were the fruits of this new Rabbinic phenomenon. These, the Mishnah and the Midrash, would in turn be examined for hundred of years and serve as the basis for centuries of further learning, leading to the development of the Talmud.

The total sum of all Rabbinic teaching came to be known as the “Oral Tradition”. This designation suggests a mass of material that complements the written tradition, which of course is the Bible. The two, the Bible on the one hand, and the oral tradition of the rabbis on the other; were destined to be inseparable. They became the base for almost all subsequent intellectual and legal activity.

The Origins of Rabbinic Judaism

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We find that the Judaism practiced today is radically different from everything known to us in the Bible. For instance, how do Jews worship? The standard system for religious expression was through sacrifices in the Temple of Jerusalem. Today, there is a total decentralization. The very same decentralization that was frown upon in the Bible today is the standard. Jews worship in synagogues. These are located wherever a sufficient number of Jews warrant their establishments. This decentralization would seem to go on the face of what the Bible was interested in.

The Israelites of the Bible were required to serve God through an elaborate system of sacrificial worship. They slaughtered animals on an altar at a temple. This was primarily carried on by a priestly family. Today, we encounter a totally different mode of worship in Judaism: prayer. In that model, there is absolutely no necessity for priests. Anyone can do it.

The most visible form of religious leadership today is the Rabbinic model. We all know these are the leaders of the Jewish community. But whereas the Bible talks about kings, about priests and about prophets, there is absolutely no mention of rabbis anywhere. Where does this model come from?

The Destruction of the Temple

The changes I mentioned are just a few of the major adjustments that resulted from what was arguably the most dramatic event in Judaism’s long history, maybe only the holocaust is equal in drama: the destruction of the second Jewish Temple in the year 70 C.E. by the Romans.

The Second Temple stood in Jerusalem for almost 600 years, from 560 B.C.E. to 70 C.E. Viewed in historical perspective, the sudden lose of the center of Jewish life for practitioners of Judaism throughout the world must had been devastating. We must remember that not only Jews from the land of Judea worshiped there, but Jews throughout the diaspora supported that temple. It was really the focal point of a worldwide brotherhood.

If we add to that that the first temple stood for almost 400 years, we find that for a thousand year period, save for a 70 year interval, Judaism understood its religious existence around the Temple. The sudden absence of the Temple demanded a theological explanation, as well as a practical adjustment to the new reality.

If God’s temple was destroyed by Roman armies, does that must mean that the Roman gods defeated the Jewish God? That was the mentality of the ancient Roman world. One of the books of the Midrash describes how the Roman conquered Jerusalem. The Roman general actually entered the temple of Jerusalem, banged on the altar and attacked the Jewish God by saying “you’re a god and I’m a god, come and do battle with me”.

We have a book that was written in Arameic on Assyria by a fellow who called himself Baruc. He understands the destruction of the temple as being the cessation of life. There is nothing to live for without a temple.

Other sources describe groups of Jews entering a state of perpetual mourning. They assumed the life of ascetic abstinence. They would not eat meat, they would not drink wine. The would derive no joy from this world.

The Solutions

Rabbinic stories would describe how one sage living at the time, literally in the immediate aftermath of the destruction, his name is Rabbi Joshua, approaches these ascetics and argues with them. He claims that such extreme reactions to the destruction can only lead to an ultimate negation of life itself.

We’re told that the ascetics stopped eating meat and stopped drinking wine. Joshua asks why. They say “how can we eat meat when meat is no longer offered on the temple, as it used to be when there were sacrifices”. “How can we drink wine when there are no longer wine libations.” Joshua responds by saying “if we are going to follow your logic, let’s stop eating bread, because they used to offer it on the temple. Let’s stop drinking water, because they used to pour water on the altar.” What Joshua was basically saying is that if I use your logic and I take it to its logical extreme, we cannot live anymore.

His solution, as opposed to theirs, was to establish formal symbols of mourning. You paint your house and you leave one portion unpainted to remind people of the destruction. Then, get on with life.

When you read these stories, you realize that it must have taken quite a bit of guts to stand up and say “we have to get on with life”. That is really the essence of the Rabbinic solution and the Rabbinic period. We cannot go into this constant state of negation of life.

Rabbinic literature describes the efforts to create alternative systems of Jewish religious expression. From one sage in particular. He is a fantastic fellow. I often dream that I could create a time machine so that I could go back in history and interview this Rabbi, whose name is Yochanan ben Zakai.

Not surprisingly, it was Yochanan ben Zakai who was Joshua’s mentor. It was he that really developed much of this process of rejuvenation and redefinition of Judaism.

A New Atonement Without the Temple

A popular Rabbinic story describes how during the siege of Jerusalem Yochanan ben Zakai realized the city was doomed. Something had to be done before the city fell. He faints death and smuggles out of the city in a coffin. That was the only way you could leave town. He appears before the Roman general conducting the battle and prophetizes that this general would be the next Caesar. Sure enough, a messenger comes running, telling the general exactly that. This general turns Caesar and is so overwhelmed that he tells Yochanan ben Zakai “what can I do for you?”. Yochanan says “give me a little town of the southern coast of Judea known as Yavneh and its wise men”. This little town would set up a center of learning that ultimately would become the new focal point of Jewish Rabbinic life.

The story is clearly anachronistic for one obvious reason. That city of Yavneh and its wise men did not exist yet. But people who told the story generations later knew that something happened that assured continuity. All stories really intended to answer the riddle how could Judaism had survived.

These wise men would become the foundation for a new type of leadership and a new type of ritual Jewish behavior.

A more symbolic legend describes Yochanan and his disciple Joshua visiting Jerusalem after it had been destroyed. Joshua sees the sanctuary devastated. He says to his mentor Yochanan, “the place where the sins of Israel are atoned for is devastated”.

The mentality here is clear. Joshua imagines a Jewish nation accruing sins throughout the calendar year, but he knows that the Bible has already presented the people of Israel with a solution. A day in the calendar year is known as the day of atonement, where sins are atoned for as the result of a particular process of sacrificial worship and changing of behavior patterns. People obviously tried to atone for sins that were committed not only towards God, but towards fellow men. The point is that Joshua imagined that there is only through Temple worship that sins would be atoned for. Without the Temple, these sins would pile up and they would ultimately crush us.

Yochanan replies with a fascinating statement. “My son, be not grieved. We have another atonement as effective as this: acts of loving kindness.” He is quoting the prophet Hosea for a desire of mercy, not sacrifices.

Yochanan was brilliant. He knew that when the prophet made that statement, he did not claim that we don’t need a temple. What the prophet was suggesting was that sacrifice without mercy is not only meaningless, but it might achieve the opposite that it intends. It is an abomination to God to you think that by burning an animal in an altar you’re achieving something if that is not accompanied by proper behavior.

Yochanan is reinterpreting that prophetic statement to say that the prophets already suggested that acts of loving kindness can take the place of sacrifices. It is a reinterpretation of a biblical statement. The Mishnah, that code of law produced by the Rabbis, attributes to Yochanan ben Zakai a number of ordinances. These all intended not so much to get over the grieving and the theological implications of the destruction, but the practical implications. To establish alternative practices. To establish an alternative leadership.

Yochanan would move certain behaviors and practices that once were only allowed in the temple to towns throughout the country. A decentralizing process.

These legends and traditions were probably put to literary form years and generations after the death of Yochanan ben Zakai. They testify to an awareness of a totally new system and context for the maintenance of Judaism as a vital religion, not withstanding the destruction of all previous historical frameworks.

Sacred Books in Judaism

2009-04-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

Four thousand years of Jewish history produced four thousand years of literary development. Understanding Judaism requires a familiarity with the library of Judaism. It is somewhat ironic. The author of one of the books of the Bible known as Ecclesiastes, ends his book with an interesting warning against making many books. The irony is that if Jews have propensity for anything, it is precisely for the production of many books.

Here we will describe those literary works that fashioned and directed Jewish behavior. What we have to do is to understand that Judaism functioned within a literary category, and although this literature at times was oral until it was actually put into writing, it was indeed literature. These were formulated texts and they had a definitive influence on the development of Judaism.

Jews, in general, were brought up as bibliophiles. The book has a revered status in Judaism. When a book falls to the ground, Jews pick it up and kiss it. This has a tremendous impact on children, who are taught from the earliest stages of their education that a book is not something to be handled lightly.

All books that are not longer used are not simply discarded. Instead, they are stored or buried, so as not to be toasted around. This custom is known as Genizah, the storing or hiding of a book. Usually, it would be a sacred text, but there might be other books that also are stored in a Ganizah.

In the late 19th century, in the old city of Cairo, one such repository of ancient books was discovered. It is known as the Cairo Genizah. It is one of the most fascinating discoveries in the history of Judaism. In the late 19th century, we found hundreds and thousands of fragments of books, text that we have known and texts that were not even known to us at that time. We found the handwriting of Maimonides himself. We have texts going back to the Second Temple Period for which we did not have a Hebrew original until the Cairo Genizah.

We might refer to Jews as people of the book. You open the book to know how to behave. You open the book as a way not just of learning what God wants of you, but almost as a way of religious devotion. One studies from the book as a means of worship. The book takes on a tremendous sanctity and a tremendous centrality in the Jewish mind.

The appearance of printed books in the 16th century introduced a vast amount of learning to the masses of Jews. We must remember that until the invention of the press, most Jews could not afford books. Books were the property of scholars and rabbis. Beginning in the 16th century, we encounter a popular phenomenon of Jewish learning.

Everyone now has a Prayer Book. Everybody now has a Haggadah. Most people might have some edition of the Bible. The library in a Jewish home becomes one of the most important, if not the most important room in all the house. Here we will talk about the books or groups of books that shaped Jewish history:

The Jewish Bible: The ultimate book of the Jewish library is the Hebrew Bible. All subsequent books in Judaism could be considered expansions and elaborations of the Bible.

Books of Laws: After the Bible, the second major corpus of Jewish literature was produced by the formulators of what we referred to as Rabbinic Judaism. That is to say, those sages rabbis who in the post-temple period tried to revitalize a Judaism that had to survive without a temple.

Jewish Prayer Books: If there is one book that defined Jewish behavior and believe, it was the Jewish Prayer Book. The earliest prayer books appeared in the 8th and 9th century. They were produced in Babylonia by rabbis.

Jewish Prayer Books

2009-04-14T18:07:00.000-07:00

If there is one book that defined Jewish behavior and believe, it was the Jewish Prayer Book. The earliest prayer books appeared in the 8th and 9th century. They were produced in Babylonia by rabbis. There is no standard prayer book. Every community might produce its own prayer book. There are common prayers that everybody shares. There is a basic structure to the prayer, but otherwise, different communities would have different traditions.

Not only that, there are other books of liturgy that cannot be defined as prayer books, but are part of the religious liturgical activity. One in particular stands out. The Passover Haggadah. This is the text that is recited by Jews on the eve of Passover, describing the events of the exodus. It became not just an important text. These Haggadahs were often lavishly designed. The artwork was as impressive as the text itself. Since the invention of the printing press, thousands of Haggadahs had been produced. These became books that every Jewish household would have.

Haggadahs, by the way, became extremely popular among bibliophiles. They actually became collectors’ items.

Jewish Books of Laws

2009-04-14T17:43:00.001-07:00

After the chronological end of the Bible, Jews continued to produce books throughout that second stage of Jewish history which we referred to as the Second Temple Period. Many of these books, almost all of them, are expansions and elaboration of the Bible. We must remember that everything flows out of the Bible. If you are going to sit down in the post-biblical period and write a book, you can justify writing that book by maintaining that it is really an extension of the Bible.

Some of these books dealt with the events of their day. For instance, the Book of Maccabees, which talks about clashes between Hellenistic rulers in Judea and Jews. Almost all the books that were produced in the final centuries B.C.E. and the first century C.E., however, did not become canonized in the Jewish canon.

As a result, they were basically lost to Judaism and would have gone totally lost have they not being preserved by the Christian Church. This is true particularly for the writings of the renowned Jewish historian of the Second Temple Period, Josephus, known as Josephus Flavius. It is also true of the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. Their works were not preserved by the Jewish community. The Church preserved them, in each case for a different reason. For instance, Josephus was preserved because he describes the first century in Roman Judea. He talks about Pontius Pilate, he mentions Jesus himself. This literature, otherwise, was lost to the Jewish community and it was never part of the Jewish curriculum.

The Oral Torah

After the Bible, the second major corpus of Jewish literature was produced by the formulators of what we referred to as Rabbinic Judaism. That is to say, those sages rabbis who in the post-temple period tried to revitalize a Judaism that had to survive without a temple. Their corpus attained a sanctity within the Jewish canon that is not much smaller than the Bible itself. The two are actually considered alongside one another. The Bible is referred to very often as the “written Torah”, and works of the rabbis as the “oral Torah”, because they were preserved in an oral manner for many hundreds of years.

The Rabbinic corpus contains two major literary components. One continues to follow the Bible. This genera is known as Midrash. This word means to search for, but it is an examination of the biblical text, primarily the Torah. It is sort of a commentary, but not quite a commentary. Some of the books of Midrash indeed do address scripture, but others use the Bible to go to more thmatic or topical discussions. The scripture is very often a point of departure for a much broader homiletical presentation.

We can say that this is an enhancement of the Bible. It is an attempt at addressing issues of their time using the Bible as a vehicle. Midrash contains almost every type of popular literary genera that we know: fables, parables and much more.

The second component is of a legal nature. It doesn’t follow the path of the Bible, but rather it is arranged according to topics. The central legal text of Rabbinic Judaism is a book known as Mishnah, a word which means to repeat. It has six sections that cover all aspects of Jewish religion.

The topics of these six sections are:

Laws of agriculture
Laws of Sabbath and festivals
Marriage laws
Civil laws
Laws pertaining to the temple
Issues with ritual purity.

The Talmud

The Mishnah was completed in the early 3rd century of the Common Era. It became the basis for all subsequent Rabbinic legislation. In particular, the Mishnah became the basis for two works that set out for the next three hundred years to discuss the Mishnah, the Talmuds. To call them commentaries to the Mishnah would be very misleading.

We should remember that by the third, fourth and fifth centuries there were two major centers of Jewish life, one still in the land of Judea and other East of the Euphrates River in what Jews called Babylonia, we would refer to it as Irak today. Each of these centers had major Rabbinic centers discussing the Talmud. Ultimately, one of these discussions, known as the Babylonian Talmud, would assume a preferred status, and it would become the widely used basis for legislation.

Although the Talmud would serve as the basis for Jewish law, it is anything but a law manual or a legal code. It is really the embodiment of three hundred years of learning. Following the thematic format of the Mishnah, it has an associated nature to it that gives the reader a sense of actually sitting on some sort of academic framework and being witnessing a free willing and sometimes heated discussion of a group of intellectuals.

For hundred of years, this Talmud was used as the basis for formulating systematic legal texts. It is not a code, so people try to make it into a code. This system was actually employed by that renowned scholar of the 12th century, Maimonides, who took the Talmud, removed all the names of the rabbis of any particular discussion, and projected their opinions as an universally recognized law. Maimonides wasn’t the only one to produce such a code. Each person did it in a different fashion. Over centuries, many such compilations appeared.

The most famous of these is one known as the Shulchan Aruch. In Hebrew, this means “set table”. It was compiled by a rabbi in Galilee, his name is Joseph Karo, in the 16th century. Basically it took all the traditions and divided it into four sections. The four sections are:

Daily life: prayer, holidays, Sabbath, etc.
Dietary Laws
Laws of marriage
Civil Law

In a sense, the appearance of this Shulchan Aruch, marked the turning point in Jewish life. It is almost the literary demarcation between the Middle Ages and early Modernity. Everything afterwards had to be based on the Shulchan Aruch.

The Jewish Bible

2009-04-12T18:33:00.000-07:00

The ultimate book of the Jewish library is the Hebrew Bible. The phrase Bible originated among Christians. While English-speaking Jews today might use the phrase, this often causes misunderstanding. Christians refer to both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament as the Bible, whereas Jews apply the phrase only to the Hebrew Bible. Very often people use the same word and they are referring to different literary works.

Since this causes many problems, you will find many Jews today using another designation for the Hebrew Bible. It would be an acronym based on three Hebrew words that describe the three components of that Bible. The acronym in Hebrew is Tanakh. This word is comprised of the first Hebrew letter for the three components of the Jewish Bible. The first component is the Torah, hence the T. The second component the prophets, Nevi'im, hence the N. The third component are the books that have a collected title to them known as scriptures, or Ketuvim.

The Torah: Sacred Among Sacred Books

The Torah, the five books of Moses, reigns supreme in terms of prestige and sanctity. It is considered by traditional Jews to have been given in its entirety to Moses at Sinai. That was one of the principles that Maimonides listed as a major tenet of Judaism.

The Torah is read regularly as part of the Synagogue ritual. You will know maybe that there are many artworks that depict a scene within the synagogue, the scene centers around the reading and lifting up of the Torah. Because this book was considered to be so sacred, it could only be produced for ritual purposes in a very special manner. It had to be written on parchment with quill, with a certain type of ink. If you made one mistake, if one letter was left out, the book would be disqualified from public reading at synagogues.

I can tell you this happens to this very day. The reader is preparing to read one of the texts, and suddenly he discovers a word missing. Everything stops.

Chronologically, the Torah begins with the creation of the world, and ends with the death of Moses. Almost all the legal components of Judaism are considered to have their source in the Torah.

In antiquity, the books of Moses were probably the only text taught to children who had any formal education. In the Greco-Roman world, there was a wealth of literature that could be used to introduce them to the school system. It might be poetry, history, etc. Judaism had no secular literature. The education of children was intended to make them knowledgeable of this Torah. This was the text that was taught.

The Prophets

The second segment of the Hebrew Bible is comprised of the books of the prophets. They come from the period of Israel’s settlement in the land of Canaan, after the death of Moses. As we have seen before, they come down to the end of the First Temple period, the destruction of the Temple, and they end there.

While some of these books contain historical narrative, the majority of the books of the prophets are exhortations of the same prophets to their contemporaries. They include the castigation of their leaders for their sins. They frequently contain foretelling of either imminent or distant events. They allude to the hopes for a rejuvenated national and universal order.

The prophets also enjoy a role in the synagogue services, but in truth it is a secondary role. Not all the books of the prophets are read in their entirety in the synagogue services. Within a period of a year, all of the Torah is read, but only portions of the books of the prophets are added to the reading of the books of Moses.

Traditional Judaism, however, makes one very important point regarding the prophets. Prophets could not introduce new laws or abrogate existing ones. The basic assumption of Judaism was that their role is primarily to promote the moral behavior of the people of Israel. This is very important. Jews have an aversion not only to prophets interfering in the legal system, but there are beautiful stories in Rabbinical literature where even revelations from God himself cannot interfere in the legal system.

Prophets cannot change the law, God cannot change the law, the law was given to human beings and it is for them to interpret and apply.

The Ketuvim or Scriptures

The third section of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew referred as Ketuvim or “scriptures”, it is indeed a collection of a very varied genera. You find there wisdom literature, poetry as well as some historical narratives. The largest book in this third component is the book of Psalms. These beautiful poems one time were attributed either in their entirety or partially to king David himself, although we know that some of the psalms were clearly written much after the time of David.

The scriptures contain unique books known as scrolls, the Hebrew word is Megillot. There are five scrolls that are read on five different occasions during the Jewish liturgical year. These five books are the books of Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Book of Esther.

The Song of Songs or Song of Solomon raised major problems among post-biblical scholars who could not imagine what an erotic love song is doing in the Bible. The only solution was to interpret the Song of Solomon in an allegorical fashion. This could not really mean what it says, that two lovers are plotting to meet and yearn for one another, this must be a love song between God and the people of Israel.

The book of Lamentations weeps over the destruction of the temple. Ecclesiastes, a book of wisdom. It is a very interesting book of wisdom. Many scholars found mystical influences in this book. It asks very uncomfortable questions. What is this world all about? What is the meaning of the world? It is one of the great forerunners of Jewish philosophy in many ways.

The Book of Ruth is a very touching one that tells the story of the process of conversion of a non-Jewish woman to Judaism.

Among others, in this third section is the Book of Job, clearly asking a major theological question. Why is the role of the just so miserable in this world sometimes? One of the last books is the Books of Esdras, which talks about this return of the captives from Babylonia to Judea.

Here is where the Bible ends. All subsequent books in Judaism could be considered expansions and elaborations of the Bible. Everything flows out of the Bible.

What is Judaism

2009-04-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

What is Judaism? Is Judaism a religion? Maybe it is far more than that. There are ethnic components in Judaism. There is a national, and even a geographical component in what we call Judaism. Maybe it should be redefined or presented in another fashion.

When we define Judaism as one of the great world religions, we are confining a complex social phenomenon under a one-dimensional category. Christianity and Islam are faiths. They are systems of beliefs, and they embrace diverse ethnic communities and even nations. Judaism also heeds to particular beliefs and practices, but many Jews would probably consider the designation of Judaism as only a religion as being far too narrow or far too confining as a categorization.

The Non-Religious Aspects of Judaism

Judaism in the Bible is practiced by a group of people referred to as the nation of Israel. Israel is a nation. If we go through the literature of the Bible we will find that there is a number of criteria that label Israel as having something far beyond than just a belief. Their destiny was to have faith in God’s promise to give a particular land to the offspring of Israel’s founding patriot Abraham. Now you find Judaism related to land and not just to a belief.

The tribal roots of the Israelite religion would be maintained for several years. When this promised land was ultimately settled by the people of Israel, they divided it among the same tribal lines of demarcation. We have an ethnic demarcation in a piece of geography. Again, this is far more than just religion.

There are agricultural regulations in Judaism. Farmers are required to refrain from working the land every sabbatical year. These laws pertain to the land of Israel, so we have again a geographical component.

For much of the Biblical period, Israel was ruled as a monarchy, at first united, and then as two smaller kingdoms. The monarchical dynasty, going back to its second king, David, served as the ultimate symbol of unity and as a focus for a belief in a future restoration. Here we actually find Judaism as part of a kingdom.

The biblical Israelites were instructed to refrain from intermarry with surrounding tribes that might corrupt their faith. These enhances even further the ethnic character of this Israelite faith.

The Name Judaism

What are the origins of the name Judaism? This too points to an ethical and geographical beginning. Judaism comes from the name of the fourth son of the patriot Jacob, who was the grandson of Abraham. This forth son was named Judah. This name was ultimately the name of the kingdom that would be established originally by king David and his son Solomon.

With the establishment of this Israelite kingdom there is a movement from the term Judah as a son, to Judah as a designation of a land, and the kingdom that goes by that name until its very conquest by the Babylonians in the year 586 B.C.E. What is more important, even after the conquest of the land and throughout all the subsequent periods of Persian, Hellenistic and Roman rule, the official designation of the territory would continue to go by a variation on the name Judah.

It is only in the Hellenistic period, in the second century B.C.E., that the phrase Judaism appears for the first time in the way we might use it. That is to say, as the designation of a culture or a way of life maintained by those who lived in the land of Judah. The word Judaism appears for the first time in a book known as the Second Book of Maccabees. It was a book written by a Jew living a Greek-speaking environment. It describes a clash in Palestine between the Jews of that land and the Hellenistic rulers.

What is interesting and not so well-known is that the same book of Maccabees is not only the first book to use the word Judaism, but is also the first book anywhere to use the phrase Hellenism. The use of the same suffix, -ism, for both systems of life and belief may be the forerunner for later tendencies to equate a cosmopolitan and multicultural Hellenism with another culture which was not cosmopolitan, that of Judaism. A modern equivalent of this comparison might be that between Judaism and Christianity.

The Essence of Judaism

Over the centuries, various attempts at defining the essence of Judaism have been made. Some attempts have designated portions of the Bible as representing the essence of what would emerge as Judaism.

For instance, one common belief is “Judaism can be summarized in the Ten Commandments that were given by God to Israel on Mount Sinai”. The first five of them deal primarily with relations between man and God: the requirement to believe in one God, to worship no other deities, to refrain from using God’s name in vain. Interestingly, the fifth commandment is to honor one’s parents. The rabbis say that God is involved there as well. It is part of your commitment to God to honor your parents.

The other five commandments are clearly those regulations that relate to human interaction: the prohibition of murder, adultery, stealing and so on. Actually, synagogues very often would place the Ten Commandments on the head of the synagogue. We may think that there is major stress on the Ten Commandments, but frankly, already in the first century of the Common Era, we find figures opposed to the special role of the Ten Commandments. They claim that this would tend to assign to all the rest of the Bible a secondary status.

The prophet Habacuc makes the statement: “The righteous person shall live by his faith”. According to this approach, the most important aspect of Judaism would be a trust in God, with apparently everything else evolving from this.

Common to these attempts was a wish not to go beyond the Bible. Nevertheless, Judaism has been subject to a wide variety of post-biblical attempts to isolate the most basic components of the faith. For instance, one of the early Rabbinic books known as the Mishnah, claims that all Israelites have a share in the world to come, except the following three exceptions: those who claimed that there is no resurrection of the death, those who believe that the Torah was not given from heaven, and epicureans (rabbis used the name of the Greek philosopher Epicure as a symbol of heretic beliefs).

Some people would claim that this is the essence of Judaism: not to be an idolater, to believe that the Torah was divinely given and not to have any heretic belief. Another example in describing martyrdom, the rabbis claim that one must never give up one’s life, except in three very dire circumstances: when you are required either to participate in idolatry, in forbidden sexual relations or in murder. Some people say maybe this is the essence, these three components.

These attempts were never presented as creed affirmations or cathecism. These were attempts to point to the principles or major components of Judaism. Such formulations are significantly missing from rabbinic literature of the first centuries of the Common Era. It’s only in the Middle Ages that the search for the roots or the essence of Judaism becomes more commonplace.

This search for the principles of the Jewish religion was probably motivated, or at least partially encouraged by a number of external factors, specially the contemplative activity of Islamic theologians known as mutakallimiin. Their speculation regarding the nature of religious faith spread to Jewish thinkers as well. Jewish authors looked for the roots of their religion. Often, confrontation and polemics with the Christian and Muslim worlds enhanced the perception of the need to articulate the differences between Judaism and the two other monotheistic faiths.

Maimonides’ 13 Principles

The most famous attempt at formulating a list of Judaism’s principles was made by the renowned Jewish philosopher of the 12th century Maimonides. His list appears as a commentary to one of the statements in the Mishnah that talks about those who have a place in the world to come. He tries to elaborates who in fact has a place in the world to come. He says that these are people who believe in the following thirteen things:

The existence of God
God’s unity
God has no corporeal aspect
God is eternal
God alone and no intermediaries should be worshipped
Belief in prophecy
A belief that Moses was the greatest of all prophets
That all the Torah in our possession is divine and was given through Moses
That the Torah will not be changed or superseded
That God knows the actions of man
That God rewards those who keep the Torah and punishes those who transgress it
A belief that the Messiah will come
A belief in the resurrection of the dead

Some of these principles were clearly aimed at refuting what Maimonides believed to be major challenges posed by Islam or by Christianity. For instance, the principle that Moses was the greatest of all prophets clearly seems to reject the role that was ascribed either to Muhammad or to Jesus in Islam and Christianity. Or the principle that the Torah would not be superseded was clearly a response to the claim that it had been abrogated by subsequent texts of the two younger religions.

Maimonides’ formulation appeared first as a commentary to the Mishnah, but by the 16th century, it was already published with each of the principles proceeded by an affirmation: “I believe with absolute faith that...”, then each of the thirteen principles follows. This type of formulation is the first actual presentation of a cathecism in Judaism and was clearly influenced by a similar phenomenon in the Christian world.

The list of Maimonides’ principles ultimately found its way into the Jewish prayer book and was even the basis for a popular poem known as the Yigdal. This is a song sung in synagogues to this very day.

Although it was ultimately embraced by broad segments of the traditional Jewish community, Maimonides’ list engendered widespread reaction among Jewish thinkers. Some attempted to shorted the list, others to refine it, others to add other aspects. Others opposed the whole enterprise. Among these was Rabbi Isaac Abrabanel. Writing around the year 1500, he maintained that the very notion of principles in the Torah suggests different levels of sanctity or of truth in that very same text. That also encourages a sort of heresy. If the Bible is completely divine, how can you single out some portions as opposed to others.

What is interesting is that by listing the principles of faith, Maimonides was not ignoring the ethnic communal aspects of Judaism. After he enumerates in his commentary to the Mishnah the thirteen principles, he says that one who does not accept all these principles effectively removes himself from the community of Israel. This is interesting. Here we were thinking that we were talking about principles of faith and suddenly we are back at ethnicity.

Judaism and Modernity

Modern realities would inject new thinking regarding the relationship between the communal and the religious aspect of Judaism. The attempts by Western European societies in the 18th century to grant Jews equal rights, we refer to this as the emancipation, while encouraging them, at the same time this openness led to attempts by some Jews to doubt their communal and national roots. They thought that they could join the European society and downplay the ethnic component of Judaism.

In certain cases this led to upright assimilation into the open society. In other cases, it led to reforming Jewish practice and beliefs that hopefully rendered Jews more adaptable to new political and social realities.

In the 19th century we would encounter Jews for whom all religious manifestations of Judaism were almost unacceptable. Here we find a heightened rediscovery of the national and ethnic components of Judaism. One of the many political groups to emerge from this reappraisal of the national roots of Judaism is the movement known as Zionism, which was a secular movement.

Suddenly we realize that we encounter a totally different representation of Judaism. Zionists did not claim that they were not part of Judaism, but for them, Judaism meant returning to the Biblical land, returning to the land as farmers, creating a productive Judea in manners of old Biblical reality. The first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, really believed that Zionism would return the Jews back to a Biblical reality.

I think that this would be a factor in all this website. We would always talk about Judaism as a religion, constantly aware of the fact that Judaism has ethnic components, national components and national aspirations. It is linked to a particular land, it is connected to a particular language, and in this context, it is in fact different from the other great religions.

History of Judaism

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Central to Jewish self-definition is a shared memory, or a connected path. The familiarity with that shared experience is essential for appreciating almost every aspect of Jewish religious thought and behavior. The development of Judaism was constantly linked to an ever changing world. We will try to delineate the stages of Jewish history, which of course goes back to the biblical period. That would be our first stage.

Our second stage would be the emergence of a post-biblical, or what we will call Rabbinical Judaism. This period defined much of what we today call Judaism.

We will focus on the formative stages of Judaism. Those that serve to this day as the historical frames of reference for almost all of Jewish ritual and behavior. In certain cases, even as models and hopes for a future restorative process. History serves as a stage for ongoing change. The past is fixed. At least we think it is fixed. Some scholars claim that there is one thing that God cannot do, he cannot change history, only historians can change history.

Not withstanding the fact that they are constantly reinterpreting history, for Jews there is a collective past that contributed enormously to their sense of unity, without which Judaism cannot be understood. The collective memory of Judaism is not just a sequence of events, but it is a story to be studied, to be transmitted, and in certain cases, even to be relived. Past and present come together in much of Judaism self-image. This has all sorts of practical manifestations.

For instance, the liberation or exodus of Israelites from Egypt is not only discussed throughout the year, but in a sense, it is relived on the Passover festival, with a ceremony where the participants literally immerse themselves in the events of that ancient deliverance. They even proclaim that in every generation a Jew should considered himself to have personally been redeemed from Egypt. In another example, Jews mourn to this day the destruction of their temples, events that took place thousands of years ago.

Jews at prayer frequently turn to the past as part of their supplication regarding the present or the future. For instance, if promises were made to the patriots, these promises now become arguments in petitioning God to have pity on their descendancy.

Judaism represents an ongoing and constantly changing saga. Each period left its distinct mark. While new expressions were constantly being added and taking the place of the old ones, nevertheless, the ultimates were never discarded.

Early Biblical Judaism: The Biblical period spans a period of 4000 years. It begins with the earliest roots of the patriotic family of Israel and its intimate initial relationship with God. The Bible records the stages leading to the emergence of Israelites as a nation, their liberation from bondage and their acceptance of a body of teaching.

Judaism Today: When the second temple was destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans, for the first time, Judaism encountered a major challenge to its very existence. Without a recognized and unified center, without access to sacrificial worship as the prime mode of religious expression, new systems and contexts for Jewish religious life were necessary.

Judaism Today

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When the second temple was destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans, for the first time, Judaism encountered a major challenge to its very existence. Without a recognized and unified center, without access to sacrificial worship as the prime mode of religious expression, new systems and contexts for Jewish religious life were necessary. The success of suggesting and putting into place these modes of religious life, and the literature that would develop in the aftermath of the destruction of the temple, helped save Judaism as a living faith and as a living nation.

This new literature would almost become a second canon. A literature that would be produced to explain and enhance the Bible. Most importantly, adapting the Bible to this new reality. This would be the basis for Rabbinic Judaism. In many ways, for the Judaism that we all recognize today.

In the Middle Ages, new challenges would appear. The vast majority of Jews no longer resided in a Jewish homeland. They were dispersed throughout lands that were controlled either by Muslims or by Christian rulers. Not less important were the intellectual challenges to Judaism from theologians of both religions. This reality stimulated an enormous literary output, ranging from philosophical works, mystical literature, polemical work and the expansion and application of the existing legal system of Judaism. This system was constantly required to adjust and to answer new questions in new realities.

I should express that with all their differences involved, geographical and racial-ethnic, the vast majority of Jews throughout the world during the Middle Ages still followed the major guidelines and the practical structures of what was historical Judaism.

The Challenges of Modernity

Modernity, beginning with the Enlightenment of the 18th century, and continuing with the major political changes of the 19th century, introduced totally new challenges to Judaism. For the first time, Christian society in Western Europe opened its gates to Jews. As a result, assimilation for the first time became an ever growing challenge to the Jewish world. Simply put, it became easy to assimilate. Jews had a lot to gain by assimilating. They could advance their career as never before.

Deriving from the general Enlightenment movement, Jews began to raise serious questions for the first time regarding the nature of their own religious believes. One major example is the critical study of the Bible, that by the 19th century was already going full steam. This is one of many factors that encouraged the establishment of circles of Jewish intellectuals striving to introduce the new fruits of this research into the lives and believes of the practitioners of Judaism.

Traditional Jewish practice and believe was now challenged by the new thought process, and in particular, by a reform Jewish movement that developed originally in Germany and then spread to other lands. The most most important points of Jewish law, which embraces not only the religious aspects but what you and I would call the secular aspects of life, were now placed in question.

Jewish Nationalism

In the 19th century, romantic nationalism became a dominant idea in Western European society and culture. People began looking for smaller ethnic and national entities in what once had been massive empires. This is a phenomenon that we had been living with during much of the 20th century as well. This caught on with Jews as well.

Interestingly, it caught on primarily with Jews who were rather secular in their orientation. That is not to say that more traditional Jews did not have this national bent to them. Traditional Jews believed that a restoration to the land would be God’s deed. It would be something carried out by some divine intervention. He would restore the people of Israel to the land. The Jewish national movement of the late 19th century claimed that this was an imperative for Jews, and that they could not or would not wait for God to carry this.

What you have here is a secular movement embracing a traditional approach to the land of Israel, but now interpreting it in modern secular language. This caused a major split within the ranks of Judaism. There were those Jews who claimed that by hastening the divine process you were showing a lack of faith. Do you not believe the promises that were made by God through the prophets, that at the end of days he would restore our people? Why can’t you wait until God does this? If you don’t wait, clearly this suggests lack of faith.

Does this restoration to the land supplant the religious behavior of Jews throughout the centuries? Are we returning to the land and at the same time returning to the past in history, or are we creating something new? Here, the ranks of Jews and its leadership were split. There were those who believed that this restoration to the land was a restoration to the biblical period. David Ben-Gurion was the great champion of the Bible. He thought that he was literally restoring Israel to its role among the nations in the image of the Bible.

Ben-Gurion did not realize that Judaism, over two thousand years, had picked up so much additional content and character. The years of dispersion required so many adjustments. These adjustments became internalized. They became part of Judaism. They were not an ad hoc temporary addition to get Jews through a difficult period until they returned to the land. They became part of Jewish religious believe, behavior and self-identity.

Many Jews returned to the land and understood that they are not quite the same Jews that left the land 2000 years ago.

This restoration to the land raised another major question within Judaism. What would the role be of Jews living outside of the land? Is this Judaism different from the Judaism of an Israelite? To this day, not one answer has been accepted by all Jews.

Jews would ask themselves: are we American Jews or Jewish Americans? The very questions existed already 2000 years ago in cities like Alexandria. There was a Jewish philosopher in Alexandria, Philo, who clearly felt at home within Alexandria, and considered himself a citizen of the city of Alexandria; and yet he expressed his Judaism based on philosophical, spiritual and religious contents. Opposed to Philo, there were Jews living in Judea, who took arms against the Romans trying to restore political independence.

Here we see the different characterizations of Judaism in history. This is the secret of understanding Judaism. We all look back to the past. We share a collected memory, but we clothe into different aspects of that memory.

Early Biblical Judaism

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The Biblical period spans a period of 4000 years. It begins with the earliest roots of the patriotic family of Israel and its intimate initial relationship with God. The Bible records the stages leading to the emergence of Israelites as a nation, their liberation from bondage and their acceptance of a body of teaching. That is what the word Torah means, “teaching”. A body of teaching revealed to them through Moses. And finally, the Bible ends with the establishment of a kingdom in that land promised to the patriots.

The Father Abraham

Israelite history and its religion both begin with the patriot Abraham. The national epic begins with Abraham being told by God to leave his home in Ur and proceed to a land that he will show him. In this journey begins a series of intermittent migrations. Ultimately the family settles in the land that will become the emergent nation’s homeland.

Abraham is not only the progenitor of the Israelite people, he is the father of their faith as well. He is described in the Bible as having faith in God. He will later be perceived as the first man to not only recognize God’s existence, but to remove himself from the pervasive idolatrous culture of his day.

His faith is rewarded by a series of covenants with God, one of which was symbolized through his willingness to circumcise himself and his offspring. Hence the Hebrew word for covenant now designates the circumcision ceremony in Judaism.

Abraham’s faith is tested by God. God commands and Abraham is willing to sacrifice his son Isaac on an altar. This story became a defining moment for Jews throughout history. Their willingness to accept all sorts of pain and adversity would constantly be compared to that of their patriot Abraham.

Even today, a convert is given the Hebrew name “son of Abraham our father”. Female converts are also designated “daughter of Sarah our mother”.

The events surrounding the patriots represent the earliest sprangs of a collective memory that binds Judaism together. Our interest is not in historicity. Even the Bible never attempts to contextualize those stories into a broader historical framework. We should know, however, that scholars have placed the migratory processes that are alluded in the stories of the patriots somewhere between the 20th and 16th centuries B.C.E. There is absolutely no way that we can verify any of this stories.

Bondage in Egypt and the Liberation

The second historical stage in the biblical account of Israel’s emergence as a nation and as a religion is the bondage of Abraham’s descendants in Egypt. That culminated with their exodus from that land under the leadership of Moses. The biblical book of genesis has already gotten informing Abraham that his descendants would be slaves in the land of Egypt. This is very important, because it meant a sense of providential involvement in all the subsequent history of Israel. This expresses that nothing in the nation’s history occurs by chance.

The centuries of bondage in Egypt coincided with Israel’s transformation from an extended family of 70 people to a nation of hundreds of thousands. Through divine intervention and punishment of the Egyptians, the Israelites are ultimately led out of Egypt by Moses, the most important figure in the emergence of Judaism. The miraculous redemption was destined to become one of the great defining moments in the collective memory of Judaism. It would even be enhanced by the opening statement of the Ten Commandments, where God proclaims “I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, you should not have another god but me.”

The liberation from Egypt often serves as a prototype for hopes of a future redemption in Jewish history. It is constantly alluded to in Jewish prayer.

Wandering in the desert after leaving Egypt, they arrived at Mount Sinai, where the ultimate revelation takes place. The people of Israel receive the Ten Commandments, also manifest signs of God’s presence in the mountain. God called Moses up to the top of the mountain for forty days and forty nights. There, Moses receives from God the complete system of laws which would ultimately be transmitted to the people of Israel.

This teaching is known as the Torah, and it would serve as the divine basis for all subsequent aspects of Jewish law and behavior. Everything in the end would come back to the Torah and to this divine revelation.

Traditional Judaism accepts that the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, the first portion of the Jewish Bible, was dictated by God to Moses at Sinai. The more liberal denominations of contemporary Judaism, following modern scholarship, had modified this article of faith, by assigning a greater role for human authorship of the Torah. That, again, does not change this collective memory and the centrality of the Torah in subsequent Judaism.

Establishment of a Nation

They received their physical freedom from Egypt. They received their spiritual substructure at Sinai. The people of Israel now are prepared for the final stage of the primal ethnographic saga. After forty years in the desert, under the leadership of Moses’ successor, Joshua, the land of Canaan is captured. The land that was promised to the patriots.

The subsequent portions of the Hebrew Bible now describe the stages in the establishment of Israel as a nation in the land. Following conquest and political consolidation, a monarchy finally emerges. David, the second king of Israel, whose reign is commonly dated to somewhere in the first half of the 10th century B.C.E., was the founder of a monarchical dynasty that will rule Israel for four centuries, until the fall of the kingdom to the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.

Just as Moses came to represent the ultimate prophet in Judaism, David emerged not only as a symbol of political unity, but as the dynastic forerunner of a future restorative process. A process that would culminate by the appearance of one of his descendants as the Messiah.

The period of the monarchy would coincide with two major phenomena. Both would have a lasting effect on Judaism as a religion. David moved his capital to Jerusalem. Under his son Solomon, a temple would be established as the focal point of Jewish worship. This is important because Jerusalem would have a dual role to play in the Judaic psyche. It became the political capital of Judaism, but at the same time it was its legitimate religious center. You can worship only in Jerusalem, at the temple.

The period of the monarchy coincides with the appearance of the great prophets of Israel. Their teachings stressing the moral imperatives of the nation would serve as the cornerstones for Judaism as well for Christianity. The Jewish reform movement of the 19th century would actually attribute a heightened significance to the words of the prophets.

The fall of the kingdom in 586, coupled with the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, marks the end of the first formative stage of Jewish history. The Jewish Bible does not end, however, with the destruction. It goes a bit further, to the beginnings of the restoration, with the declaration of king Cyrus of Persia allowing captives that have been taken to Babylonia some decades earlier to return to rebuild the temple. That’s basically where the Hebrew Bible ends its story.

A second temple would be build in Jerusalem that was completed in 516 B.C.E. It would stand until the first century of the common era, when it was destroyed by the Romans. The events that took place during this stage of Judaism’s development were pretty significant.

Jews were ruled by a succession of conquering empires: Persian, Hellenistic, Roman. For most of this period, there is no prophecy anymore. As a result, for most of the period there is no Jewish monarchy and no new forms of leadership. A spiritual leadership begins to emerge. A sage who knows the Bible and can teach, Esdras.

A second major development in understanding where Judaism was headed is the appearance of a Jewish diaspora, a dispersion. In the Hebrew Bible, dispersion of the Israelites is considered a threat. If you misbehave, you will be dispersed around the world. What was a threat in the Bible, by the post-biblical period had become reality. We would now encounter Jews throughout the Greco-Roman world and East of the Greco-Roman world, in the lands beyond the Euphrates River. This diaspora would play a very important role in early Christianity, as well as in the formation of what is known as Rabbinic Judaism.