Holyland Judaica
Judaism is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the Jewish people's collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization. It has its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Religious Jews believe Judaism to be the expression of God's covenant with the Israelites, their ancestors. It encompasses a vast body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization.
As Jews commonly understand it, the Torah is part of the larger text known as the Tanakh. The Tanakh is also known to secular scholars of religion as the Hebrew Bible and Christians as the "Old Testament." Later texts such as the Midrash and the Talmud represent the Torah's supplemental oral tradition. The Hebrew word Torah can mean "teaching," "law," or "instruction." However, "Torah" can also be used as a general term that refers to any Jewish text expanding or elaborating on Moses's original Five Books. Representing the core of the Jewish spiritual and religious tradition, the Torah is a term and a set of teachings explicitly self-positioned as encompassing at least seventy, and potentially infinite, facets and interpretations. Judaism's texts, traditions, and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity and Islam. Hebraism, like Hellenism, played a seminal role in the formation of Western civilization through its impact as a core background element of Early Christianity.
Within Judaism, there are a variety of religious movements, most of which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism, which holds that God revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah. Historically, all or part of this assertion was challenged by various groups such as the Sadducees and Hellenistic Judaism during the Second Temple period; the Karaites during the early and later medieval period; and among segments of the modern non-Orthodox denominations. Some current branches of Judaism, such as Humanistic Judaism, may be considered secular or nontheistic. The most significant Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism (Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism), Conservative Judaism, and Reform Judaism. Essential sources of difference between these groups are:
- Their approaches to halakha (Jewish Law).
- The authority of the rabbinic tradition.
- The significance of the State of Israel.
Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and halakha are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, and should be strictly followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditionalist interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that halakha should be viewed as a set of general guidelines rather than restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced halakha; today, these courts still exist, but the practice of Judaism is mostly voluntary. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in anyone or organization but in the sacred texts and the rabbis and scholars who interpret them.
Jews are an ethnoreligious group, including those born Jewish (or "ethnic Jews"), in addition to converts to Judaism. In 2019, the Jewish population was estimated at 14.7 million, or roughly 0.19% of the total world population. About 46.9% of all Jews reside in Israel. Another 38.8% reside in the United States and Canada, with most of the remainder living in Europe and other minority groups spread throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
The term Judaism derives from Iudaismus, a Latinized form of the Ancient Greek Ioudaismos (Ἰουδαϊσμός) (from the verb ἰουδαΐζειν, "to side with or imitate the [Judeans]"). Its ultimate source was the Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, "Judah," which is also the source of the Hebrew term for Judaism: יַהֲדוּת, Yahadut. The word Ἰουδαϊσμός first appears in the Hellenistic Greek book of 2 Maccabees in the 2nd century BCE. In the context of the age and period, it meant "seeking or forming part of a cultural entity," It resembled its antonym Hellenismos. This word signified a people's submission to Hellenic (Greek) cultural norms. The conflict between Judaism and Hellenismos lay behind the Maccabean revolt and the invention of the term iudaismos.
We are tempted, of course, to translate [Ioudaïsmós] as "Judaism." Still, this translation is too narrow because, in this first occurrence of the term, Ioudaïsmós has not yet been reduced to the designation of a religion. Instead, it means "the aggregate of all those characteristics that make Judaeans Judaean (or Jews Jewish)." Among these characteristics, to be sure, are practices and beliefs that we would today call "religious," but these practices and beliefs are not the sole content of the term. Thus Ioudaïsmós should be translated not as "Judaism" but as Judaeanness.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest citation in English where the term was used to mean "the profession or practice of the Jewish religion; the religious system or polity of the Jews" is Robert Fabyan's The newe chronicles of England and France (1516)."Judaism" as a direct translation of the Latin Iudaismus first occurred in a 1611 English translation of the Apocrypha (Deuterocanon in Catholic and Eastern Orthodoxy), 2 Macc. ii. 21: "Those that behaved themselves manfully to their honor for Judaism."
At its core, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is an account of the Israelites' relationship with God from their earliest history until the building of the Second Temple (c. 535 BCE). Abraham is hailed as the first Hebrew and the father of the Jewish people. As a reward for his act of faith in one God, he was promised that Isaac, his second son, would inherit the Land of Israel (then called Canaan). Later, the descendants of Isaac's son Jacob were enslaved in Egypt, and God commanded Moses to lead the Exodus from Egypt. At Mount Sinai, they received the Torah—the five books of Moses. Together with Nevi'im and Ketuvim, these books are known as Torah Shebikhtav as opposed to the Oral Torah, which refers to the Mishnah and the Talmud. Eventually, God led them to the land of Israel, where the tabernacle was planted in the city of Shiloh for over 300 years to rally the nation against attacking enemies. As time went on, the spiritual level of the Government declined to the point that God allowed the Philistines to capture the tabernacle. The people of Israel then told Samuel the prophet that they needed to be governed by a permanent king, and Samuel appointed Saul to be their King. When the people pressured Saul into going against a command conveyed to him by Samuel, God told Samuel to set David in his stead.
The Western Wall in Jerusalem is a remnant of the wall encircling the Second Temple. The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism.
Once King David was established, he told the prophet Nathan, that he would like to build a permanent temple. As a reward for his actions, God promised David that he would allow his son, Solomon, to create the First Temple, and the throne would never depart from his children.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the details and interpretation of the law, called the Oral Torah or Oral Law, were originally an unwritten tradition based upon what God told Moses on Mount Sinai. However, as the persecutions of the Jews increased, and the details were in danger of being forgotten, these oral laws were recorded by Rabbi Judah HaNasi (Judah the Prince) in the Mishnah, redacted circa 200 CE. The Talmud was a compilation of the Mishnah and the Gemara, rabbinic commentaries edited over the next three centuries. The Gemara originated in two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Palestine and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud. It was compiled sometime during the 4th century in Palestine. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled from discussions in the houses of study by the scholars Ravina I, Ravina II, and Rav Ashi by 500 CE. However, it continued to be edited later.
According to critical scholars, the Torah consists of inconsistent texts edited together in a way that calls attention to divergent accounts. Several of these scholars, such as Professor Martin Rose and John Bright, suggest that during the First Temple period, the people of Israel believed that each nation had its own God but that their God was superior to other gods. Some suggest that strict monotheism developed during the Babylonian Exile, perhaps due to Zoroastrian dualism. In this view, it was only during the Hellenic period that most Jews came to believe that their God was the only God. The notion of a bounded Jewish nation identical to the Jewish religion was formed. John Day argues that the origins of biblical Yahweh, El, Asherah, and Ba'al may be rooted in earlier Canaanite belief, which was centered on a pantheon of gods much like the Greek pantheon.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the United Monarchy was established under Saul and continued under King David and Solomon, with its capital in Jerusalem. After Solomon's reign, the nation split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel (in the north) and the Kingdom of Judah (in the south). The Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE when the Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered it; many people were taken captive from Samaria's capital to Media and the Khabur River valley. The Kingdom of Judah continued as an independent state until Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered it in 586 BCE. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, at the center of ancient Jewish worship. The Judeans were exiled to Babylon in what is regarded as the first Jewish diaspora. Later, many of them returned to their homeland after the subsequent conquest of Babylon by the Persian Achaemenid Empire seventy years later, an event known as the Return to Zion. A Second Temple was constructed, and old religious practices were resumed.
During the early years of the Second Temple, the highest religious authority was a council known as the Great Assembly, led by Ezra the Scribe. Among other accomplishments of the Great Assembly, the last books of the Bible were written at this time, and the canon was sealed. Hellenistic Judaism spread to Ptolemaic Egypt from the 3rd century BCE.
During the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. Later, Roman emperor Hadrian built a pagan idol on the Temple Mount and prohibited circumcision; these acts of ethnocide provoked the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE), after which the Romans banned the study of the Torah and the celebration of Jewish holidays, and forcibly removed virtually all Jews from Judea. In 200 CE, however, Jews were granted Roman citizenship, and Judaism was recognized as a religion licita ("legitimate religion") until the rise of Gnosticism and Early Christianity in the fourth century.
Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple. Prayer took the place of sacrifice; worship was rebuilt around the community (represented by a minimum of ten adult men), and the establishment of the authority of rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities.
Unlike other ancient Near Eastern gods, the Hebrew God is portrayed as unitary and solitary; consequently, the Hebrew God's principal relationships are not with other gods but with the world and, more specifically, with the people he created. Judaism thus begins with ethical monotheism: the belief that God is one and is concerned with the actions of humanity. According to the Hebrew Bible, God promised Abraham to make his offspring a great nation. Many generations later, he commanded the nation of Israel to love and worship only one God; that is, the Jewish nation is to reciprocate God's concern for the world. He also commanded the Jewish people to love one another; Jews are to imitate God's love for people. These commandments are but two of a large corpus of commandments and laws that constitute this covenant, which is the substance of Judaism.
Thus, although there is an esoteric tradition in Judaism (Kabbalah), Rabbinic scholar Max Kadushin has characterized normative Judaism as "normal mysticism" because it involves everyday personal experiences of God through ways or modes that are common to all Jews. This is played out through the observance of the halakha (Jewish Law) and given verbal expression in the Birkat Ha-Mitzvot. These short blessings are spoken every time a positive commandment is fulfilled.
The ordinary, familiar, everyday things and occurrences we have constitute occasions for the experience of God. Such things as one's daily sustenance, the very day itself, are felt as manifestations of God's loving-kindness, calling for the Berakhot. Kedushah, holiness, which is nothing else than the imitation of God, is concerned with daily conduct, being gracious and merciful, and keeping oneself from defilement by idolatry, adultery, and the shedding of blood. The Birkat Ha-Mitzwot evokes the consciousness of holiness at a rabbinic rite, but the objects employed in most of these rites are non-holy and of a general character. In contrast, the several holy objects are non-theurgic. Not only do ordinary things and occurrences bring with them the experience of God. Everything that happens to a man evokes that experience, evil and good, for a Berakah is said also at evil tidings. Hence, although the knowledge of God is like none other, the occasions for experiencing Him, for having a consciousness of Him, are manifold, even if we consider only those that call for Berakot.
Whereas Jewish philosophers often debate whether God is immanent or transcendent and whether people have free will or their lives are determined, halakha is a system through which any Jew acts to bring God into the world.
Ethical monotheism is central in all sacred or normative texts of Judaism. However, monotheism has not always been followed in practice. The Jewish Bible records and repeatedly condemns the widespread worship of other gods in ancient Israel. In the Greco-Roman era, many different interpretations of monotheism existed in Judaism, including those that gave rise to Christianity.
Moreover, some have argued that Judaism is a non-creedal religion that does not require one to believe in God. For some, observance of halakha is more important than belief in God per se. In modern times, some liberal Jewish movements do not accept the existence of a personified deity active in history. Whether one can speak of authentic or normative Judaism is not only a debate among religious Jews but also historians.
In the strict sense, in Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, there are no fixed universally binding articles of faith due to their incorporation into the liturgy. Scholars throughout Jewish history have proposed numerous formulations of Judaism's core tenets, all of which have met with criticism. The most popular formulation is Maimonides' thirteen principles of faith, developed in the 12th century. According to Maimonides, any Jew who rejects even one of these principles would be considered an apostate and a heretic. Jewish scholars have held points of view diverging from Maimonides' principles in various ways. Thus, within Reform Judaism, only the first five principles are endorsed.
In Maimonides' time, Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo criticized his list of tenets. Albo and the Raavad argued that Maimonides' principles contained too many items that, while true, were not fundamentals of the faith.
Along these lines, the ancient historian Josephus emphasized practices and observances rather than religious beliefs, associating apostasy with a failure to observe halakha and maintaining that the requirements for conversion to Judaism included circumcision and adherence to traditional customs. Maimonides' principles were primarily ignored over the next few centuries. Later, two poetic restatements of these principles ("Ani Ma'amin" and "Yigdal") became integrated into many Jewish liturgies, leading to their eventual near-universal acceptance.
In modern times, Judaism lacks a centralized authority to dictate an exact religious dogma. Because of this, many different variations on the fundamental beliefs are considered within the scope of Judaism. All Jewish religious movements are, to a greater or lesser extent, based on the principles of the Hebrew Bible and various commentaries such as the Talmud and Midrash. Judaism also universally recognizes the Biblical Covenant between God and the Patriarch Abraham and the additional aspects of the covenant revealed to Moses. He is considered Judaism's greatest prophet. In the Mishnah, a core text of Rabbinic Judaism, acceptance of the Divine origins of this covenant is regarded as an essential aspect of Judaism, and those who reject the covenant forfeit their share in the World to Come.
Establishing the core tenets of Judaism in the modern era is even more difficult, given the number and diversity of the contemporary Jewish denominations. Even if to restrict the problem to the most influential intellectual trends of the nineteenth and twentieth century, the matter remains complicated. Thus, for instance, Joseph Soloveitchik's (associated with the Modern Orthodox movement) answer to modernity is constituted upon the identification of Judaism with following the halakha. In contrast, its ultimate goal is to bring holiness down to the world. Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, abandons the idea of religion to identify Judaism with civilization. He tries to embrace as many Jewish denominations as possible by employing the latter term and secular translation of the core ideas. In turn, Solomon Schechter's Conservative Judaism was identical to the tradition understood as the interpretation of Torah, in itself being the history of the constant updates and adjustment of the law performed through the creative performance. Finally, David Philipson draws the outlines of the Reform movement in Judaism by opposing it to the strict and traditional rabbinical approach and thus comes to conclusions similar to that of the Conservative movement.
The basis of halakha and tradition is the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses). According to rabbinic tradition, there are 613 commandments in the Torah. Some of these laws are directed only to men or women, some only to the ancient priestly groups, the Kohanim and Leviyim (members of the tribe of Levi), and some only to farmers within the Land of Israel. Many laws were only applicable when the Temple in Jerusalem existed, and only 369 of these commandments are still relevant today.
While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were based on the written text of the Torah alone (e.g., the Sadducees and the Karaites), most Jews believe in the oral law. These oral traditions were transmitted by the Pharisee school of thought of ancient Judaism and were later recorded in written form and expanded upon by the rabbis.
According to Rabbinical Jewish tradition, God gave Moses the Written Law (the Torah) and the Oral Torah on Mount Sinai. The Oral Law is the oral tradition as relayed by God to Moses and from him, transmitted and taught to the sages (rabbinic leaders) of each subsequent generation.
For centuries, the Torah appeared only as a written text transmitted parallel with the oral tradition. Fearing that the oral teachings might be forgotten, Rabbi Judah haNasi undertook the mission of consolidating the various opinions into one body of law known as the Mishnah.
The Mishnah consists of 63 tractates codifying halakha, which are the basis of the Talmud. According to Abraham ben David, the Mishnah was compiled by Rabbi Judah haNasi after the destruction of Jerusalem in anno mundi 3949, which corresponds to 189 CE.
Over the next four centuries, the Mishnah underwent discussion and debate in both of the world's foremost Jewish communities (in Israel and Babylonia). The commentaries from these communities were eventually compiled into the two Talmuds, the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi) and the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli). Commentaries of various Torah scholars have further expounded these during the ages.
In the text of the Torah, many words are left undefined, and many procedures are mentioned without explanation or instructions. Such phenomena are sometimes offered to validate the viewpoint that the Written Law has always been transmitted with a parallel oral tradition, illustrating the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the details from other, i.e., oral sources.
Halakha, the rabbinic Jewish way of life, is based on a combined reading of the Torah and the oral tradition—the Mishnah, the halakhic Midrash, the Talmud, and its commentaries. The halakha has developed slowly through a precedent-based system. The literature of questions to rabbis, and their considered answers, is referred to as responsa (in Hebrew, Sheelot U-Teshuvot.) Over time, as practices develop, halakha codes are written based on the responsa; the most critical code, the Shulchan Aruch, largely determines Orthodox religious tradition today.
Jewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy and Jewish theology. Major Jewish philosophers include Philo of Alexandria, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Saadia Gaon, Judah Halevi, Maimonides, and Gersonides. Significant changes occurred in response to the Enlightenment (late 18th to early 19th century), leading to the post-Enlightenment Jewish philosophers. Modern Jewish philosophy consists of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox oriented philosophy. Notable among Orthodox Jewish philosophers are Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Yitzchok Hutner. Well-known non-Orthodox Jewish philosophers include Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Will Herberg, and Emmanuel Lévinas.
Orthodox and many other Jews do not believe that the revealed Torah consists solely of its written contents but its interpretations. The study of Torah (in its broadest sense, including both poetry, narrative, and Law, and both the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud) is in Judaism itself a sacred act of central importance. For the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud, and for their successors today, the study of Torah was therefore not merely a means to learn the contents of God's revelation but an end in itself. According to the Talmud,
These are the things for which a person enjoys the dividends in this world while the principal remains for the person to enjoy in the world to come: honoring parents, loving deeds of kindness, and making peace between one person and another. But the study of the Torah is equal to them all. (Talmud Shabbat 127a).
In Judaism, "the study of Torah can be a means of experiencing God." [85] Reflecting on the contribution of the Amoraim and Tanaim to contemporary Judaism, Professor Jacob Neusner observed:
The rabbi's logical and rational inquiry is not mere logic-chopping. It is a most profound and substantive effort to locate in trivialities the fundamental principles of the revealed will of God to guide and sanctify the most specific and concrete actions in the everyday world. ... Here is the mystery of Talmudic Judaism: the alien and remote conviction that the intellect is an instrument not of unbelief and desacralization but sanctification."
To study the Written Torah and the Oral Torah in light of each other is thus also to learn how to look at the word of God.
In the study of the Torah, the sages formulated and followed various logical and hermeneutical principles. According to David Stern, all Rabbinic hermeneutics rest on two fundamental axioms:
first, the belief in the Omni-significance of Scripture, in the meaningfulness of its every word, letter, even (according to one famous report) scribal flourish; second, the claim of the essential unity of Scripture as the expression of the single divine will.
These two principles make possible a great variety of interpretations. According to the Talmud,
A single verse has several meanings, but no two poems hold the same purpose. It was taught in the school of R. Ishmael: 'Behold, My word is like fire—declares the Lord—and like a hammer that shatters rock' (Jer 23:29). Just as this hammer produces many sparks (when it strikes the rock), a single verse has several meanings." (Talmud Sanhedrin 34a).
Observant Jews thus view the Torah as dynamic because it contains a host of interpretations within it.
According to Rabbinic tradition, all valid interpretations of the written Torah were revealed to Moses at Sinai in oral form and handed down from teacher to pupil (The verbal revelation is coextensive with the Talmud itself). When different rabbis forwarded conflicting interpretations, they sometimes appealed to hermeneutic principles to legitimize their arguments; some rabbis claim that these principles were themselves revealed by God to Moses at Sinai.
Thus, Hillel called attention to seven commonly used hermeneutical principles in interpreting laws (baraita at the beginning of Sifra); R. Ishmael, thirteen (baraita at the beginning of Sifra; this collection is essentially an amplification of that of Hillel). Eliezer b. Jose ha-Gelili listed 32, used mainly to explain the narrative elements of the Torah. Malbim has collected all the hermeneutic rules scattered through the Talmud and Midrashim in Ayelet ha-Shachar, the introduction to his commentary on the Sifra. Nevertheless, R. Ishmael's 13 principles are perhaps the most widely known; they constitute an important one of Judaism's earliest contributions to logic, hermeneutics, and jurisprudence. Judah Hadassi incorporated Ishmael's principles into Karaite Judaism in the 12th century. Today R. Ishmael's 13 principles are incorporated into the Jewish prayer book to be read by observant Jews daily.
According to Daniel Boyarin, the underlying distinction between religion and ethnicity is foreign to Judaism. It is one form of the dualism between spirit and flesh that has its origin in Platonic philosophy and permeated Hellenistic Judaism. Consequently, in his view, Judaism does not fit easily into conventional Western categories, such as religion, ethnicity, or culture. Boyarin suggests that this partly reflects that much of Judaism's more than 3,000-year history predated the rise of Western civilization and occurred outside the West (that is, Europe, particularly medieval and modern Europe). During this time, Jews experienced slavery, anarchic and theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile. In the Jewish diaspora, they were in contact with and influenced by ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment (see Haskalah) and the rise of nationalism, which would bear fruit in the form of a Jewish state in their ancient homeland, the Land of Israel. They also saw a select population convert to Judaism (the Khazars), only to disappear as the centers of power in the lands once occupied by that elite fell to the people of Rus and then the Mongols.[citation needed] Thus, Boyarin has argued that "Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension."[98]
In contrast to this point of view, practices such as Humanistic Judaism reject the religious aspects of Judaism while retaining certain cultural traditions.
According to Rabbinic Judaism, a Jew is anyone who was either born to a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism by halakha. Reconstructionist Judaism and the larger denominations of worldwide Progressive Judaism (also known as Liberal or Reform Judaism) accept the child as Jewish if one of the parents is Jewish, if the parents raise the child with a Jewish identity, but not the smaller regional branches.[clarification needed] All mainstream forms of Judaism today are open to sincere converts, although conversion has traditionally been discouraged since the Talmud. An authority evaluates the conversion process, and the convert is examined on their sincerity and knowledge. Converts are called "ben Abraham" or "bat Abraham" (son or daughter of Abraham). Conversions have, on occasion, been overturned. In 2008, Israel's highest religious court invalidated the conversion of 40,000 Jews, mostly from Russian immigrant families, even though an Orthodox rabbi had approved them.
Rabbinical Judaism maintains that a Jew, whether by birth or conversion, is a Jew forever. Thus a Jew who claims to be an atheist or converts to another religion is still considered by traditional Judaism to be Jewish. According to some sources, the Reform movement has maintained that a Jew who has converted to another faith is no longer a Jew. After Supreme Court cases and statutes, the Israeli Government has also taken that stance. However, the Reform movement has indicated that this is not so cut and dried, and different situations call for consideration and differing actions. For example, Jews who have converted under duress may be permitted to return to Judaism "without any action, but their desire to rejoin the Jewish community" and "A proselyte who has become an apostate remains, nevertheless, a Jew." [103]
Karaite Judaism believes that Jewish identity can only be transmitted by patrilineal descent. However, a minority of modern Karaites believe that Jewish identity requires that both parents be Jewish, not only the father. They argue that only patrilineal descent can transmit Jewish identity because all drops in the Torah went according to the male line.
What determines Jewish identity in the State of Israel was given new impetus when, in the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion requested opinions on mihu Yehudi ("Who is a Jew") from Jewish religious authorities and intellectuals worldwide to settle citizenship questions. This is still not fixed and occasionally resurfaces in Israeli politics.
Historically Jewish identity has traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent and halakhic conversions. Historical descriptions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations of sections of the Tanakh, such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, by Jewish sages, are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and Canaanites because "[the non-Jewish husband] will cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods (i.e., idols) of others."Leviticus 24 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by Ezra 10, where Israelites return from Babylon and vow to put aside their gentile wives and children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the Law of Jewish identity inherited through the maternal line. However, scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.
The total number of Jews worldwide is difficult to assess because the definition of "who is a Jew" is problematic; not all Jews identify themselves as Jewish, and some who identify as Jewish are not considered so by other Jews. According to the Jewish Year Book (1901), the global Jewish population in 1900 was around 11 million. The latest available data is from the World Jewish Population Survey of 2002 and the Jewish Year Calendar (2005). In 2002, according to the Jewish Population Survey, there were 13.3 million Jews around the world. The Jewish Year Calendar cites 14.6 million. It is 0.25% of the world population. Jewish population growth is near zero percent, with 0.3% growth from 2000 to 2001.
Rabbinic Judaism (or in some Christian traditions, Rabbinism) (Hebrew: "Yahadut Rabanit" – יהדות רבנית) has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Talmud. It is characterized by the belief that the Written Torah (Written Law) cannot be correctly interpreted without reference to the Oral Torah and the voluminous literature specifying what behavior is sanctioned by the law.
The Jewish Enlightenment of the late 18th century resulted in the division of Ashkenazi (Western) Jewry into religious movements or denominations, especially in North America and Anglophone countries. Today, the main denominations outside Israel (where the situation is somewhat different) are Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. The notion of "traditional Judaism" includes the Orthodox with Conservative or solely the Orthodox Jews.
- Orthodox Judaism holds that both the Written and Oral Torah were divinely revealed to Moses and that the laws within it are binding and unchanging. Orthodox Jews generally consider commentaries on the Shulchan Aruch (a condensed codification of halakha that largely favored Sephardic traditions) to be the definitive codification of halakha. Orthodoxy places high importance on Maimonides' 13 principles as a definition of the Jewish faith.
Orthodoxy is often divided into Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism. Haredi is less accommodating to modernity and has less interest in non-Jewish disciplines. It may be distinguished from Modern Orthodox Judaism in practice by its styles of dress and more stringent procedures. Subsets of Haredi Judaism include Hasidic Judaism, rooted in the Kabbalah and distinguished by reliance on a Rebbe or religious teacher; their opponents Misnagdim (Lithuanian); and Sephardic Haredi Judaism, which emerged among Sephardic and Mizrahi (Asian and North African) Jews in Israel. "Centrist" Orthodoxy (Joseph B. Soloveitchik) is sometimes also distinguished.
- Conservative Judaism is characterized by a commitment to traditional halakha and customs, including observance of Shabbat and kashrut, deliberately non-fundamentalist teaching of Jewish principles of faith, a positive attitude toward modern culture, and an acceptance of both traditional rabbinic and contemporary scholarship when considering Jewish religious texts. Conservative Judaism teaches that halakha is not static but has continually developed in response to changing conditions. It holds that the Torah is a divine document written by prophets inspired by God and reflecting his will but rejects the Orthodox position that God dictated it to Moses. Conservative Judaism holds that the Oral Law is divine and normative. The rabbis may interpret both the Written and Oral Law to reflect modern sensibilities and suit current conditions.
- Reform Judaism, called Liberal or Progressive Judaism in many countries, defines Judaism in relatively universalist terms, rejects most of the ritual and ceremonial laws of the Torah while observing moral laws, and emphasizes the ethical call of the Prophets. Reform Judaism has developed an egalitarian prayer service in the vernacular (along with Hebrew in many cases) and emphasizes personal connection to Jewish tradition.
- Reconstructionist Judaism, like Reform Judaism, does not hold that halakha, as such, requires observance, but unlike Reform, Reconstructionist thought emphasizes the role of the community in deciding what observances to follow.
- Jewish Renewal is a recent North American movement that focuses on spirituality and social justice but does not address the issues of halakha. Men and women participate equally in prayer.
- Humanistic Judaism is a slight nontheistic movement centered in North America and Israel that emphasizes Jewish culture and history as the sources of Jewish identity.
- Subbotniks (Sabbatarians) are a movement of Jews of Russian ethnic origin in the 18th–20th centuries, most of whom belonged to Rabbinic and Karaite Judaism. Many settled in the Holy Land as part of the Zionist First Aliyah to escape oppression in the Russian Empire and later mostly intermarried with other Jews. Their descendants included Alexander Zaïd, Major-General Alik Ron, and the mother of Ariel Sharon.
While traditions and customs vary between discrete communities, it can be said that Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities do not generally adhere to the "movement" framework popular in and among Ashkenazi Jewry. Historically, Sephardi and Mizrahi's communities have eschewed denominations favoring a "big tent" approach. This is particularly the case in contemporary Israel, which is home to the world's largest gatherings of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. (However, individual Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews may be members of or attend synagogues that do adhere to one Ashkenazi-inflected movement or another.)
Sephardi and Mizrahi observance of Judaism tends toward the conservative, and prayer rites reflect this, with the text of each tradition being essentially unchanged since their respective inception. Observant Sephardim may follow the teachings of a particular rabbi or school of thought, for example, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Most Jewish Israelis classify themselves as "secular" (hiloni), "traditional" (Masorti), "religious" (dati) or Haredi. The term "secular" is more popular as a self-description among Israeli families of western (European) origin, whose Jewish identity may be a powerful force in their lives but who see it as largely independent of traditional religious belief and practice. This portion of the population largely ignores organized religious life, be it of the official Israeli rabbinate (Orthodox) or the liberal movements common to diaspora Judaism (Reform, Conservative).
The term "traditional" (Masorti) is most familiar as a self-description among Israeli families of "eastern" origin (i.e., the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa). This term, as commonly used, has nothing to do with Conservative Judaism, which also names itself "Masorti" outside North America. There is a great deal of ambiguity in the ways "secular" and "traditional" are used in Israel: they often overlap, covering an extensive range in terms of worldview and practical religious observance. The term "Orthodox" is not popular in Israeli discourse, although the percentage of Jews who come under that category is far more significant than in the Jewish diaspora. What would be called "Orthodox" in the diaspora includes what is commonly called dati (religious) or Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) in Israel. The former term includes what is called "Religious Zionism" or the "National Religious" community, as well as what has become known over the past decade or so as Haredi-Leumi (nationalist haredi), or "Hardal," which combines a largely haredi lifestyle with nationalist ideology. (Some people, in Yiddish, also refer to observant Orthodox Jews as frum, as opposed to frei (more liberal Jews)).
Haredi applies to a populace that can be roughly divided into three separate groups along both ethnic and ideological lines:
- "Lithuanian" (non-hasidic) haredim of Ashkenazic origin
- Hasidic haredim of Ashkenazic origin
- Sephardic Haredim
Karaite Judaism defines itself as the remnants of the non-Rabbinic Jewish sects of the Second Temple period, such as the Sadducees. The Karaites ("Scripturalists") accept only the Hebrew Bible and what they view as the Peshat ("simple" meaning); they do not accept non-biblical writings as authoritative. Some European Karaites do not see themselves as part of the Jewish community, although most do.
The Samaritans, a tiny community, located entirely around Mount Gerizim in the Nablus/Shechem region of the West Bank and Holon, near Tel Aviv in Israel, regard themselves as the descendants of the Israelites of the Iron Age kingdom of Israel. Their religious practices are based on the literal text of the written Torah (Five Books of Moses), which they view as the only authoritative Scripture (with particular regard also for the Samaritan Book of Joshua).
Haymanot (meaning "religion" in Ge'ez and Amharic) refers to the Judaism practiced by Ethiopian Jews. This version of Judaism differs substantially from Rabbinic, Karaite, and Samaritan Judaisms, Ethiopian Jews having diverged from their coreligionists earlier. Sacred scriptures (the Orit) are written in Ge'ez, not Hebrew, and dietary laws are based strictly on the text of the Orit, without explication from ancillary commentaries. Holidays also differ, with some Rabbinic holidays not observed in Ethiopian Jewish communities, and some other holidays, like Sign.
Jewish secularism refers to secularism in a particularly Jewish context, denoting the definition of Jewishness either with little recourse to religion or without. Jewish Secularist ideologies first arose in the latter third of the 19th century and reached the apogee of their influence in the interwar period.
Noahidism is a Jewish religious movement based on the Seven Laws of Noah and their traditional interpretations within Rabbinic Judaism. According to the halakha, non-Jews (gentiles) are not obligated to convert to Judaism, but they must observe the Seven Laws of Noah to be assured of a place in the World to Come (Olam Ha-Ba), the final reward of the righteous. The divinely ordained penalty for violating Noah's Laws is discussed in the Talmud. Still, in practical terms, it is subject to the working legal system established by society at large. Those who subscribe to the observance of the Noahic Covenant are referred to as B'nei Noach (Hebrew: בני נח, "Children of Noah") or Noahides (/ˈnoʊ.ə.haɪdɪs/). Supporting organizations have been established worldwide over the past decades by both Noahides and Orthodox Jews.
Historically, the Hebrew term B'nei Noach has applied to all non-Jews as descendants of Noah. However, nowadays, it's primarily used to refer specifically to those non-Jews who observe the Seven Laws of Noah.
Jewish ethics may be guided by halakhic traditions, other moral principles, or central Jewish virtues. Jewish ethical practice is typically marked by values such as justice, truth, peace, loving-kindness (chesed), compassion, humility, and self-respect. Specific Jewish ethical practices include practices of charity (tzedakah) and refraining from harmful speech (lashon hara). Proper ethical practices regarding sexuality and many other issues are subjects of dispute among Jews.
Traditionally, Jews recite prayers three times daily, Shacharit, Mincha, and Ma'ariv, with a fourth prayer, Mussaf added on Shabbat and holidays. At the heart of each service is the Amidah or Shemoneh Esrei. Another essential prayer with many benefits is the declaration of faith, the Shema Yisrael (or Shema). The Shema is the recitation of a verse from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4): Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad—"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God! The Lord is One!"
Most of the prayers in a traditional Jewish service can be recited in solitary prayer, although communal prayer is preferred. Communal prayer requires a quorum of ten adult Jews, called a minyan. In nearly all Orthodox and a few Conservative circles, only male Jews are counted toward a minyan; most Conservative Jews and members of other Jewish denominations count female Jews.
In addition to prayer services, observant traditional Jews recite prayers and benedictions when performing various acts throughout the day. Prayers are recited upon waking up in the morning, before eating or drinking different foods, after eating a meal, etc.
The approach to prayer varies among the Jewish denominations. Differences can include the texts of prayers, the frequency of prayer, the number of prayers recited at various religious events, musical instruments, choral music, and whether prayers are repeated in the traditional liturgical languages or the vernacular. Orthodox and Conservative congregations adhere most closely to tradition, and Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues are more likely to incorporate translations and contemporary writings in their services. Also, in most Conservative synagogues and all Reform and Reconstructionist congregations, women participate in prayer services equally with men, including roles traditionally filled only by men, such as reading from the Torah. In addition, many Reform temples use musical accompaniment such as organs and mixed choirs.
A kippah (Hebrew: כִּפָּה, plural kippot; Yiddish: יאַרמלקע, yarmulke) is a slightly rounded brimless skullcap worn by many Jews while praying, eating, reciting blessings, or studying Jewish religious texts, and at all times by some Jewish men. In Orthodox communities, only men wear kippot; in non-Orthodox communities, some women also wear kippot. Kippot ranges in size from a small round beanie covering only the back of the head to a large, snug cap covering the whole crown.
Tzitzit (Hebrew: צִיציִת) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tzitzis) are special knotted "fringes" or "tassels" found on the four corners of the tallit (Hebrew: טַלִּית) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tallis), or prayer shawl. Jewish men and some Jewish women wear the tallit during the prayer service. Customs vary regarding when a Jew begins wearing a tallit. In the Sephardi community, boys wear a tallit from bar mitzvah age. In some Ashkenazi communities, it is customary to wear one only after marriage. A tallit katan (small tallit) is a fringed garment worn under the clothing throughout the day. In some Orthodox circles, the fringes can hang freely outside the dress.
Tefillin (Hebrew: תְפִלִּין), known in English as phylacteries (from the Greek word φυλακτήριον, meaning safeguard or amulet), are two square leather boxes containing biblical verses, attached to the forehead and wound around the left arm by leather straps. They are worn during weekday morning prayer by observant Jewish men and some Jewish women.
A Kittel (Yiddish: קיטל), a white knee-length overgarment, is worn by prayer leaders and some observant traditional Jews on the High Holidays. It is standard for the head of the household to wear a kittel at the Passover seder in some communities, and some grooms wear one under the wedding canopy. Jewish males are buried in a tallit and sometimes also a kittel which are part of the tachrichim (burial garments).
Jewish holidays are special days in the Jewish calendar that celebrate moments in Jewish history and central themes in the relationship between God and the world, such as creation, revelation, and redemption.
Shabbat, the weekly day of rest lasting from shortly before sundown on Friday night to nightfall on Saturday night, commemorates God's day of rest after six days of creation. It plays a pivotal role in Jewish practice and is governed by a large corpus of religious law. At sundown on Friday, the woman of the house welcomes the Shabbat by lighting two or more candles and reciting a blessing. The evening meal begins with the Kiddush, a gift recited aloud over a cup of wine, and the Mohtzi, a blessing recited over the bread. It is customary to have challah, two braided loaves of bread, on the table. During Shabbat, Jews were forbidden to engage in any activity under 39 categories of Halakhah, translated literally as "work." The activities banned on the Sabbath are not "work" in the usual sense: They include such actions as lighting a fire, writing, using money, and carrying in the public domain. The prohibition of lighting a fire has been extended in the modern era to driving a car, which involves burning fuel and using electricity.
Jewish holy days (chaggim) celebrate landmark events in Jewish history, such as the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah, and sometimes mark the change of seasons and transitions in the agricultural cycle. The three major festivals, Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot, are called "regalim" (derived from the Hebrew word "regel" or foot). On the three regalim, it was customary for the Israelites to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices in the Temple.
- A Haggadah used by the Jewish community of Cairo in Arabic
- Passover (Pesach) is a week-long holiday beginning on the evening of the 14th day of Nisan (the first month in the Hebrew calendar) that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. Outside Israel, Passover is celebrated for eight days. In ancient times, it coincided with the barley harvest. It is the only holiday that centers on home service, the Seder. Leavened products (chametz) are removed from the house before the holiday and are not consumed throughout the week. Homes are thoroughly cleaned to ensure no bread or bread by-products remain, and a symbolic burning of the last vestiges of chametz is conducted on the morning of the Seder. Matzo is eaten instead of bread.
- Shavuot ("Pentecost" or "Feast of Weeks") celebrates the revelation of the Torah to the Israelites on Mount Sinai. Also known as the Festival of Bikurim, or first fruits, coincided in biblical times with the wheat harvest. Shavuot customs include all-night study marathons known as Tikkun Leil Shavuot, eating dairy foods (cheesecake and blintzes are particular favorites), reading the Book of Ruth, decorating homes and synagogues with greenery, and wearing white clothing, symbolizing purity.
- A sukkah
- Sukkot ("Tabernacles" or "The Festival of Booths") commemorates the Israelites' forty years of wandering through the desert on their way to the Promised Land. It is celebrated through the construction of temporary booths called sukkot (sing. sukkah) that represent the temporary shelters of the Israelites during their wandering. It coincides with the fruit harvest and marks the end of the agricultural cycle. Jews around the world eat in sukkot for seven days and nights. Sukkot concludes with Shemini Atzeret, where Jews begin to pray for rain, and Simchat Torah, "Rejoicing of the Torah," a holiday that marks reaching the end of the Torah reading cycle and beginning all over again. The occasion is celebrated with singing and dancing with the Torah scrolls. Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are considered separate holidays and not a part of Sukkot.
The High Holidays (Yamim Noraim or "Days of Awe") revolve around judgment and forgiveness.
- Rosh Hashanah (also Yom Ha-Zikkaron or "Day of Remembrance," and Yom Teruah, or "Day of the Sounding of the Shofar"). Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year (literally, "head of the year"), although it falls on the first day of the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar, Tishri. Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the ten days of atonement leading up to Yom Kippur, during which Jews are commanded to search their souls and make amends for sins committed, intentionally or not, throughout the year. Holiday customs include blowing the shofar, or ram's horn, in the synagogue, eating apples and honey, and saying blessings over various symbolic foods, such as pomegranates.
- Yom Kippur ("Day of Atonement") is the holiest day of the Jewish year. It is a day of communal fasting and praying for forgiveness for one's sins. Observant Jews spend the entire day in the synagogue, sometimes with a short break in the afternoon, reciting prayers from a special holiday prayerbook called a "Machzor." Many non-religious Jews make a point of attending synagogue services and fasting on Yom Kippur. On the eve of Yom Kippur, a perfect meal, the "seuda mafseket," is eaten before candles are lit. Synagogue services on the eve of Yom Kippur begin with the Kol Nidre prayer. It is customary to wear white on Yom Kippur, especially for Kol Nidre, and leather shoes are not worn. The following day, prayers are held from morning to evening. The final prayer service, called "Ne'ilah," ends with a long blast.
Purim (Hebrew: פורים (help·info) Pûrîm "lots") is a joyous Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Persian Jews from the plot of the evil Haman, who sought to exterminate them, as recorded in the biblical Book of Esther. It is characterized by public recitation of the Book of Esther, mutual gifts of food and drink, charity to the poor, and a celebratory meal (Esther 9:22). Other customs include:
- Drinking wine.
- Eating unique pastries called hamantashen.
- Dressing up in masks and costumes.
- Organizing carnivals and parties.
Purim has celebrated annually on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar, which occurs in February or March of the Gregorian calendar.
Hanukkah (Hebrew: חֲנֻכָּה, "dedication"), also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday that starts on the 25th day of Kislev (Hebrew calendar). The festival is observed in Jewish homes by the kindling of lights on each of the festival's eight nights, one on the first night, two on the second night, and so on.
The holiday was called Hanukkah (meaning "dedication") because it marks the re-dedication of the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Spiritually, Hanukkah commemorates the "Miracle of the Oil." According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days—the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate new oil.
Hanukkah is not mentioned in the Bible and was never considered a significant holiday in Judaism. Still, it has become much more visible and widely celebrated in modern times, mainly because it falls around the same time as Christmas and has national Jewish overtones emphasized since the establishment of the State of Israel.
Tisha B'Av (Hebrew: תשעה באב or ט׳ באב, "the Ninth of Av") is a day of mourning and fasting commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and in later times, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
There are three more minor Jewish fast days that commemorate various stages of the destruction of the Temples. They are the 17th Tamuz, the 10th of Tevet, and Tzom Gedaliah (the 3rd of Tishrei).
The modern holidays of Yom Ha-shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day), and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) commemorate the horrors of the Holocaust, the fallen soldiers of Israel and victims of terrorism, and Israeli independence, respectively.
The core of the festival and Shabbat prayer services is the public reading of the Torah, along with related tasks from the other books of the Tanakh, called Haftarah. The whole Torah is read for a year, with the cycle starting over in the autumn, on Simchat Torah.
Synagogues are Jewish houses of prayer and study. They usually contain separate rooms for prayer (the main sanctuary), smaller rooms for analysis, and often an area for community or educational use. There is no set blueprint for synagogues, and synagogues' architectural shapes and interior designs vary greatly. The Reform movement primarily refer to their synagogues as temples. Some standard features of a synagogue are:
- The Ark (called aron ha-Kodesh by Ashkenazim and hekhal by Sephardim) where the Torah scrolls are kept (the Ark is often closed with an ornate curtain (parochet) outside or inside the ark doors);
- The elevated reader's platform (called bimah by Ashkenazim and tebah by Sephardim), where the Torah is read (and services are conducted in Sephardi synagogues);
- The eternal light (ner tamid), a continually lit lamp or lantern used as a reminder of the constantly lit menorah of the Temple in Jerusalem
- The pulpit, or amud, is a lectern facing the Ark where the hazzan or prayer leader stands while praying.
In addition to synagogues, other buildings of significance in Judaism include yeshivas, institutions of Jewish learning, and mikvahs, ritual baths.
The Jewish dietary laws are known as kashrut. Food prepared by them is termed kosher, and food that is not kosher is also known as treifah or treif. People who observe these laws are colloquially said to be "keeping kosher."
Many of the laws apply to animal-based foods. For example, mammals must have split hooves and chew their cud to be considered kosher. The pig is arguably the most well-known example of a non-kosher animal. Although it has split hooves, it does not chew its cud. For seafood to be kosher, the animal must have fins and scales. Certain types of seafood, such as shellfish, crustaceans, and eels, are considered non-kosher. Concerning birds, a list of non-kosher species is given in the Torah. The exact translations of many of the species have not survived, and some non-kosher birds' identities are no longer sure. However, traditions exist about the kashrut status of a few birds. For example, both chickens and turkeys are permitted in most communities. Other animals, such as amphibians, reptiles, and most insects, are prohibited altogether.
In addition to the species' requirement to be considered kosher, meat and poultry (but not fish) must come from a healthy animal slaughtered in a process known as shehitah. Without the proper slaughtering practices, even an otherwise kosher animal will be rendered treif. The slaughtering process is intended to be quick and relatively painless for the animal. Forbidden parts of animals include the blood, some fats, and the area in and around the sciatic nerve.
Halakha also forbids the consumption of meat and dairy products together. The waiting period between eating meat and dairy varies by the order in which they are consumed and by the community and can extend for up to six hours. Based on the Biblical injunction against cooking a kid in its mother's milk, this rule is mainly derived from the Oral Torah, the Talmud, and Rabbinic law. Chicken and other kosher birds are considered the same as meat under the laws of kashrut, but the prohibition is rabbinic, not biblical.
The use of dishes, serving utensils, and ovens may make food treif that would otherwise be kosher. Knives that have been used to prepare non-kosher food, or words that have held meat and are now used for dairy products, render the food treif under certain conditions.
Furthermore, all Orthodox and some Conservative authorities forbid the consumption of processed grape products made by non-Jews, due to ancient pagan practices of using wine in rituals. Some Conservative rules permit wine and grape juice to be made without rabbinic supervision.
The Torah does not give specific reasons for most of the laws of kashrut. However, many explanations have been offered, including maintaining ritual purity, teaching impulse control, encouraging obedience to God, improving health, reducing cruelty to animals, and preserving the distinctness of the Jewish community. The various categories of dietary laws may have developed for different reasons, and some may exist for multiple reasons. For example, people are forbidden from consuming the blood of birds and mammals because, according to the Torah, this is where animal souls are contained. In contrast, the Torah forbids Israelites from eating non-kosher species because "they are unclean." The Kabbalah describes sparks of holiness that are released by the act of eating kosher foods but are too tightly bound in non-kosher foods to be released by eating.
Survival concerns supersede all the laws of kashrut, as they do for most halakhot.
The Tanakh describes circumstances in which a tahor or ritually pure person may become tamei or ritually impure. Some of these circumstances include contact with human corpses or graves, seminal flux, vaginal flux, menstruation, and communication with people who have become impure from any of these. In Rabbinic Judaism, Kohanim, members of the hereditary caste that served as priests in the time of the Temple, are mostly restricted from entering grave sites and touching dead bodies. During the Temple period, such priests (Kohanim) were required to eat their bread offering (Terumah) in a state of ritual purity, which eventually led to more rigid laws, such as hand-washing, which became a requisite of all Jews before consuming ordinary bread.
An important subcategory of the ritual purity laws relates to the segregation of menstruating women. These laws are called niddah, literally "separation," or family purity. Jews do not usually follow vital aspects of halakha for traditionally observant Jews in liberal denominations.
Especially in Orthodox Judaism, the Biblical laws are augmented by Rabbinical injunctions. For example, the Torah mandates that a woman's average menstrual period must abstain from sexual intercourse for seven days. A woman whose menstruation is prolonged must continue to abstain for seven more days after the bleeding has stopped. The Rabbis conflated ordinary niddah with this extended menstrual period, known in the Torah as Sarah. They mandated that a woman may not have sexual intercourse with her husband from when she begins her menstrual flow until seven days after it ends. In addition, Rabbinical law forbids the husband from touching or sharing a bed with his wife during this period. Afterward, purification can occur in a ritual bath called a mikveh
Traditional Ethiopian Jews keep menstruating women in separate huts and, similar to Karaite practice, do not allow menstruating women into their temples because of a temple's special sanctity. Emigration to Israel and the influence of other Jewish denominations have led to Ethiopian Jews adopting more normative Jewish practices.
Lifecycle events, or rites of passage, occur throughout a Jew's life to strengthen Jewish identity and bind them to the entire community.
- Brit milah – Welcoming male babies into the covenant through the rite of circumcision on their eighth day of life. The baby boy is also given his Hebrew name in the ceremony. A naming ceremony intended as a parallel ritual for girls, named zeved habat or brit bat, enjoys limited popularity.
- Bar mitzvah and Bat mitzvah – This passage from childhood to adulthood occurs when a female Jew is twelve, and a male Jew is thirteen years old among Orthodox and some Conservative congregations. In the Reform movement, both girls and boys have their bat/bar mitzvah at age thirteen. This is often commemorated by having the new adults, male-only in the Orthodox tradition, lead the congregation in prayer and publicly read a "portion" of the Torah.
- Marriage – Marriage is a significant lifecycle event. A wedding takes place under a chuppah, or wedding canopy, which symbolizes a happy house. At the end of the ceremony, the groom breaks a glass with his foot, symbolizing the continuous mourning for the destruction of the Temple and the scattering of the Jewish people.
- Death and Mourning – Judaism has a multi-staged mourning practice. The first stage is called the shiva (literally "seven," observed for one week), during which it is traditional to sit at home and be comforted by friends and family, the second is the shloshim (kept for one month), and for those who have lost one of their parents, there is a third stage, value and bet Chodesh, which is observed for eleven months.
The role of the priesthood in Judaism had significantly diminished since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE when priests attended to the Temple and sacrificed. The priesthood is an inherited position, and although priests no longer have any but ceremonial duties, they are still honored in many Jewish communities. Many Orthodox Jewish communities believe that they will be needed again for a future Third Temple and need to remain ready for future duty.
- Kohen (priest) – patrilineal descendant of Aaron, brother of Moses. In the Temple, the kohanim were charged with performing the sacrifices. Today, a Kohen is the first one called up at the reading of the Torah, performs the Priestly Blessing, and complies with other unique laws and ceremonies, including the tradition of redemption of the firstborn.
- Levi (Levite) – Patrilineal descendant of Levi, the son of Jacob. In the Temple in Jerusalem, the Levites sang Psalms, performed construction, maintenance, janitorial, and guard duties, assisted the priests, and sometimes interpreted the law and Temple ritual to the public. Today, a Levite is called up second to the reading of the Torah.
Prayer leaders
Magen David Synagogue in Kolkata, India
From the Mishnah and Talmud to the present, Judaism has required specialists or authorities to practice very few rituals or ceremonies. A Jew can fulfill most requirements for prayer by himself. Some activities—reading the Torah and haftarah (a supplementary portion from the Prophets or Writings), the prayer for mourners, the blessings for bridegroom and bride, the complete grace after meals—require a minyan, the presence of ten Jews.
- Rabbi of a congregation – Jewish scholar who is charged with answering the legal questions of a community. This role requires ordination by the congregation's preferred authority (i.e., from a respected Orthodox rabbi or, if the assembly is Conservative or Reform, from academic seminaries). A gathering does not necessarily require a rabbi. Some communities have a rabbi and allow members of the congregation to act as shatz or baal kriya (see below).
- Hazzan (note: the "h" denotes voiceless pharyngeal fricative) (cantor) – a trained vocalist who acts as shatz. She was chosen for a good voice, knowledge of traditional tunes, understanding of the meaning of the prayers, and sincerity in reciting them. A congregation does not need to have a dedicated hazzan.
Jewish prayer services involve two specified roles, which are sometimes, but not always, filled by a rabbi or hazzan in many congregations. In other communities, these roles are filled on an ad-hoc basis by members of the community who lead portions of services on a rotating basis:
- Shaliach tzibur or Shatz (leader—literally "agent" or "representative"—of the congregation) leads those assembled in prayer and sometimes prays on behalf of the community. When a shatz recites a prayer on behalf of the congregation, he is not acting as an intermediary but rather as a facilitator. The entire congregation participates in the recital of such prayers by saying amen at their conclusion; with this act, the shatz's prayer becomes the congregation's prayer. Any adult capable of reciting the prayers clearly may act as a shatz. In Orthodox congregations and some Conservative congregations, only men can be prayer leaders, but all Progressive communities now allow women to serve in this function.
- The Baal kriya or Baal Korea (master of the reading) reads the weekly Torah portion. The requirements for being the Baal kriya are the same as those for the shatz. These roles are not mutually exclusive. The same person is often qualified to fill more than one role. Often, several people are capable of filling these roles, and each will lead to different services (or parts of benefits).
Many congregations, especially larger ones, also rely on a:
- Gabbai (sexton) – Calls people up to the Torah, appoints the shatz for each prayer session if there is no standard shatz, and ensures that the synagogue is kept clean and supplied.
The three preceding positions are usually voluntary and considered an honor. Since the Enlightenment, large synagogues have often adopted hiring rabbis and hazzans to act as shatz and baal kriya, typically in many Conservative and Reform congregations. However, in most Orthodox temples, these positions are filled by laypeople on a rotating or ad-hoc basis. Although most communities hire one or more Rabbis, a professional hazzan is generally declining in American congregations, and the use of professionals for other offices is still rarer.
- Dayan (judge) – An ordained rabbi with special legal training belongs to a beth din (rabbinical court). In Israel, religious courts handle marriage and divorce cases, conversion, and financial disputes in the Jewish community.
- Mohel (circumciser) – An expert in the laws of circumcision who has received training from a previously qualified mohel and performs the brit milah (circumcision).
- Shochet (ritual slaughterer) – For meat to be kosher, it must be slaughtered by a shochet who is an expert in the laws of kashrut and has been trained by another shochet.
- Sofer (scribe) – Torah scrolls, tefillin (phylacteries), mezuzot (scrolls put on doorposts), and gittin (bills of divorce) must be written by a sofer who is an expert in Hebrew calligraphy and has undergone rigorous training in the laws of writing sacred texts.
- Rosh yeshiva – A Torah scholar who runs a yeshiva.
- Mashgiach of a yeshiva – Depending on which yeshiva, might either be the person responsible for ensuring attendance and proper conduct or even supervise the emotional and spiritual welfare of the students and give lectures on Mussar (Jewish ethics).
- Mashgiach – Supervises manufacturers of kosher food, importers, caterers, and restaurants to ensure that the food is kosher. Must be an expert in the laws of kashrut and trained by a rabbi, if not a rabbi himself.
Around the 1st century CE, there were several small Jewish sects: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes, and Christians. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, these sects vanished. [18][142] Christianity survived, but by breaking with Judaism and becoming a separate religion; the Pharisees survived but in the form of Rabbinic Judaism (today, known simply as "Judaism"). [18] The Sadducees rejected the divine inspiration of the Prophets and the Writings, relying only on the Torah as divinely inspired. Consequently, the Sadducees dismissed some other core tenets of the Pharisees' belief system (which became the basis for modern Judaism). (The Samaritans practiced a similar religion, traditionally considered separate from Judaism.)
Like the Sadducees who relied only on the Torah, some Jews in the 8th and 9th centuries rejected the authority and divine inspiration of the oral law as recorded in the Mishnah (and developed by later rabbis in the two Talmuds), relying instead only upon the Tanakh. These included the Isunians, the Yudganites, the Malikites,[clarification needed], and others. They soon developed oral traditions of their own, which differed from the rabbinic traditions, and eventually formed the Karaite sect. Karaites exist in small numbers today, mostly living in Israel. Rabbinical and Karaite Jews hold that the others are Jews but that the other faith is erroneous.
Over a long time, Jews formed distinct ethnic groups in several different geographic areas—amongst others, the Ashkenazi Jews (of central and Eastern Europe), the Sephardi Jews (of Spain, Portugal, and North Africa), the Beta Israel of Ethiopia, the Yemenite Jews from the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and the Malabari and Cochin Jews from Kerala. Many of these groups have developed differences in their prayers, traditions, and accepted canons; however, these distinctions are mainly the result of their being formed at some cultural distance from normative (rabbinic) Judaism rather than based on any doctrinal dispute.
Antisemitism arose during the Middle Ages in persecutions, pogroms, forced conversions, expulsions, social restrictions, and ghettoization.
This was different in quality from the repressions of Jews that had occurred in ancient times. Ancient repressions were politically motivated, and Jews were treated the same as members of other ethnic groups. With the rise of the Churches, the primary motive for attacks on Jews changed from politics to religion. The religious justification for such attacks was specifically derived from Christian views about Jews and Judaism. [143]. During the Middle Ages, Jewish people who lived under Muslim rule generally experienced tolerance and integration [144]. Still, there were occasional outbreaks of violence like Almohad's persecutions.
Hasidic Judaism was founded by Yisroel ben Eliezer (1700–1760), also known as the Ba'al Shem Tov (or Besht). It originated in a time of persecution of the Jewish people when European Jews had turned inward to Talmud study; many felt that most expressions of Jewish life had become too "academic" and no longer had any emphasis on spirituality or joy. Its adherents favored small and informal gatherings called Shtiebel, which, in contrast to a traditional synagogue, could be used both as a place of worship and for celebrations involving dancing, eating, and socializing. [146] Ba'al Shem Tov's disciples attracted many followers; they established numerous Hasidic sects across Europe. Unlike other religions, which typically expanded through word of mouth or print, Hasidism spread largely owing to Tzadiks, who used their influence to encourage others to follow the movement. Hasidism appealed to many Europeans because it was easy to learn, did not require total immediate commitment, and presented a compelling spectacle. [147] Hasidic Judaism eventually became the way of life for many Jews in Eastern Europe. Waves of Jewish immigration in the 1880s carried it to the United States. The movement itself claims nothing new but a refreshment of original Judaism. As some have put it: "they merely re-emphasized what the generations had lost."
Nevertheless, there was a serious schism between Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews. The Hasidim dubbed European Jews who rejected the Hasidic movement as Misnagdim (lit. "opponents"). Some of the reasons for the rejection of Hasidic Judaism were the exuberance of Hasidic worship, its deviation from tradition in ascribing infallibility and miracles to their leaders, and the concern that it might become a messianic sect. Over time differences between the Hasidim and their opponents have slowly diminished, and both groups are now considered part of Haredi Judaism.
In the late 18th century CE, Europe was swept by a group of intellectual, social, and political movements known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment led to reductions in the European laws that prohibited Jews from interacting with the wider secular world, thus allowing Jews access to secular education and experience. In response to both the Enlightenment and these new freedoms, a parallel Jewish movement, Haskalah or the "Jewish Enlightenment," began, especially in Central Europe and Western Europe. It emphasized integration with secular society and a pursuit of non-religious knowledge through reason. With the promise of political emancipation, many Jews saw no reason to continue to observe halakha, and increasing numbers of Jews assimilated into Christian Europe. Modern religious movements of Judaism all formed in reaction to this trend.
In Central Europe, followed by Great Britain and the United States, Reform (or Liberal) Judaism developed, relaxing legal obligations (especially those that limited Jewish relations with non-Jews), emulating Protestant decorum in prayer, and emphasizing the ethical values of Judaism's Prophetic tradition. Modern Orthodox Judaism developed in reaction to Reform Judaism, by leaders who argued that Jews could participate in public life as citizens equal to Christians while maintaining the observance of halakha. Meanwhile, in the United States, wealthy Reform Jews helped European scholars, who were Orthodox in practice but critical (and skeptical) in their study of the Bible and Talmud, to establish a seminary to train rabbis for immigrants from Eastern Europe. To form the Conservative movement, these left-wing Orthodox rabbis were joined by right-wing Reform rabbis who felt halakha should not be entirely abandoned. Orthodox Jews who opposed the Haskalah formed Haredi Orthodox Judaism. After massive movements of Jews following The Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel, these movements have competed for followers from among traditional Jews in or from other countries.
Countries such as the United States, Israel, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina, and South Africa contain large Jewish populations. Jewish religious practice varies widely through all levels of observance. According to the 2001 edition of the National Jewish Population Survey, in the United States' Jewish community—the world's second-largest—4.3 million Jews out of 5.1 million had some connection to the religion. [148]. Of that population of connected Jews, 80% participated in some Jewish religious observance, but only 48% belonged to a congregation, and fewer than 16% regularly attend. [149]
Birth rates for American Jews have dropped from 2.0 to 1.7. [150] (The replacement rate is 2.1.) Intermarriage rates range from 40–to 50% in the US, and only about a third of children of intermarried couples are raised as Jews. Due to intermarriage and low birth rates, the Jewish population in the US shrank from 5.5 million in 1990 to 5.1 million in 2001. This indicates the general population trends among the Jewish community in the diaspora. Still, focusing on the total population obscures growth trends in some denominations and congregations, such as Haredi Judaism. The Baal teshuva movement is a movement of Jews who have "returned" to religion or become more observant.
Christianity was originally a sect of Second Temple Judaism, but the two religions diverged in the first century. The differences between Christianity and Judaism initially centered on whether Jesus was the Jewish Messiah but eventually became irreconcilable. Significant differences between the two faiths include the nature of the Messiah, atonement and sin, the status of God's commandments to Israel, and perhaps most significantly, the nature of God himself. Due to these differences, Judaism traditionally regards Christianity as Shituf or worship of the God of Israel, which is not monotheistic. Christianity has traditionally regarded Judaism as obsolete with the invention of Christianity and Jews as a people replaced by the Church, though a Christian belief in dual-covenant theology emerged as a phenomenon following Christian reflection on how their theology influenced the Nazi Holocaust. [151]
Since the time of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church upheld the Constitution pro-Judæis (Formal Statement on the Jews), which stated
We decree that no Christian shall use violence to force them to be baptized, so long as they are unwilling and refuse.… Without the judgment of the political authority of the land, no Christian shall presume to wound them or kill them or rob them of their money or change the good customs that they have thus far enjoyed in the place where they live."[152]
Until their emancipation in the late 18th and the 19th century, Jews in Christian lands were subject to humiliating legal restrictions and limitations. They included provisions requiring Jews to wear specific and identifying clothing such as the Jewish hat and the yellow badge, restricting Jews to particular cities and towns or in certain parts of cities (ghettos), and forbidding Jews to enter specific trades (for example selling new clothes in medieval Sweden). Disabilities also included special taxes levied on Jews, exclusion from public life, restraints on the performance of religious ceremonies, and linguistic censorship. Some countries went even further and completely expelled Jews, for example, England in 1290 (Jews were readmitted in 1655) and Spain in 1492 (readmitted in 1868). The first Jewish settlers in North America arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1654; they were forbidden to hold public office, open a retail shop, or establish a synagogue. When the territory was seized by the British in 1664, Jewish rights remained unchanged. Still, by 1671 Asser Levy was the first Jew to serve on a jury in North America. [153]. In 1791, Revolutionary France was the first country to abolish disabilities altogether, followed by Prussia in 1848. Emancipation of the Jews in the United Kingdom was achieved in 1858 after an almost 30-year struggle championed by Isaac Lyon Goldsmid[154] with the ability of Jews to sit in parliament with the passing of the Jews Relief Act 1858. The newly created German Empire in 1871 abolished Jewish disabilities in Germany, which were reinstated in the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.
Jewish life in Christian lands was marked by frequent blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions, and massacres. Religious prejudice was an underlying source against Jews in Europe. Christian rhetoric and antipathy towards Jews developed in the early years of Christianity and were reinforced by ever-increasing anti-Jewish measures over the ensuing centuries. The action taken by Christians against Jews included acts of violence and murder, culminating in the Holocaust. [155]: 21 [156]: 169 [157]. These attitudes were reinforced by Christian preaching in art and popular teaching for two millennia, which expressed contempt for Jews [158] and statutes designed to humiliate and stigmatize Jews. The Nazi Party was known for its persecution of Christian Churches; many of them, such as the Protestant Confessing Church and the Catholic Church,[159] as well as Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses, aided and rescued Jews who were being targeted by the antireligious régime. [160]
The attitude of Christians and Christian Churches toward the Jewish people and Judaism has changed in a primarily positive direction since World War II. Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church have "upheld the Church's acceptance of the continuing and permanent election of the Jewish people" as well as a reaffirmation of the covenant between God and the Jews. [161]. In December 2015, the Vatican released a 10,000-word document that, among other things, stated that Catholics should work with Jews to fight antisemitism.
Both Judaism and Islam trace their origins from the patriarch Abraham, and they are therefore considered Abrahamic religions. In both Jewish and Muslim traditions, the Jewish and Arab peoples are descended from the two sons of Abraham—Isaac and Ishmael, respectively. While both religions are monotheistic and share many commonalities, they differ because Jews do not consider Jesus or Muhammad to be prophets. The religions' adherents had interacted with each other since the 7th century when Islam originated and spread in the Arabian peninsula. Indeed, the years 712 to 1066 CE under the Ummayad and the Abbasid rulers have been called the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. Non-Muslim monotheists living in these countries, including Jews, were known as dhimmis. Dhimmis were allowed to practice their religions and administer their internal affairs. Still, they were subject to certain restrictions that were not imposed on Muslims. [163]. For example, they had to pay the jizya, a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males,[163] and they were also forbidden to bear arms or testify in court cases involving Muslims. [164] Many of the laws regarding dhimmis were highly symbolic. For example, dhimmis in some countries were required to wear distinctive clothing, a practice not found in either the Qur'an or the hadiths but invented in early medieval Baghdad and inconsistently enforced. [165] Jews in Muslim countries were not entirely free from persecution. For example, many were killed, exiled, or forcibly converted in the 12th century in Persia by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in North Africa and Al-Andalus [166] and by the Zaydi imams of Yemen in the 17th century (see: Mawza Exile). At times, Jews were also restricted in their choice of residence—in Morocco, for example, Jews were confined to walled quarters (mullahs) beginning in the 15th century and increasingly since the early 19th century. [167]
In the mid-20th century, Jews were expelled from nearly all of the Arab countries. [168][169][170]. Most have chosen to live in Israel. Today, antisemitic themes, including Holocaust denial, have become commonplace in the propaganda of Islamic movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers publications of Refah Partisi.
There are some movements in other religions that include elements of Judaism. There are several denominations of ancient and contemporary Judaizers in Christianity. The most well-known of these is Messianic Judaism, a religious movement, which arose in the 1960s,-In this, elements of the messianic traditions in Judaism are incorporated into and melded with the tenets of Christianity. The movement generally states that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, that he is one of the Three Divine Persons, and that salvation is only achieved through acceptance of Jesus as one's savior. [184]. Some members of Messianic Judaism argue that it is a sect of Judaism. [185] Jewish organizations of every denomination reject this, stating that Messianic Judaism is a Christian sect because it teaches creeds which are identical to those of Pauline Christianity. [186] Another religious movement is the Black Hebrew Israelite group, which not to be confused with less syncretic Black Judaism (a constellation of activities which, depending on their adherence to normative Jewish tradition, receive varying degrees of recognition by the broader Jewish community).
Other examples of syncretism include Semitic neopaganism, a loosely organized sect that incorporates pagan or Wiccan beliefs with some Jewish religious practices; Jewish Buddhists, another loosely organized group that combines elements of Asian spirituality in their faith; and some Renewal Jews who borrow freely and openly from Buddhism, Sufism, Native American religions, and other beliefs.
The Kabbalah Centre employs teachers from multiple religions and is a New Age movement that claims to popularize the kabbalah, part of the Jewish esoteric tradition.
The Masoretic Text[a] (MT or 𝕸; Hebrew: נוסח המסורה, romanized: Nusakh Ham'mas'sora) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the mas'sora. Referring to the Masoretic Text, Mesorah specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Hebrew scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Tanakh, which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). The oldest-known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates from the early 11th century CE.
The differences attested to in the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that multiple versions of the Hebrew scriptures already existed by the end of the Second Temple period. [1]. Which is closest to a theoretical Urtext is disputed if such a singular text ever existed at all. [2] The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to as early as the 3rd century BCE, contained versions of the text that are radically different from Today's Hebrew Bible. [3] The Septuagint (a Koine Greek translation made in the 2nd - 3rd century BCE) and the Peshitta (a Syriac translation made in the 2nd century CE) occasionally present notable differences from the Masoretic Text, as does the Samaritan Pentateuch, a version of the Torah preserved by the Samaritans in Samaritan Hebrew. [4] Manuscript fragments of an ancient manuscript of the Book of Leviticus found near an ancient synagogue's Torah ark in Ein Gedi have been found that have identical wording to the Masoretic Text.
The Masoretic Text is the basis for most Protestant translations of the Old Testament, such as the King James Version, English Standard Version, New American Standard Version, and New International Version. After 1943, it is also used for some versions of Catholic Bibles, such as the New American Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible. Some Christian denominations prefer translations of the Septuagint as it matches quotations in the New Testament, especially by Paul the Apostle.
This article is about the rest day in Judaism. For the general day of rest in Abrahamic religions, see Sabbath. For Sabbath in the Bible, see Biblical Sabbath. For the Talmudic tractate, see Shabbat (Talmud).
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Shabbat (/ʃəˈbæt/, /ʃəˈbɑːt/, or /ʃəˈbʌt/; Hebrew: שַׁבָּת, romanized: Šabat, [ʃa'bat], lit. 'rest' or 'cessation') or the Sabbath, also called Shabbos (Yiddish: שבת) by Ashkenazim, is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the week—i.e., Saturday. On this day, religious Jews remember the biblical stories describing the creation of heaven and earth in six days and the redemption from slavery, and The Exodus from Egypt, and look forward to a future Messianic Age. Since the Jewish religious calendar counts days from sunset to sunset, Shabbat begins in the evening of what on the civil calendar is Friday.
Shabbat observance entails refraining from work activities, often rigorously, and relaxing activities to honor the day. Judaism's traditional position is that the unbroken seventh-day Shabbat originated among the Jewish people as their first and most sacred institution, although some suggest other origins. Variations upon Shabbat are widespread in Judaism and, with adaptations, throughout the Abrahamic and many other religions.
According to halakha (Jewish religious law), Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. Shabbat is ushered in by lighting candles and reciting a blessing. Traditionally, three festive meals are eaten: The first one is held on Friday evening, the second is historically a lunch meal on Saturday, and the third is held later in the afternoon. The evening meal and the early afternoon meal typically begin with a blessing called kiddush and another blessing recited over two loaves of challah. The third meal does not have the kiddush replicated, but all have the two loaves. Shabbat is closed Saturday evening with a havdalah blessing.
Shabbat is a festive day when Jews exercise their freedom from the regular labors of everyday life. It offers an opportunity to contemplate the spiritual aspects of life and spend time with family.
Passover
A table set up for a Passover Seder
Observed by Jews
TypeJewish (religious and cultural)
- SignificanceCelebrates The Exodus, the freedom from the slavery of the Israelites from Ancient Egypt that followed the Ten Plagues
- Beginning of the 49 days of Counting of the Omer
- Connected to barley harvest in spring
CelebrationsPassover Seder
Begins15 Nisan
Ends21 Nisan (22 Nisan in traditional Diaspora communities)
Date15 Nisan, 16 Nisan, 17 Nisan, 18 Nisan, 19 Nisan, 20 Nisan, 21 Nisan, 22 Nisan
2021 dateSunset, March 27 –
2022 dateSunset, April 15 –
2023 dateSunset, April 5 –
2024 dateSunset, April 22 –
It is related to Shavuot ("Festival of Weeks"), which follows 49 days from the second night of Passover.
Passover, also called Pesach (/ˈpɛsɑːx, ˈpeɪ-/;[2] Biblical Hebrew: חַג הַפֶּסַח, romanized: Ḥag hapPesaḥ), is a major Jewish holiday that celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt,[3] which occurs on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the first month of Aviv, or spring. The word Pesach or Passover can also refer to the Korban Pesach. The paschal lamb was offered when the Temple in Jerusalem stood; to the Passover Seder, the ritual meal on Passover night; or the Feast of Unleavened Bread. One of the biblically ordained Three Pilgrimage Festivals, Passover is traditionally celebrated in the Land of Israel for seven days and eight days among many Jews in the diaspora, based on the concept of Yom Tov Sheni Shel guyot. The seven-day holiday is Chag HaMatzot, the feast of unleavened bread (matzoh) in the Bible.
According to the Book of Exodus, God commands Moses to tell the Israelites to mark a lamb's blood above their doors so that the Angel of Death will pass over them (i.e., they will not be touched by the tenth plague, death of the firstborn). After the end of the firstborn Pharaoh, the Israelites were ordered to leave, taking whatever they wanted, and Moses was asked to bless him in the name of the Lord. The passage goes on to state that the Passover sacrifice recalls the time when God "passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt." [5] This story is recounted at the Passover meal in the form of the Haggadah, in fulfillment of the command "And thou shalt tell (Higgadata) thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that which the LORD did for me when I came forth out of Egypt."[6]
The wave offering of barley was offered at Jerusalem on the second day of the festival. The counting of the sheaves is still practiced for seven weeks until the Feast of Weeks on the 50th day, the holiday of Shavuot.
Nowadays, in addition to the biblical prohibition of owning leavened foods for the duration of the holiday, the Passover Seder is one of the most widely observed rituals in Judaism.
Shavuot (listen (help·info)), or Shavuos (listen (help· information)) in some Ashkenazi usage (Hebrew: שָׁבוּעוֹת, Šāvūʿōṯ, lit. "Weeks"), commonly known in English as the Feast of Weeks, is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan (it may fall between May 15 and June 14 on the Gregorian calendar). In the Bible, Shavuot marked the wheat harvest in the Land of Israel (Exodus 34:22). In addition, Orthodox rabbinic traditions teach that the date also marks the revelation of the Torah to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sinai, which, according to the practice of Orthodox Judaism, occurred on this date in 1314 BCE.
The word Shavuot means "weeks," and it marks the conclusion of the Counting of the Omer. Its date is directly linked to Passover; the Torah mandates the seven-week Counting of the Omer, beginning on the second day of Passover, to be immediately followed by Shavuot. This counting of days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the giving of the Torah. On Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot, they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God.
While it is sometimes referred to as Pentecost (in Koinē Greek: Πεντηκοστή) due to its timing after Passover, "Pentecost" means "fifty" in Greek since Shavuot occurs fifty days after the first day of Passover, it is not the same as the Christian Pentecost. [Note 1][5]
One of the biblically ordained Three Pilgrimage Festivals, Shavuot, is traditionally celebrated in Israel for one day, a public holiday, and two days in the diaspora.
Sukkot[a] is a Torah-commanded holiday celebrated for seven days from the 15th day of the month of Tishrei. It is one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals (Hebrew: שלוש רגלים, Shalosh regalim) on which those Israelites could be commanded to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.
The names used in the Torah are Chag HaAsif, translated to "Festival of Ingathering" or "Harvest Festival," and Chag HaSukkot, translated to "Festival of Booths." [1] This corresponds to the double significance of Sukkot. The one mentioned in the Book of Exodus is agricultural—"Festival of Ingathering at the year's end" (Exodus 34:22)—and marks the end of the harvest time and thus of the agricultural year in the Land of Israel. The more elaborate religious significance of the Book of Leviticus is commemorating the Exodus and the dependence of the People of Israel on the will of God (Leviticus 23:42–43).
The holiday lasts seven days in the Land of Israel and eight in the diaspora. The first day (and second day in the diaspora) is a Shabbat-like holiday when work is forbidden. This is followed by intermediate days called Chol Hamoed when a specific job is permitted. The festival is closed with another Shabbat-like holiday called Shemini Atzeret (one day in the Land of Israel, two days in the diaspora, and the second day is called Simchat Torah). Shemini Atzeret coincides with the eighth day of Sukkot outside the Land of Israel.
The Hebrew word sukkōt is the plural of sukkah, "booth" or "tabernacle," which is a walled structure covered with s'chach (plant material, such as overgrowth or palm leaves). A sukkah is the name of the temporary dwelling in which farmers would live during harvesting, connecting to the agricultural significance of the holiday stressed by the Book of Exodus. As stated in Leviticus, it is also intended as a reminiscence of the type of fragile dwellings in which the Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of travel in the desert after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. Meals are eaten inside the sukkah throughout the holiday, and many people sleep there.
Rosh HaShanah (Hebrew: רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה, Rōʾš hašŠānā, lit. "start of the year") is the Jewish New Year. The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah (יוֹם תְּרוּעָה, Yōm Tərūʿā), literally "day of shouting or blasting." It is the first of the Jewish High Holy Days (יָמִים נוֹרָאִים, Yāmīm Nōrāʾīm; "Days of Awe"), as specified by Leviticus 23:23–25,[2] that occur in the late summer/early autumn of the Northern Hemisphere. The High Holy Days comprise both Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.
Rosh Hashanah is a two-day observance and celebration that begins on the first day of Tishrei, the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year. In contrast to the religious lunar new year on the first day of the first month, Nisan, the spring Passover month which marks Israel's Exodus from Egypt, Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the civil year, according to the teachings of Judaism, and is the traditional anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman according to the Hebrew Bible, as well as the initiation of humanity's role in God's world.
Rosh Hashanah customs include sounding the shofar (a cleaned-out ram's horn), as prescribed in the Torah, following the prescription of the Hebrew Bible to "raise a noise" on Yom Teruah. Its rabbinical customs include attending synagogue services, reciting a special liturgy about teshuva, and enjoying festive meals. Eating symbolic foods is now a tradition, such as apples dipped in honey, hoping to evoke a sweet new year.
Yom Kippur (/ˌjɒm kɪˈpʊər, ˌjɔːm ˈkɪpər, ˌjoʊm-/;[1] Hebrew: יוֹם כִּיפּוּר, romanized: Yōm Kīpūr, IPA: [ˈjom kiˈpuʁ], lit. 'Day of Atonement'; plural יום הכיפורים, Yom HaKipurim) is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a day-long fast, confession, and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. The High Holy Days comprise both Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.
Purim (/ˈpʊərɪm/; Hebrew: פּוּרִים Pūrīm, lit. 'lots')[a] is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, an official of the Achaemenid Empire who was planning to have all of Persia's Jewish subjects killed, as recounted in the Book of Esther (usually dated to the 5th century BCE).
Haman was the royal vizier to Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes I or Artaxerxes I; "Khshayarsha" and "Artakhsher" in Old Persian, respectively). [3][4][5][6] Mordecai of the tribe of Benjamin foiled his plans. Esther, Mordecai's cousin and adopted daughter had become queen of Persia after her marriage to Ahasuerus. [7]. The day of deliverance became a day of feasting and rejoicing among the Jews.
According to the Scroll of Esther,[8] "they should make them days of feasting and gladness, send portions one to another, and gifts to the poor ."Purim is celebrated among Jews by:
- Exchanging gifts of food and drink, known as mishloach manot
- Donating charity to the poor, known as mattanot la-evyonim[9]
- I am eating a celebratory meal known as se'udat Purim.
- Public recitation of the Scroll of Esther (Hebrew: קריאת מגילת אסתר, romanized: Kriat megillat Esther), or "reading of the Megillah," usually in synagogue
- Reciting additions to the daily prayers and the grace after meals, known as Al HaNissim
Other customs include wearing masks and costumes, public celebrations and parades (Adloyada), and eating hamantashen (transl. "Haman's pockets"); men are encouraged to drink wine or any other alcoholic beverage.
According to the Hebrew calendar, Purim is celebrated annually on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar (and it is celebrated on Adar II in Hebrew leap years, which occur every two to three years), the day following the victory of the Jews over their enemies. In cities that were protected by a surrounding wall at the time of Joshua, Purim was celebrated on the 15th of the month of Adar on what is known as Shushan Purim since fighting in the walled city of Shushan continued through the 14th day of Adar. [11] today, only Jerusalem and a few other cities celebrate Purim on the 15th of Adar.
Hanukkah[a] (/ˈhɑːnəkə/; Hebrew: חֲנֻכָּה, Modern: Ḥanuka, Tiberian: Ḥanukā listen), also known as the Festival of Lights (Hebrew: חַג הַאוּרִים, Ḥag HaUrim), is a Jewish festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE.[3][4]
According to the Hebrew calendar, Hanukkah is observed for eight nights and days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev, which may occur from late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar. The festival is observed by lighting the candles of a candelabrum with nine branches, commonly called a menorah or hanukkiah. One unit is typically placed above or below the others, and its candle is used to light the other eight candles. This unique candle is called the shamash (Hebrew: שַׁמָּשׁ, "attendant"). Each night, one additional candle is lit by the shamash until all eight candles are lit together on the final night of the festival. [5] Other Hanukkah festivities include singing Hanukkah songs, playing the game of dreidel, and eating oil-based foods, such as latkes and sufganiyot, and dairy foods. Since the 1970s, the Chabad Hasidic movement has initiated public menorah lighting in many countries' open public places.
Originally instituted as a feast "in the manner of Sukkot (Booths)," it does not come with the corresponding obligations and is, therefore, a relatively minor holiday in strictly religious terms. Nevertheless, Hanukkah has attained major cultural significance in North America and elsewhere, especially among secular Jews, often occurring around the same time as Christmas during the holiday season.
The name "Hanukkah" derives from the Hebrew verb "חנך," meaning "to dedicate." On Hanukkah, the Maccabean Jews regained control of Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple. [8][9]
- The name can be broken down into חנו כ״ה, "[they] rested [on the] twenty-fifth," referring to the fact that the Jews ceased fighting on the 25th day of Kislev, the day on which the holiday begins. [11]
- חינוך Chinuch, from the same root, is the name for Jewish education, emphasizing ethical training and discipline.
- חנוכה (Hanukkah) is also the Hebrew acronym for ח נרות והלכה כבית הלל – "Eight candles, and the halakha is like the House of Hillel." This refers to the disagreement between two rabbinical schools of thought – the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai – on the proper order to light the Hanukkah flames. Shammai opined that eight candles should be lit on the first night, seven on the second night, and down to one on the last night (because the miracle was most significant on the first day). Hillel argued in favor of starting with one candle and lighting an additional one every night, up to eight on the eighth night (because the miracle grew in greatness each day). Jewish law adopted the position of Hillel. [12]
- Psalm 30 is called שיר חנכת הבית, the "Song of Ḥănukkāt HaBayit," The Song of the "Dedication" of the House," and is traditionally recited on Hanukkah. 25 (of Kislev) + 5 (Books of Torah) = 30, which is the number of the song.
In Hebrew, the word Hanukkah is written חֲנֻכָּה or חֲנוּכָּה (Ḥănukā). It is most commonly transliterated to English as Hanukkah or Chanukah. The former spelling (Hanukkah), which is based on using characters of the English alphabet as symbols to re-create the word's correct spelling in Hebrew,[13] is the most common[14] and the preferred choice of Merriam–Webster,[15] Collins English Dictionary, the Oxford Style Manual, and the style guides of The New York Times and The Guardian. [16] The sound represented by Ch ([χ], similar to the Scottish pronunciation of loch) is not native to the English language. Furthermore, the letter ḥeth (ח), which is the first letter in the Hebrew spelling, is pronounced differently in modern Hebrew (voiceless uvular fricative) from in classical Hebrew (voiceless pharyngeal fricative [ħ]), and neither of those sounds is unambiguously representable in English spelling. However, its original sound is closer to the English H than to the Scottish Ch, and Hanukkah more accurately represents the spelling in the Hebrew alphabet. [13] Moreover, the 'kaf' consonant is geminate in classical (but not modern) Hebrew. Adapting the classical Hebrew pronunciation with the geminate and pharyngeal Ḥeth can lead to the spelling of Hanukkah, while adjusting the modern Hebrew pronunciation with no gemination, and uvular Ḥeth leads to the spelling Chanukah.
The story of Hanukkah is preserved in the books of the First and Second Maccabees, which describe in detail the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem and the lighting of the menorah. These books, however, are not a part of the canonized Masoretic Text version of the Tanakh (Hebrew and Aramaic language Jewish Bible) used and accepted by normative Rabbinical Judaism and, therefore, modern Jews (as copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era). However, the books of Maccabees were included in the mid-3rd century BCE Jewish scholarly Greek-language translation of the Jewish Bible known as the Septuagint, in circulation and considered authoritative Jewish scripture, at least among the Alexandrian Jews of that time. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches consider the books of Maccabees as a canonical part of the Old Testament.
The eight-day rededication of the Temple is described in 1 Maccabees,[19] though the oil miracle does not appear here. A story similar in character, and older in date, is the one alluded to in 2 Maccabees[20], according to which the relighting of the altar fire by Nehemiah was due to a miracle that occurred on the 25th of Kislev and which appears to be given as the reason for the selection of the exact date for the rededication of the altar by Judah Maccabee. ]The above account in 1 Maccabees, as well as 2 Maccabees[22] portrays the feast as a delayed observation of the eight-day Feast of Booths (Sukkot); similarly, 2 Maccabees explains the length of the dinner as "in the manner of the Feast of Booths."
A synagogue,[a] also called a shul[b], or Temple,[c] is a Jewish house of worship. The term "synagogue" is also occasionally used to describe a Samaritan house of prayer. Synagogues have a place for prayer (the main sanctuary) and may also have rooms for study, a social hall, offices, and classrooms.
Synagogues are consecrated spaces for Jewish prayer, study, assembly, and reading of the Tanakh (the entire Hebrew Bible, including the Torah). However, a synagogue is not necessary for Jewish worship. Halakha (Jewish law) states that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever a minyan (a group of at least 10 Jewish adults) is assembled. Worship can also happen alone or with fewer than ten people, but halakha considers some prayers solely communal, which can be recited only by a minyan. The synagogue does not replace the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem regarding its specific ritual and liturgical functions.
Israelis use the Hebrew term beyt Knesset, "house of assembly." In everyday speech, Ashkenazi Jews have traditionally used the Yiddish term shul (cognate with the German Schule, 'school'). Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews generally use the term kal (from the Hebrew ḳahal, meaning "community"). Spanish Jews call the synagogue an esnoga, and Portuguese Jews call it a synagogue. Persian Jews and some Karaite Jews also use the term Kenya, which is derived from Aramaic, and some Mizrahi Jews use kenis or unit. Some Reform and Reconstructionist Jews use the word, Temple. The Greek word synagogue is used in English to cover the preceding possibilities.
Although synagogues existed a long time before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, communal worship in the time while the Temple still stood focussed mainly on korbanot ("sacrificial offerings") brought by the kohanim ("priests") in the Temple in Jerusalem. The all-day Yom Kippur service was an event in which the congregation both observed the movements of the kohen gadol ("high priest") as he offered the day's sacrifices and prayed for his success.
According to Jewish tradition, the men of the Great Assembly (around the 5th century BCE) formalized and standardized the language of the Jewish prayers. [3] Before that, people prayed as they saw fit, with each individual praying in their way, and there were no common prayers that were recited.[Ghatan Antiques
Johanan ben Zakai, one of the leaders at the end of the Second Temple era, promulgated the idea of creating individual houses of worship in whatever locale Jews found themselves. According to many historians, this contributed to the continuity of the Jewish people by maintaining a unique identity and a portable way of worship despite the destruction of the Temple.[citation needed]
Synagogues in the sense of purpose-built spaces for worship, or rooms originally constructed for some other purpose but reserved for formal, communal prayer, however, existed long before the destruction of the Second Temple. [4][unreliable source?] The earliest archaeological evidence for the existence of very early synagogues comes from Egypt, where stone synagogue dedication inscriptions dating from the 3rd century BCE prove that synagogues existed by that date. [5][Ghatan Antiques] More than a dozen Jewish (and possibly Samaritan) Second Temple era synagogues have been identified by archaeologists in Israel and other countries belonging to the Hellenistic world.
Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue. Synagogues have been constructed by ancient Jewish kings, by wealthy patrons, as part of a wide range of human institutions, including secular educational institutions, governments, and hotels, by the entire community of Jews living in a particular place, or by sub-groups of Jews arrayed according to occupation, ethnicity (i.e., the Sephardic, Polish or Persian Jews of a town), style of religious observance (i.e., a Reform or an Orthodox synagogue), or by the followers of a particular rabbi.
It has been theorized that the synagogue became a place of worship in the region after the destruction of the Second Temple during the First Jewish–Roman War; however, others speculate that there had been places of prayer, apart from the Temple, during the Hellenistic period. The popularization of prayer over sacrifice during the years before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE[6] had prepared the Jews for life in the diaspora, where prayer would serve as the focus of Jewish worship.
Despite the possibility[dubious – discuss] of synagogue-like spaces before the First Jewish–Roman War, the synagogue emerged as a stronghold for Jewish worship after the destruction of the Temple. For Jews living in the wake of the Revolt, the synagogue functioned as a "portable system of worship." Jews worshiped through prayer rather than sacrifices within the synagogue, which had previously served as the primary form of worship within the Second Temple.
Kashrut (also kashruth or kashrus, כַּשְׁרוּת) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jews are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher (/ˈkoʊʃər/ in English, Yiddish: כּשר), from the Ashkenazic pronunciation (KUHsher) of Hebrew kashér (כָּשֵׁר), meaning "fit" (in this context: "fit for consumption").
Although the details of the laws of kashrut are numerous and complex, they rest on a few fundamental principles:
- Only certain types of mammals, birds, and fish meeting specific criteria are kosher; consuming the flesh of any animals that do not meet these criteria, such as pork, frogs, and shellfish, is forbidden.
- Kosher mammals and birds must be slaughtered according to a process known as shechita; blood may never be consumed and must be removed from meat by salting and soaking in water for the heart to be permissible for use.
- Meat and meat derivatives may never be mixed with milk and milk derivatives: separate equipment for storing and preparing meat-based and dairy-based foods must be used.
Every food that is considered kosher is also categorized as follows:
- "Meat" products (also called b'sari or fleishig) are those that contain kosher meat, such as beef, lamb, or venison, kosher poultry such as chicken, goose, duck, or turkey, or derivatives of beef, such as animal gelatin; non-animal products that were processed on equipment used for meat or meat-derived products must also be considered as meat (b'chezkat basar)
- "Dairy" products (also called Chalabi or milchig) contain milk or any derivatives such as butter or cheese; non-dairy products that were processed on equipment used for milk or milk-derived products must also be considered as milk (b'chezkat chalav)
- Pareve products contain neither meat nor milk nor their respective derivatives and include foods such as fish, eggs, grains, fruit, and produce; they remain pareve if they are not mixed with or processed using equipment used for any meat or dairy products.
While any produce that grows from the earth, such as fruits, grains, vegetables, and mushrooms, is always permissible, laws regarding the status of certain agricultural produce, especially that grown in the Land of Israel, such as levies and produce of the Sabbatical year, impact their permissibility for consumption.
Most of the fundamental laws of kashrut are derived from the Torah's books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. However, their details and practical application are set down in the Oral Torah (eventually codified in the Mishnah and Talmud) and elaborated later in rabbinical literature. Although the Torah does not state the rationale for most kashrut laws, some suggest that they are only tests of obedience,[1] while others have suggested philosophical, practical, and hygienic reasons. [2][3][4]
Over the past century, many kashrut certification agencies have started to certify products, manufacturers, and restaurants as kosher, usually authorizing the use of a proprietary symbol or certificate, called a hechsher, to be displayed by the food establishment or on the product, which indicates that they comply with the kosher laws. This labeling is helpful for many people, including those whose religions expect adherence to a similar set of dietary rules, people with allergies to dairy foods, or vegans, who use the various kosher designations to determine whether a food contains meat or dairy-derived ingredients.
Jewish philosophy divides the 613 commandments (or mitzvot) into three groups—laws that have a rational explanation and would probably be enacted by most orderly societies (mishpatim), rules that are understood after being explained but would not be legislated without the Torah's command (editor), and laws that do not have a rational explanation (chukim).
Some Jewish scholars say that kashrut should be categorized as laws for which there is no particular explanation since the human mind is not always capable of understanding divine intentions. In this line of thinking, the dietary laws were given to demonstrate God's authority, and man must obey without asking why. Although Maimonides concurs that all the statutes of the Torah are decrees, he is of the view that whenever possible, one should seek out reasons for the Torah's commandments. [6]
Some theologians have said that the laws of kashrut are symbolic: kosher animals represent virtues, while non-kosher animals represent vices. The 1st-century BCE Letter of Aristeas argues that the rules "have been given ... to awake pious thoughts and to form the character".[7] This view reappears in the work of the 19th-century Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
The Torah prohibits "cooking the kid (goat, sheep, calf) in its mother's milk." While the Bible does not provide a reason, it has been suggested that the practice was perceived as cruel and insensitive.
Hasidic Judaism believes that everyday life is imbued with channels connecting with Divinity, the activation of which it sees as helping the Divine Presence to be drawn into the physical world;[11] Hasidism argues that the food laws are related to the way such channels, termed sparks of Holiness, interact with various animals. These sparks of Holiness are released whenever a Jew manipulates any object for a religious reason (including eating);[12]. However, not all animal products can emit their sparks of Holiness. [13]. The Hasidic argument is that animals are imbued with signs that reveal the release of these sparks. The characters are expressed in the biblical categorization of ritually clean and ritually unclean.
Although the reason for kashrut is that it is a decree from the Torah, there have been attempts to provide scientific support for the view that Jewish food laws have an incidental health benefit. One of the earliest is that of Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed.
In 1953, David Macht, an Orthodox Jew and proponent of the theory of biblical scientific foresight, conducted toxicity experiments on many kinds of animals and fish. [15] His experiment involved lupin seedlings being supplied with extracts from the meat of various animals; Macht reported that in 100% of cases, extracts from ritually unclean meat inhibited the seedling's growth more than that from ritually clean hearts. [16]
At the same time, these explanations are controversial. Scholar Lester L. Grabbe, writing in the Oxford Bible Commentary on Leviticus, says, "[a]n explanation now almost universally rejected is that the laws in this section [17] have hygiene as their basis. Although some of the laws of ritual purity roughly correspond to modern ideas of physical cleanliness, many of them have little to do with hygiene. For example, there is no evidence that the 'unclean' animals are intrinsically bad to eat or to be avoided in a Mediterranean climate, as is sometimes asserted."
The laws of kashrut can be classified according to the origin of the prohibition (Biblical or rabbinical) and whether the ban concerns the food itself or a mixture of foods. [19]
Biblically prohibited foods include:[19]
- Non-kosher animals[20][21]—any mammals without specific identifying characteristics (cloven hooves and rumination); any birds of prey; any fish without fins or scales (thus excluding catfish, for instance).
All invertebrates are non-kosher apart from certain types of locusts, on which most communities lack an evident tradition. No reptiles or amphibians are kosher.
- Carrion (nevelah)—meat from a kosher animal that has not been slaughtered according to the laws of shechita. This prohibition includes animals that non-Jews have killed.
- The injured (terefah)—an animal with a significant defect or injury, such as a fractured bone or particular types of lung adhesions.
- Blood (dam)—the blood of kosher mammals and fowl is removed through salting, with special procedures for the liver, which is very rich in blood.
- Particular fats (chelev)—specific parts of the abdominal fat of cattle, goats, and sheep must be removed by Nikkor.
- The twisted nerve (gid hanasheh)—the sciatic nerve, as according to Genesis 32:32, the patriarch Jacob's was damaged when he fought with an angel, so may not be eaten and is removed by Nikkor.
- A limb of a living animal (ever min ha-chai)[23]—according to Jewish law, God forbade Noah and his descendants to consume flesh torn from a live animal. Hence, Jewish law considers this prohibition applies even to non-Jews,[24] and therefore, a Jew may not give or sell such meat to a non-Jew.
- Untithed food (level)—the produce of the Land of Israel requires the removal of certain levies, which in ancient times were given to the kohanim (priests), Levites, and the poor (terumah, maaser rishon, and measure ani, respectively) or taken to the Old City of Jerusalem to be eaten there (maaser sheni).
- Fruit during the first three years (orlah)—according to Leviticus 19:23,[25] fruit from a tree in the first three years after planting may not be consumed (both in the Land of Israel and the diaspora). This also applies to the fruit of the vine—grapes and wine produced from them.
- New grain (chadash)[27]—the Bible prohibits newly grown grain (planted after Passover the previous year) until the second day of Passover; there is debate as to whether this law applies to grain grown outside the Land of Israel.
- Wine of libation (yayin neck)—the wine that may have been dedicated to idolatrous practices.
Biblically prohibited mixtures include:[19]
- Mixtures of meat and milk[28][29][30] (basar be-chalav)—this law derives from the broad interpretation of the commandment not to "cook a kid in its mother's milk";[31][32][33] other non-kosher foods are permitted for non-dietary use (e.g., to be sold to non-Jews), but Jews are forbidden to benefit from mixtures of meat and milk in any way.
- Different species of plants grown together (kilim)—in the Land of Israel, other species of plants are to be developed separately and not near according to Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:9–11.
A specific subdivision of this law is killed ha-Kerem, the prohibition of planting any grain or vegetable near a grapevine; this law applies to Jews worldwide, and a Jew may not benefit from such produce.
Rabbinically prohibited foods include:[19]
- Non-Jewish milk (chalav akum)—milk that may have an admixture of milk from non-kosher animals (see below for current views on this prohibition).
- Non-Jewish cheese (gevinat akum)—cheese that may have been produced with non-kosher rennet.
- Non-Jewish wine (stam year)—a wine that, while not produced for idolatrous purposes, may otherwise have been poured for such a purpose or, when consumed, will lead to intermarriage.
- Food cooked by a non-Jew (bishul akum)—this law was enacted for concerns about intermarriage.
- Non-Jewish bread (pat akum)—this law was enacted for concerns about intermarriage.
- Health risk (savannah)—certain foods and mixtures are considered a health risk, such as mixtures of fish and meat.