The term was first used by Hellenized Jews to describe their
religious practice, but it is of predominantly modern usage; it is not
used in the Bible or in Rabbinic literature and only rarely in the
literature of the medieval period. The word Torah is employed when
referring to the divinely revealed teachings of Jewish law and belief.
Judaism is used more broadly, including also the totality of human
interpretation and practice. The most important holy days in Judaism are
the weekly Sabbath , the major holidays of Rosh ha-Shanah , Yom Kippur ,
Sukkoth , Simhat Torah,Passover , Shavuot , and the minor holidays of
Hanukkah , Purim , Tisha B'Av.
HISTORY
Early Period
The history of Judaism predates the period to which the term itself
actually refers, in that Judaism formally applies to the post-Second
Temple period, while its antecedents are to be found in the biblical
“religion of Israel.” The Bible is no longer considered a homogeneous work;
the many traditions represented in it demonstrate variance and growth.
While the historicity of the patriarchs' existence and of Moses as the
giver of all laws is under question, certain dominant themes can be seen
developing in this early period that have importance for later Judaism.
Central to these themes is the notion of monotheism, which most
scholars believe to have been the outgrowth of a process that began with
polytheism, progressed to henotheism (the worship of one god without
denying the existence of others), and ended in the belief in a single Lord
of the universe, uniquely different from all His creatures. He is
compassionate toward His creation, and in turn humans are to love and fear
Him. Because God is holy, He demands that His people be holy, righteous,
and just, a kingdom of priests to assist in the fulfillment of His designs
for humankind and the world.
Israel's chosenness consists of this special designation and the task that
accompanies it. God promises the land of Canaan to Israel as their
homeland, the place in which the Temple will be built and sacrificial
worship of God carried out. The holy days were the Sabbath, Passover,
Shavuot, and Sukkoth; and circumcision, dietary laws, and laws pertaining
to dress, agriculture, and social justice characterized the structure of
the biblical religion. Three types of leaders existed during this period:
the priest ( kohen ), who officiated in the Temple and executed the laws;
the prophet ( navi ), to whom was revealed God's messages to His people;
and the sage ( hacham ), who taught practical wisdom and proper behavior.
There was developing already in this early period a belief in the ultimate
coming of God's kingdom on earth, a time of peace and justice. To this was
added, after the destruction (586 BC) of the First Temple and the
Babylonian captivity (which many saw as the consequence of idolatry and
which may have been responsible for the final stage of the development
from polytheism to monotheism), the expectation of national restoration
under the leadership of a descendant of the Davidic house, the Messiah .
Middle Ages
The kabbalah flowered during the Middle Ages, combining older
trends in Jewish mysticism with Neoplatonism and other ideas. The
kabbalists retained the idea that the totality of God's nature is
ultimately beyond human grasp, yet, in keeping with tradition, held to a
vision of a personal God who exists as the active, creative, and
sustaining force within the cosmos. Spain was a major center of
kabbalistic thought, which after the expulsions and forced conversion in
1492, spread and became more central to Jewish life in the Mediterranean
world. Palestine then became the center of kabbalism, especially as it was
developed by Isaac Luria and others.
A Jewish philosophy developed in answer to the questions raised by the
exposure to Greek thought as distilled through the Islamic natural
philosophy and metaphysics. Central to these issues was the conflict
between reason and revelation: whether revelation was necessary if all
could be ascertained through reason, or whether reason was imperfect and
revelation was God's assisting humans to know the truth. Maimonides argued
that one can say nothing positive about the personal nature of God, which
is beyond human comprehension; one can only indicate what He is not (thus,
the statement that God is wise says only that God is not ignorant, not how
wise He actually is).
While the Jewish Middle Ages is usually defined by scholars as extending
at least into the 18th cent., there was a Jewish counterpart to the
general European Renaissance of the 15th and 16th cent., and figures such
as Judah Abravanel were influenced by contemporary European philosophic
currents. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 led to the Jews of
N Italy, S France, and the Levant coming under Sephardic influence, and
these events provoked much messianic and kabbalist speculation,
culminating in the spectacular career of the self-proclaimed Messiah,
Sabbatai Zevi .
The Amsterdam community of Marranos (those Jews forced by the Inquisition
to adopt Christianity, but who continued to practice Judaism in secret,
and many of whom later emigrated and returned to the Jewish fold) often
provided a liberalizing influence on Orthodox Judaism, most significantly
in the person of Baruch Spinoza, a Jew excommunicated for his unsparing
critique of Rabbinic Judaism. The reaction to Sabbatianism and
philosophical liberalism caused a hardening of rabbinic orthodoxy, but the
Jewish world of the 18th cent. remained turbulent. It produced both the
great traditionalist rabbinic figure Elijah ben Solomon and the
untraditional figures of Baal-Shem-Tov , the founder of Hasidism (which
Elijah himself fought against), and Moses Mendelssohn , the spiritual
progenitor of later reformers whom Elijah's spiritual descendants
repeatedly condemned.
Modern Judaism
Ultimately, it was the halakah (the law) that divided Judaism in the
19th cent. The Orthodox hold both the written law (Scriptures) and the
oral laws (commentaries on the legal portions of the Scriptures) as
authoritative, derived from God, while the Reform do not see them as
authoritative in any absolute sense, but binding only in their ethical
content. While Orthodox Jews maintain the traditional practices, Reform
Jews perform only those rituals that they believe can promote and enhance
a Jewish, God-oriented life. In 1999, however, leaders of American Reform
Judaism reversed century-old teachings by encouraging but not enforcing
the observance of many traditional rituals. The “historical school,” or
Conservative movement, attempts to formulate a middle position between
Orthodox and Reform, maintaining most of the traditional rituals but
recognizing the need to make changes in accordance with overriding
contemporary considerations. Conservative Jews believe that the history of
Judaism proves their basic assumptions: that tradition and change have
always gone hand in hand and that what is central to Judaism and has
remained constant throughout the centuries is the people of Israel (and
their needs), not the fundamentalism of Orthodoxy nor what they consider
the abandonment of traditions by Reform. The related Reconstructionist
movement of Mordechai M. Kaplan holds Judaism to be a human-centered
rather than a God-centered religious civilization.
Also part of contemporary Judaism are the several Sephardic traditions
maintained in Israel, France, Canada, and the United States by immigrants
from the Middle East and North Africa and by European Sephardim in Europe
and the Americas; the several Hasidic groups in Israel and the United
States; the religious and secular Zionists in Israel and the Diaspora; the
unorganized secular Jews, who maintain an atheist's or agnostic's
adherence to Jewish values and culture; and those unorganized Jews who
seek a religious life outside the synagogue. These many positions
represent the most recent attempts at defining the “essence of Judaism,” a
process that has been continuous throughout the ages, variously
emphasizing one of the three major components of Judaism (God, Torah,
Israel) over the remaining two.
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