Judaism

Judaism

THEOLOGY OF JUDAISM

JUDAISM AND PHILOSOPHY: MEDIEVAL RATIONALISM

JUDAISM AND THE OTHER MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS

JUDAISM AND MODERNITY

THE REFORM, ORTHODOX, AND CONSERVATIVE JUDAIC RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Judaism is the religion founded upon the Hebrew Scriptures, or “Old Testament,” which is viewed as an exhaustive account of God’s will for humanity. Judaism is the oldest of the three monotheist religions—the others being Christianity and Islam. The Hebrew scriptures first took shape around 450 BCE with the assembling of the Torah (“instruction”), which recorded the revelation of God to Moses at Mount Sinai. The Torah is composed of the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The sacred Scripture also encompasses the Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets; as well as the Writings: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Daniel, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah.

The Torah and the Prophets tell twin stories of exile from Paradise—one concerned with humanity as a whole, the other with Israel, the people of the Torah. Adam and Eve, representing humanity, lose Paradise—the Garden of Eden—because of their rebellion against God. The people of Israel likewise lose their paradise—the Land of Israel—because of their disregard of God’s will as revealed in the Torah. Israel had acquired the Promised Land in fulfillment of God’s covenant with Israel’s founders, Abraham and Sarah, and their descendants. In 722 BCE, however, the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians and was incorporated into Assyria, and in 586 BCE the southern kingdom of Judea fell to the Babylonians, who destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem. Following this, the Jews went into exile in Babylonia (present-day Iraq). In the later sixth century BCE the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, who in 530 permitted the exiled Judeans to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple there on Mount Zion. Some did just that. Then, around 450 BCE the scribe Ezra, in cooperation with the Temple priests, promulgated the Torah of Moses as the law for Israel.

The Torah portrays Israel’s exile as the consequence of rebellion and its return as its reward for repentance, and sets forth the rules that Israel must keep if it is to retain paradise in the Land of Israel. The parallel narratives—the stories of Adam and Eve and their counterpart, the people of Israel—part ways with the return to Zion, for whereas Israel could repent and reform, Adam, representing the rest of humanity, without the Torah could do nothing to regain Paradise.

THEOLOGY OF JUDAISM

The theology of Judaism is set forth by the rabbis of the first six centuries CE in their readings of Scripture. These readings took place in dialogue with a set of documents that record the oral traditions that had been passed on via a chain of masters and disciples stretching back to Moses and up to the early centuries of the Common Era. The first of these documents recoding oral tradition is the Mishnah (ca. 200 CE), a law code that both amplifies the laws of Scripture and sets forth laws that take up topics not treated by Scripture. A collection of supplements, the Tosefta (ca. 300 CE), and two commentaries to the Mishnah, the Talmud of the Land of Israel (ca. 400 CE) and the Talmud of Babylonia (ca. 600 CE), augmented the laws of Scripture as systematized in the Mishnah’s topical expositions. The same rabbis produced commentaries on Scripture, called Midrashim: among others, Genesis Rabbah (ca. 400), on Genesis; Mekhilta Attributed to Rabbi Ishmael (ca. 300), on Exodus; Leviticus Rabbah (ca. 450), on Leviticus; and Sifré to Numbers and Sifré to Deuteronomy, on Numbers and Deuteronomy, respectively.

The monotheism of Judaic theology as set forth in Scripture and oral tradition contrasts strongly with the polytheism prevalent at the time of Judaism’s foundation. For a religion of numerous gods, life’s problems have many causes; for a religion of only one God, there is only one cause. To explain why life is seldom fair and often unpredictable, polytheism identifies multiple causes, one god per anomaly. Diverse gods do diverse things, so it stands to reason that the outcomes of their actions conflict. Monotheism by its nature explains many things in a single way. One God rules all and everywhere. Life is meant to be fair, and just rules are supposed to describe what is ordinary, all in the name of that one-and-only God. Thus, in Judaic monotheism a simple logic governs, to limit ways of making sense of things. But that logic contains its own dialectics. If one true God has done everything, then, because he is God all-powerful and omniscient, all things are credited to, and blamed on, him. In that case he can be either good or bad, just or unjust—but not both.

Jewish theology attempts to systematically reveal the justice of the one-and-only God of all creation. God is not only God but also good. The Torah pictures a world order based on God’s justice and equity. Judaism finds its dynamic in the struggle between God’s plan for creation—to create a perfect world of justice—and man’s will. That dialectic is embodied in a single paradigm: the story of Paradise lost and regained.

Four key sets of beliefs characterize the theology of Judaism:

1. God formed creation in accord with a plan, which the Torah reveals. The facts of nature and society set forth in that plan conform to a pattern of reason based on justice and together constitute God’s world order. Private life as much as public order conforms to the principle that God rules justly in a creation of perfection. Those who possess the Torah—namely, Israel—know God and those who do not—the gentiles—reject him in favor of idols. What happens to these two sectors of humanity, respectively, corresponds to their relationship with God. Israel in the present age is subordinate to the nations, because God has designated the gentiles as the medium for penalizing Israel for its rebellion—meaning that Israel’s subordination and exile is intended to provoke repentance.
2. The perfection of creation, realized in the rule of exact justice, is signified by the timelessness of the world of human affairs, and its conformity to a few enduring paradigms that transcend change. Perfection is further embodied in the unchanging relationships of the social commonwealth, which assure that scarce resources, once allocated, remain unchanged. Further indications of perfection lie in the complementarity of the components of creation, and in the correspondence between God and man, who was created in God’s image.
3. Israel’s condition, public and personal, constitutes flaws in creation. What disrupts perfection is the sole power capable of standing on its own against God: man’s will. What man controls and God cannot coerce is man’s capacity to form intention and therefore choose either arrogantly to defy, or humbly to love, God. Because man defies God, the sin that results from man’s rebellion flaws creation and disrupts world order. As with Adam and Eve’s exile from Eden, the act of arrogant rebellion leads to humanity’s flawed condition. God retains the power to encourage repentance through punishing man’s arrogance. In mercy, moreover, God exercises the power to respond to repentance with forgiveness—that is, a change of attitude bringing about a change in man’s condition. Because man also has the power to initiate the process of reconciliation with God through repentance—an act of humility—man may restore the perfection of that order his arrogance has marred.
4. God ultimately will restore that perfection that embodied his plan for creation. In the process of restoration, death—which exists because of sin—will die, the dead will be raised and judged for their deeds, and most, having been justified, will go on to eternal life in the world to come. The paradigm of man restored to Eden is realized in Israel’s return to the Land of Israel. In that world or age to come, idolaters will perish, and the remaining portion of humanity, comprising Israel, will know the one, true God and spend eternity in his light.

JUDAISM AND PHILOSOPHY: MEDIEVAL RATIONALISM

The theology of Judaic monotheism set forth by the rabbis of the first six centuries CE was subsequently amplified by philosophers and mystics. Judaic intellectuals in the Islamic world, from the advent of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century CE, faced the challenge posed by Muslim rationalism and philosophical rigor. The task at hand was to reconcile and accommodate Torah and the philosophical form of science.

That is why alongside the study of Torah—meaning the Babylonian Talmud and later codes, commentaries, and rabbinical court decisions—a different sort of intellectual-religious life flourished in Judaism. This was the study of the Torah-tradition through the instruments of reason and the discipline of philosophy: the quest for generalization, a critical sifting of evidence, and, above all, the attempt to find harmony between the generalizations of the Torah and the scientific principles of Aristotle. For example, how can the scriptural notion that God changes his mind be harmonized with the Aristotelian principle that change indicates imperfection, and how can the belief that miracles interrupt the course of nature be reconciled with the philosophical principle that laws of nature are immutable? If God is arbitrary, then God is no philosopher. But for Judaic, Christian, and Islamic theology, God is the source of all truth, whether revealed in nature or in scripture.

The Judaic philosopher had to cope with problems imposed not only by the Torah’s conflict with philosophy, but also by the anomalous situation of the Jews themselves. For instance, what was the meaning of the unfortunate history of the Jews? How was philosophy to account reasonably for the homelessness of God’s people, who were well aware that they lived as a minority among powerful, prosperous majorities—Christian or Muslim? If the Torah were true, why did different revelations claiming to be based upon it—and to complete it—flourish, while the people of Torah suffered? Why, indeed, ought one to remain a Jew, when every day one was confronted by the success of the daughter religions? Conversion was always a possibility—an inviting one even under the best of circumstances—for a member of a despised minority.

The search was complicated by the formidable appeal of Greek philosophy to medieval Christian and Islamic civilizations, two cultures in which Judaism was practiced. Its rationalism, openness, and search for pure knowledge challenged all revelations. Philosophy called into question all assertions based not on reason, but on appeals to a source of truth not universally recognized. Specific propositions of faith and the assertions of holy books had to be measured against the results of reason. Belief in mysterious divine plans conflicted with claims for the limitless capacity of human reason. It seemed, therefore, that reason stood in opposition to revelation, and free inquiry could not be relied on to lead to the synagogue, church, or mosque. Faith or reason—this seemed to be the choice.

For the Jews, moreover, the very substance of faith—in a personal, highly anthropomorphic God who exhibited traits of character not always in conformity with humanity’s highest ideals and who in rabbinic hands looked much like the rabbi himself—posed a formidable obstacle. The obvious contradictions between belief in free will and belief in divine providence further enriched classical philosophical conundrums. Is God all-knowing? Then how can people be held responsible for what they do? Is God perfect? Then how can he change his mind or set aside his laws to forgive people? No theologian in such a cosmopolitan, rational age could begin with an assertion of a double truth or a private, relative one. The notion that something could be true for one party and not for another, or that faith and reason were equally valid and yet contradictory were ideas that had little appeal.

JUDAISM AND THE OTHER MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS

From the time of the Roman emperor Constantine, who in the fourth century declared Christianity legal and whose heirs made it the religion of the Roman Empire, to the nineteenth century, Jewry in Christendom had sustained itself as a recognized and ordinarily tolerated minority. The contradictory doctrines of Christianity—which saw Jews as Christ-killers to be punished, and as witnesses to be kept alive and ultimately converted at the second coming of Christ—held together in an uneasy balance. Official policy—keep the Jews alive, but do not reward their disloyalty—accounts for the Jews’ survival in some of the Christian realms, particularly those on the frontiers of Christian Europe, south and east. The pluralistic character of some multiethnic societies explains the welcome accorded Jewish entrepreneurs in certain territories, including Spain before 1492, and Norman England, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine in the early centuries of their development.

The rabbinic system, for its part, had addressed the agenda of Christianity and for long centuries had given answers that, for Israel, proved self-evidently valid. Judaism had answered the question made urgent by Christianity’s triumph: What is Israel in the divine plan? This it did by appeal to the sanctification of Israel and its future salvation. Normative Judaism had taken shape in response to the challenge of Christianity. So long as in Christian lands Christianity defined the issues, Judaism would flourish without effective competition within Jewry, absorbing and accommodating new ideas. The same was true of Islamic lands and the character of Judaism in the Muslim world.

JUDAISM AND MODERNITY

In modern times, faced with the political changes brought about by the American Constitution of 1787 and the French Revolution of 1789, Jews in western Europe and the United States aspired to rights possessed by the majority population: citizenship, equality before the law. But an urgent question emerged: How could and why should one be both Jewish and German or Jewish and French or Jewish and British? (The issue was conceived in terms of the categories of religion and nationality; that is, Jews were Jewish by religion and German by nationality. In the late-twentieth-century United States the issue would be conceived in terms of religion and ethnicity; thus, one could be both Christian and ethnically Jewish.) From the earliest decades of the nineteenth century, new Judaisms took shape, dealing with this and other urgent questions. They offered explanations of how a Jew could be not solely an Israelite but also something—anything—else. To do so, people had to identify a neutral realm in the life of individuals and consequently of the community, a realm left untouched by the processes of sanctification leading to salvation, which had for so long made Jews into “Israel,” the community of Judaism. Each of these Judaisms claimed to continue in linear succession the Judaism that had flourished for so long, to develop it incrementally, and so to connect, through the long past, to Sinai. But in fact, each one responded to contemporary issues deemed urgent among one or another group of Jews.

THE REFORM, ORTHODOX, AND CONSERVATIVE JUDAIC RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS

Three main new Judaisms took shape between 1800 and 1850. The first to emerge was Reform Judaism, which developed in the early part of the nineteenth century. Reform Judaism made changes in liturgy, then in doctrine and in the Jewish way of life. More significantly, perhaps, it recognized the legitimacy of making changes and regarded change as reform—hence its name.

Second to develop was Orthodox Judaism, which achieved its first systematic expression in the middle of the nineteenth century. A reaction to Reform Judaism, Orthodox Judaism was in many ways continuous with traditional Judaism, but in other ways it was as selective in its adoption of elements of traditional Judaism as was Reform Judaism. Orthodox Judaism denied the validity of change, and held that Judaism lies beyond history; it is the work of God, and constitutes a set of facts of the same order as the facts of nature. Hence change is not reform, and Reform Judaism is not Judaism. But, at the same time, Orthodox Judaism affirmed that one could devote time to science as well as Torah-study, an accommodation with contemporary culture different only in degree from the Reform compromise.

Third in line and somewhat after Orthodox Judaism came positive Historical Judaism, known in America as Conservative Judaism, which occupied a middle position between the two other new Judaisms. This Judaism maintained that change could become reform, but only in accordance with the principles by which legitimate change may be separated from illegitimate change. Conservative Judaism would discover those principles through historical study. In an age in which historical facts were taken to represent theological truths, the historicism of Conservative Judaism gave it compelling weight. Positivism and dependence on history to validate theological conviction would serve Conservative Judaism poorly later on, however, when the discoveries of archaeologists called into doubt principal parts of the scriptural narrative.

SEE ALSO Jews

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baron, Salo Wittmayer. 1952–1993. A Social and Religious History of the Jews. 2nd rev. ed. 18 vols. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ben-Sasson, Haim Hillel, ed. 1976. A History of the Jewish People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Finkelstein, Louis, ed. 1966. The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion. 3rd ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.

Heschel, Abraham Joshua. 1987. God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

Neusner, Jacob. 1987. The Enchantments of Judaism: Rites of Transformation from Birth through Death. New York: Basic Books. Reprint, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005.

Neusner, Jacob. 2003. The Way of Torah: An Introduction to Judaism. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson.

Schwarz, Leo W., ed. 1956. Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People. New York: Random House.

Jacob Neusner