Judaism

Judaism. The faith and practice of the Jewish people. The word is derived from the name of Judah, the biblical Southern Kingdom which ended with the Babylonian captivity (c.586 BC). In modern scholarship the term is used of the faith and practice of Jews from this time, though in a wider sense Judaism may be said to go back to the Patriarchs many centuries earlier (see ISRAEL). There are c.13 million Jews, half living in North and South America, and about a quarter each in Europe and Asia. Only in Israel, established as a Jewish State in 1948, do they constitute more than a small element in the population.

Until AD 70 Jewish religious life centred on the Temple in Jerusalem, with its hereditary priesthood and its daily rituals and annual celebrations involving animal and vegetable offerings. By the end of the period there was some criticism of the Temple and its priestly establishment, and the ever-increasing diaspora meant that pilgrimage to Jerusalem was beyond the aspirations of many Jews. The local synagogue became the place for public gatherings for Scriptural study and religious teaching, and possibly also for worship. After the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in AD 70 the sacrificial form of worship ceased. Authority, both religious and to some extent secular, was concentrated in the hands of the rabbis, and a new style of leadership emerged. Rabbinic Judaism spread to most parts of the Jewish world. Its classical written text is the Talmud, but rabbinic literature includes also the Midrashim, various medieval biblical commentaries, and works of Halachah.

From the beginning of the Enlightenment in the 17th cent., rabbinic orthodoxy found it increasingly difficult to resist challenges emanating from the contemporary situation, and the powers of the rabbis were weakened. Hasidism, a revivalist movement, swept through E. European Jewry in the period 1730–1830. In W. Europe various modernist movements emerged in the 19th cent., laying the foundations of the best-known religious denominations in W. Judaism today: Liberalism, Reform, Conservatism, and Orthodoxy (sometimes termed ‘neo-Orthodoxy’ or ‘modern Orthodoxy’ to distinguish it from the various forms of traditional Judaism which are still strong in Israel and elsewhere). Contemporary Judaism is also marked by the rise of political antisemitism in Europe, the Russian programs and subsequent mass migration of Jews from Russia, the racial persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel, and the conflict between Israel and the countries of the Arab League.

Theology is less central to Judaism than to Christianity, but there is a broad acceptance of the idea of a single, unique, incorporeal God, who created the world, acts in it, and will eventually redeem it, and who revealed His will in the Torah and elsewhere. Jewish worship traditionally consists of readings from the Torah, Prophets, Psalms, hymns, and set prayers. Movements for liturgical reform have resulted in considerable revision and in the introduction of vernacular languages into the synagogue.

See also JEWS, CHRISTIAN ATTITUDES TO THE.