Judaism – RationalWiki
Posted By admin on October 23, 2015
'You are not practicing Judaism if you celebrate Christmas.'
Judaism is the first Abrahamic religion. Due to their refusal over the centuries to accept Christianity and/or Islam, and their traditionally strong cultural coherence, Jews are frequently made the subject of numerous conspiracy theories and libels, as well as pogroms and genocides (by far the most notable being the Holocaust of World War II). All forms of Judaism have in common the Tanakh as their primary scriptures. The Tanakh is made up of the five books of Moses, or Torah ("the Law"), the books of the prophets, or Nevi'im ("the Prophets"), and the Ketuvim ("the Writings"). The overwhelming majority also base their practices on a substantial body of exegesis, Rabbinical tradition and commentary known as the Talmud.
The books of the Tanakh were (with some slight variation) adopted by Christians as the Old Testament of their Bible. The same books are accepted as legitimate by Protestants and Jews, but the Jews divide their Tanakh in to 24 books instead of 39, collapsing the twelve Minor Prophets (Habbakuk, etc.) in to one book, and Ezra and Nehemiah in to one book (and often both parts of Samuel and Kings in two books instead of four). The order is also much different, with Chronicles being placed at the end, lending a chronology that's self-contained - it ends with the Jews back in the Holy Land. The Christian arrangement ends with a bunch of "Messianic Double-Fulfillment Prophecies" (Isaiah and Daniel) supposedly foretelling the coming of Jesus and the New Testament, and Paul's Judas' betrayal of him. Jews do not accept the additional books (called the deuterocanon or apocrypha) that the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and other Christian Churches accept as scripture to a lesser or greater degree (1 and 2 Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, Additions to Ruth and Daniel, Judith, 1, 2, 3 and 4 Maccabees, etc.)
In addition to these differences in religious text, there are several major theological differences between Christianity and Judaism. Judaism unlike Christianity focuses more on this life than the afterlife-which is hardly mentioned in their scriptures and highly debatable. [1] Behavior is also more important than faith. [2] Satan never rebelled against YHWH but was created for the purpose of tempting people-usually Satan is more a symbol than an actual being. [3] It would be blasphemous and a violation of monotheism to regard him as a rival to YHWH, as Satan is in some forms of Christianity. Judaism also rejects the concept of original sin. [4]
Judaism arose several thousand years ago in the Middle East, descending apparently from the local polytheistic traditions of thirteen (not twelve) tribes of an ethnic group known as the Hebrews (traditionally, the ancient nations of Israel, Judah, Edom, Moab, and Ammon); these people may have had their origins in itinerant tribes known in Egyptian as "Habiru" in the ancient Middle East. The precise origin is lost to history, but is described with unknown accuracy in Biblical mythology (dealt with in depth at Wikipedia). According to the Book of Judith, Holofernes, when he inquired of the lineage of the Israelites, was told they were of Chaldean descent: Judith 5:6: This people are descended of the Chaldeans.[5] "Jewish" is a relatively modern term applied to the descendants of the Israelites or Hebrews, specifically those whose ancestry primarily traces to Judah, occupying the central regions of the areas now known as the state of Israel and the West Bank; the word "Jewish" itself is a specifically English spelling deriving from an earlier form of the French juif. Depending on sources, historical/archaeological records of the Jews appear approximately twelve hundred years before the Common Era with the disappearance of pig bones from area trash heaps.
The Jewish kingdoms in Canaan were often at war with neighboring kingdoms, leading to several periods of Exile and Return. After the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, the modern Diaspora took place, scattering the Jewish population throughout the world, but especially into Europe (the Ashkenazi), Mesopotamia, and North Africa.
Judaism has gone through a great many developments since its early origins among Hebrew-speaking Canaanites during the Bronze Age, from being a (possibly polytheistic) form of the traditional Middle Eastern temple-state traditionally based around Jerusalem to a Monolatry,[6] to the modern variants of Rabbinical Judaism with no temple at all. From its early origins, Judaism began to take its modern shape with the earliest codification of the Torah (the Jewish law) in the reign of King Josiah of Judah (known to Biblical scholars as the Deuteronomic Reform), though it retained its priestly trappings until the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman Empire c.70 CE. Modern Judaism derives from the legal codes of the Pharisees, a scholarly branch of the faith that was one of three major factions in first-century Judaism (the other significant ones were the Saducees, a faction that preferred emphasis on priestly functions, and Essenes, largely a monastic and ascetic tradition represented in the Bible by John the Baptist). The Pharisees were the ones whose philosophies survived the collapse of the Jewish state and the purge of the other branches; marginalized earlier was the Hellenistic tradition that attempted to combine the widening influence of the Greeks with Jewish tradition that resulted in the creation of the Septuagint, the Greek-language version of the Tanakh still used by the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches.[7]
Hungarian-British author Arthur Koestler wrote a book called The Thirteenth Tribe, which speculated that a great number of Ashkenazic Jews are descended not from ancient Hebrews, but from a Turkish tribe called the Khazars, who ruled in much of what is now southwest Russia and Georgia and converted to Judaism en masse. Anti-semites seized on this hypothesis as proof that modern Jews were not truly Jewish at all but usurpers, and that those who had Semitic ancestry came not from Judah but the Edomites of the Negev desert (these claims are circulated widely in the Arab world as part of anti-Israel propaganda). Modern genetic studies have largely disproved the Khazar hypothesis and supported Levantine ancestry for the vast majority of modern Jews, even going so far as to prove the existence of a Y-chromosomal Aaron (again, more at Wikipedia) who is a common ancestor of a great many Jews identified as being of priestly ancestry; this and similar genetic markers have been used to support some claims of widely distributed groups throughout Africa and western Asia to Jewish ancestry. In fact, despite the survival of the Khazar canard among anti-Jewish hate groups, modern descendents of the Khazars have yet to be positively identified. Oddly enough Koestler himself was Jewish and a non religious Zionist, he actually believed that his book would help end anti-Semitism. The Khazar argument was also used to save Karaite (non-Rabbinic) Jews in Eastern Europe from anti-Semitic persecution.
The following describes the general divisions of Judaism as they're known in the United States; the exact terminology sometimes differs in other countries. One should keep under consideration is the fact that most Jews, regardless of the orthodoxy of their beliefs, tend to view other Jews as all belonging to the same religious identity, in contrast to many Christian sects which view themselves as separate from each other.
Judaism has several more liberal sects (often describing themselves as movements), with varying degrees of adherence to halakha. Adherents of liberal Jewish sects generally are less strict about observance than many Orthodox, and generally more accepting of gender and class equality as well as Western moral ideals. A few on the fringe practice syncretist faiths with aspects of Buddhism or neopaganism or are outright atheist, treating Jewish practice as a cultural rather than religious observance. Many liberal Jewish congregations (mostly Reform and Reconstructionist, but also many but not all Conservative) permit female rabbis, and as a general rule tend to be more tolerant of homosexuality and intermarriage.
There are some Jewish sects that fall outside the accepted concept of orthodox vs. liberal.
The word "Jews" is used to refer to both practitioners of the religion of Judaism and people who are ethnically Jewish. The two usages are fundamentally intertwined (most ethnic Jews practice Judaism), but an ethnic Jew who converts to another religion may still be considered Jewish, as may someone who is not ethnically Jewish but converts to Judaism. There are several Jewish ethnic groups with different practices. There is no conflict between them beyond a friendly rivalry, and the occasional bit of racism.
Jewish holidays are observed according to the lunisolar Hebrew calendar, and so their dates move around in the Gregorian calendar from year to year. The Jewish New Year is called Rosh HaShanah. Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is one of the least important holidays in Judaism, contrary to what Western popular culture thinks. It has nothing to do with Christmas, and many Jews oppose religious syncretism, whereby "Hanukkah bushes" ("Jewish" Christmas trees) and "Hanukkah Harry" (the "Jewish" Santa Claus) are mixed in with the traditional lighting of Hanukkah candles and the playing of dreidel.
Since the Christian holiday of Easter is based on the Jewish Passover, Easter is also a "moveable feast."
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