2-UNIT STUDIES OF RELIGION
UNIT 3: JUDAISM DEPTH STUDY
Overview of Jewish History
The history of the Jewish people can be divided into four eras:
First Era: Ca. 1500 BCE — Ca. 586 BCE
Beginnings of Judaism
— Wandering of Abraham and Sarah.
— Their descendants in Egypt.
— The central concept of covenant.
Foundation period of Judaism
—Life of Moses: his birth, childhood, youth.
— Leading of the Exodus.
Early development of Judaism
— Revelation on Mount Sinai.
— Entry into the promised land.
— Time of judges, Kings and prophets.
The people of this time lived in a world of violence and cruelty, brutal warfare and oppression. Out of this
came one God who was both infinitely merciful and yet just. The issue that concerned the Jews in this
area was how, as a group, to find a way to achieve holiness in everyday life. In this matter, the Jews
looked to the Torah for guidance.
Second Era: Ca. 586 BCE — 500 CE
Use the information below to complete Worksheet One
Although the people of Israel maintained their loyalty to King Solomon, they rebelled under his son,
Rehoboam. The rebellion destroyed the central government in Jerusalem and led to the development of
two kingdoms after Solomon died in 931 BCE: Judah to the south and Israel to the North. The Kingdom
of Judah centred around the Temple in Jerusalem, remained loyal to the line of David. The kingdom of
Israel was more unstable politically. This instability led the kingdom of Israel into a series of wars with
neighbouring kingdoms and to its eventual defeat by the powerful Assyrian kingdom. They called the
kingdom, Samaria, and the Jews living there eventually became Samarians.
The collapse of Israel was interpreted as God’s punishment for political and religious corruption.
However, the outcry concerning corruption was not confined to Israel. For many years prophets criticised
corruption in Judah as well. The prophet Jeremiah warned the Judeans of the collapse of Jerusalem and
the destruction of the Temple. His warnings were disregarded and the kingdom of Judah was captured by
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon in 586 BCE. Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. The Jews
were taken into exile in Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem. The dispersion of the Jews beginning with the
Babylonian captivity and including all subsequent scatterings of Jewish people, is know is the Diaspora
The Jews in Babylon maintained a strong belief that they would eventually return to Jerusalem and
rebuild the Temple. During the Babylonian exile:
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Synagogue worship began. A synagogue is a Jewish house of worship.
Judaism became family centred.
Scribes began to preserve and collect literature which came to be viewed as uniquely holy.
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Sixty years after the fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Persians. The King
of Persia renamed Judah to Judea and allowed the Jews to return to Judea and to the Temple in Jerusalem.
Although Judea was under Persian control, the Persian Empire granted the Judeans complete autonomy in
religious and administrative matters. The construction of the Second Temple can be largely attributed to
the work of a scribe, Ezra, who was born into a priestly family. Ezra introduced significant religious
changes:
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He limited the role of sacrifices in the Jewish tradition. This meant that the priest had less significance
in daily ritual worship.
He expanded the role of the Torah.
He increased the importance of religious teachers and interpreters.
He changed the definition of “Jew” from anyone who came from Judea to those who chose to partake
in the religious and ethical requirements of the Torah.
In 332BCE, the Greek general Alexander the Great took Judea into the Greek Empire. Whilst he was kind
to the Jews, some of his successors showed no tolerance and sought to impose Hellenistic religious and
cultural values upon Judaism. Over time, Greek culture had a profound influence upon the Jews However,
crisis point was reached in 167 BCE, when the Temple was desecrated by offering pork there as a
sacrifice. A revolt, led by a group later named the Maccabeans ensued. War continued for 25 years, and
the Jewish people remained united in purpose. The revolt was successful, but after the war ended, the
Jewish people became divided into three groups:
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The Essenes — an ascetic and mystical group devoted to strict discipline. They lived in isolation from
the world and refused to engage with politics and everyday concerns.
The Sadducees evolved out of the Hellenistic elements of Judaism. The movement was made up of
the priests and the aristocrats of Jewish society. They were religiously conservative but socially
liberal. The Sadducees believed in a strict, narrow and unchanging interpretation of the written Torah,
and they did not believe in the oral Torah. The Temple and its sacrificial services were at the centre of
their worship. Socially, they adopted the ways of the neighbouring Greek culture.
The Pharisees believed that God gave the Jews both a written Torah and an oral Torah, both of which
were equally binding and both of which were open to reinterpretation by the rabbis people with
sufficient education to make such decisions. The Pharisees were devoted to study of the Torah and
education for all.
After Judea was conquered by Rome and tensions with Rome began to mount, a fourth group appeared:
the Zealots The Zealots were basically a nationalistic movement, not a religious one. They favoured war
against Rome, and believed that death was preferable to being under Roman control. They would commit
suicide rather than be taken prisoner. Desperate for change, they rebelled against Rome. The Romans
regained control in 70 CE. Jerusalem was recaptured and the Second Temple was totally destroyed. The
Zealots were killed off during the war. The Sadducees could not survive without the Temple, which was
the centre of their religion.
The Essenes, who were never very numerous, were apparently killed off by the Romans. Only the
Pharisees survived, and they shaped what has become known as Rabbinical Judaism.
After another failed rebellion in 135 CE, the Romans barred any access to Jerusalem. It was no longer
possible even to visit the site of the ruined Temple. The Jews were further humiliated, when the Romans
changed to name of Judea to Palestine. By naming the Jewish ancestral homeland after the Philistines, the
Romans blocked all attempts by the Jews to reclaim it as their own. Judaism was reduced to a minority
religion and scattered in a vast Diaspora.
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For many centuries after the destruction of the Temple, there was no large-scale, organised difference of
opinion within Judaism. Judaism was Judaism, and it was basically the same as what we now know as
Orthodox Judaism.
Use the following information to complete Worksheet Two
Rabbis are Jewish scholars or teachers with a thorough knowledge of the Torah, and their task was now
to interpret the oral traditions of Judaism, so that they could survive without a religious centre and
without an effective priesthood. Those rabbis who were teachers of the Jewish oral law, are known as
Tanna’im. They were responsible for the codification of the oral law into a series of textbooks dealing
with legal matter and folklore. These books are called the Mishnah and they were completed by 200 CE.
In the fourth century Christianity became the official religion of the empire. Palestine became part of the
Christian territory of Byzantium. As Christianity claimed to be the continuation of the spiritual Israel,
Jewish writings began to focus on direct links and family relations between the people of Israel and their
biblical ancestors. This insistence on their biblical heritage brought a profound change in the way that the
Jews saw themselves. Exiled, and having no political centre, they could not claim any national identity.
The Temple was replaced by the synagogue, priests by rabbis, and sacrifice by prayer. The Jewish people
chose to see themselves as part of the larger family of Judaism.
Soon after the publication of the Mishnah, Jewish scholars from Babylon and Palestine began working on
compiling more commentaries on the oral Torah. These scholars are called the Amora’im. Their religious
studies, more formal, were held in religious schools called yeshiva. In these schools, students and
scholars, under the leadership of a rabbi, sat down together and debated and argued the meanings of
biblical and mishnaic texts. This way of study is called midrash There are two kinds of midrash:
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Midrash halachah — deals mainly with Jewish law.
Midrash agadah — focuses on rabbinical folklore, including moral tales and personal anecdotes.
The work of the amora’im resulted in additional commentaries, known as Gemara The Misbnah and the
Gemara are collectively known as the Talmud. There are two Talmuds:
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The Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud.
The Babylonian Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud is larger and more comprehensive, and is the one
most Jews mean when they refer to the Talmud.
The issue of the second era that faced the Jews concerned the question of how, with God’s guidance
through the Torah, Jews can create and define themselves and their group existence lacking a land. This
was a spiritual problem and was answered by Rabbinic Judaism’s development of what has been called
Normal Mysticism: the sanctification of everyday, humble life, making it a province of the Kingdom of
God even though one’s people are dispersed around the world. In this kingdom, the Torah is the
constitution and guide, and the interpretation of the Torah through the Talmud is central. There were two
main ways of following this spiritual path:
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To be educated in the Torah.
To celebrate the Sabbath and other festivals.
The development of distinctive charitable and conununal structures were also crucial.
Third Era: ca. 500— ca.l500 CE
The rapid advance of the Arab armies into territories previously held by the Byzantine and Persian
Empires brought the Jews into contact with Islam. The rabbinical teaching of a direct family link between
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contemporary Jews and their biblical ancestors was challenged by Islam’s claim as the pure continuation
of the religion founded by Abraham.
Judaism and Christianity
Use the information to complete Worksheet Three
In 800 Charlemagne became the first ruler of the Holy Roman Empire — the first successful attempt by a
European leader to create a central government after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the
fifth century. Unlike the Christians who lived rural lives, the Jews were for the most part urban dwellers,
and their main occupation. Charlemagne, and various rulers and kings who followed him, began a
sequence of events that were to be endlessly repeated in later centuries:
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Jews were invited to settle into territories to stimulate trade and economic life. The Church,
prohibiting Christians from charging interest on all financial transactions, permitted the Jews to
engage in money- lending.
Jews would experience the protection of the Church for a while and experience a time of prosperity.
Some generations later when non-Jews could sustain the economy, Jews were restricted and antiJewish persecutions would follow. Jewish people were limited to small areas where they could reside
and work. They were barred from holding land. The medieval religious authorities would further
restrict Jewish occupations.
The Muslim capture of Babylonia meant that ties between European Jews and Babylonian Jews were
broken. Therefore, the medieval Jewish communities in Europe formed their own legal and rabbinical
bodies. The communities were funded by household taxes, and official delegates represented communal
interests before the secular authorities. Traditions of scholarship were maintained; medieval European
Judaism produced fine religious scholars, the most prominent of which were Rabbi Gershom and Rashi.
Rabbi Gershoni established an academy in Germany. His most famous takkanot or regulations, dealt
with monogamy (a husband being allowed to have only one wife), which he instituted, along with many
other reforms of Jewish marital law. Rashi was concerned with biblical and talmudic interpretations. He
devised his own script, and his commentaries became the standard texts for European Jews.
In 1095 Pope Urban II called the First Crusade. Its aim was to rescue the Christians of Palestine from
their Muslim rulers and to reclaim Christianity’s holy places. For the European Jewish communities the
Crusades marked the beginning of a long period of persecution. The Church’s attitude to the Jews was
one of tolerance only, because their presence reminded Christians of what could happen to those who
rejected Christ. The two most widespread anti-Jewish beliefs of the Middle Ages were the blood libel and
the stealing of the host. Blood libel was the accusation that the Jews use Christian blood in baking
unleavened bread for Passover. The stealing of the host referred to the allegation that Jews steal the
eucharistic host in order to further theft torture of Christ.
Between 1347 and 1350, a third of the population of Europe died from the Black Death plague. Jewish
people, because of their ritual purity laws and dietary regulation, suffered fewer casualties than their
Christian neighbours. The Jews were used as a scapegoat to explain the plague. Despite papal opposition
many parish priests arrested Jews and tortured them. Some were forced to confess to the outrageous
falsehoods that the Jews had poisoned wells and major European rivers.
The Jews did not improve their social and political status as a result of the Christian Reformation. Luther
demanded that his followers bum Jewish synagogues and treat Jews mercilessly. In Catholic countries,
the Jewish people were blamed for the origin of Protestantism — an accusation that led to further
persecutions.
In 1492, after the Christian re-conquest of Spain, the Catholic rulers of the country expelled the remaining
Jewish population. The Jews of Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East are known as
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Sephardic Jews. The beliefs of Sephardic Judaism are basically in accord with those of Orthodox
Judaism. The Sephardic Jews were dispersed among the Muslim countries and in the Netherlands. Many
of these migrated to the newly discovered world by the sixteenth century.
The Jews in France, Germany and Eastern Europe are known as Ashkenazic Jews. The beliefs of
Ashkenazic Judaism are basically in accord with those of Orthodox Judaism. From the fifteenth till the
end of the eighteenth century the Ashkenazic Jews were forced to live in restricted areas known as
ghettos. Each large European city had a ghetto, which was locked at night.
Judaism and Islam
Use the following information to complete Worksheet Four
Since the Qur’an rejects any forced conversion of the People of the Book, Jews and Christians were
allowed to practise their religion. Regulations governing Jews included a special tax that was to be paid
directly to the central authorities, the prohibition of any attempt to convert a Muslim to Judaism, the
promise of religious tolerance, and the guarantee of legal autonomy in all internal matters.
The medieval Muslim world extended from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to India. Jewish merchants
and craftsmen were encouraged to partake in the commercial and banking interests that supported the
imperial infrastructure. Jews travelled freely throughout the Muslim world. As the political centres of
Islam shifted to Iraq and later to Egypt, Jewish centres of trade and learning moved as well. By the
beginning of the fourteenth century most Jews lived in Iraq and along the shores of the Mediterranean.
There were some similarities between some Judaic and Islamic beliefs and practices:
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The belief in one God.
The rite of circumcision.
The non-consumption of pork.
These contributed to the exchange of cultural and religious ideas between Jews and Muslims. There is no
doubt that medieval Jewish theology developed in the context of Muslim thought and philosophy. While
the European Jews spoke in Yiddish, the Jews of the Islamic world spoke in Arabic.
Hasidism
In the seventeenth century in Turkey, a Jewish scholar was proclaimed as the Messiah. Encouraged by the
support of his followers, Shabbetai Tzevi when to the Sultan in Constantinople in order to reclaim
Palestine for the Jewish people. He was arrested and imprisoned. When he was summoned to appear
before the sultan he was given the option of conversion to Islam or death. He chose life.
The disappointment that followed had major repercussions for the future of Judaism. European rabbis
realised that a new way of addressing the Jewish despair at their prolonged exile had to be found. This
lead to the establishment of a new movement, known as Hasidism founded by Israel be Eliezer in the
1700’s. Before Hasidism, Judaism emphasised education as the way to get closer to God. Hasidism
emphasised other, more personal experiences, prayer and the experiences of the divine presence as
alternative routes to God than the study of the Torah. Hasidism was considered a radical movement at the
time it was founded. There was strong opposition from those who held to the pre-existing view of
Judaism. Those who opposed Hasidism became known as mitnagdim (opponents), and disputes between
the Hasidim and the mitnagdim were often brutal. Hasidism remains a sect of Judaism even today and has
greatly influenced Judaism.
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Jewish Enlightenment
A second movement, known as the Haskalah or the Jewish enlightenment, sought to achieve the same
goal as Hasidism. The supporters of the Haskalah are known as the Maskilim The Maskilim attempted to
break down the barriers between the Jews and non-Jews through education. It was considered that an
educated Jew, familiar with gentile philosophy and literature would foster mutual tolerance. One of the
greatest proponents of the Haskalah was Moses Mendelssohn. His opponents saw his life and teachings
encouraging assimilation and the potential loss of Jewish traditional identity.
Fourth Era: Ca. 1800 to the Present
In 1808 Napoleon recognised Jews as citizens of France. His actions started a process called the Jewish
Emancipation Throughout the nineteenth century the emerging European states started to assimilate
Jews into most aspects of civil life. Jews could now become soldiers, university students, and public
officials. They could vote and reside outside the ghetto.
The emancipation of Jews was limited to Western and Central Europe. The majority of Russian and
Polish Jews still lived in ghettos and continued to be subject to restrictions. The sharp contrast between
Western and Eastern Jews meant that their understanding of Judaism was completely different. For the
Western Jew, Judaism was more a private matter; Eastern Jews placed greater emphasis on communal
considerations. The opportunities set in train by the Jewish Emancipation stimulated new movements
within rabbinical Judaism, and resulted in three major variants.
Use the following information to complete Worksheet Five
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism was founded by Sampson Raphael Hirsch. Hasidim, Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews
are generally Orthodox. The term “Orthodox” applies to the traditional movement within modem Judaism
based upon the strict adherence to the letter of the law. Orthodox Jews believe that:
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God gave Moses the whole Torah at Mount Sinai.
The whole Torah includes both the written Torah and the Oral Torah.
The Torah is true — it has been handed down by God intact and unchanged. It is binding
The Torah contains 613 binding mitzvot (commandments covering all aspects of Jewish life).
All religious rituals must be conducted in Hebrew.
Segregation between the sexes must be maintained during worship.
The rabbinical legal tradition, the halachah is binding and unchanging.
Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism
This variant originated in the 1880’s. It is referred to as the middle ground between Orthodox and Reform
and contains a mixture of Orthodox and Reform beliefs and practices. Conservative Judaism maintains
that:
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The truths found in the Jewish scriptures and other Jewish writings come from God, but were
transmitted by humans and contain a human component.
The rabbinical legal tradition, the halachah is binding, but that the Law should change and adapt,
absorbing aspects of the predominant culture while remaining true to Judaism’s values.
Men and women should sit together in the synagogue during worship.
Women are allowed to read the Torah.
Worship is conducted in both Hebrew and English.
Worship can involve, singing accompanied by music.
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Reconstructionist Judaism is an outgrowth of Conservative Judaism. Reconstructionists believe that
Judaism is an evolving religious civilisation. They do not believe in a personified deity that is active in
history, and they do not believe that God chose the Jewish people. Reconstructionists observe the
halachah if they choose to, not because it is a binding Law from God, but because it is a valuable cultural
remnant. There are less than 100 Reconstructionist synagogues world-wide.
Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism has sought to modify some traditional orthodox religious practice and adapt it to
contemporary life and thought. Reform Judaism retains the spiritual and idealistic core of traditional
Jewish teaching but dispense with many Jewish rituals. Reform Judaism does not believe that the Torah
was written by God. Reform Judaism concentrates on the ethical teachings of the biblical prophets rather
than on Moses’ religious prescriptions or on the commentaries in the Talmud. They retain much of the
values and ethics of Judaism, along with some of the practices and the culture. Human beings, according
to Reform Judaism, are God’s partners, and the Jewish people, following the prophets, are under an
obligation to serve as moral and ethical model to all other people. Reform Jews challenge Rabbinical
Judaism in every way; as a symbol of this challenge, they call their synagogues temples. Women can be
ordained as rabbis or cantors.
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