Five Faiths Project
JUDAISM
The story of Abraham and Sarah
How wonderful, O Lord, are the works of your hands! The heavens declare your glory, the arch of sky displays your handiwork. The heavens declare the glory of God.
Psalm 8
In order to begin to build a basic understanding of Judaism, it is essential to turn to its stories. The early history of the Jewish faith is recorded in the books of the Torah, Judaism’s sacred text. According to these stories and members of the living Jewish tradition, the history of the Jewish people, their faith and their practices may be said to begin with one man and his wife. This story tells of the time when God, Creator of the universe, spoke to Abraham and said he must take his wife and leave their homeland to travel to a distant and unknown land. Abraham was living in a remote region of what is now called the Middle East and traveled toward the land identified today as Israel. While he was on this journey, Abraham looked up at the night sky. The story explains that he heard God speak to him again. In the sacred text, the words of God are recorded:
“I will make of you a great nation,
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great
And you shall be a blessing…”
The story explains that Abraham was 75 years old at the time, married, and without children. Nevertheless, the text informs the reader that Abraham believed God would fulfill his promise to him. This promise made between God and Abraham is called a covenant in the Jewish tradition. A covenant is an agreement between two parties in which both have a responsibility. God’s responsibility was to act in order to fulfill his word and Abraham’s responsibility was to believe God and live accordingly. Because of Abraham’s obedience, Jews believe God’s love for Abraham and all of his descendents deepened. And because God fulfilled his word, Abraham and his descendents’ love for God deepened as well.
But the story of Abraham must also include Sarah, his wife. She, too, believed God, and her wisdom and faithfulness is seen throughout the story. Women play many important roles in the foundational stories of Judaism. In this story, God told Abraham to listen to his wife, to be accountable to her. Abraham and Sarah gave birth to a son. They called him Isaac. Isaac married Rebecca. They in turn had children and little by little the lineage grew. As the story progresses through a series of adventures and challenges, the descendents of Abraham and Sarah were taken into slavery in Egypt. However, throughout these events, time and again, Jews find examples which strengthen their belief in God’s steadfastness. These examples support the Jewish belief in a true love between God and God’s people.
The stories of the Jewish heritage are not without sorrow and difficulty. In these stories, recorded in the book of Exodus, one of the books in the Torah, God ultimately frees the descendents of Abraham, through the obedient leadership of Moses and his brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam.
God revealed to Moses the Ten Commandments and the Law
For forty years, Moses and the Hebrew people wandered through the wilderness. At a place called Mt. Sinai, God revealed to Moses the Ten Commandments and the Law. These commandments and law were instrumental in the formation of a new identity for the descendents of Abraham, often called the Hebrew People. According to the texts, the Exodus out of Egypt to the land God promised to Abraham would not be the last exile. Jewish history is often understood as exilic, as a series of exiles in which Jews have been faced with leaving one land for another, journeying and returning to the land promised so long ago. It is this history of motion, of travel and return, of faith expressed in the lives of ordinary men and women, mothers and daughters, sons and brothers that constitutes the Jewish heritage into which God is seen to have moved.
In giving the Ten Commandments and the Law to Moses, many Jews believe God reaffirmed the promise made to Abraham and consolidated a uniquely Jewish way of life. The Law of Moses, as it is sometimes called, covers every aspect of life. But the modern word “law” is lacking, for the Jewish law is often called Halakhah, a Hebrew word which means “the way, the path.” In some sense then, the Law is active and expansive, rather than restrictive. It implies motion and progression. It implies life. Halakhah creates for the Jewish people a way of life in full response to the love of God.
The Shabbat: a Jewish response to the love of God
One way in which Jewish people may respond to God’s love is through the weekly celebration of the Shabbat. Shabbat begins on Friday evening with a festive meal and continues through a day of rest on Saturday, during which many Jews refrain from all workaday activities. During the Shabbat, many Jews attend synagogue, the gathering place of worship and education in the Jewish tradition. At synagogue, a portion of the sacred texts is read and prayers are spoken. At every gathering in the synagogue, the essence of the faith is proclaimed: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord alone.” These words once again introduce the presence of God, reaffirm the authority of God and God’s call to faithful men and women throughout history.
The sacred texts of Judaism
the Torah, the Writings and the Talmud
While all religious traditions hold their stories as an important component for faith building, Judaism places a special reliance on the call and actions of God in the recorded history of a particular lineage. By carefully listening to the stories, time and time again, year after year, Jewish people may see and come to know tshe loving hand of God. In these stories, Jews see the action, intervention, creation and sustenance of God. The preservation of this sacred history takes on profound significance because within it Jewish people are given glimpses of their own human nature and the nature of God. These stories are recorded in the Hebrew Bible. It consists of three parts: The Torah, which includes the story of the Exodus and the Law, the Prophets, (Joshua, Judges, Jeremiah, et al.) and the Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, the Book of Job). In addition to the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, a vast and rich literary resource, offers interpretations, commentary, explanations of the commandments of God, stories of famous rabbis and other Jewish lore. The sacred texts are recorded in Hebrew and preserved by rabbis. The rabbi is a teacher and a scholar, qualified to offer explanations of the sacred Torah.
The cycles of remembrance: Shabbat and the High Holidays
At the synagogue, the Jewish center of life and worship, over the course of a year, the Torah is read in its entirety. Jewish services create a cycle of remembrance. Weekly, Shabbat commemorates God’s creation of the world. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the annual Day of Atonement, mark the Jewish New Year with a time of introspection and moral resolve. The Seder celebration relives in story and song the Exodus from Egypt and rekindles Jewish hope and future vision. Hanukkah is the annual, eight-day celebration commemorating the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BCE after years of severe religious persecution. These holidays, along with many others, reinforce three critical truths in the Jewish world view. First, Jewish heritage and tradition affirm that God is the maker and human beings are the made. Second, this religious heritage asserts that God can be known through hearing his word. And finally, the Jewish faith tradition maintains that God offered, through his word, a way of life which is both meaningful and purposeful.
With God there is always a mystery
Take care, then, not to forget the covenant that the Lord your God concluded with you, and not to make for yourselves any sculptured image in any likeness, against which the Lord your God has enjoined you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, an impassioned God.
Deuteronomy 4.23-24
While many Jewish stories speak of God and God’s action in sacred history, it is important to stress that many Jews believe that with God there is always mystery, a certain unknowable aspect. The Jewish way of life invites followers to remember and imagine how God has acted in history, but also to keep that image from ever becoming more important than God’s true self. God is not contained within creation or history anymore than the pot holds the potter. Many Jews believe that this mystery is born out of the tension that lives between God as transcendent and God as thoroughly imminent. Transcendence refers to the other-ness of God, different from humans, separate in existence from all that appears to exist. But in this tradition, reverence for God also includes an awareness of God as close at hand, nearby, involved in human history in an abiding way. In the fleeting moments of life when human beings actually experience the presence of God, they experience kedushah or holiness. As David Ariel explains in What Do Jews Believe?, kedushah is “the experience of becoming momentarily aware of the impact of divine transcendence in the world.”
Thus, the whole of human experience, and particularly Jewish history, is the direct outgrowth of what might be described as God-experience. Judith Plaskow writes:
Again and again in the course of its existence, the Jewish people has felt itself called by and accountable to a power not of its own making, a power that seemed to direct its destiny and give meaning to its life. In both ordinary and extraordinary moments, it has found itself guided by a reality that both propelled and sustained it and to which gratitude and obedience seemed the only fitting response.
Judaism as culture and way of life
But to think of Judaism as solely a religion is to overlook its complexity. It is a culture, a way of life. It is a people. Imagine a mighty tree. Judaism can be likened to the tree and its complex root system and its many branches. There are four main roots in Jewish life and history: Faith, Observance, Culture and Nation. Each of these roots is expressed in the many branches of the Jewish heritage.
Faith
Faith, the first root, reaches back through history to the story of Abraham. Today, the faithful response is expressed in as many different ways as there are Jews. Remembering the analogy of the tree, each Jew may be said to be linked to the tap root of faith in one way or another, and each manifests that relationship according to upbringing, conscience and individual integrity. The diversity within Judaism is noteworthy, but its diversity grows from these common roots. There are many branches of the Jewish faith community, spreading from fundamentalism to ultra liberalism, with varying understandings and practices, but each member of each branch looks with faith to the God of history. Each branch also acknowledges that there is more to Jewish life and identity than faith alone.
Observance
Judaism also has a deep root of observance. Again, the ways and the means by which this observance is expressed may vary greatly from individual to individual, from household to household, but to be Jewish is to observe. This word, observance, has two important meanings. First, to observe means to attentively watch. To be Jewish means to be one who watches in order to see glimpses of God. To be Jewish is to possess a keen sense of “taking note” of what has occurred and what is now occurring in order to better understand and more fully participate in the significant moments of life. But to observe also has the meaning of adherence to or compliance with a certain set of agreements, rules and celebrations. Many Jews observe the holy days, holidays and festivals. Jews observe, to one degree or another, the laws that God gave to Moses. This notion of observance is central to Judaism because Jewish people find their lives to be so rich in ritual, so imbued with symbolism, so striking in complexity and in generosity, that they require observance in order to fully appreciate its magnitude. To be Jewish is to observe in both its meanings: to see and to adhere to the way things really are, to stand in the reality of the world as God made it in the Torah. This root gives to Jews a particular vantage point on all that has been, is and will be. Observance becomes both the present experience of Jewish people, and the historical and future imperative.
Culture
The third root of Judaism is its culture. Defining beauty as that which has unity, balance and a sense of integrity or completeness, to be Jewish is to have and maintain a truly beautiful culture. Stories, language and a connection to a particular land are central to this Jewish culture. The stories of Judaism live in the Torah and Talmud, but also in grandparents, mothers and fathers, uncles and cousins. Jews also search for and find the Midrash, a living tradition of stories, explanations and reflections on Jewish texts and traditions. Whether told formally in Jewish rituals and texts, or informally across a kitchen table, Jewish culture is supported and maintained through its stories. Hebrew is the language of the sacred texts and is still used in many Jewish ceremonies and celebrations, but Judaism is expressed in many languages, including Arabic and Yiddish.
Similarly, Israel plays an important role in Jewish culture. In much the same way that Hebrew is the language of the sacred texts, so Israel is the historical homeland of a sacred history. This attachment to the land now known as Israel is so important to the Jewish identity that it cannot be ignored. Modern Israel, given to a new Jewish nation in 1948, just after World War II, is an important indicator of the passionate love many Jews feel for that region of the world wherein God acted on their behalf. But lines on a map, while important, cannot define what is at stake for Jewish people. Honoring the sacred history of God is what matters. As Huston Smith describes Israel in The World’s Religions, “History cries out from every city and hillside, storied in the past.”
It is this history that is lived in, held in and remembered through the land that makes the territorial boundaries of such great importance to so many Jews.
Nation
But there is at least one more root, and that is the root of Nation. The Jewish identity draws strength from more than its faith, its observances and its culture. Judaism draws identity from its understanding of nationality. To be Jewish, wherever one lives, however one practices faith, is to see oneself as part of a people, all descended from Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca and Jacob, all part of the nation which God promised would come from them. This sense of national identity is an ancestral kinship and affiliation which unites all Jews regardless of their individual and often differing expressions of faith, culture and observance.
The richness of the Jewish tradition
But to end here would be to miss something of the richness of this tradition. Judaism is a faith which incorporates story, song and prayer into the daily lives of millions of individuals and families. It is a tradition that has produced highly intricate and ornate objects made of rare and fine materials for use in its religious celebrations. While not all Jews would describe themselves as religious, there are almost 13 million people who identify themselves as Jewish in the world toady. To sit at the Shabbat table, light the candles at the appointed times, drink from the Kiddush cup, regard the Law of Moses and the story of the unleavened bread, to identify oneself as Jewish is to be reminded of the many aspects of Jewish life. The feasting and fasting, the laughter and tears, the chanting voices of believers as they retell and reenact the sacred history of God, who made all the creation out of his words spoken into the void, all of these things and more, create only an image of the richness of the Jewish heritage, in much that one can only see expressions of God’s nature, and never the face of God himself. To be Jewish is to live in that rich wonder and profound faithfulness of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Moses and Miriam, all the prophets and faith-filled men and women who have gone before. To be Jewish is stand in a particular stream of human history which holds a living memory of the times in which God spoke, the ways in which God acted, and how a nation was born, grew, survived and continues even to this day.
Footnotes
- Genesis 12:13
- The Ten Commandments will be discussed in far greater detail in a lesson plan on moral codes and conduct.
- Deuteronomy 6:4 In Hebrew these words are called the Sh’ma, and they are spoken in every Jewish Shabbat service.
- To settle on any one image, to create a static picture of God from any one story, is to come dangerously close to breaking the commandment which prohibits the making of idols or graven images. This prohibition has informed what constitutes Judaic art in significant ways. While other religious traditions, such as Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, are rife with images of deities, Judaism and Islam consider it to be a sin to create such images. At the core of this prohibition is the compassion of God for the limitations of the human mind. Perhaps it is safe to say that human beings are too easily distracted and fixated on objects and images. God is not some “thing” or some one whose likeness can be captured. God is far too grand for that. To help the Jewish people remember that there is this undeniable distinction between any made thing and the one true Maker, images of God, be they paintings or sculpture, are expressly prohibited in the Commandments. Some scholars assert that even an idea of God, or about God can become too important. An idea can become an idol. It is to this end that Jewish scholars maintain an ongoing dialogue about the nature of God. For more information on this particular conception of idolatry and adherence to the commandment which prohibits it, see What Do Jews Believe?: the Spiritual Foundations of Judaism by David S. Ariel (1995, Schocken Books, New York.), Chapter One.
- p. 22 Ariel, David S. What do Jews Believe?: the Spiritual Foundations of Judaism. 1995 Schocken Books, New York. In the same paragraph from which this small quote was taken, the author continues: “Kedushah is the experience of creature consciousness, that is, of the relationship of the created being to the creator, of the transient and mortal to the eternal, of the partial to the whole, of the moment to eternity, of the good to the ideal, and of the perfectible to the perfect.” The rabbis who lived and studied during the Talmudic period, worked on the tension between transcendence and imminence. Perhaps one way to explore this tension is through analogy. For example, gravity is a law of science, but its effects are felt. The law of gravity is transcendent, but it effects are imminent. So, too, God is the transcendent reality, but the effects of that reality are imminent. Given this analogy, it is possible to perceive that all of life is Kedushah, for all of life is imbued with the transcendent reality of God, and every step is made in the effects of that reality. Human beings are only fleetingly aware of gravity, even though gravity dictates and constrains much of human experience.
- p. 33 Plaskow, Judith. Standing Again At Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. 1990, HarperCollins, New York.
- The three major movements within Judaism are Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. There are others, including a strong mystical movement.
- Many of these are explored in the art objects, stories and lesson plans which accompany this text.
- This definition of beauty is loosely based on the writings of Jacques Maritain, in his studies of the medieval scholastics. Beauty, as stated in the first and fourth definition found in the American Heritage Dictionary, is “a pleasing quality associated with harmony of form or color, excellence of craftsmanship, truthfulness, originality or other, of unspecified property” and “a part, characteristic, or attribute that arouses…delight, a specific excellence or grace.” Ways to discuss and define beauty are explored in the lesson plans which focus on study of particular religious art objects included in these materials.
- p. 313 Smith, Huston. The World’s Religions