History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 13
13.1 Introductory Remarks.
Judaism belongs to the category of ethnic religions – that is, those that exist predominantly within the framework of a single people. In this case, that people is the Jewish people. Throughout the long history of the Jewish people and of Judaism, periods of active proselytism have been exceedingly rare. Judaism does not conduct systematic missionary activity and does not seek to extend its faith beyond the bounds of the Jewish people. One of the few historical exceptions, in which a large non–Jewish community professed Judaism, was the period of the Khazar Khaganate.
In large part, this is conditioned by the belief in the divine election of the Jewish people, or, as Jews themselves put it, by the conviction that the “yoke of the Torah” (ol Torah) has been laid upon the Jews, and in this lies their distinctiveness. The yoke of the Torah does not rest upon the other peoples. “Had the Almighty wished that everyone be a Jew, He would have had the power to make it so,” a certain rabbi once remarked.
The history of Judaism is conventionally divided into several stages:
Ancient Judaism: Encompasses the early history of the Jewish people, from the election of Abraham to the entry into the Promised Land, as well as the era of the First Temple up to 586 BCE, when the Temple was destroyed and the Babylonian Exile began.
Second Temple Judaism: Up to the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE.
Rabbinic (Normative) Judaism: Also known as post–Temple Judaism, conventionally reckoned from the First Jewish–Roman War down to our own time.
Naturally, what concerns us above all is normative, contemporary Judaism. Since the roots of contemporary Judaism reach back into antiquity, however, we shall inevitably have occasion to touch upon individual themes of ancient Judaism.
13.2 The Chosen People.
The concept of the chosen people in Judaism is, of course, the central religious idea. Judaism is precisely the life of the Jewish people. For this reason, any textbook on Judaism presupposes some acquaintance with Jewish history. In Jewish literature, Judaism is often not defined as a religion, and is even contrasted with the very concept of “religion.” On the contrary, it is emphasized that Judaism is a broader concept than religion. Judaism is the life of the Jews, “from the moment a Jew opens his eyes in the morning to the moment a Jew opens his eyes [the next] morning.” That is, it is a holistic concept encompassing the whole of Jewish life.
An equivalent term to chosenness is the concept of the yoke of the Torah. The yoke of the Torah rests upon the Jewish people. In other words, Jews are obliged to fulfill the Torah; indeed, a Jew is precisely the one who fulfills the Torah, and in Jewish literature one encounters such a definition as: “Abraham was the first to undergo giyur” (the process of conversion to Judaism).
Jews believe that, unlike all the other peoples of the earth, who arose through the natural evolution of ethnic groups, the Jewish people came into being through direct divine intervention. Without retelling the biblical narratives, let us say briefly: at a certain historical moment, from the perspective of Judaism, the Almighty chose a single individual, Abraham, from whom He brought forth the Jewish people.
The principal questions surrounding the election of Abraham concern causes and purposes—that is: why does the Almighty choose Abraham in particular, rather than someone else? What was it that distinguished Abraham from his contemporaries? And to what end is Abraham chosen and the Jewish people brought into being? None of these questions receives a direct answer in the Torah, but they do receive answers in the Jewish oral tradition.
There is a Christian answer to the question of the purpose of the election of the Jewish people. It is this: that the Jewish people are chosen for the sake of the Incarnation, so that there might be born in their midst a pure heart capable of saying to the Almighty, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” Judaism, however, does not accept Christian messianic ideas, does not acknowledge the Incarnation, and consequently has its own answers to the questions posed above.
Here is how the election of Abraham is interpreted by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin: “G-d appears to Abraham and commands: ‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, into a land that I will shew thee. And I will make of thee a great nation…’ (12:1—2). The Torah nowhere explains why G-d chose Abraham for this mission. Jewish tradition, however, explains it by the fact that he was the first monotheist since the days of Noah. A Jewish legend relates that Abraham’s father, Terah, kept a shop selling idols. Once, when his father had gone out and Abraham had been left in charge of the shop, he took a hammer and smashed all the idols except the largest, then placed the hammer in the hand of the surviving idol. When his angry father demanded an explanation, Abraham replied that the great idol had grown angry with the others and smashed them. ‘You know perfectly well that these idols cannot move,’ shouted his father. ‘If they cannot defend themselves,’ Abraham answered, ‘then we are above them. Why, then, should we worship them?’ G-d made clear that He expected great deeds from Abraham and his descendants: ‘For Abraham must become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in them. For I have chosen him, that he may command his sons and his household after him to keep the way of the L-rd, doing what is good and just’ (18:18—19).
Abraham’s legacy was ethical monotheism—the belief that there is one G-d for all humankind, and that His chief concern is that human beings behave morally” [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, pp. 16–17].
This story, and the view expressed by the well-known rabbi, are typical of Jewish literature. The point is the following: the election of Abraham takes place at roughly the beginning of the second millennium BCE, while the giving of the Torah occurs only in the thirteenth century—that is, some seven hundred years after Abraham. Accordingly, Abraham did not know the Ten Commandments. Yet by smashing all the idols save one, he confessed before his father his faith in the one God, giving his father to understand that the Almighty is one. And by asking, “Why, then, should we worship them?” he confessed the second commandment of the Decalogue: namely, “thou shalt not make for thyself any graven image, and thou shalt not worship it.” That is, Abraham rejected idolatry. Seven hundred years before the Ten Commandments, the young Abraham had already confessed two of the most fundamental.
Indeed, Jews believe that after Noah, Abraham was the first true monotheist, and that this is precisely why he was chosen—for this and for the sake of this. From this springs the Jewish understanding of chosenness: the Jewish people exists in order to bring true monotheism into the world. Or rather ethical monotheism—that is, not monotheism alone, but monotheism conjoined with morality. In this sense Jews call themselves a nation of priests and a chosen people. As the same Rabbi Joseph Telushkin writes, “the world owes to the Jews the idea of one G-d.”
13.3 “The Yoke of the Torah” and the Children of Noah.
The word Torah is a verbal noun derived from the verb “to instruct,” which may be rendered as “instruction” or “law.” The Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament, also called the Pentateuch—Humash. Within the Pentateuch itself, “Torah” frequently refers to a specific divine prescription, a particular commandment, or the totality of laws relating to a given subject—for example, “the law (torah) of the burnt offering” (Lev. 6:9).
Orthodox Judaism holds that the whole of the Torah was revealed to Moshe Rabbenu (Moses) and recorded by him on Mount Sinai. Maimonides (Rambam) said: “I believe with perfect faith that the entire Torah now in our possession is the very Torah given to our teacher Moshe, peace be upon him. I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be replaced, and that there will be no other Torah from the Creator, blessed be His Name.” The Torah states that the manner in which God communicated with Moses differed from that in which all other prophets received revelation: the other prophets were deprived of their ordinary human senses, whereas Moshe alone received revelation while in full possession of his faculties, “mouth to mouth… and manifestly, not in dark sayings”; “and the Lord spoke with Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.” Orthodox Judaism rejects the historical-critical approach to the Torah and any scientific-philological analysis of the text. The Masoretic text is accepted as the sole authoritative and authorized version of the Pentateuch.
Already in the earliest period, the word Torah was applied to law “within the Torah”—that is, to its prescriptions and commandments, of which traditional Judaism counts 613.
The English names of the books of the Torah derive from the Greek, whereas in the Jewish tradition the books are named after their first significant words, namely:
Bereshit (“In the beginning”);
Shemot (“Names”);
Vayikra (“And He called”);
Bamidbar (“In the wilderness”);
Devarim (“Words”).
The yoke of the Torah is understood in Judaism as the duty of the Jewish people before the Almighty. This duty consists in proclaiming and observing the Torah; however, this yoke does not extend to the other peoples of the earth, the so-called Noahides, the children of Noah, upon whom only the Noahide commandments are laid. Observance of the Torah is not a necessary condition for entry into the World to Come, but it is required of a Jew, while non-Jews are not obliged to observe all 613 commandments of the Torah.
This yoke also defines the mutual relationship between the Jews and God. Jews are bound to keep His law, for which He preserves them, or, conversely, punishes them—and more severely than any other people, because the yoke has been laid upon them and not upon others.
In this lies the essence of the covenant, the agreement (brit) between the Jews and the Almighty. A well-known midrash relates that when Israel prepared to receive the Torah at Sinai, the Lord said to the Jews: “I am giving you My Torah. Name to Me those who will stand surety that you will keep it, and I shall give it to you.” The Israelites proposed that the Almighty accept their patriarchs as guarantors. But God refused. Then they offered the prophets. Again He refused. Finally the Jews said: “Accept our children as guarantors for us.” And G-d replied: “They are indeed reliable guarantors. For their sake I give you the Torah” (Shir HaShirim Rabbah, 1:24) [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, p. 37].
13.4 The Torah for Jews and for Non-Jews.
As indicated above, the Torah is given both to Jews and to non-Jews; however, only of the Jews is its full observance required. More precisely, the situation is as follows. The fullest observance of the Torah is incumbent upon the priests; next come ordinary Jews; and finally the children of Noah. With the destruction of the Temple, however, the priestly Torah has lost its immediate relevance.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch writes in his Nineteen Letters on Judaism:
“To the people of Israel it has been given to safeguard the Torah of the Lord among the nations of the world, as a priest within his people; to safeguard it as a holy nation, to stand fast in this holiness and not be drawn aside onto the path of other peoples. The Torah and the fulfillment of God’s will constitute the foundation of the life of the Jewish people, the soil beneath its feet, and the meaning of its existence. The nationhood of this people does not, therefore, depend on changing circumstances and is not conditioned by them. The people of Israel is called to occupy its unique place among the nations and to show to the whole world that God is Lord of the world, for the good of all.”
Rabbi Yoel Schwartz writes: “At Mount Sinai God appeared before His people Israel with the intention of giving instruction to the whole world. The entire body of instruction—that is, the Torah—is divided into three parts. The first contains the teaching applicable to all humankind, ‘the Torah of the descendants of Noah.’ Beyond this, the Torah contains instruction intended exclusively for the Jewish people, who are to serve as an example for humankind as a nation of priests. To this end, Jews are given additional, highly specific commandments. In addition to these two parts, the Torah contains a further section for the priests from among the Jews, who must stand on a yet higher spiritual level than the rest of the Jews, since they perform the service in the Temple. On the whole, the Torah, as the instruction of God, is given to all human society, to each person according to his nature and his role on earth.”
Maimonides writes: “Anyone who, acknowledging the Seven Commandments, strives to fulfill them belongs to the righteous of the other nations and has a share in the World to Come. Such a person fulfills the commandments because God included them in the Torah, having declared through our teacher Moses that they too are given to the descendants of Noah.”
The The Seven Laws of Noah, which according to the Talmud are incumbent upon all humankind, are these:
The prohibition of idolatry in all its forms, and of everything connected with belief in idols and their worship.
The prohibition of blasphemy.
The prohibition of murder and suicide.
The prohibition of adultery.
The prohibition of theft.
The prohibition against eating a limb torn from a living animal.
The obligation to establish a just judicial system.
These Seven Commandments have received extensive commentary in Judaism; thus, for example, “adultery” is understood to include any form of sexual perversion, as well as sexual relations with a married woman.
On the whole, the logic of the Torah for Jews and non-Jews consists in this: that the acceptance of Judaism is not a necessary condition for salvation. The World to Come, as Maimonides notes, is open to all, and the righteousness of non-Jews is righteousness no less than that of Jews. The yoke of the Torah, however, rests upon the Jews in particular. That is, a non-Jew is not obligated—and in some cases is not even permitted—to observe the Jewish commandments.
An important principle here is that even if a non-Jew should begin to fulfill the law of Judaism, he will not receive a greater reward thereby. ” Greater is the one who is commanded [to do a mitzvah] and performs it than the one who is not commanded and performs it”, declares the venerable Talmudic maxim (Kiddushin 31a). Consequently, a non-Jew who observes the principles of Judaism gains nothing thereby. Only if he undergoes giyur, the process of conversion to Judaism—which involves lengthy instruction and a rigorous examination—will the yoke of the Torah voluntarily come to rest upon his shoulders.
13.5 The Jewish Temple and the Synagogue.
Normative, or post-Temple, Judaism emerges after the destruction of the Second Temple and two devastating Jewish wars. The loss of the Temple and of the priesthood brought about profound changes in Judaism and gave rise to a wave of eschatological and messianic expectations.
“According to the biblical description, the Temple of Shlomo was approximately 60 meters long, 30 meters wide, and 20 meters high. The king spared no expense in its construction, importing precious cedar from Hiram, king of Tyre, and commanding that the foundations be laid of enormous hewn stones. All Shlomo’s subjects were obliged to labor on the building, which was supervised by some 3,300 officials. Shlomo incurred such heavy debts that he was forced to pay off Hiram with twenty cities in the Galilee” [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, p. 63].
The Temple was the sole place of direct communion with God, the place where sacrifices could be offered, the “House of God.” The idea of the Temple was this: that the omnipresent Lord dwells everywhere, yet not everywhere is He at home, for the world does not live by His laws. The Jerusalem Temple was the exception; in it everything corresponded to God’s will and His law, and so this place was called His house. It was here alone that direct sacrifices were offered to the Almighty, which constituted the principal form of worship until the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians (586 BCE).
Seventy years after the Babylonian devastation, the Second Temple was built on the same site as the First, and the sacrifices were resumed. In the first century BCE, King Herod substantially expanded the Temple precincts. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70, following the suppression of the First Jewish Revolt.
To illustrate the significance of the Jewish Temple, Telushkin cites the monologue of a Hasidic rebbe from the play The Dybbuk:
“G-d’s world is vast and holy. The most holy land in the world is the Land of Israel. In the Land of Israel the most holy city is Jerusalem. The holiest place in Jerusalem was the Temple, and the holiest place in the Temple was the Holy of Holies…
There are seventy nations in the world. The most holy nation is the people of Israel. The most holy among the tribes of Israel are the Levites. Among the Levites the most holy are the kohanim. Among the priests the most holy is the High Priest…
There are 354 days in the year (the lunar year). Of these the most holy are the festivals. Above them stands the holiness of the Sabbath. Among the Sabbaths the most holy is the Day of Atonement, the Sabbath of Sabbaths…
There are seventy languages in the world. The most sacred of them is Hebrew. Holier still in this language is the holy Torah, and in the Torah the most holy are the Ten Commandments. In the Ten Commandments the holiest words are the Name of G-d…
And once a year, at one appointed hour, these four highest values of the world unite with one another. This is Yom Kippur, when the High Priest enters the Holy of Holies and there pronounces the Name of G-d. And because this hour is immeasurably holy and awesome, it is also the hour of greatest danger—not only for the High Priest, but for all Israel. For if at this hour, G-d forbid, a false or sinful thought should arise in the mind of the High Priest, the whole world would be destroyed…” [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, p. 64].
The synagogue differs fundamentally from the Temple. Most scholars hold that the first synagogues appeared during the Babylonian Exile, after the destruction of the First Temple. The Jews who had been carried off to Babylon began to gather in one another’s houses to pray together and to study the Torah. Later, synagogues began to be built as separate structures dedicated to communal prayer and Torah study. “Synagogue” is a Greek word meaning “assembly.” Other terms are also used—for example, shul. Shul (a Yiddish word) means both “school” and “synagogue,” because Orthodox synagogues have always served as centers not only of prayer but also of learning.
Relatively recently, some Orthodox Jews have begun to pray in shtiblekh. A shtibl is somewhat smaller than a synagogue. Typically it is a private dwelling converted for synagogue use. Many shtiblekh are under the spiritual direction of Hasidic rebbes and serve as their private courts of assembly.
At present, synagogues are the only houses of prayer. They are required for the holding of a minyan, the obligatory quorum of ten adult men for prayer. Among Jewish prayers there are those that may be recited alone, and others that require a minyan. Jews say that one who prays alone prays selfishly, for himself, whereas the minyan prays on behalf of all. The gathering of a minyan requires a synagogue.
A synagogue may take any architectural form, but a number of rules are observed in every synagogue:
A mechitza (partition) separates men and women; in most Orthodox synagogues, men cannot see the women during the service, and women take no part in the service.
The Torah is read from the bimah (raised platform) located in the midst of the congregation. When the Torah is read here, the reader faces the same direction as the congregation—toward the aron kodesh.
The aron kodesh—the holy ark in which the Torah scrolls are kept. It determines the direction of prayer, and is traditionally set against the wall that faces Jerusalem.
The absence of depictions of human beings and animals, as a rejection of idolatry. In rare cases, rabbis permit partial depictions of certain animals—for example, a lion.
A seven-branched candelabrum, the symbol of the menorah and one of the principal symbols of Judaism, is present in some form in every synagogue.
Every synagogue contains Sifrei Torah, the liturgical Torah scrolls. According to the reckoning of the Talmud, more than twenty requirements are imposed upon such a scroll. Only a scroll that meets all these requirements is kosher (fit). The Shulchan Arukh sets out rules governing the writing of each letter; the law regulates the length of the lines, the length and width of the parchment, the number of lines, and the size of the spaces and margins. If even one of the twenty conditions is violated, the scroll may not be used in prayer.
Torah scrolls likewise may not be used if even a single letter in them is damaged. Such scrolls are corrected; if a scroll cannot be corrected, it is buried in the earth in a Jewish cemetery, in an unmarked grave, in the presence of ten adult men. They may not be disposed of in any other way.
13.6 The Destruction of the Temple and the Formation of the New Judaism.
In the year 66, the last Roman procurator stole a large quantity of silver from the Jerusalem Temple. In response to this act of sacrilege, the outraged Jewish populace launched the Great Revolt against Roman rule that same year. At the beginning of the new era, a new group had arisen among the Jews: the Zealots (Heb. kana’im). The Zealots had actively resisted Rome for more than sixty years before the Great Revolt broke out. At first it met with success, and the Jews succeeded in overcoming two Roman garrisons, the one stationed in Jerusalem and the Syrian detachment of Cestius Gallus. After a time, however, heavy losses began. The Romans returned with sixty thousand heavily armed soldiers. The first blow fell upon the most active center of rebellion, the Galilee. Some 100,000 Jews were killed or sold into slavery. The subsequent course of events brought enormous losses to the Jewish people.
All of this was compounded by internal conflict and civil war. The Jewish elites, including the priestly class, were heavily Hellenized and were perceived by the Jews as traitors. In the end, by the year 68, the Jewish nobility had been destroyed by their own countrymen. In the summer of 70, the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem. Soon afterward the Second Temple too was destroyed.
In the midst of these terrible events a new Judaism was taking shape, one which had to reform itself in the absence of the Temple and the priesthood.
Already on the eve of the fall of Jerusalem, one of the Jewish rabbis had managed to come to an agreement with the Roman authorities and thereby attempted to preserve what remained of the Jewish religion. This was Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai. During the siege of Jerusalem, in order to prevent the inhabitants from surrendering, the Zealots had forbidden anyone to leave the city on pain of death. Rabbi Yochanan resolved to leave besieged Jerusalem, and with the help of his disciples staged his own illness and death. A dead rabbi could not, by law, remain within the city limits, and so he was carried out through the walls to the cemetery.
Yochanan ben Zakkai went to Vespasian to surrender and negotiate. In exchange for his surrender, Vespasian offered to grant the rabbi one request, and the teacher said: “Give me Yavneh and its sages.” In other words, he asked permission to found a Jewish academy (yeshivah) in the town of Yavneh. Vespasian agreed.
It was precisely in this academy that the foundations of contemporary Orthodox Judaism were laid—a Judaism capable of continuing its existence without the Temple, the priesthood, or sacrifices. Joseph Telushkin assesses these events as follows: “When the crushing defeat became reality, when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, many Jews fell into the deepest despair, convinced that G-d had forsaken them—but not Rabbi Yochanan: he was too busy establishing a new center of Jewish life in Yavneh. When one disciple expressed despair over the destruction of the Temple—since it was no longer possible to offer sacrifices and atone for sins—Rabbi Yochanan consoled him: ‘My son, do not grieve. We shall make another atonement, no less powerful… deeds of loving- kindness, as G-d says: For I desire piety, not sacrifices’ (Hosea 6:6)” [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, p. 109].
To this day, Orthodox Jews pray three times daily for the restoration of the Temple and the rite of sacrifice. The destruction of the Temple was the most powerful shock to have transformed Judaism. The Talmud tells of Jews who plunged into despair, became ascetics, and renounced meat and wine—an attitude uncharacteristic of traditional Judaism.
At the same time it must be noted that of the many Jewish sects that existed at the turn of the era, essentially only the Pharisaic survived, and the Judaism that we know today—without sacrifices, with belief in the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead—represents the development of Pharisaic religious ideas.
The next great shock to shape contemporary Judaism was the Bar Kokhba Revolt and the definitive loss, for nearly 2,000 years, of the Land of Israel. In essence one may say that of the principal “objects” of the covenant between the Jews and the Almighty, only the Torah, the Law, remained. The rest—the Temple and the sacrifices, the Promised Land, and the people themselves, who had been scattered into diaspora—were lost. In large measure for these reasons, the Law, the Torah, which had occupied a central place in Jewish life even before this, expanded and came to fill the whole of Jewish religious life.
The Bar Kokhba Revolt broke out in 132 and lasted until 135. Many prominent rabbis of that time recognized in this man the Messiah (mashiach), among them the most famous of them all, Rabbi Akiva. The underlying causes of the Bar Kokhba Revolt are not fully clear. Certain Talmudic passages report that the Romans had launched a campaign for the eradication of Judaism, declaring circumcision and the study of the Torah to be capital crimes.
The Galilee took no part in the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and after its suppression the Jews of the Galilee were permitted by the Roman authorities to continue practicing Judaism as before. After the Romans crushed Judaea, where the revolt had taken place, the Galilee became the new center of Jewish life. It was there that the Oral Torah began to be codified; there the Mishnah appeared, laying the foundation of the Talmud.
The Bar Kokhba Revolt, like the First Revolt, was initially successful but ended in terrible bloodshed. In the course of these two revolts, some one million Jews were killed. Still more devastating were the cultural consequences. Israel as a state was abolished; the Jewish Temple was definitively forbidden to be rebuilt; in its place the Romans resolved to erect a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus.
Summing up these events, Telushkin writes: “By the time the Romans had finished suppressing the revolt, half the population of Judaea had been killed. After the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135, the number of non- Jews in the country exceeded the number of Jews. The Jews who survived the war were in a desperate condition: tens of thousands of men and women were sold into slavery; Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem” [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, p. 116].
13.7 The Written Torah and the Oral Torah.
In Judaism, alongside the concept of the Torah, or Written Torah, there exists the concept of the Oral Torah, which in essence performs the function of sacred tradition; it represents the codification of the oral tradition.
Scripture in Judaism (the Tanakh) is divided into three parts:
Torah—the Pentateuch.
Nevi’im—the Prophets.
Ketuvim—the Writings.
The structure of the Written Torah has already been given above. The second section of the Tanakh, Nevi’im, comprises nine books tracing the history of the Jews and their faith from the death of Moses and the entry into Canaan (ca. 1200 BCE) to the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians. The third section, the Ketuvim, is heterogeneous in character. Some of its books are historical: Ezra and Nehemiah, for example, recount the return of the Jews to Israel after the Babylonian captivity, and I and II Chronicles provide a survey of Jewish history. The Ketuvim also includes the Tehillim (Psalms), the Book of Job, and the Five Scrolls (Megillot)—the Song of Songs, Ruth, Eichah (Lamentations), Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), and Esther.
The Oral Torah, however, is not part of the biblical canon, yet it constitutes the principal (though formally auxiliary) foundation of normative Judaism.
The point is that the Pentateuch, as has been noted, contains a great many commandments—613 mitzvot of the Torah, to be exact—but offers no commentary or guidance concerning their application. For example, the Torah issues a call to marriage: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Bereshit 2:24). Yet it specifies no marriage rite. Or take commandments such as “an eye for an eye.” These require a precise sphere of application, and without commentary may degenerate into barbarism.
Here is how Rabbi Joseph Telushkin explains the necessity of the oral tradition: “Without the oral tradition, some of the Torah’s ordinances would be unintelligible. The first paragraph of the Shema prescribes: ‘And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes’ (Devarim 6:4—8). ‘Bind them for a sign upon thy hand,’ commands the final verse. Bind what? The Torah does not say. ‘And they shall be as frontlets between thy eyes.’ What is to serve as frontlets? The Hebrew word for ‘frontlets’—totafot—appears three times in the Torah, always in this context (Shemot 13:16; Devarim 6:8; 11:18). Only from the Oral Law do we learn that a Jew is to bind upon his hand and his head tefillin (phylacteries)” [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, p. 118].
Although the venerable rabbi’s words are open to challenge—one might ask why these passages did not lend themselves to allegorical interpretation—he nevertheless expresses the Jewish position clearly. It is in the oral tradition that we find all those features of normative Judaism that are absent from the Bible.
It is held in Judaism that Moshe Rabbenu already possessed a correct understanding of the laws of the Torah and of their juridical subtleties. He passed this understanding on to other sages, who in turn supplemented and developed it. Life does not stand still, and each era brings new problems to which the mitzvot of the Torah must be applied. The same holds for ritual.
The understanding of the Torah is dynamic, and in the time that elapsed between Moses and the Middle Ages many interpretations of the Torah arose. The sum of these interpretations and understandings constitutes the Oral Torah, which by tradition was not committed to writing until the very moment when the existence of the Jewish people came under threat, and it seemed likely that the Romans and the rebel Zealots would simply kill the teachers who preserved the oral tradition.
After the bloody revolts, the Jews faced the necessity of writing down the sum of the Oral Torah. Such, in broad terms, is how Judaism accounts for the emergence of the two most important collections of texts—the Mishnah and the Talmud.
13.8 The Mishnah.
The word “Mishnah” (Heb. “repetition”) is a biblical word, found in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:7): “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy sons, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”
The Mishnah is the first attempt to commit the oral tradition to writing and to codify it. It was compiled and codified at the end of the second and beginning of the third century CE by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi.
In its arrangement, the Mishnah bears the marks of having once been a text intended not for reading but for memorization. Its laws are presented not in systematic but in associative order. The Mishnah contains 63 tractates in all, which set forth Jewish law systematically—in contrast to the Torah, in which the commandments are scattered throughout the text. Rabbi Yehudah gathered and arranged Jewish law by subject. The result is six orders, containing 63 tractates (originally 60, since three were combined into one).
The first order, Zera’im (Seeds), is devoted to the agricultural laws of ancient Israel. The most famous tractate of this order, however, is Berakhot (“Blessings”). In fact, it says nothing about agriculture, but gathers together the laws of various blessings and the times for their recitation.
The second order, Mo’ed (Appointed Times). This order contains tractates devoted to the festivals (twelve in all): to Pesach (Pesachim), Purim (Megillah), Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Yoma), and others. A special place is occupied by the tractate Shabbat. The prescriptions contained in the 24 chapters of Shabbat are considerably more detailed than those of the Torah.
The third order, Nashim (Women), is devoted to the institutions of marriage (Kiddushin) and divorce (Gittin). It consists of seven tractates.
The fourth order, Nezikin (Damages), contains ten tractates on Jewish civil and criminal law—although one of them contains no laws at all. This is Avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”). Here are recorded the most famous sayings and statements of the sages.
The fifth order, Kodashim (Holy Things), contains the rules governing animal sacrifices, as well as various aspects of Temple life. It consists of eleven tractates.
The sixth order, Tohorot (Purities), is devoted to the laws of ritual purity and impurity. It consists of twelve tractates.
This structure, along with the tractates themselves, is largely preserved in the subsequent development of Jewish law—for example, in the Talmud.
13.9 The Talmud.
The Talmud (literally “study”) represents the next stage in the expansion and development of the Oral Torah. Over 200 years of reflection upon the Mishnah, numerous disputes arose among the Jewish rabbis, which lay at the foundation of a new corpus, and around the year 400 the Jerusalem (Palestinian) Talmud appeared. About a century later, an expanded and more complete version appeared—the Babylonian Talmud (mid-sixth century)—since by that time all the Jewish communities of the Near East had been consolidated into two large ones, the Jerusalem and the Babylonian.
The Babylonian corpus is more extensive than the Jerusalem; for this reason the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli) became the most authoritative collection of the Oral Law. The Talmud is for the most part written in various dialects of Aramaic, with the inclusion of a great many Hebrew words and concepts.
The Talmudic conversations and disputes are all presented in the same format. First a law of the Mishnah is quoted; it is followed by the discussion of the teachers concerning its content. These discussions of the sages are the Gemara; together with the Mishnah they constitute the Talmud. On the whole, the Talmud is not a catalogue of detailed prescriptions but a record of the discussions of various teachers about the law. The Talmud preserves both the opinion of the majority and the opinion of the minority. Indeed, the Talmud today might call to mind an internet forum, with a thread heading and numerous comments beneath it.
The Talmud does not provide ready-made rulings. It is held that the law is a living thing, and therefore a good rabbi is not one who has merely memorized many volumes of prescriptions, but one who knows the discussions of the teachers concerning particular norms. Knowing these discussions, he must be able to apply them correctly to the concrete situation that has arisen and requires resolution. In other words, there are no ready answers; though many questions are resolved in the same way, life presents many circumstances that are atypical.
The sages whose opinions are recorded in the Mishnah are called tanna’im (Aramaic, “teachers”); the sages cited in the Gemara (that is, in the Talmud) are amora’im (“interpreters” or “expositors”). The Talmud is divided in content into two parts: halakhah, which is law in the most direct sense of the word (analogous to Islamic sharia), and aggadah, the portion of the Talmud containing ethical reflections, medical texts, and folklore.
The orders of the Talmud follow the six orders of the Mishnah.
There are other works of the Oral Torah as well. We mention only the Mishneh Torah (literally “Repetition of the Law”)—Rambam’s systematization of Jewish teaching, published in 1180—and the Shulchan Arukh (literally “the Set Table”), a work composed by Rabbi Joseph ben Ephraim Karo (1488–1575). In it Karo attempted to bring together all the rulings of the Law. Abridged versions appeared later—the Kitzur Shulchan Arukh.
13.10 The Mitzvot.
The Talmudic tradition teaches that the Torah contains 613 commandments, though the Torah itself nowhere specifies this number. Over a long period of reflection and commentary upon the mitzvot, various typologies have emerged. Thus, for example, they are divided into the positive and the prohibitive, and into mitzvot toward God and mitzvot toward one’s fellow. More than half the mitzvot of the Torah lost their immediate relevance with the destruction of the Temple, since they related principally to Temple sacrifice.
Talmudic commentary on the mitzvot of the Torah presupposes a multi-layered approach to interpretation. For example, we find that the commandment “an eye for an eye” is, among other things, a mitzvah of justice as against revenge. Since revenge always demands more than the harm caused—a man possessed by vengeance for a knocked-out eye wishes to knock out both his enemy’s eyes, or more—the commandment “eye for an eye” stands as a restraint upon revenge and rage.
The matter of forgiveness for sin is likewise instructive. In Judaism there is no confession and there are no atoning sacrifices; the motif of repentance from sin is nonetheless present. The customary days of repentance are the ten days between the Jewish New Year and the end of Yom Kippur—Aseret Yemei Teshuvah (the Ten Days of Repentance).
“A repentant sinner must strive to do good by the same means by which he sinned… By that with which he sinned, by that he must do good. If the feet were guilty of the sin, let them run to the good. If the mouth has spoken falsehood, let it speak wisdom. The cruel hands must perform good deeds… The one who caused strife must bring peace” (Rabbeinu Yonah of Gerona, 13th c.).
According to Jewish tradition, however, there exist sins that cannot be forgiven—or, more precisely, whose forgiveness cannot be assured. These include above all sins committed against one’s fellow. The Talmud teaches: “The Day of Atonement atones for sins between man and G-d, but not for sins between man and man, until the injured party has received redress” (Mishnah, Yoma 8:9). Thus at least one transgression—murder—cannot be atoned for by repentance, since it is impossible to redress the harm caused.
Strictly speaking, this category also includes, in part, all cases in which it is not possible to ask forgiveness directly of the one against whom the sin was committed. At least two further transgressions—the deception of the public and the defamation of a good name—come close to being unforgivable. For rumors once set loose cannot be recalled, even if a retraction is issued in time.
This peculiarity of Jewish law has unexpected consequences for those Jews who believe in reincarnation, gilgul (gilgul neshamot / transmigration of souls). Belief in gilgul is not obligatory, but many Kabbalistic rabbis spoke of it. Reincarnation in Judaism is not akin to the conceptions of samsara in Hinduism or Buddhism. Judaism is a biblical tradition and holds that a human being is created once and will be raised once, and likewise believes in the providence of God. Nevertheless, some medieval rabbis explained gilgul and its necessity precisely by reference to unforgiven sins between people. The Almighty is merciful and forgives the sinner. A number of sins, however, as it were compel a person to be reborn and to expiate them anew.
13.11 The Thirteen Principles of Faith of Maimonides (Rambam).
In Judaism there is no creed as such, nor is there any strict dogmatics. There is, however, a set of principles formulated by the medieval philosopher and Jewish teacher Maimonides (Rambam, 1138–1204) in his commentary on the Mishnah. In his Treatise on the Resurrection of the Dead, Maimonides laments that he had met people educated in the Talmud who did not know whether God has a body, and so resolved that a binding brief statement of the faith was needed. He set out thirteen principles, which are today often printed in Jewish prayer books, but which may be reduced to four: belief in God, in the Torah, in the resurrection of the dead, and in the Mashiach. Let us cite them all:
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His Name, creates and rules over all created things. He alone has done, does, and will do all that is done.
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is One, and that there is no oneness in any way like His, and that He alone is our G-d, who was, is, and shall be.
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is incorporeal, that He is not subject to any of the properties of matter, and that He has no likeness whatsoever.
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is the first and the last.
I believe with perfect faith that to the Creator, blessed be His Name, alone is it proper to pray—to Him and to no other.
I believe with perfect faith that all the words of the prophets are true.
I believe with perfect faith that the prophecy of Moshe Rabbenu, peace be upon him, is true, and that he is the greatest of all the prophets, both those who preceded him and those who came after him.
I believe with perfect faith that the entire Torah we now possess is the same that was given to Moshe Rabbenu, peace be upon him, by the Almighty.
I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be exchanged, and that there will be no other Torah from the Creator, blessed be His Name.
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His Name, knows all the deeds of human beings and all their thoughts, as it is said: “He fashions the hearts of them all; He understands all their deeds.”
I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His Name, rewards those who keep His commandments and punishes those who transgress them.
I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Mashiach, and though he tarry, I will nonetheless await him every day.
I believe with perfect faith that the dead will be restored to life when the Creator, blessed be His Name, so wills—may His Name be exalted forever and ever.
13.12 The Mashiach.
A special place among these thirteen principles is occupied by the affirmation of obligatory faith in the Mashiach (the Anointed One). Judaism affirms five fundamentally important things concerning the Mashiach:
He will come from the line of King David;
He will gain sovereignty over the Land of Israel;
He will gather the Jews from the four corners of the earth;
He will restore full observance of the Torah;
He will bring peace to the world.
The five points listed above are an obligatory component of Jewish faith in the Messiah. Over the long history of Judaism, however, several images of the Mashiach have appeared in Jewish apocryphal and Talmudic literature. There is the image of the heavenly Messiah from the Book of Enoch (37—71), where the Messiah is called “the Son of Man,” similar to the angels, seated in heaven beside the “Ancient of Days” (66:1). His name was uttered before the Lord before the appearance of the sun and the signs of the zodiac, before the stars and the heavens were created (48:3, 6).
Although individual representatives of Judaism expressed similar ideas about a pre-eternal or heavenly Mashiach (the “Revelation” of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi and the “Midrash Konen” speak of his pre-eternal existence in paradise, which does not, however, prevent his being in those same tractates of the line of David), on the whole this image did not become traditional.
In place of the heavenly Mashiach we encounter an earthly image of the Messiah. And although even in the Talmud he displays unusual traits—for example, the notion that the Messiah is already born but not revealed, that is, he may already exist but not yet be manifested—still, faith in the Mashiach and in the messianic age is fairly traditional and accords with the five points indicated above. To these may also be added the widespread Jewish belief in the return of the Temple; in what form, however, the Temple will return—as a physical reality or as an eschatological, mystical reality—is a matter of debate.
13.13 Ashkenazim and Sephardim.
Jewish society is divided into Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Ashkenaz is the Jewish designation for Germany, and Sefarad for Spain. Both branches belong to Orthodox Judaism, profess the same doctrinal tenets, and adhere to a single Oral Torah, but differ chiefly in the order of liturgical prayers and in particular regional customs. Most Jews of European ancestry are reckoned as Ashkenazim, while those descended from families with ties to Spain or to Arab lands are Sephardim.
The use of the word Ashkenazim to designate the Jews of Central Europe begins around the fourteenth century. The vernacular of the great majority of Ashkenazim was Yiddish. Since the Ashkenazim are the German-speaking European Jews, their history is conventionally dated from the appearance of Jews on the banks of the Rhine—that is, from roughly the first century CE, when the first Jews appeared in these lands. An organized Jewish community is historically attested in Cologne in 321.
Having settled in Central and Western Europe relatively early in the Middle Ages, the Jews found their situation rapidly deteriorating in these lands with the spread of the “blood libel,” and they were driven out of a number of European countries. Beginning in the thirteenth century, many Ashkenazim relocated to Poland, where at that time Casimir III granted the Jews a number of privileges, and by the sixteenth century the Jews in Poland constituted about 80% of world Jewry. The total number of Ashkenazim today is variously estimated at between 8 and 11 million.
The Sephardim—the Spanish Jews—were a large Jewish community that lived in the territory of Spain during Muslim rule and was expelled from there at the end of the fifteenth century by order of Queen Isabella. At the time of the expulsion, by various estimates some 800,000 Jews lived in Spain. The decree of Queen Isabella of 1492 confronted them with a choice: to accept baptism or to leave the country, taking with them only what they could carry.
Some of the Jews accepted baptism; the majority, however, refused the new faith and chose exile. After 1492 the Spanish Jews gradually began to settle in other lands. They moved south and southeast (to the countries of North Africa), east (to Palestine, Asia Minor, the Balkans, and the Italian peninsula), northeast (to southern France), and north (to England and the Netherlands), carrying with them the Spanish prayer book and their traditions. The total number of Sephardic Jews today is estimated at between 1.5 and 2 million.
13.14 Medieval German Hasidism.
Hasidut is literally translated as “piety”; accordingly, a hasid is a pious person. There have been several Hasidic movements in the history of Judaism. The first is medieval German Hasidism. The term “German Hasidim” refers to a group of Jewish leaders who lived in Germany in the second half of the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth centuries. The term is not a self- designation, and so is used in a derived sense. Its origin is evidently connected with the fact that at the head of the group stood Rabbi Yehudah HeHasid (the Pious) and his father, Rabbi Shmuel ben Kalonymus HeHasid. The epithet of the teachers probably passed to their disciples. Early references to the “Hasidim of Alemannia” (that is, of Germany) are found in the book of Rabbi Abraham ben Nathan ha-Yarhi (1155–1215).
When one speaks of the teaching of German Hasidism, what is meant in the first instance is the Sefer Hasidim. From their literary heritage we learn the specific ethical and mystical details of their teaching. Gershom Scholem summarizes the basic positions of German Hasidism as follows: “In order to become a true hasid, as he is portrayed in Sefer Hasidim, one must possess above all three qualities: ascetic detachment from worldly affairs, perfect equanimity of soul, and an altruism elevated into a principle and carried to an extreme… The realization of these ascetic principles requires abstention from worldly conversation, from playing with children, and from other innocent pleasures, for ‘he who keeps a bird only for adornment will do better to distribute the money to the poor.’ In a word, this asceticism leads to a renunciation of the everyday life that ordinary people live” [Gershom Scholem. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Mosty Kultury, 2004].
At the same time, alongside this asceticism, the writings of the medieval Hasidim are filled with motifs of mystical love for God: “The soul is filled with love for God and bound by cords of love, in joy and gladness of heart. The hasid is not as one who serves his master against his will; rather, even when they try to hinder him, the love of service burns within his heart and he rejoices to fulfill the will of his Creator… For when the soul is plunged in deep meditation upon the fear of God, the flame of true love suddenly flares up within it, and the exultation of secret joy fills the heart… and the lover gives no thought to his own gain in this world; he does not concern himself with the pleasures of his wife or his sons and daughters, but all this is as nothing in his eyes—all save the doing of his Creator’s will, the doing of good to others, the hallowing of the Name of the Lord… And every one of his thoughts burns in the flame of love for Him” [Eleazar of Worms, Hilkhot Hasidut, the section entitled Shoresh ha-Ahavah (“The Root of Love”)].
13.15 Normative Hasidism.
German Hasidism, as noted, was an internal current within Ashkenazi Jewry; in the proper sense of the word, however, Hasidism designates a movement of the first half of the eighteenth century which, in very short order, embraced the Jewish population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the surrounding territories.
The founder of Hasidism was Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov. In his youth he served as an assistant in a Jewish primary school, collecting the pupils from their homes and escorting them to school. By around 1736, the Baal Shem Tov had become known as a healer and spiritual teacher. In 1740 he moved to Medzhybizh—a small town in Podolia, in Ukraine. Disciples came to him from the neighboring regions; his lessons differed sharply from those given in ordinary Jewish schools.
He taught about a personal relationship between the human being and G-d far more than about the subtleties of Jewish law. The stories the Hasidim told about the Baal Shem Tov (abbreviated as the Besht) depict him “with a pipe in his hand, telling outwardly quite secular stories that carried a deep spiritual undercurrent. He died in 1760, leaving as his successor Dov Ber of Mezeritch. Shortly before his death, the Besht said to those standing at his bedside: ‘I do not grieve over my death, for I see only one door opening as another closes…’ The Besht especially loved the Talmudic dictum: ‘G-d desires the heart’ (Sanhedrin 106b), which he interpreted in the sense that for G-d a pure religious spirit matters more than knowledge of the Talmud” [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, p. 172].
Another idea to which the Besht attached special importance was the idea of the Glory of God diffused throughout all creation. Accordingly, one must be unfailingly joyful in the glory of God, for the greatest works of creation are accomplished in joy. On this point the new Hasidism became the diametrical opposite of the old German Hasidism.
“To an outside observer unfamiliar with the Besht’s teaching, Hasidic prayers and services may appear chaotic and unseemly. Following the ecstatic exclamation of King David, ‘All my bones shall say, L-rd, who is like unto Thee?’ (Tehillim 35:10), worshippers would sometimes even stand on their heads” [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, p. 173].
In the early phase of its existence, Hasidism was actively opposed by Orthodox Judaism, since it created a new model of the pious Jew in which emotion and religious rapture took precedence over logic and ritual, and religious exaltation over learning. Distinctive prayer states, bold halakhic rulings, and ideas of personal perfection and communion with God were perceived in Hasidism as potentially dangerous and sectarian.
Yet another distinctive feature of Hasidism was the role of the rebbe, the tzaddik, the spiritual leader of the community. One of the successors and continuators of the Besht’s teaching, Dov Ber, taught that G-d manifests Himself in the most trivial actions of the tzaddik. One of Dov Ber’s disciples once said: “I do not go to him to study Torah, but to see how he unlaces his shoes.” A true tzaddik enjoys a more intimate relationship with the Almighty than an ordinary Jew, and may bless people. This, of course, only intensified the suspicions of Orthodox Judaism.
13.16 Reform Judaism.
Reform Judaism (also known as Progressive Judaism or Liberal Judaism) is a movement that advocates the “renewal” of the principles of Halakhah in keeping with modernity. It arose in Germany in the 1820s. Most Jewish communities did not accept the ideas of Reform, and among Orthodox Jews, Reform is not regarded as Judaism at all: it rejects one of the foundations of Judaism—the tradition of the Oral Torah and the principles based upon it.
The first practical reform of the liturgy was carried out in 1796 in Amsterdam, where the Adath Yeshurun congregation removed part of the piyyutim from the prayer book and introduced the sermon in Dutch. These, however, were only the first tentative steps toward reform, and the true center of Reform became Germany.
A prominent role in the Reform movement was played by the philanthropist Israel Jacobson (1768–1828). Jacobson moved to Berlin, where he opened a prayer house equipped with an organ, a choir, the singing of hymns, and a sermon in German (1815). Since Jewish law forbids the playing of musical instruments on the Sabbath, this particularly outraged the Orthodox.
In 1818 Jacobson’s friend Eduard Kley founded his own congregation in Hamburg. In its liturgical reforms, the Hamburg congregation went further than the Berlin one. In 1819 it issued its own prayer book, in which the praises of the coming of the Messiah, the chosenness of the Jewish people, and the return to Israel were removed or, in some cases, replaced.
In 1820 a new Reform prayer house was opened in Leipzig with services conducted in German. Over the following thirty years, Reform congregations arose in a number of cities in Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, and Denmark, and Reform spread considerably, chiefly among enlightened members of the middle class who sought the integration of Jews into European society.
The general ideas of Liberal Judaism, which took shape in Germany and found their widest reception in the United States, may be summed up as follows:
Judaism is a continually developing religion. Since the biblical faith is not identical with the later Rabbinic Judaism, modernity presupposes the further evolution of the faith. The purpose of the Jewish people’s existence lies in serving as a people for the nations of the earth; so why does Judaism live in a closed Jewish circle, only setting Jews apart from the other peoples of Europe? Such, in broad outline, were the ideas advanced by the famous Rabbi Abraham Geiger, one of the founders of Liberal Judaism.
Geiger’s ideas became the foundation of the reform. Services were simplified, shortened, and translated into the local vernacular. Liturgical paraphernalia were dispensed with. Musical instruments were introduced. Some of the more radical Reform rabbis even advocated the abolition of circumcision. Without addressing the subject publicly, Geiger spoke of it in a private letter as “a barbaric, bloody rite.” The Reform congregation of Berlin first moved the beginning of the Sabbath from Friday (the traditional Shabbat begins on Friday evening), and subsequently transferred the Sabbath service to Sunday altogether, in order to allow Jews to rest together with their Christian neighbors. Liberal Judaism today accepts the ordination of women as rabbis and dispenses with most of the laws of kashrut.
Moving from particulars to generalities, Liberal Judaism rejects the Oral Torah, regarding it as a transient creation of its time. New times demand a new Oral Torah, and the Talmud is not suited to modernity.
“In 1885 a group of Reform rabbis convened in Pittsburgh and rethought the very concept of Judaism. From now on, they declared, what is binding is the observance of the ethics of the Torah, not its rituals: the commandment ‘love thy neighbor’ remains in force, but not kashrut or the Sabbath restrictions. The framers of the document, known as the Pittsburgh Platform, considered that rituals impeded the realization of the ‘mission of Israel,’ which consists in affirming universal norms of morality. Rituals such as kashrut, in their view, isolated the Jewish community from its neighbors, making it virtually impossible to dine in the homes of non-Jews. Seeking to reduce to a minimum the barriers separating Jews from non-Jews, these rabbis declared that the Jews were no longer a people but only a religious community” [Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The Jewish World. Moscow, 1995, p. 333].
At the theological level, Liberal Judaism accepts in principle the same doctrinal positions as Orthodox Judaism. Here too, however, there are divergences. Thus, for example, the Reformers do not hold that the Torah was given to Moshe directly by the Almighty, but regard it as a text composed by many human authors, though divinely inspired. Judaism as a whole is understood as a work of human creativity, not as the revelation of God.
13.17 Conservative Judaism.
In response to the activity of Liberal Judaism in the United States and Germany, Conservative Judaism arose. One of the ideologues of Conservative Judaism in the United States was Isaac Leeser (1806–1868), and the spread of the movement in the United States is associated with the name of Sabato Morais, who founded the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 1886.
The principal centers of Conservative Judaism took shape in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. Around these communities a group of non-Orthodox Jews formed, united by their disagreement with Reform, which they felt had broken too radically with Jewish tradition. Yet Conservative Judaism is also reformist in spirit, though not as radically as Liberal Judaism. The chief distinguishing feature of Conservative Judaism was the latitude allowed in the observance of Jewish law and the absence of a formal platform. Whereas Liberal Judaism set out point by point its differences from Orthodoxy (for instance, in the Pittsburgh Platform), Conservative Judaism gave its rabbis the freedom to determine the degree of reform and the degree of observance of the Halakhah.
13.18 The Mysticism of the Merkavah.
By way of introduction to the discussion of Jewish mysticism, let us note that, with the exception of the messianic Sabbateanism initiated by Sabbatai Zevi, none of the Jewish mystical movements broke away from normative Judaism, despite at times serious disagreements with the Orthodox tradition. They were subjected to criticism and suspicion by the mainstream rabbinate; nevertheless, Jewish mysticism did not become heterodox or marginal, and the Jewish Kabbalah remains a part of normative Judaism, though in no sense obligatory for a Jew.
The early stage in the development of Jewish mysticism is associated above all with the visionaries of the Merkavah, those who journeyed to the divine Throne of the Almighty. Crystallizing by the first century BCE, this esoteric tradition persisted down to the tenth century and ultimately flowed into the traditional Jewish Kabbalah.
Already in the period of the Second Temple, an esoteric teaching was cultivated in Pharisaic circles, in which the first chapter of the Book of Genesis and the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, with its vision of the divine throne in the form of a chariot (Merkavah), were given a special interpretation. These commentaries were kept secret. St. Jerome, for example, mentions in one of his letters a Jewish custom forbidding the study of the beginning and end of the Book of Ezekiel by anyone under thirty years of age.
The idea of a secret teaching was further developed in the apocryphal literature, in the Apocalypse of Abraham and the Book of Enoch. A further exposition of the ideas of this mystical movement is found in the Hekhalot Rabbati and Hekhalot Zutarti (Books of the Heavenly Halls).
The movement of the yordei merkavah, “those who descend to the Chariot,” consisted of closed circles of male Jews into which only halakhically observant Jews could be admitted upon reaching a certain age, provided they possessed halakhic virtues—that is, lived in accordance with the Torah. These were organized groups developing and transmitting a particular tradition to subsequent generations, a school of mystics unwilling to initiate just anyone into their secret knowledge, their gnosis. Selection, however, was not based on moral and halakhic criteria alone. We also find mention of selection by hand and face—that is, by chiromantic and physiognomic criteria. Some of these principles of selection were preserved in the Kabbalah as well.
For the ecstatic journey, one prepared for between twelve and forty days, engaging in ascetic exercises: fasting, ritual chanting, and the repetition of secret names. The journey itself took place in a special posture, on a low step in a squatting position, with the head between the knees. By tradition, this is held to be the posture of the prophet Elijah when he prayed on Mount Carmel.
The central idea and goal of this journey was the apprehension of the secret divine world of the heavenly halls and the contemplation of its structure. The journey was, of course, visionary. It is described in terms of ascent to the throne of the Almighty and, at the same time, descent to it.
The point is that the supreme goal of this journey was the Merkavah—that is, the throne of the Almighty, upon which sits the Glory of the Lord—and the contemplation of it. The Glory of the Lord, the Image of the Almighty, was understood by the yordei merkavah and by the subsequent Kabbalah as the image after which the human being was created, the primordial Adam. Accordingly, this image abides simultaneously in the highest heaven and in the depths of the human being, for the human being is created in this image; the ascent to it and to the Glory of the Lord is thus simultaneously an ascent to heaven and a descent into oneself.
This Glory of the Lord, the Image of God, is the image in which God addressed the prophets of the Old Testament, gave down the Torah to Moshe Rabbenu, and spoke to all the other figures of the Bible.
This journey to the Throne and to the Glory of the Lord required of the traveler an inner transfiguration. It is for this reason that, according to the protagonist of the Book of Enoch, the traveler, upon entering the higher halls, felt his own body being consumed by fire. Here is how Gershom Scholem describes this moment:
“The dangers of the ascent through the halls of the world of the Merkavah are great, especially for those who set out on the way without the necessary preparation, not to speak of those who are unworthy of its goal. The further the traveler advances, the greater are the dangers that await him. He is subjected to furious attacks by the angels and archons seeking to ‘drive him away’; he is threatened with being devoured by the flame issuing from his own body. The Hebrew Book of Enoch gives an account by the patriarch to Rabbi Ishmael of his transformation into the angel Metatron, accompanied by the transformation of his flesh into ‘blazing torches.’ The Greater Hekhalot asserts that every mystic must undergo this transformation, though, being less worthy of it than Enoch, he is in danger of being consumed by it. This passage through the initial stage of the process of mystical transformation is an inescapable necessity. Another fragment indicates that the mystic must stand erect ‘without arms and feet,’ for they have been consumed. This standing without feet in the bottomlessness of space is mentioned in other sources as well as a characteristic experience of many ecstatics; in particular, a description of an analogous stage is given in the Apocalypse of Abraham” [Gershom Scholem. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Mosty Kultury, 2004].
Let us cite one further fragment from the Munich manuscript of the Hekhalot, which recounts the dangers of ascent to the Throne of the Almighty:
“But if anyone was unworthy to behold the King in His glory, then the angels at the gates disordered his senses and threw him into confusion. And when they said to him ‘enter,’ he entered, and at once they pressed in upon him and hurled him into a fiery river of lava. And at the gates of the sixth hall it seemed to him as though thousands upon thousands of streams of the sea were crashing down upon him, although there was not a drop of water there, but only the ethereal radiance of the marble slabs with which the hall was paved. And the radiance of them is yet more terrifying than water. The angels rose up before him, and when he asked, ‘What is the meaning of these waters?’ they smote him with stones and cried: ‘Contemptible one, do you not see this for yourself? Or are you a descendant of those who kissed the golden calf, and therefore unworthy to behold the King in His glory?’ And the herald came forth before him, sounding a trumpet and proclaiming: ‘True are the words of your lips, for he is a descendant of those who kissed the calf, and unworthy is he to behold the King and His Majesty.’ And he would not depart until they struck his head with their staves (Sanhedrin 82b). Let this be a sign for all time, that no one should stray from the path, penetrate to the gates of the Sixth Hall, behold the ethereal radiance of the slabs, and question them, and say, ‘They are water,’ lest he expose himself to ruinous danger. But if the one unworthy to behold does not inquire about the ethereal radiance of the pure marble with which the hall is paved, he is not tormented to death, but is judged according to the measure of mercy.”
This thoroughly gnostic text conveys the chief warning to the mystics, the essence of which may be summed up as follows: even an unworthy person may ascend into the heavenly world, but he can never see truth there, but will always see the heavenly world distorted by reason of his sins. Likewise, having entered it as a thief, he cannot remain near the Image of God, and never having beheld the truth even when he was near it, he will be cast down.
Such, in brief, is the description of the early Jewish tradition of the yordei merkavah, which, like the subsequent Kabbalah, drew heavily on gnostic ideas.
13.19 Sefer Yetzirah and Sefer ha-Bahir.
Among the many Kabbalistic books, let us single out three that reflect the stages in the formation of the Kabbalah:
Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation) is one of the foundational texts of the Kabbalah, and one of the earliest. It contains only 1,600 words. It has come down to us, however, in four principal versions: the “short,” the “long,” the “Kabbalistic” (the version published by the Vilna Gaon), and the version of Saadia Gaon; in its most extensive recension its length reaches 2,500 words. The text is dated variously from 300 to the sixth century CE.
The first chapter treats of the ten sefirot, and the remaining five chapters of the role of the letters in the process of creation. The text speaks of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and of how they were used in the creation of the world. The combinations of these “fundamental letters” contain within themselves the roots of all things. This brief book contains the most important and the boldest portion of all the subsequent Kabbalah. It is, in effect, a practical manual showing how the combination of letters can exert influence upon the world; for he who knows how the Almighty created the world can, as it were, repeat this act to a certain extent.
Sefer ha-Bahir (The Book of Brightness) is a most important treatise of early Kabbalah. The Bahir was first published around 1176 (though its core may have been composed as early as the tenth century) by the Provençal school of Kabbalists and circulated in manuscript within a limited circle of followers. As in the Sefer Yetzirah, this text contains extensive reflections on the ten sefirot and on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet (though only on fifteen of them).
The ten sefirot appear as ten lights distinguished from God. The highest light is Hochmah, the lowest Shekhinah. They are also likened to the ten fingers on the palms of God, which uphold heaven and earth. A comparison with the Ten Commandments is also present. Beyond the numerological sections, many new ideas are advanced concerning angels and the structure of the spiritual world. Three highest angels are named: Michael (on the right), Gabriel (on the left), and Uriel (in the middle). The Fall and the fallen Samael are mentioned. A special place in the book is given to the Merkavah and the secret Names of God. There is also mention of a name consisting of twelve letters—the threefold repetition of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH).
13.20 Sefer ha-Zohar and the Basic Ideas of the Kabbalah.
Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Splendor) is the principal Kabbalistic work, which came to light in the thirteenth century. It is ascribed to the famous second- century Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. For a long time, indeed, he was considered the actual author either of the entire book or at least of several of its parts. Today, however, this view is not widely held. At present, scholars favor either the hypothesis of multiple authors or the attribution to Rabbi Moshe de Leon. The Zohar is written in five volumes.
The language of the Zohar is artificial and contains many grammatical errors, as well as geographical, botanical, and other inaccuracies; their presence suggests that the author of the text had most likely never visited Palestine. “The language of the Zohar can be defined as a mixture of the Aramaic dialects in which the two books most familiar to the author were written: the Babylonian Talmud and Targum Onkelos, the ancient Aramaic translation of the Torah… Medieval Hebrew expressions, especially drawn from philosophical terminology, frequently appear in it in Aramaic dress,” Scholem observes [Gershom Scholem. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Mosty Kultury, 2004].
Kabbalah means “tradition,” from the root kbl, “to receive”—that is, that which has been received, and accordingly that which has been handed down, denoting a special form of secret transmission of knowledge and initiation into it. The language of the Zohar best of all reflects the secrecy and concealment of this tradition. It is obscure, in places barely intelligible, and employs key words—that is, a number of words mean something other than they do in everyday speech, and only by knowing their true meaning does the sense of the statement become accessible.
The Zohar itself relates to the text of the Torah in the same way, refracting it and uncovering it through its own laws. For example: notarikon (Greek “abbreviation”)—a method of mystical exegesis consisting in the interpretation of the letters of a word as abbreviations of whole words or sentences. Or temurah, the substitution of one word for another according to certain rules. Or gematria—that is, the determination of the numerical value of Hebrew words and the search for their connections with other words or phrases of the same numerical value. All these techniques are employed by the Zohar to disclose the hidden meaning of the Torah.
It is impossible to set out briefly all the aspects of the Kabbalah and the Zohar. Let us confine ourselves to a few points concerning the categories of Ein Sof and the sefirot.
In its theology, the Kabbalistic tradition distinguishes a hidden and a manifest aspect of God. “The hidden God is without qualities and devoid of any attributes; the Zohar and the Kabbalists call Him Ein Sof, ‘the Infinite.’ But since the hidden God acts throughout the universe, He manifests certain properties, which in turn indicate certain aspects of the nature of the deity. According to the Kabbalists, God has ten fundamental properties, sefirot, which are also the ten levels through which the divine life flows. The names of these ten sefirot reflect various modes of divine manifestation” [Eliade, M. A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 3, p. 158].
The ten sefirot are:
1. Keter (“Crown”)
2. Chokhmah (“Wisdom”)
3. Binah (“Understanding”)
4. Chesed (“Lovingkindness”)
5. Gevurah (“Severity”)
6. Tiferet (“Beauty”)
7. Netzach (“Eternity”)
8. Hod (“Majesty”)
9. Yesod (“Foundation”)
10. Malkhut (“Kingdom”)
Together they form a mystical organism, a tree, expressing the secret life of God and His manifestations. Together they form His image and, in an allegorical sense, His “body” (Shi’ur koma—the measure of the body). Together they are that very Glory of the Lord and Image of God which the mystics of the Merkavah strove to contemplate.
Let us cite an extended passage from Gershom Scholem, who describes the relation between Ein Sof and the sefirot as follows:
“The ten sefirot form the mystical tree of God, or the tree of divine power. Each of the ten sefirot represents one branch; their common root, however, is unknown and unknowable. But Ein Sof is not only the hidden root of all roots; He is also the life-giving sap of the tree: each branch, embodying some attribute, exists not by itself but by virtue of Ein Sof, the hidden God. And this tree of God is at the same time, as it were, the framework of the universe. It grows throughout the whole of creation and stretches its branches over all its branches. All earthly and created things exist only because a particle of the power of the sefirot lives and acts within them.
The comparison of the sefirot with the human being occurs in the Zohar as often as the comparison with a tree. The biblical statement that man is created in the image and likeness of God has, in the eyes of the Kabbalist, a twofold meaning. First, it means that the power of the sefirot, the prototype of divine life, exists and acts also in the human being; second, that the world of the sefirot, that is, the world of God the Creator, can be made visible in the image of created man. From this it follows that the members of the human body, to repeat the example I have already cited, are nothing other than the reflection of an inner spiritual being that manifests itself in the symbolic figure known as Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Man” [Gershom Scholem. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Mosty Kultury, 2004].
From this flow the ethics and the practice of the Kabbalah. Since the world was not created by God as a separate essence but is the direct reflection of the sefirot, the world contains these sefirot within itself and is originally not separated from the Almighty; a particular significance attaches to the sin of Adam. By sinning, the human being introduced a rupture into the whole of the universe and in fact inflicted injury upon God Himself (not in His essence but in His existence), tearing Him away from His Shekhinah. The Fall of Adam moved God to withdraw into “otherworldliness.” The cosmic consequence of the Fall was the loss by things of their original harmonious unity and their becoming isolated entities.
It should be noted that it is precisely in the Kabbalah that the category of the Fall is understood most tragically, whereas normative Judaism frequently does not consider Adam’s sin a Fall, but only Adam’s personal affair. It is true that the sin of Adam is presented esoterically in the Zohar: “The sefirot were revealed to Adam in the image of the tree of life and the tree of knowledge—that is, the middle and the last sefirah. Instead of preserving their original unity and thereby uniting the realms of ‘life’ and ‘knowledge’ and bringing redemption to the world, Adam separated the one from the other and devoted himself to the worship of the Shekhinah alone, failing to recognize its unity with the other sefirot. By this he interrupted the flow of life passing from sphere to sphere, and introduced division and isolation into the world” [Gershom Scholem. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Mosty Kultury, 2004].
At the heart of the ethical teachings of the Kabbalah lies the concept of devekut—uninterrupted communion with, or cleaving to, God, the direct connection with Him, which is the personal goal and the goal of the whole of creation.
Bibliography:
Neusner, Jacob. The Way of Torah: An Introduction to Judaism. Wadsworth Publishing, 2003.
Satlow, Michael L. Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice. Columbia University Press, 2006.
De Lange, Nicholas. An Introduction to Judaism. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Narrative. Basic Books, 2011.
Cohen, Shaye J. D. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.
Schiffman, Lawrence H. From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. Ktav Publishing House, 1991.
Neusner, Jacob. The Talmud: A Close Encounter. Prometheus Books, 2005.
Strack, Hermann L., and Günter Stemberger. Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash. Fortress Press, 1996.
Urbach, Ephraim E. The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs. Translated by Israel Abrahams, Harvard University Press, 1987.
Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Scribner, 1970.
Guttmann, Julius. Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig. Shocken Books, 1973.
Scholem, Gershom. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Schocken Books, 1995.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976.
Meyer, Michael A. Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism. Wayne State University Press, 1995.
Rubenstein, Richard L. After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
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- 13.5-13.8
- 13.9-13.12
- 13.13-13.17
- 13.18-13.20
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