Judaism

Judaism is the religion and culture of the Jewish people and one of the first recorded monotheistic faiths. The tenets and history of Judaism constitute the historical foundation of many other religions, including Christianity and Islam.

Judaism does not easily fit into common Western categories, such as religion, race, ethnicity, or culture. This is because Jews understand Judaism in terms of its 4,000-year history. During this stretch of time, Jews have experienced slavery, anarchic self-government, theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile; they have been in contact, and have been influenced by ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment and the rise of nationalism. Thus, Daniel Boyarin has argued that "Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension."

The seven-branched Menorah is an ancient symbol of Judaism.According to both traditional rabbinic Jews and critical historical scholars, a number of ideas distinguish Judaism from the other religions that existed when it first developed. One characteristic was monotheism. The significance of this idea lies in that Judaism holds that God created, and cares about, humankind. In polytheistic religions, humankind is often created by accident, and the gods are primarily concerned with their relations with other gods, not with people.

Second, the Torah specifies a number of laws to be followed by the Children of Israel. Other religions at the time were characterized by temples in which priests would worship their gods through sacrifice. The Children of Israel similarly had a temple, priests, and made sacrifices -— but these were not the sole means of worshiping God. In comparison to other religions, Judaism elevates everyday life to the level of a temple, and worships God through everyday actions.

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