The question raised in the previous entry Abraham Versus Moses, namely, What is Judaism? has not been answered so far, and I have a strong feeling that by the end of this one the situation may not appreciably improve either, although everyone should agree that, had we been talking not about religion per se, but about a way of life, Judaism would have required no further clarification.
Judaism is defined by the Webster’s Dictionary as “the Jewish religion,” which is much less of a definition than anything afforded by the same dictionary to all other religions. Harper’s Bible Dictionary’s entry on Judaism, on the other hand, is sorely messed up. Here it is in its ignominious short entirety:
“Judaism, the religion of the Jewish people (Israel) from Sinai through the Exilic and post-Exilic periods to the present. Judaism is expressed in the Written and the Oral Torah: Scripture and Tradition. Judaism may be defined as the belief in One God, and the practical effects of that belief on life. Among Judaism’s chief principles is the belief in God’s choice of the Jews to preach His message.”
This remarkable paragraph of sheer nonsense seems to imply that monotheism can be equated to Judaism, or that the Jews are commanded to engage in Evangelical activity. But, most notably, it is a gross mistake to suggest the continuity of Judaism as a continuous religion “from Sinai to the present.” The fact is that the so-called Torah Judaism, first centered around the Tabernacle, then around the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, no longer exists, suspended until the coming of the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, and substituted, ever since the destruction of the last Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, by Rabbinical Judaism, known today perhaps only as the smallest, Orthodox branch of Judaism.
Finally, here is Encyclopaedia Britannica’s opening macropaedic paragraph on Judaism:
“Judaism, the religion of the Jews, is the complex expression of a religious and ethnic community, a way of life, as well as a set of basic beliefs and values, discerned in patterns of action, social order, and culture, as well as in religious statements and concepts.” This is certainly a better definition than the rest of them, even though it is by no means ideal.
In a sense, modern Judaism here can be compared to Hinduism, which, as I already stated in the Religion section, is defined by the BBC World Religions Project as “a group of faiths rooted in the religious ideas of India.” Expressing this point with maximum clarity, Judaism could indeed be compared to Hinduism in a number of aspects, such as that it cannot be seen as a single religion, but, rather, as a cluster of culturally-connected, but religiously disparate methods of worship (some denouncing the others as fraud), all rooted, however, in the "Jewish identity." Another, less obvious aspect is that the non-Orthodox branches of Judaism can be described, like Hinduism, as syncretic, in the same sense that the Time Almanac is ascribing to Hinduism, that is, “welcoming and incorporating a variety of outside influences.” Judaism is, of course, a set of religious or cultural practices emphasizing the unique Jewish identity and, as such, closed to outsiders. However, in the times past, Reform Judaism did receive a separate identity from the Orthodox standard by "lowering the bar," to emulate Gentile culture, most graphically showing itself in the new Jewish manner of dress and general appearance, allowing the German Jew to become virtually indistinguishable from the European Gentile, also shown in the music of religious service, and well illustrated by the so-called “organ-use controversy,” back in the nineteenth century. But the extent of such emulation was still limited, and today the situation is showing a decided reversal of the previous trend toward a similarization (rather than a wholesale assimilation, of course), the non-Orthodox Jews having lived with a guilty conscience toward the “authentic Jews” ever since the tragic German Holocaust experience, in which the well-polished and Westernized Deutsche Jüden had not received any preferential treatment, compared to the so-called Poilische Yidden, whom they had treated with horrified disgust, on account of their "discreditable" kinship, which they had regarded as an embarrassing stain on their otherwise impeccable European credentials. (As a matter of fact, this had been a colossal misjudgment on the part of the affluent German Jews, who had failed to realize that it was their “ill-begotten” wealth that had set a large majority of impoverished Germans against them, whereas the impoverished, and already persecuted in Poland by the historically anti-Semitic Poles, Poilische Yidden had hardly been a factor among the sources of German anti-Semitism.)
Summarizing what I have said so far, the one and only bond that holds all modern-day Judaism together is its allegiance to the Jewish identity. It is a genuine world religion, in the sense that internationally it is just as much widespread as the Jewish people are still dispersed around the globe outside the confines of their own, officially Jewish, Medinat Yisroel. While only its smallish Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox branches could be called properly “religious,” the much larger Reform and Conservative denominations plus the unequivocally secular, pro-Zionist Reconstructionist movement, founded by Mordecai Kaplan, all deserve, in the words of a good Jewish acquaintance of mine, “a zero on God, but the top mark on Yiddishkeit.” I guess that this last observation sums it all up for the non-Orthodox brands of Judaism as a world religion.
Judaism is defined by the Webster’s Dictionary as “the Jewish religion,” which is much less of a definition than anything afforded by the same dictionary to all other religions. Harper’s Bible Dictionary’s entry on Judaism, on the other hand, is sorely messed up. Here it is in its ignominious short entirety:
“Judaism, the religion of the Jewish people (Israel) from Sinai through the Exilic and post-Exilic periods to the present. Judaism is expressed in the Written and the Oral Torah: Scripture and Tradition. Judaism may be defined as the belief in One God, and the practical effects of that belief on life. Among Judaism’s chief principles is the belief in God’s choice of the Jews to preach His message.”
This remarkable paragraph of sheer nonsense seems to imply that monotheism can be equated to Judaism, or that the Jews are commanded to engage in Evangelical activity. But, most notably, it is a gross mistake to suggest the continuity of Judaism as a continuous religion “from Sinai to the present.” The fact is that the so-called Torah Judaism, first centered around the Tabernacle, then around the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, no longer exists, suspended until the coming of the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, and substituted, ever since the destruction of the last Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, by Rabbinical Judaism, known today perhaps only as the smallest, Orthodox branch of Judaism.
Finally, here is Encyclopaedia Britannica’s opening macropaedic paragraph on Judaism:
“Judaism, the religion of the Jews, is the complex expression of a religious and ethnic community, a way of life, as well as a set of basic beliefs and values, discerned in patterns of action, social order, and culture, as well as in religious statements and concepts.” This is certainly a better definition than the rest of them, even though it is by no means ideal.
In a sense, modern Judaism here can be compared to Hinduism, which, as I already stated in the Religion section, is defined by the BBC World Religions Project as “a group of faiths rooted in the religious ideas of India.” Expressing this point with maximum clarity, Judaism could indeed be compared to Hinduism in a number of aspects, such as that it cannot be seen as a single religion, but, rather, as a cluster of culturally-connected, but religiously disparate methods of worship (some denouncing the others as fraud), all rooted, however, in the "Jewish identity." Another, less obvious aspect is that the non-Orthodox branches of Judaism can be described, like Hinduism, as syncretic, in the same sense that the Time Almanac is ascribing to Hinduism, that is, “welcoming and incorporating a variety of outside influences.” Judaism is, of course, a set of religious or cultural practices emphasizing the unique Jewish identity and, as such, closed to outsiders. However, in the times past, Reform Judaism did receive a separate identity from the Orthodox standard by "lowering the bar," to emulate Gentile culture, most graphically showing itself in the new Jewish manner of dress and general appearance, allowing the German Jew to become virtually indistinguishable from the European Gentile, also shown in the music of religious service, and well illustrated by the so-called “organ-use controversy,” back in the nineteenth century. But the extent of such emulation was still limited, and today the situation is showing a decided reversal of the previous trend toward a similarization (rather than a wholesale assimilation, of course), the non-Orthodox Jews having lived with a guilty conscience toward the “authentic Jews” ever since the tragic German Holocaust experience, in which the well-polished and Westernized Deutsche Jüden had not received any preferential treatment, compared to the so-called Poilische Yidden, whom they had treated with horrified disgust, on account of their "discreditable" kinship, which they had regarded as an embarrassing stain on their otherwise impeccable European credentials. (As a matter of fact, this had been a colossal misjudgment on the part of the affluent German Jews, who had failed to realize that it was their “ill-begotten” wealth that had set a large majority of impoverished Germans against them, whereas the impoverished, and already persecuted in Poland by the historically anti-Semitic Poles, Poilische Yidden had hardly been a factor among the sources of German anti-Semitism.)
Summarizing what I have said so far, the one and only bond that holds all modern-day Judaism together is its allegiance to the Jewish identity. It is a genuine world religion, in the sense that internationally it is just as much widespread as the Jewish people are still dispersed around the globe outside the confines of their own, officially Jewish, Medinat Yisroel. While only its smallish Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox branches could be called properly “religious,” the much larger Reform and Conservative denominations plus the unequivocally secular, pro-Zionist Reconstructionist movement, founded by Mordecai Kaplan, all deserve, in the words of a good Jewish acquaintance of mine, “a zero on God, but the top mark on Yiddishkeit.” I guess that this last observation sums it all up for the non-Orthodox brands of Judaism as a world religion.
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