Jewish principles of faith: Encyclopedia II - Jewish principles of faith - Jewish principles of faith

Jewish principles of faith - Jewish principles of faith

Jewish principles of faith - Monotheism

Judaism is based on a strict unitarian monotheism, the belief in one God. The prayer par excellence in terms of defining God is the Shema Yisrael, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One", also translated as "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is unique/alone."

God is conceived of as eternal, the creator of the universe, and the source of morality. God has the power to intervene in the world. The term God thus corresponds to an actual ontological reality, and is not merely a projection of the human psyche. Maimonides describes God in this fashion: "There is a Being, perfect in every possible way, who is the ultimate cause of all existence. All existence depends on God and is derived from God."

The Hebrew Bible and classical rabbinic literature affirm theism and reject deism. However, in the writings of medieval Jewish philosophers, influenced by neo-Aristotelian philosophy, one finds what can be termed deistic tendencies. These views still exist in Judaism today.

Jewish principles of faith - God as Creator of the universe

According to the Biblical account, the world was created by God in six days. While most Haredi Jews take this literally, many Modern Orthodox, Conservative and Reform authorities feel that the six days should be interpreted as "stages" in the creation of the universe and the earth, and that Judaism would not be in contradiction to the scientific model that states that the universe is over 13 billion years old. Further, since the Torah text does not indicate in what way God created life - some hold that it can not be derived from the text whether evolution may have been part of the creation of life. Jewish creationism is a form of evolutionary creationism aiming to merge the creation account with evolutionary theory. Many Orthodox Jewish groups reject evolution as a factor in creation, and Haredi Jews in Israel have referred to evolutionary views as heretical.

Jewish principles of faith - God is One

The idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical - it is considered akin to polytheism. "[God], the Cause of all, is one. This does not mean one as in one of a pair, nor one like a species (which encompasses many individuals), nor one as in an object that is made up of many elements, nor as a single simple object that is infinitely divisible. Rather, God is a unity unlike any other possible unity. This is referred to in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4): "Hear Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one." (Maimonides, 13 principles of faith Second Principle).

While Jews hold that such conceptions of God are incorrect, they generally are of the opinion that non-Jews that hold such beliefs are not held culpable.

See also Divine simplicity.

Jewish principles of faith - God is all-powerful

Most rabbinic works present God as having the properties of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence (being all good). This is still the primary ways that most Orthodox and many non-Orthodox Jews view God.

The issue of theodicy was raised again, especially after the extreme horrors of the Holocaust and several theological responses surfaced. These are discussed in a separate entry on Holocaust theology. The central questions they address are whether and how God is all powerful and all good, given the existence of evil in the world, particularly the Holocaust.

Jewish principles of faith - God is personal and cares about humanity

Harold Kushner, a Conservative rabbi, writes that "God shows His love for us by reaching down to bridge the immense gap between Him and us. God shows His love for us by inviting us to enter into a Covenant (brit) with Him, and by sharing with us His Torah". Hasidism seems to endorse this view to some degree. On the other hand, Maimonides and most other medieval Jewish philosophers rejected the idea of a personal God, viewing, instead nature of the vehicle of providence; see Divine Providence In Jewish thought.

Jewish principles of faith - Names of God

The different names of God are ways to express different aspects of God's presence in the world.

Jewish principles of faith - The Nature of God

God is non-physical, non-corporeal, and eternal. A corollary belief is that God is utterly unlike man, and can in no way be considered anthropomorphic. All statements in the Hebrew Bible and in rabbinic literature which use anthropomorphism are held to be linguistic conceits or metaphors, as it would otherwise be impossible to talk about God at all. See Divine simplicity; Negative theology; Tzimtzum.

Jewish principles of faith - To God alone may one offer prayer

Any belief that an intermediary between man and God could be used, whether necessary or even optional, has traditionally been considered heretical. Maimonides writes that "God is the only one we may serve and praise....We may not act in this way toward anything beneath God, whether it be an angel, a star, or one of the elements.....There are no intermediaries between us and God. All our prayers should be directed towards God; nothing else should even be considered." However, since the 1800s some Hasidic Orthodox Jews have begun to teach that their leaders, called rebbes, are indeed a sort of intermediary between man and God.

Jewish principles of faith - Scripture

Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), and much of the belief system formulated and expounded upon in the Talmud, are held to be the product of divine revelation. How revelation works, and what precisely one means when one says that a book is "divine", has always been a matter of some dispute. Different understandings of this subject exist among Jews.

Jewish principles of faith - The words of the prophets are true

This does not mean that Jews are required to read the books of the prophets literally. The Jewish tradition has always held that prophets used metaphors and analogies just like people today use them. As such, there is a wide degree of interpretation for many prophetic verses.

Jewish principles of faith - The status of Moses

The Torah and Talmud teach that God took the descendants of Israel out of Egypt and spoke to them at Mount Sinai. It was here that God revealed the Torah to Moses. The Jewish tradition holds that the laws therein are binding on all of Israel.

Orthodox and Conservative Jews hold that the prophecy of Moses is held to be true; he is held to be the chief of all prophets, even of those who came before and after him. This belief was expressed by Maimonides, who wrote that "Moses was superior to all prophets, whether they preceded him or arose afterwards. Moses attained the highest possible human level. He perceived God to a degree surpassing every human that ever existed....God spoke to all other prophets through an intermediary. Moses alone did not need this; this is what the Torah means when God says "Mouth to mouth, I will speak to him."

However, this does not imply that the text of the Torah should be understood literally. The rabbinic tradition maintains that God conveyed not only the words of the Torah, but the meaning of the Torah. God gave rules as to how the laws were to be understood and implemented, and these were passed down as an oral tradition. This oral law ultimately was written down almost 2,000 years later in the Mishna and the two Talmuds. The founders of Reform Judaism replaced this principle with the theory of Progressive Revelation.

For Reform Jews, the prophecy of Moses was not the highest degree of prophecy; rather it was the first in a long chain of progressive revelations in which mankind gradually began to understand the will of God better and better. As such, they maintain, that the laws of Moses are no longer binding, and it is today's generation that must assess what God wants of them. (For examples see the works of Rabbis Gunther Plaut or Eugene Borowitz). This principle is also rejected by most Reconstructionist Jews, but for a different reason; most posit that God is not a being with a will; thus they maintain that no will can be revealed.

Jewish principles of faith - The origin of the Torah

The Torah is composed of 5 books called in English Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They chronicle the history of the Hebrews and also contain the commandments that Jews are to follow.

Rabbinic Judaism holds that the Torah extant today is the same one that was given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. Maimonides explains: "We do not know exactly how the Torah was transmitted to Moses. But when it was transmitted, Moses merely wrote it down like a secretary taking dictation....[Thus] every verse in the Torah is equally holy, as they all originate from God, and are all part of God's Torah, which is perfect, holy and true."

Haredi Jews generally believe that the Torah today is no different from what was received from God to Moses, with only the most minor of scribal errors. Many other Orthodox Jews suggest that over the millennia, some scribal errors have crept into the Torah's text. They note that the Masoretes (7th to 10th centuries) compared all known Torah variations in order to create a definitive text. Some Modern Orthodox Jews hold that there are a number of places in the Torah where gaps are seen, and accept that part of the story in these places may have been edited out. However, all Orthodox Jews view the Written and Oral Torah as the same as Moses taught, for all practical purposes.

Accepting the findings of biblical scholarship, archeological and linguistic research, most non-Orthodox Jews reject this principle. Instead, they may accept that the core of the Oral and Written Torah comes from Moses, but maintain that the Torah extant today has been edited together from several documents.

Conservative Jews tend to believe that much of the Oral law is divinely inspired, while Reform and Reconstructionist Jews tend to view all of the Oral law as an entirely human creation. Traditionally, the Reform movement held that Jews were obliged to obey the ethical but not the ritual commandments of Scripture, although today many Reform Jews have adopted many traditional ritual practices. For more details see Richard Elliot Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible?" and the entry on the documentary hypothesis.

Jewish principles of faith - Holy Books

The Tanakh and the Talmud are the main holy books in Judaism. The Tanakh contains the Written Torah, the writings of the prophets, and a few additional texts called Ktuvim (lit. writings). The Talmud contains Judaism's oral law.

Jewish principles of faith - Reward and punishment

The mainstream Jewish view, clearly expressed in the Bible and rabbinic literature, is that God will reward those who observe His commandments and punish those who intentionally transgress them. Examples of rewards and punishments are described throughout the Bible, and throughout classical rabbinic literature. See Free will In Jewish thought.

In contrast, philosophical rationalists such as Maimonides believed that God did not actually mete out rewards and punishments as such. In this view, these were beliefs that were necessary for the masses to believe in order to maintain a structured society and to encourage the observance of Judaism. However, once one learned Torah properly, one could then learn the higher truths. In this view, the nature of the reward is that if a person perfected his intellect to the highest degree, then the part of his intellect that connected to God - the active intellect - would be immortalized and eternally enjoying the "Glory of the Presence" for all eternity. The punishment would simply be that this would not happen; no part of one's intellect would be immortalized with God. See Divine Providence In Jewish thought.

The common understanding of this principle is accepted by most Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews; it is generally rejected by the Reconstructionists.

According to the Kabbalah (not a universally-accepted set of doctrines) God judges who has followed His commandments and who doesn't and to what extent. Those who do not "pass the test" go to a purifying place called Sheol lit. gloom (sometimes referred to as Purgatory, sometimes Hell) to "learn their lesson". There is, however, for the most part, no eternal damnation. The vast majority of souls can only go to that reforming place for a limited amount of time (less than one year).

The concept of "life after death" in the Jewish view is therefore fuzzy, but whatever its nature, is a reward from God, not a punishment, and is not guaranteed to everyone. Jews are encouraged to concentrate more on the life they live now than on a possible afterlife, and to ritually remember (yizkor) those loved ones who have died, as an important (and possibly the only) form of continuation for their lives.

Jewish principles of faith - Israel chosen for a purpose

God chose the Jewish people to be in a unique covenant with God; the description of this covenant is the Torah itself. Contrary to popular belief, Jewish people do not simply say that "God chose the Jews." This claim, by itself, exists nowhere in the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible). Such a claim could imply that God loves only the Jewish people, that only Jews can be close to God, and that only Jews can have a heavenly reward. The actual claim made is that the Jews were chosen for a specific mission, a duty: to be a light unto the nations, and to have a covenant with God as described in the Torah. Reconstructionist Judaism rejects also this variant of chosenness as morally defunct.

Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, former Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue of Great Britain, describes the mainstream Jewish view on this issue: "Yes, I do believe that the chosen people concept as affirmed by Judaism in its holy writ, its prayers, and its millennial tradition. In fact, I believe that every people—and indeed, in a more limited way, every individual—is "chosen" or destined for some distinct purpose in advancing the designs of Providence. Only, some fulfill their mission and others do not. Maybe the Greeks were chosen for their unique contributions to art and philosophy, the Romans for their pioneering services in law and government, the British for bringing parlimentary rule into the world, and the Americans for piloting democracy in a pluralistic society. The Jews were chosen by God to be 'peculiar unto Me' as the pioneers of religion and morality; that was and is their national purpose."

More on this topic is available in the entry on Jewish views of religious pluralism.

Jewish principles of faith - The messianic age

There will be a Jewish Messiah known as Mashiach, and a messianic era with the words expressing this as formulated by Maimonides: "I believe (Ani Ma'amin) with complete faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he may may delay, nevertheless I anticipate every day that he will come" (from the Artscroll siddur, p. 181). Note that the Jewish belief regarding the messiah has little to do with the Christian definition of this term. Jewish views of the messiah as derived from the Davidic line, the messianic era, and the afterlife are discussed in the entry on Jewish eschatology.

Jewish principles of faith - The soul is pure at birth

Humans are born morally pure; Judaism has no concept analogous to original sin. Judaism affirms that people are born with a yetzer ha-tov (יצר הטוב), a tendency to do good, and with a yetzer hara (יצר הרע), a tendency to do evil. Thus, human beings have free will and can choose the path in life that they will take. The rabbis even recognize a positive value to the yetzer ha-ra: without the yetzer ha-ra there would be no civilization or other fruits of human labor. The implication is that yetzer ha-tov and yetzer ha-ra are best understood not as moral categories of good and evil but as selfless versus selfish orientations.

Judaism recognizes two classes of "sin": offenses against other people, and offenses against God. Offenses against God may be understood as violation of a contract (the covenant between God and the Children of Israel). In a post-Temple world, Jews believe that right action (as opposed to right belief) is the way for a person to atone for one's sins. (See Jewish views of sin.)

A classical rabbinic work, Avoth de-Rabbi Natan, states: "One time, when Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai was walking in Jerusalem with Rabbi Yehosua, they arrived at where the Temple in Jerusalem now stood in ruins. "Woe to us," cried Rabbi Yehosua, "for this house where atonement was made for Israel's sins now lies in ruins!" Answered Rabban Yochanan, "We have another, equally important source of atonement, the practice of gemiluth ḥasadim (loving kindness), as it is stated: "I desire loving kindness and not sacrifice" (Hosea 6:6). Also, the Babylonian Talmud teaches that "Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Eleazar both explain that as long as the Temple stood, the altar atoned for Israel, but now, one's table atones [when the poor are invited as guests]" (Talmud, tractate Berachoth 55a). Similarly, the liturgy of the Days of Awe (the High Holy Days; i.e. Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur) states that prayer, repentance and tzedakah atone for sin.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Jewish principles of faith", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki