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Jul 9, 2023 · July 9, 2023 1 comment. by The Conversation. As a scholar of modern Jewish history, religion and politics, I am often asked to explain the differences between Judaism’s major denominations. Here is a very brief overview: Rabbinic roots.
- Ancient Religious Groups
- Ethnicities: Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi etc.
- Denominations
- Semites and Anti-Semitism
Since the biblical period, Jews have been divided into three religious groups: The vast majority of today’s Jews are Israelites, but Kohanim and Levites still have a few distinguishing features. Kohanim are subject to some restrictions on whom they may marry and are forbidden from coming into contact with corpses. They also receive the first aliyah...
Jews from different parts of the world have developed distinct cultures and customs. Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe are known as Ashkenazim. Much of what, in America, is thought of as Jewish — bagels, Yiddish, black hats — are actually specific to Ashkenaziculture. Jews from Spain, the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish Diaspora are known as S...
Jews vary dramatically in their approach to Jewish traditions, laws and ritual observance. In the United States, the major religious streams of Judaism are Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist. The Orthodox population is itself quite diverse, with numerous subgroups, such as ultra-Orthodox or haredi Pronounced: hah-RAY-dee, Origin: ...
As a whole, Jews are sometimes referred to as Semites, but this can be misleading. This term originally comes from the Bible, referring to Shem, one of Noah’s sons. The Jewish people are thought to be descendants of Shem, a view that was widely accepted for a long time, but had no scientific backing. In modern times, anti-Semitism is understood to ...
Most streams of modern Judaism developed from the Pharisaic movement, which became known as Rabbinic Judaism (in Hebrew Yahadut Rabanit — יהדות רבנית) with the compilation of the Oral Torah into the Mishna.
Jewish festivals, holidays commonly observed by the Jewish community. Below is a summary of the major Jewish holidays, which traditionally begin at sunset on the previous evening. For fuller treatment of the Jewish calendar and its cycle of Jewish religious observance, see Jewish religious year.
Judaism has played a significant role in the development of Western culture because of its unique relationship with Christianity, the dominant religious force in the West. Although the Christian church drew from other sources as well, its retention of the sacred Scriptures of the synagogue (the Old Testament) as an integral part of its Bible ...
Summary. APPROACHING RELIGION IN THE HEBREW BIBLE. The practices, beliefs, and social values that have coalesced within the religious system we call Judaism have their foundation in the Hebrew Bible, also called the Tanakh. It is therefore critical to assess the Tanakh as a source of historical, social, and religious information; often ...
Judaism - Monotheism, Torah, Covenant: Judaism is more than an abstract intellectual system, though there have been many efforts to view it systematically. It affirms divine sovereignty disclosed in creation (nature) and in history, without necessarily insisting upon—but at the same time not rejecting—metaphysical speculation about the divine.
