Judaism

Overview

Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people and an enduring framework for Jewish law, worship, learning and communal life. It originated among the people of ancient Israel and centers on a covenant between God and Israel, expressed through the Torah. Jewish identity also carries a historical and cultural inheritance: Jews have maintained communities across many countries while preserving a connection to the Land of Israel and to Jerusalem. Religious observance varies widely, but the Torah, the Sabbath, the annual festivals and the memory of Jerusalem remain common points of reference.

Judaism developed across distinct periods. Worship at the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem gave the city a central place in Jewish religious life. After Babylon destroyed the First Temple, exiles returned and rebuilt it. After Rome destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jewish religious life increasingly centered on prayer, study, communal institutions and rabbinic interpretation. Modern Jewish movements took shape under new political and social conditions, while the Jewish people’s return to sovereign statehood in 1948 renewed an older national dimension of their history. These changes produced varied forms of Jewish life without severing its connection to earlier texts and traditions.

Origins

Judaism’s foundational accounts begin with the ancestors of Israel and the covenant that binds their descendants to God. In the Torah, the Israelites’ departure from Egypt, the revelation at Sinai and their entry into the Land of Israel establish themes of freedom, obligation, land and collective memory. The Torah’s first five books contain narratives and commandments that became central to Jewish worship and law. The wider Tanakh preserves prophetic writings, poetry and histories alongside the Torah. It belongs to the shared religious and cultural inheritance of Jews with different levels of observance.

Biblical narratives connect Jewish memory to particular people and places. The account of Moses begins with Pharaoh’s order to cast newborn Hebrew boys into the Nile. Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives, defied the order, and Pharaoh’s daughter rescued Moses from a basket by the river. Later accounts describe Israel’s journey toward its land, including the episode in which ten of twelve spies discouraged entry and the people wandered for forty years. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and figures such as Saul and David, became lasting subjects of Jewish scripture, prayer and interpretation. Samuel’s anointing of David, the youngest son of Jesse, presents a king chosen for his character rather than his appearance.

Jerusalem became the center of the ancient kingdom and its Temple worship. The First Temple housed a system of priestly service and animal offerings. Its destruction by Babylon was followed by exile for part of the Jewish population. Under Persian rule, Jews returned and built the Second Temple; Ezra and Nehemiah belong to this era of religious and civic restoration. Nehemiah also rebuilt Jerusalem’s defensive wall despite opposition from Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arab. The return did not erase the experience of exile. It helped establish a pattern in which Jewish communities lived both in the land and elsewhere while continuing to look toward Jerusalem.

Physical remains illuminate aspects of this history. Two small silver amulets bearing words from the priestly blessing in Numbers were discovered at Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem in 1979. Their inscriptions show the antiquity of a text still used in Jewish worship. The Temple Mount marks the site of the Temples, while nearby Western Wall remains a place of Jewish prayer. Hebron and its Cave of the Patriarchs, as well as Bethlehem and the Jordan River, also hold places in Jewish religious memory.

Doctrine

Judaism affirms one God and treats the covenant as a source of religious duties and ethical obligations. The Torah guides worship, family life, social conduct and the treatment of other people. Rabbinic literature, especially the Mishnah and Talmud, records generations of legal interpretation and debate. Jewish law is therefore studied through texts and applied through continuing discussion rather than through a single fixed summary of practice. Distinct communities and movements differ on the authority and application of that law.

The Sabbath is a weekly day of rest beginning before sunset on Friday and ending after nightfall on Saturday. Prayer, shared meals and abstention from ordinary work give it both religious and communal meaning. The annual calendar includes Passover, which recalls the departure from Egypt; Shavuot, associated with the giving of the Torah; Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; Sukkot; Hanukkah; and Purim. The story read at Purim recounts how Esther and Mordechai thwarted Haman’s decree against the Jews. Biblical law also sets out a sabbatical year in which agricultural land rests, and provisions concerning the release of slaves. These texts remain subjects of interpretation across Jewish communities.

Temple worship shaped Judaism long after sacrifices ceased. Prayers recall Jerusalem and the Temple, and traditional customs include breaking a glass at weddings in memory of the Temple’s destruction. The Passover declaration ‘Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem’ expresses a hope preserved across centuries of dispersion. Visits to the Western Wall became part of Jewish practice, especially on occasions such as Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning for the Temples. Rabbinic authorities differ over access to the Temple Mount. Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and many other authorities prohibit Jews from entering because of concerns about ritual purity and the former sanctuary’s holiness.

Judaism also places weight on human responsibility. In Jewish interpretation, Abraham’s response ‘Hineni’ conveys readiness to answer a divine call and accept the task before him. Maimonides held that redeeming captives takes precedence over providing for the poor because captives face hunger, exposure and danger to life. Jewish hopes for a Messiah traditionally include the gathering of Jews in the Land of Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple and an era of peace. These expectations help distinguish Jewish understandings of the Messiah from Christianity’s belief about Jesus.

History

During the Second Temple period, Jewish life included differing schools of law and approaches to worship. The Hasmonean struggle and subsequent Jewish rule linked religious practice with political independence. After Judah Maccabee fell in battle, his brother Jonathan assumed leadership; their brother Simon later defended Judea as the inheritance of their ancestors. In the final centuries of the Second Temple, Jews gradually lost independence under foreign rule. Jesus was Jewish, was born in Judea and raised in the Galilee. His disciples were Jewish, and he prayed in synagogues and visited the Temple in Jerusalem. Christianity emerged from this Jewish setting and developed into a distinct religion over time.

Jewish revolts against Rome culminated in the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. A Judaea Capta coin minted around 71 CE commemorated Rome’s victory. The loss of the Temple ended its sacrificial service, but it did not end Jewish religious or national history. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai is traditionally associated with securing a center for Jewish sages at Yavneh before Jerusalem fell. Synagogue prayer, study and rabbinic leadership became increasingly important. Later rabbinic Judaism drew substantially on traditions associated with the Pharisees, while the Mishnah and subsequent Talmud preserved extensive discussion of Jewish law and life.

Jewish communities developed throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Asia. The history of the Jews in Iraq reaches back to the Babylonian exile. Communities also lived in Egypt and Syria; Mizrahi Jews and Yemenite Jews preserve traditions shaped in these regions. Jewish traditions place some communities in India in antiquity, although individual accounts of their earliest arrival differ. Across the diaspora, Jews maintained prayer, festivals, Hebrew texts and memories of Jerusalem. Their presence in many countries does not make Jewish origins exclusively European.

Medieval Jewish learning produced works that continue to shape religious thought. Judah Halevi’s Kuzari presents a Khazar king’s search for religious truth through dialogue with representatives of philosophy, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Maimonides’ writings brought together Jewish law, philosophy and medical learning. Jewish communities also faced persecution under different rulers. Christian supersessionist theology claimed that the Church had replaced the Jewish people; in 1543, Martin Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies advocated severe measures against Jews and their institutions. In other settings, Jews lived under Islamic rule as dhimmis, a subordinate legal status associated with jizya obligations. Conditions varied across times and places.

The nineteenth-century emancipation era changed Jewish life in Europe and North America. As Jews gained wider access to civic society, they debated how inherited law and practice should relate to new surroundings. Reform Judaism emerged first among the major modern interpretations, adapting worship and religious expectations. Orthodox Judaism defended the continuing authority of traditional law. Conservative Judaism, also known as Masorti Judaism, developed an approach that retained much traditional practice while permitting historically grounded change. Zechariah Frankel’s call for ‘positive-historical Judaism’ became influential in that development. These movements differ internally and do not encompass every form of Jewish observance or identity.

American institutions helped establish the movements’ lasting forms. Reform leader Isaac Mayer Wise built religious institutions and sought common ground among American Jews. Debate over observance remained sharp: nonkosher food served at an 1883 banquet celebrating Hebrew Union College’s first rabbinic graduates deepened divisions within Reform Judaism. Conservative institutions later included the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, founded in 1913. Reconstructionist Judaism developed another approach, treating Jewish religious civilization and communal practice as traditions renewed across generations. Reconstructing Judaism was formed in 2018 through a merger of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.

Political role

Judaism has never been confined to private worship. Biblical law addresses public conduct, ancient Jewish kingdoms exercised sovereignty, and diaspora communities maintained institutions for education, charity and mutual aid. Religious texts and symbols have also informed Jewish national movements, while Jewish political views have remained diverse. No modern party or religious sector speaks for all Jews. Secular Jews may draw on the Tanakh, Hebrew language and Jewish history without adopting religious observance; religious Jews likewise hold differing views on the role of religious law in public life.

Zionism is the Jewish national movement for self-determination in the Jewish people’s historical homeland. It is distinct from Judaism: one is a national movement, while the other is a religion and a wider tradition of Jewish life. Their connection lies in Jewish history, the Hebrew names of Judea and Zion, and the longstanding hope of return to Jerusalem. That hope predates the modern Zionist Organization by more than two thousand years. In 1903, Britain proposed a temporary Jewish settlement in a part of East Africa then called Uganda and now in Kenya. The Zionist Congress rejected the proposal, preserving the movement’s focus on the Land of Israel.

Jewish organizations today engage in public life on subjects including religious freedom, education and antisemitism. In 2021, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Anti-Defamation League formed an education and advocacy partnership against Jew hatred; the Union for Reform Judaism announced a separate partnership with the same organization. Jewish groups also support interreligious education. The American Jewish Committee has worked to update and translate Reuven Firestone’s introduction to Judaism for readers in Muslim-majority countries and has supported programs through which Christian leaders study Jewish texts and traditions in Israel. These activities reflect particular institutional choices, not a single political position held by all Jews.

Relationship to Israel and the Jewish people

The Jewish people’s bond with the Land of Israel is religious, historical and national. Jerusalem was the site of the Temples and remains central to Jewish prayer. The names Jew, Judea and Zion preserve connections between a people and its homeland. Exile and migration dispersed Jewish communities, but their texts, calendar and customs sustained a common memory. Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones identifies them as the House of Israel and speaks of restoration to the land. Jewish return to the land continued in different periods, and modern Aliyah gave that return a new scale and political setting.

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 restored Jewish sovereign statehood. It did not make Judaism and citizenship identical: Jews live in Israel and abroad, and Israeli citizens include people of several religions. It did, however, give renewed public expression to Jewish language, festivals and historical memory. After Israel unified Jerusalem in 1967, it preserved arrangements at the Temple Mount under which the Muslim Waqf retained administrative responsibility and Jewish prayer remained restricted there. The Western Wall serves as a prominent site of Jewish prayer.

Jewish attachment to Israel also appears in the response to threats against Jewish communities. The Holocaust devastated European Jewry, while persecution and upheaval reshaped communities elsewhere. Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks against Israel prompted responses across Jewish religious movements. Reconstructing Judaism condemned the attacks and affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself. Jewish institutions have also confronted antisemitism abroad: an armed attacker held a rabbi and three worshippers hostage during Sabbath services at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, in 2022. Such events affect communal security and public debate, though they do not define Judaism’s religious teachings or the full range of Jewish life.

Present day

Judaism today includes Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and other religious communities, alongside Jews whose connection to their heritage is primarily cultural or familial. Communities differ in prayer, interpretations of law, gender roles and relations with wider society. They share overlapping bodies of scripture, historical memory and communal practice. Some Jews worship daily; others encounter tradition chiefly through family celebrations, festivals, study or public culture. Religious and secular expressions both form part of contemporary Jewish life.

Jewish communities continue to develop outside Israel. In the United Arab Emirates, Jewish visitors completed work on a Torah scroll at the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue in Abu Dhabi’s Abrahamic Family House in 2023. In Cyprus, communal life expanded beyond the occasional religious services and Israeli Independence Day gatherings once held at Israel’s embassy in Nicosia; an agreement to establish a Jewish studies program at the University of Cyprus followed in 2013. In India, longstanding Jewish communities maintain their heritage while younger Jews encounter online antisemitism and anti-Israel hostility. Across these settings, local circumstances shape Jewish life without replacing the religious and historical traditions that connect communities to one another.

Modern Judaism remains both a subject of internal debate and a living inheritance. Arguments about law, worship, inclusion and public policy occur within and between its movements. The Tanakh belongs to the Jewish people as a whole rather than to one sector, and Jerusalem remains significant to Jews regardless of their level of observance. From the covenant and Torah of ancient Israel through Temple worship, rabbinic learning, diaspora communities and renewed sovereignty, Judaism has carried a continuous Jewish religious and cultural identity across changing political worlds.