Introduction to World

Religions & Belief Systems

JUDAISM
GENEROSO C. ZARADOLLA
Teacher III
Objectives:

1. Recite the Ten Commandments as stated in the Old Testament (Exodus 20)

2. Identify a Jewish custom or tradition demonstrated in a movie.

3. Justify that the core teaching of Judaism is the covenant of one God with a
chosen people vs other people with many gods.

4. Identify a story from the Old Testament that demonstrate the Jewish belief in
one God.
Topics:

1. Historical Background

2. Sacred Scriptures and the Ten Commandments.

3. Sects

4. Selected Issues
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

 Ancestors of the Jews were groups of Semites called Hebrew whose origin can be
traced in the desert lands of Arabia.

 Origin of the Jewish people and the beginning of Judaism are recorded in the first
five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch.

 Three notable founding figures or patriarch: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

 Anchored upon God’s revelation to Abraham that He is the creator and ruler of the
universe, and that He loves His creatures and demands rightiousness from them.

 The Jewish concept of leadership based on the Old Testament directs us to certain
types of leadership, one of which is kingship as the ideal form of government.
 SACRED SCRIPTURES AND THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

Tanakh or Mikra – Hebrew Bible where

Jewish people have been called the “people of
Book”.
Three principal Sections:

1. Torah – the foundational text Torah

(“Teaching”)
- composed of the first “Five Books” or
the Pentateuch traditionally who have
been authored by Moses through divine
instruction in Senai.
- Narrates the history, religious statues
The Torah contains the greater part of Jewish
and moral regulations for individuals and
teaching, culture, and practice.
society, ceremonial rites and creation
stories by Yahweh, and the origin and
growth of mankind.
2. Nevi’im (“Prophets”) – subdivided into earlier Prophets, Later
Prophets, and 12 minor prophets – served as
spokesperson who criticize the hypocritical practices of Jewish rituals.

3. Ketuvim “Writings”) – contains works on poetry, temple ritual,

private prayer, philosophical exploration, and other canonical words.
Talmud (the Oral Torah) – which means “study”.

- Contain all studies and interpretations done by Jewish

rabbis or teachers of the Torah.

- Contain materials of Law and moral codes.

- Around the second century CE, this oral law was compiled
and written down as Mishnah or a testament of the law by a
respected opinion.

- The next few centuries witnessed the writing of an additional strand of commentaries in
Jerusalem and Babylonia about the Misnah known as Gamara, it includes legends, folklores, and
saying.

- Serving as the foundation of all Jewish laws codes, the whole Talmud contains 63 tractates that is
often printed over 6,200 pages long.
The Ten Commandments - Are set of absolute laws given by God to Moses at
the biblical Mount Senai that shall govern the life of
every Israelite.

- Most scholars consider this period as the official

beginning of Judaism as an organized and structured
belief system.

- Inscribed on two stone tablets, these commandments

present God’s complete and enduring standard for
morality.

 Include instructions to venerate only one god, to honor one’s parents, and to observe the Sabbath
as a holy day.

 Some prescribes acts that are pointed out includes idolatry, infidelity, murder, theft, and deceit.
- There are also 613 mitzvot or laws found within Torah (as identified by Rambam) that guide
the Jewish people in their daily living.

- There are 248 positive and 365 negative commandments within Torah.

 Laws include about the family, personal hygiene, diet, as well as duties and
responsibilities to the community.
SECTS

Wailing Wall

This term itself was a translation of the Arabic el-

Mabka, or "Place of Weeping", the traditional Arabic
term for the wall. This description stemmed from the
Jewish practice of coming to the site to mourn and
bemoan the destruction of the Temple and the loss
of national freedom it symbolized.
 SECTS

Orthodox Judaism - the most traditional of modern

Judaism that adhere to the
authority of the entire Torah as
given to Moses by God at
Mount Senai.

- the Torah is the sole authority

that must be strictly followed until
the present time. As it considers
itself the sole and genuine heir to
the Jewish tradition, it rejects all
other Jewish movements as
undesirable deviations from the
original Jewish religion.
Reform Judaism – (Liberal or Progressive Judaism) is
considered the most liberal
expression of Judaism that
subjects religious laws and
customs to human judgement.

- developed due to internal

changes in Judaism as well as
other factors operating within
society.

- members sought to adhere to the

original teachings of Judaism
while allowing some changes in
their traditions.

 Examples: services permitted to be conducted in mixed Hebrew and English, women were also accorded
equality in terms of sitting together with men in synagogues and allowing to become rabbis unlike in
other denominations.
Conservative Judaism – developed in 20th century, seeks to conserve the traditional elements of
Judaism while at the same time allowing for
modernization that is less radical than Reform
Judaism.

- application of new historical methods of study in the

light of contemporary knowledge but within the limit
of Jewish Law may be applied to safeguard Jewish
traditions.

- gradual change in law and practice is allowed only if

such occurrence un harmony with Jewish traditions.

- it sometimes described as traditional Judaism

without fundamentalism.
SELECTED ISSUES

Jewish Diaspora and Zionist Movement

Zionism as an organized movement is generally considered to have been founded by
Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is related to
Judaism and Jewish history.

The movement's central aim was the re-establishment of a Jewish national home and cultural
centre in Palestine by facilitating Jewish return from diaspora, as well as the re-establishment of a 
Jewish state (usually defined as a secular state with a Jewish majority), attaining its goal in 1948
with the creation of Israel.
 The Holocaust

 Greek origin that means “sacrifice by fire”.

 Pertains to the methodical, bureaucratic, and state-sponsored persecution and execution of

around six million Jews undertaken by the Nazi regime and its collaborators from 1933 to 1945.

 also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between
1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million
Jews across German-occupied Europe; around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.

Start date: 1941
End date: May 8, 1945
Deaths: Around 6 million Jews
Motive: Antisemitism; racism; pan-Germanism
 Einsatzgruppe shooting a woman and child,
near Ivangorod, Ukraine, 1942
The "stairs of death" at the Weiner
Graben quarry,  Jewish women were stripped,
Mauthausen concentration camp, beaten and raped in Lwów,
Austria, 1942
occupied eastern Poland (later
Lviv, Ukraine), during the Lviv
pogroms, July 1941
Bodies being pulled out of a train
Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto march
carrying Romanian Jews from the
to the Umschlagplatz before being
Iași pogrom, July 1941
sent to a camp, April or May 1943.

Greek Jews from Saloniki are

forced to exercise or dance, July
1942.
 Anti-Semitism

 Pertains to hostility towards and discrimination against the Jewish people that strongly felt in
France, Germany, Poland, and Russia in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

 Term popularized in Germany around 1870s. The most common manifestations of anti-Semitism
were the many violent riots or pogroms undertaken against the Jews.

 The planned extermination of the entire Jewish race during the time of Holocaust was the most
extreme form of anti-Semitism.

 Persecution and massacre of Jews throughout history and the destruction of synagogues and
Jewish-owned business.
Children were not spared during the violent Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses: SA troopers urge a
state-sponsored killing of Jews as seen in the boycott outside Israel's Department Store, Berlin, 1
picture of a concentration camp in Auschwitz. April 1933. All signs read: "Germans! Defend
yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!
ASSESSMENT

Identify the correct term being asked among the choices.

Torah Holocaust Zionist
Ketuvim covenant Anti-semitism
Anti-semitism 1. Form of discrimination against Jewish people.
_________________
Torah
_________________ 2. Contains basic laws for Jewish self-understanding, origin of mankind, and
Yahweh’s creation story.
Ketuvim
_________________ 3. Contains works on poetry, temple ritual, private prayer, philosophical
explorations, and other canonical works.
Zionist
_________________ 4. The movement that advocated the return of Jews to “Land of Israel”.

Covenant 5. An agreement between God and Abraham.

_________________
Holocaust 6. The methodical, bureaucratic, and state-sponsored persecution and
_________________
execution of around six million Jews undertaken by the Nazi regime.