Portal:Judaism

Collection of Judaica (clockwise from top):
Candlesticks for Shabbat, a cup for ritual handwashing, a Chumash and a Tanakh, a Torah pointer, a shofar, and an etrog box.

Judaism (Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת‎, romanized: Yahăḏūṯ) is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which was established between God and the Israelites, their ancestors. The religion is considered one of the earliest monotheistic religions.

Jewish religious doctrine encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. Among Judaism's core texts is the Torah—the first five books of the Hebrew Bible—and a collection of ancient Hebrew scriptures. The Tanakh, known in English as the Hebrew Bible, has the same books as Protestant Christianity's Old Testament, with some differences in order and content. In addition to the original written scripture, the supplemental Oral Torah is represented by later texts, such as the Midrash and the Talmud. The Hebrew-language word torah can mean "teaching", "law", or "instruction", although "Torah" can also be used as a general term that refers to any Jewish text or teaching that expands or elaborates on the original Five Books of Moses. Representing the core of the Jewish spiritual and religious tradition, the Torah is a term and a set of teachings that are explicitly self-positioned as encompassing at least seventy, and potentially infinite, facets and interpretations. Judaism's texts, traditions, and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity and Islam. Hebraism, like Hellenism, played a seminal role in the formation of Western civilization through its impact as a core background element of early Christianity. (Full article...)

God told Moses to tell the priests these laws for the priests. None were to come in contact with a dead body except for that of his closest relatives: his parent, child, brother, or virgin sister. They were not to shave any part of their heads or the side-growth of their beards or gash their flesh. They were not to marry a harlot or divorcee. The daughter of a priest who became a harlot was to be executed. The High Priest was not to bare his head or rend his vestments. He was not to come near any dead body, even that of his father or mother. He was to marry only a virgin of his own kin. No disabled priest could offer sacrifices. He could eat the meat of sacrifices, but could not come near the altar. No priest who had become unclean could eat the meat of sacrifices. A priest could not share his sacrificial meat with lay persons, persons whom the priest had hired, or the priest’s married daughters, but the priest could share that meat with his slaves and widowed or divorced daughters. Only animals without defect qualified for sacrifice.

God told Moses to instruct the Israelites to proclaim the following sacred occasions:

• The Sabbath on the seventh day
• Passover for 7 days beginning at twilight of the 14th day of the first month
• Shavuot 50 days later
• Rosh Hashanah on the first day of the seventh month
• Yom Kippur on the 10th day of the seventh month
• Sukkot for 8 days beginning on the 15th day of the seventh month

God told Moses to command the Israelites to bring clear olive oil for lighting the lamps of the Tabernacle regularly, from evening to morning. And God called for baking twelve loaves to be placed in the Tabernacle every Sabbath, and thereafter given to the priests, who were to eat them in the sacred precinct.

A man with an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father got in a fight, and pronounced God’s Name in blasphemy. The people brought him to Moses and placed him in custody until God’s decision should be made clear. God told Moses to take the blasphemer outside the camp where all who heard him were to lay their hands upon his head, and the whole community was to stone him, and they did so. God instructed that anyone who blasphemed God was to be put to death. Anyone who killed any human being was to be put to death. One who killed a beast was to make restitution. And anyone who maimed another person was to pay proportionately (in what has been called lex talionis).