Judaism

Write the terms according to their definition:

Term Definition

The Holy Book of Judaism

The building where Jews go to pray

The first five books of the Old Testament, written by Moses

The holiest day in the Jewish calendar (in September-October)

The (usually poor) neighbourhoods where Jews were forced to live

The name for a massacre that specifically targets Jews

The extra taxes and laws created to persecute Judaism

The Tanakh
to Jews, the Old Testament is known as the Tanakh, the Holy Book of Judaism. Jews believe that God
(Hashem) created the Universe in six days, then rested on the seventh day, the Shabbat.
Given the obvious similarities between Judaism and the other Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam,
we will spend more time considering what makes Judaism different from Christianity in particular, because
so much is the same.
The symbol of Christianity is of course the cross, in reference to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (with its
slight variation in the Orthodox church), but the principal symbol of Judaism is the Star of David, found in
the centre of the modern flag of Israel.
The holiest part of a synagogue is the ark of the Covenant, a special place where the Torah scrolls are kept
(the Torah is the Jewish name for the five books of Moses). Jews understand the Torah to be a covenant, or
agreement, between God and His chosen people, the Jews. The ark usually has the Ten Commandments
written on or near it in Hebrew.
Inside a synagogue
A synagogue will also contain a Ner Tamid (eternal flame), which is kept alight at all times, representing
the presence of God. Synagogues will also contain a ceremonial seven-branched candelabra made of pure
gold called a menorah. In Exodus, God revealed the design of the menorah to Moses, which is why it also
appears in many Christian traditions and churches. A slightly different type of menorah (with nine branches
instead of seven) is used during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, celebrating the liberation of the Second
Temple in Jerusalem from pagan Greek control in the C2nd BCE.
Complete the table to explain what you can find inside a synagogue:

Name

Image

What is it?
The Talmud
The story of Hanukkah, along with most ancient Jewish
history, is told in the Talmud, fully published around 500CE.
The Talmud is the defining text of Jewish interpretation of the
Tanakh, read and studied by all rabbis as a guide to God’s will.
The Talmud includes the 613 mitzvot (singular: mitzvah), rules
by which all Jews must live. There are 248 “positive” mitzvot –
things which all Jews must do (e.g. love God), and 365
“negative” mitzvot – things which Jews must not do (e.g.
follow other gods). The Talmud also defines other Jewish
ceremonies, like Yom Kippur and the B’nei mitzvah. The Talmud Readers by Adolf Behrman

Ceremonies
The holiest day in Judaism is Yom Kippur, the tenth day of Tishrei, seventh month of the Jewish calendar
(usually in September-October). Following Leviticus 23:27, Jews spend Yom Kippur praying and fasting.
The coming-of-age ceremony in Judaism is called a bar mitzvah (for boys) or bat mitzvah (for girls). Usually
taking place on the first Shabbat after their thirteenth birthday, Jewish children read aloud from the Torah
in their synagogue and become an adult, responsible for their own sins.
The Temple in Jerusalem
The holiest place in Judaism is Temple Mount in Jerusalem, location of the Temple of Solomon. According
to the Tanakh, the Temple was built in 957BCE, then destroyed by the Babylonian Empire in 587BCE,
beginning the “Babylonian exile”, when Jews were captives in Babylon (ended by Persian Emperor Cyrus
the Great).
In their destruction of the Temple, the Babylonians stole the original Ark of the Covenant (Arca de la
Alianza), a golden box containing the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments revealed by God to Moses
on Mount Sinai. The Ark remains lost to this day.
After Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Babylon and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, the Second Temple
was built, originally by the Persian satrap Zerubbabel, but then completed by the Jewish King Herod
around 10BCE.
The Roman Empire conquered the province of Judea, including Jerusalem, in 6CE. Monotheistic Jews
were severely persecuted by the Roman Empire, like Christians, especially during the reign of Emperor
Nero (54CE-68CE), and the Second Temple was also destroyed in 70CE.
Despite persecution, Judaism spread around the Roman Empire (like Christianity) during the first few
centuries after Christ, as Roman people slowly began to tolerate monotheism.
Jews understood the destruction of the Second Temple as a loss of their “home”, so the religion became
more community-based. Judaism could be practised wherever 10 Jewish men were present, so Roman
towns tended to have “Jewish Quarters” (entirely Jewish neighbourhoods).
Compare the different views on Jesus Christ of the Abrahamic religions:

Religion

Name of Jesus Christ

Was He a “good” man?

Did He perform miracles?

Is He the Son of God?

Is He the Messiah?
Antisemitism
Jewish beliefs about Jesus Christ, tendency to live in closed communities, and lack of a “homeland”, made
Jews victims of much persecution in the Middle Ages.
One example of this was the ghetto (called mellah in the Muslim world), an area of the city, often enclosed
by walls and subject to curfew (toque de queda), where all Jews were forced to live by law.
Some ghettos developed naturally and could be quite rich areas, as in the trading city of Venice, whereas
others were deliberately made to be unpleasant, like the terribly impoverished ghetto created in 1555 in
Rome. In Central and Eastern Europe, Jewish ghettos tended to be entire small towns called shtetls.
The lack of a Jewish homeland led to the creation of the myth of the “Wandering Jew”, a man who had
insulted Jesus Christ, cursed to wander the earth until the second coming of the Messiah. Popular medieval
“Passion Plays”, showing the suffering of Christ’s last days, would often openly blame Jews for “killing
Christ”.
Antisemitism was common in the Middle Ages among both Christians and Muslims, and the assertion that
“the Jews killed Jesus” is still made today, despite Pope Benedict XVI’s exoneration of the Jews in 2011.
Judaism as ethnicity and faith
Apart from being a faith, Judaism is also an
ethnicity, so a person is considered Jewish if
their mother is Jewish.
One consequence of this is that Jews in
different parts of the world belong to different
ethnic groups. The three principal Jewish
ethnic groups are Ashkenazi Jews (mostly
from Central and Eastern Europe), Mizrahi
Jews (mostly from the Middle East), and
Sephardi Jews (mostly from North Africa and
the Iberian Peninsula).
This difference in ethnicity is reflected in the language spoken by many Jews today: most Mizrahi Jews
continue to speak the original Jewish language, Hebrew, while most Ashkenazi Jews speak Yiddish
(Germanic Hebrew), and most Sephardi Jews speak Ladino (Old Spanish/Portuguese Hebrew).
Sephardi Jews
Jews, like Christians, were persecuted in the Roman Empire, but the Visigothic conquest of the Iberian
Peninsula improved the situation of Sephardi Jews, as the Visigoths initially showed little interest in
religious persecution.
However, as they became more established in the Iberian Peninsula, the Visigothic Kingdoms became
increasingly antisemitic, and Jews were more often victims of persecution.
For this reason, many Sephardi Jews supported the Umayyad
conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711CE, with some even
joining the Muslim army.
Umayyad tolerance of Jews as People of the Book created a Golden
Age for Judaism, as Jews from all over the world travelled to
Sepharad (the Hebrew name for al-Andalus, or Spain). Jews, like
Muslims, worked to discover and translate the Classical
philosophy of Ancient Greece and Rome, and Córdoba became the
global centre for rabbinic study of the Talmud.
Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon), the greatest medieval Jewish
philosopher and scientist, lived in Córdoba in the C12th, and was
even a friend of his Muslim counterpart Averroës. His
interpretations of the Talmud to define the principles of Jewish
faith and law are still studied today, although (like Averroës) he
Statue of Maimonides in Córdoba was criticised by more conservative Jews during his life.
 Muslim persecution of Jews
However, even during the Golden Age of Jewish culture in Spain, Jews
were victims of occasional but brutal persecution by Muslims. With the
fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031, al-Andalus divided into many
small Muslim kingdoms (called taifas), and the required Muslim respect
for People of the Book was sometimes broken. For example, in 1066, the
elevation of a Jew named Joseph ha-Nagid to the position of vizier in
Granada provoked antisemitic fear and hatred, and an estimated 4,000
Jews were massacred in a single day.
Later North African invasions of al-Andalus by the aggressive Almoravid
Caliphate (in 1090) and Almohad Caliphate (in 1147) led to more
massacres and forced conversions of Jews to Islam. It was the Almohad
The Granada Massacre Caliphate that named Averroës a heretic and executed, forcibly
converted, or exiled the Jews, forcing Maimonides to go to Egypt.
Antisemitism in the Frankish Kingdom
One of the Germanic tribes that conquered the Roman Empire was called the Franks (giving us the
modern name of France), and persecution of Jews in the Frankish Kingdom began immediately after the
Fall of Rome.
Jews were subject to special laws called “disabilities” as a form of persecution in the Frankish Kingdom
(and later in the rest of Europe). Jews were forced to live in ghettos, wear the “Jewish hat” or yellow badges
for identification, and pay extra taxes. Jews were not allowed to marry Christians, speak Hebrew, or
celebrate Jewish Holy Days. The punishments for breaking these laws included enslavement, forced
conversion, exile, and execution.
Some of these laws were removed when Charlemagne re-
organised the Frankish Kingdom into the Holy Roman
Empire in 800CE, but antisemitism would return to
Europe stronger than ever by the C11th and C12th.
The image shows Jesus Christ throwing the
moneylenders out of the temple, a reference to a sin called
usury (usura). Usury is the act of charging interest on
loans, and it was considered a sin until the C16th because
it encourages people to benefit from the suffering of
others.
However, medieval “disabilities” often prevented Jews
from working in respectable professions. As a result,
many Jews worked in finance, considered “dirty” in the
Middle Ages because of its connection to usury.
The Crusades (from the Jewish perspective)
Unsurprisingly, the Crusades involved frequent and massive persecution of Jews, including many forced
conversions and pogroms. The most famous of these were the Rhineland Massacres in 1096, part of Peter
the Hermit’s disastrous “People’s Crusade”.
An unknown number of Jews were killed, and the massacres were strongly criticised by various Popes and
members of the high clergy, but pogroms continued to happen throughout the Crusades anyway. Many
Jews left Europe to live in (and defend) the more tolerant Abbasid Caliphate.
Neither Popes nor kings could stop their people from attacking Jews. When Richard the Lionheart was
coronated in London in 1189, a group of Jews brought him gifts. However, one of the Jewish “disabilities”
in England at the time prohibited Jewish attendance at religious ceremonies, so they were not allowed to
enter, and seeing a group of Jews ejected from Westminster Abbey by royal guards, the people of London
began a pogrom, killing hundreds of Jews. Persecution spread around the country, and hundreds more Jews
were burned alive in a castle in York in 1190, the following year.
The Black Death
Apart from the Crusades, the other period of great persecution
of Jews was during the Black Death (1346-53). The cause of the
disease was not known, so most people assumed it was a
punishment from God, and Jews became a scapegoat (they were
blamed).
Consequently, tens of thousands of Jews were killed all over
Europe, most famously in the Strasbourg Massacre of 1349,
where hundreds of Jews were publicly burned. Many Jews
moved to places where they were less likely to experience
antisemitism, like the Iberian Peninsula, the Netherlands,
The Strasbourg Massacre
Poland-Lithuania, and the Abbasid Caliphate.
What began as intentional Jewish movement begame a legal requirement through the Middle Ages, as
most European states expelled Jews between the C12th and C15th.
For the expulsions, Jews were given three choices: exile, forced conversion, or death.
Jews were expelled from the Holy Roman Empire throughout the C12th, from England and Wales in 1290,
from France in 1306, from Hungary in 1360, from Austria in 1421, from Spain and most of Italy in 1492
(with the Reconquista), and from Portugal in 1497.