judaism essay

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Course: ap®︎/college art history   >   unit 2, judaism, an introduction.

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Judaism and time

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BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

The origins of judaism.

When did the laws of the Torah become the norm?

Public ritual bath from the Herodian fortress at Masada, and the origins of Judaism. The massive emergence of similar pools across Judea, in accordance with the purity laws of the Torah, corresponds with the origins of Judaism in the mid-second century BCE. Photo by Talmoryair, CC BY 3.0 .

Where can we situate the origins of Judaism? If we were able to travel back in time, would we find ancient Israelites and Judeans following the laws of the Torah during the First Temple period? Almost certainly not, claims Yonatan Adler in his recent scholarly book and a popular article that was just published in the Winter 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review . So, what about during the Babylonian Exile (sixth century BCE), which is when many biblical scholars date the completion of the Torah? In his article “ The Genesis of Judaism ,” Adler asserts that even at this later date, most ordinary Judeans were not yet following the laws of the Torah. What does this mean for the origins of Judaism?

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The Genesis of Judaism

For millennia, Jewish identity has been closely associated with observance of the laws of the Torah . The biblical books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus give numerous prohibitions and commandments that regulate different aspects of Jewish life—from prayers and religious rituals to agriculture to dietary prescriptions and ritual bathing. It stands to reason that the moment when people in ancient Judea recognized these laws as authoritative would mark the origins of Judaism.

As Adler discusses, however, even the Bible itself presents a somewhat different picture:

Ancient Israelite society is never portrayed as keeping the laws of the Torah. The Israelites during the time of the First Temple are never said to refrain from eating pork or shrimp, from doing this or that on the Sabbath, or from wearing mixtures of linen and wool. … Nor is anybody ever said to wear fringes on their clothing, to don tefillin on their arm and head, or to have an inscribed mezuzah on the doorposts of their homes. Whatever it is that the biblical Israelites are doing, they do not seem to be practicing Judaism!

So, when can we date the actual origins of Judaism? Or, as Yonatan Adler puts it: “When did ancient Judeans, as a society, first begin to observe the laws of the Torah in their daily lives?” To answer this question, Adler looks at the archaeological evidence for widespread observance of the laws of the Torah. He suggests that our inquiry begin in the first century CE, where we have plenty of evidence. He then goes backward in time, until he reaches a point when we can no longer see material traces of typical Jewish religious and ritual practices.

The Judean community on Elephantine, in southern Egypt, produced a wealth of documents in Aramaic, including this adoption contract from October 22, 416 BCE. They provide clues also about observance (or not observance) of the laws of the Torah. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Theodora Wilbour, from the collection of her father, Charles Edwin Wilbour.

In particular, Adler traces archaeological imprints of the biblical laws addressing dietary prohibitions, ritual purity, graven images, tefillin and mezuzot , and Sabbath observance. In every instance, the trail of archaeological evidence ends in the mid-second century BCE—moving the origins of Judaism several centuries later than even the most critical scholars previously thought.

Surprisingly, textual sources from Babylon and Egypt, including this letter from the island of Elephantine, reveal that fifth-century BCE Judeans did not celebrate Passover at a set date, were not aware of a seven-day week or the Sabbath prohibitions, and that they sometimes prayed to deities other than Yahweh.

Widespread observance of the ritual purity laws , as attested through ritual baths (later known as mikva’ot ) and the use chalk vessels, is strong in the first century BCE but gradually disappears as we look further back in time past the late second century BCE.

When it comes to the biblical command against graven images (Deuteronomy 5:8), we can see that during the Persian period even the high priests were issuing coins with depictions of human and animal figures. The pictured silver coin from around 350 BCE bears, on its obverse, a crude depiction of a human head. The reverse features a standing owl with the feathers of the head forming a beaded circle. The Hebrew inscription reads “Hezekiah the governor,” referring to the governor of the Persian province of Yehud (Judea).

Persian-period Yehud coin, from c. 350 BCE. The presence of graven images contradicts the laws of the Torah. Photo by Classical Numismatic Group, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Only a century later, in the Hasmonean and Herodian periods, Judean leaders consciously refrained from using figurative imagery, which they replaced with decorative elements and more extensive texts—apparently adhering to the pentateuchal prohibition against graven images. Instead, the pictured bronze prutah of John Hyrcanus I from the late second century BCE features, on the reverse side, two cornucopias adorned with ribbons, and a pomegranate between them. Its obverse bears a lengthy Old Hebrew inscription inside a wreath that reads, “Yehohanan the High Priest and the Council of the Judeans.”

Hasmonean coin of John Hyrcanus I, from the late second century BCE. The absence of any human or animal figures seems to signal widespread acceptance of the laws of the Torah and to herald the origins of Judaism. Photo in public domain.

In sum, the archaeological evidence for observance of the laws of the Torah in the daily lives of ordinary Judeans seems to situate the origins of Judaism around the middle of the second century BCE.

To delve into the intricacies of the textual and archaeological evidence for widespread observance of the laws of the Torah and the origins of Judaism, read Yonatan Adler’s article “ The Genesis of Judaism ,” published in the Winter 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review .

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10 Responses

David Holland said >>Wondering if the rise of the Pharisaic movement was related to the forces driving the revolt<<

I wasn't alive in those days (contrary to what my kids say), and can only say they were the people's choice and party of the common people at least as early as Alexander Yannai ("Jannæus"). But I do know one thing:

The Pharisees were not happy that after the battles were history, the Khasmonayeem ("Hasmoneans") had both the kingship and the priesthood. Previously there was a balance of power: Kings were of the Davidic line, and priests were descendants of Aharon" {Aaron").

Now the priests, labeled "Sadducees" (derived from the ancient high priest Tzadok) controlled both powerful positions. Clashes were inevitable.

The monotheism of Judaism developed the same way as that of Islam by evolving from a polytheistic belief in many gods. Originally both Yahweh & Allah were only one of many different gods in Canaan & Arabia but eventually Yahweh was selected as the sole god to be worshiped just as Mohammed selected Allah to be the sole god when he formed Islam (using tenets and history from Judaism as a guide). This evolutionary path is glimpsed in the Bible when it had been reduced to one male god and one female goddess, Yahweh and Asherah, before Asherah was eliminated by, IIRC, King Josiah.

Baseless unadulterated nonsense! Allah (Satan) was invented around 600 AD and based on an apparent demonic encounter by Muhammad. The worship of Yahweh (God) dates back to the beginning of creation (albeit under some different name probably), certainly long before the entry of the Israelites into Canaan. As a consequence of Joshua’s conquest not eradicating all the Canaanites along with their idolatry, Asherah along with other Satanic idols were eventually incorporated into the Israelites’ worship, which was naturally followed by God’s judgment, resulting in said idols being eliminated, rightfully leaving only Yahweh left to be worshipped. The Bible blatantly contradicts your evidently false narrative!

Can’t help but think about the Maccabean Revolt when presented that suggested dating. Wondering if the rise of the Pharisaic movement was related to the forces driving the revolt, or perhaps a separate but related response to Hellenistic pressures.

As a believer (of which BAR has no understanding), I will state the obvious as found in the Bible. God does not change, therefore the laws of God were extant even before man was created. Avraham knew and understood the entirety of the statutes, commandments, and law (Gen. 26:5 …and Avraham kept my keeping, my commandments my stautes and my laws.) From that time on the law was observed. Since the commandments, statutes, and law were considered holy, you would not find extra biblical sources relating to it.

Jump to the time of Yeshua and it is clear the rabbinics had removed God from the law. The law was now on equal footing as the rabbinics and was being manipulated by the rabbinics, hence Yeshua’s issue with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. This why you will find extra biblical documents regarding the law just pior to and from this time forth. I think that maybe BAR scholars (as they call themselves) need to wake up a bit.

And that’s why he fornicated with Hagar.

He and Sarai were apparently following a known Babylonian law that called on the sterile wife to provide her husband with a servant to produce a child. The consequences of the situation make it clear it was a terrible idea. But one of the fascinating things about the Bible is that the heroes of the People of God actually make all kinds of mistakes and commit all kinds of infidelities, while God keeps trying to teach them and set them right, and is always faithful.

Interesting article but the Bible is clear that many did not follow the practices laid down by God to the people of Israel. Even kings are recorded as violating Gods laws. While finding graven images is evidence of those who did not follow Judaism, it is not proof that others were not following Judaism or not making graven images for religious reasons. And a lack of written material during this time stating their beliefs is understandably absent since any kind of writing except on clay or stone carvings is almost non-existent. Therefore, finding evidence that these laws were violated is not necessarily evidence that the laws did not exist during that time.

It’s funny that even scholars conveniently ignore the next words of the 10 Commandments. The prohibition against graven images is immediately followed by its rationale: “You shall not bow down to them nor serve them.” Ergo, it does not follow that Jews were prohibited to make coins that had a face carved into them, just as long as they didn’t worship them.

Well said. The Mt Ebal Curse Tablet appears to reinforce the Biblical events referred to in Deuteronomy and Joshua regarding the Israelites worshipping at Ebal, uttering the curses in the Law of Moses. It seems to date from the 1400s BCE (nice knowing ya, Ramesside Exodus theory), mentions Yahweh by name 4 times, written in Proto-Sinaitic script. Michael Shelomo Bar-Ron’s recent translations of the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions also support the historicity of Exodus-related events.

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George Foot Moore (1851–1931) by Ignaz Marcel Gaugengigl. Harvard University Portrait Collection, gift of friends and colleagues of Dr. Moore to the Divinity School, 1926, h348, photo by Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Leaving aside more recent  figures, the most impressive scholar of Hebraica in the history of Harvard is surely George Foot Moore (1851–1931), who served as Professor of the History of Religion from 1902 to 1928. And a remarkably capacious concept of religion he had: the first book of his two-volume  History of Religions  (1920) treated China, Japan, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, India, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and the second focused on Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism ( sic ). Even granting the obvious fact that far less was known about most of those traditions then than now and that the methodological and theoretical frameworks were more limited, one cannot come away from Moore’s study unimpressed with the command of historical and textual detail it exhibits and the author’s eagerness to be fair to the religions on which he wrote. In a memoir of Moore published soon after his death, his colleague (and sometime dean) William Wallace Fenn observed that “it was often said that he could have taught any course in the curriculum of the Theology School, except those listed under Practical Theology and Social Ethics, quite as satisfactorily as the professor who actually offered it.” 14 Personally, I am confident in the judgment that Fenn intended his comment to reflect on Moore rather than on his colleagues.

Moore came to his phenomenal Hebraic competence naturally. Fenn reports of his grandfather, the Reverend George Foot, that “largely by independent study, he mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French” and that, having taught his daughter (Moore’s mother) Hebrew, the two of them had read the Hebrew Bible through in the original seven times before she was married. 15  Moore’s own formal education was strikingly short. Largely self-taught like his grandfather, he went into the pastorate after graduating Yale in two years and Union Theological Seminary in New York in one.

Into the pastorate but not out of scholarship. Serving a church in Zanesville, Ohio (1878–1883), he took up the study of rabbinic Hebrew with a local rabbi. His comments about the experience tell us much about both Moore himself and the type of study the two undertook:

It was an old-fashioned training. Its methods were doubtless of a kind which our pedagogical experts would regard as altogether obsolete; but it accomplished its end, which is, after all, the final test of the efficiency of a method. In one respect it differed widely from that of our schools; unsophisticated by educational psychology, the yeshiva-trained teacher, like his predecessors in the great age of classical learning in Western Europe, naively assumed that the object of studying a subject was to know it, not to acquire a certificate of having been through it. In that antiquated education the memory was systematically trained, not methodologically ruined. 16

Moore pursued Modern Hebrew at the same time, 17 something that to this day cannot be said of most scholars of the Hebrew Bible.

George Foot Moore became a leading figure in the scholarship of the Hebrew Bible, playing a major role in the importation of innovative German scholarship into the United States; his commentary on Judges (1895) is still considered a classic. 18

But it is primarily in the realm of rabbinic Judaism that he left his mark. His three-volume study,  Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age  of the Tannaim  (1927–1930), is an extraordinary accomplishment, though dated in important ways now. For our purposes, I would like instead to concentrate on “Christian Writers on Judaism,” a long essay that he published in  Harvard Theological Review  (of which he was a founding editor) in 1921. 19  For reasons we shall see, it remains highly instructive.

The opening sentence tells it all: “Christian interest in Jewish literature has always been apologetic or polemic rather than historical.” 20  Whereas in “early Christian apologetic . . . the controversial points were the interpretation and application of passages in the Old Testament” to Jesus, “the discussion in the Middle Ages . . . assumed a more learned character in the endeavor to demonstrate that Christian doctrines were supported by the authentic Jewish tradition . . . or by the mostly highly reputed Jewish interpreters.” 21  (About this, Moore, perhaps with an eye to scholarship in his own day, dryly remarks, “Whatever its value otherwise, it had at least one good result—it led to a much more zealous and assiduous study of Judaism than any purely scientific interest would have inspired.” 22 ) Later, in the age of the Reformation, Protestants endeavored to show “that on the issues in debate between Protestants and Catholics the Jews were on the Protestant side.” In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, however, “a broader interest in learning for its own sake as well as its uses prevailed . . . and led . . . to the creation of a great body of learned literature in every branch of Hebrew antiquities.” 23

In the case of the revival of Christian study of Judaism in the nineteenth century, Moore writes, “the actuating motive was to find in it the milieu of early Christianity” and, more ominously, “to exhibit the system of Palestinian Jewish theology in the first three or four centuries of our era as the antithesis of Christian theology and religion as they were taught in certain contemporary German schools.” 24  There thus emerged the notion that the Talmudic rabbis subscribed to an “abstract monotheism” by which they “exalted [God] out of this world, which, like an absentee proprietor, he administered henceforth by agents.” And thus there emerged as well the charge of “legalism,” which according to Moore, (writing, remember, in 1921) “for the last fifty years has become the very definition and the all-sufficient condemnation of Judaism.” Whereas before this, “Concretely Jewish observances are censured or ridiculed . . . ‘legalism’ as a system of religion, not to say as the essence of Judaism, no one seems to have discovered.” 25

Whatever it was that first impelled the young Moore to study with that rabbi in Zanesville, by the time he had become a mature scholar his research compelled him to recognize that the reflexive anti-Judaism of the Christian community was in urgent need of correction.

Moore’s own motivation was different. As one scholar puts it, “Moore did not attempt to establish connections between Judaism and Christianity, but”—and this was really quite revolutionary for a Christian scholar—“to present a composite and constructive view of Judaism in its own terms.” 26  Whatever it was that first impelled the young Moore to study with that rabbi in Zanesville, by the time he had become a mature scholar his research compelled him to recognize that the reflexive anti-Judaism of the Christian community was in urgent need of correction. As Fenn observes in his memoir, “Professor Moore . . . had come to believe that that popular conception of the Pharisees, although possibly true of some members of the sect, misrepresented them as a whole. He sometimes said to his friends: ‘If you and I had been living in Palestine in the first century of our era, we should have been Pharisees, I hope.’ ” 27

Although  Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim  remains an important compendium of rabbinic discussions, its assumptions are now, as mentioned, woefully out of date. For one thing, Moore failed to involve himself in sufficient depth in halakhah, or normative Jewish practice, the major focus of the Talmud and of much midrashic literature as well. 28  For another, he attributed a historically problematic normativity to rabbinic Judaism and failed to reckon with the vitality of its antecedents and competitors (although, in fairness, before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, this was a more understandable move). He also accepted attributions of statements to various figures uncritically, thus limiting the utility of his massive study to historians. 29  Jacob Neusner was thus right when he wrote of Moore’s great study in 1980,“What is constructed is a static exercise in dogmatic theology.” 30  But Neusner erred when he observed in the same piece, “Moore closed many doors; he opened none.” 31  In fact, he opened the door to a fresh view of ancient Judaism for scores of Christian scholars—a “view of Judaism in its own terms.”

Not that every Christian scholar was willing to walk through it, as we shall see.

Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887–1974). Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

The attentive reader will  have noticed one element that has so far been missing in these reflections on Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School: Jews. Around 1912 this was to change, when Lyon and Moore spotted a brilliant young undergraduate who had immigrated with his family from Lithuania (then under czarist Russia), eventually creating a position for him and helping, along with Harvard Law professor (and later Supreme Court justice) Felix Frankfurter, to raise the money to fund it. 32  That young man, Harry Wolfson, was to serve on the Harvard faculty from 1915 to 1958. Although he remained grateful to the Divinity School—he had once lived in Divinity Hall—to the end of his career, and spoke warmly of the institution and of Moore in particular, 33  with his appointment the center of Jewish Studies at Harvard shifted to the Semitic Department, forerunner of today’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC).

The shift was, in a sense, inevitable. As Isadore Twersky, Wolfson’s disciple and successor as Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy and the founding director of the Center for Jewish Studies, wrote in an appreciation of his teacher in 1976:

In the past—and that means up to very recent times—the study of Judaica was ancillary, secondary, fragmentary, or derivative. Jewish studies were sometimes referred to as service departments whose task was to help illumine an obscurity in Tacitus or Posidonius, a midrash in Jerome, a Hebrew allusion in Dante. . . . The establishment of the Littauer chair at Harvard for Harry Wolfson gave Judaica its own station on the frontiers of knowledge and pursuit of truth, and began to redress the lopsidedness or imbalance of quasi-Jewish studies. 34

My sense, however, is that the importance of Jewish Studies’ having “its own station” was not well grasped in the Divinity School even as late as the time I arrived here (1988), and for quite an innocent reason: the major focus of faculty and students alike was on Christianity, and that meant that the farther the Jewish material was from intersecting with the church (especially with its two-testament Bible), the less relevance it seemed to have. Sometimes, it even appeared that the very existence of Jews and Judaism beyond antiquity was not altogether appreciated. I still remember that the catalogue cross-listed a NELC course called “Sources of Jewish History: 500–1750” in Area I, “Scripture and Interpretation”—this despite the fact that its earliest material dated to 650 years or so after the latest source in the Hebrew Bible!

Already in his essay of 1921, Moore had lamented the prominence of specialists in the New Testament among those with a penchant for commenting negatively about Judaism without, in the main, finding “it necessary to know anything about the rabbinical sources.” In a mode somewhat reminiscent of Twersky’s two generations later, he found intensely problematic the work of those whose “interest in Judaism also was not for its own sake, but for the light it might throw on the beginnings of Christianity.” 35  It is hard to gainsay this judgment, or to pronounce it obsolete. But there is another side to the issue. Absent the focus on Christianity in general and the New Testament in particular, it is hard to see how most of those laboring under anti-Jewish stereotypes originating in Christianity (whether the individuals profess Christianity or not) will ever have occasion to confront their bias and to approach Jewish sources on their own terms. In that sense, paradoxically, a more religiously diverse and pluralistic academy can prove not less but more subject to the old misconceptions, since the latter have a life and a momentum of their own, quite independent of the ancient theological claims in which they took shape.

Fully 56 years after  Moore published “Christian Writers on Judaism,” a New Testament scholar, only this time another American eager to correct the record, opened his own study by terming Moore’s essay “an article which should be required reading for any Christian scholar who writes about Judaism.” 36  As E. P. Sanders went on to show in his now classic study,  Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion , in the intervening decades many eminent New Testament scholars had failed to understand the import of Moore’s work and continued to trade in the old prejudicial stereotypes, sometimes even citing Moore against what he was, in fact, saying. 37  Decades after Moore, even after the Holocaust, the old biases were alive and well.

To me, the pressing question is why. Why has the negative presentation of Judaism proven so powerful, so protean, and so tenacious?

One reason, I think, is that it intersects with social prejudice—theological anti-Judaism drawing energy from, and imparting energy to, social anti-Semitism. But another reason is that the old pattern presents a simple but enormously powerful psychological drama—the innocent and peace-loving Jesus murdered by his godless, hypocritical, and legalistic kinsmen. As for the perfidious malefactors themselves, they are rightfully scattered all over the world with no state of their own, surviving as involuntary witnesses to the truth of the gospel, as they “groan in grief over their lost kingdom and quake in fear under the sway of innumerable Christian peoples,” as Augustine had put it. 38

The drama is so powerful, in fact, that, as Jonathan Sacks, now retired as Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth, put it, “it is a virus—and like a virus it mutates.” In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, “religious anti-Judaism,” the variety that we have been considering, “mutated into racial anti-Semitism,” best known for its role in Nazism and the Holocaust. But now what Sacks calls “the second great mutation of anti-Semitism in modern times” is underway, a mutation “from racial anti-Semitism to religious anti-Zionism.” The new strain, he writes, “uses all the mediaeval myths—the Blood Libel, poisoning of wells, killers of the Lord’s anointed, incarnation of evil—transposed into a new key and context,” with the state of Israel as the great malefactor. 39  With the Jewish people no longer stateless, groaning in grief over their lost kingdom and quaking in fear under the sway of innumerable Christian peoples, the old evil is again loose in the world.

It is essential to understand that Sacks is not speaking of those who are critical of this or that Israeli policy, even sharply so. If he were, he would be accusing large segments of the Israeli populace and world Jewry alike. Helpful criteria for distinguishing criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism are given by Alan Dershowitz, now retired as Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. “So long as criticism is comparative, contextual, and fair,” Dershowitz writes, “it should be encouraged, not disparaged. But when the Jewish nation is the only one criticized for faults that are far worse among other nations, such criticism crosses the line from fair to foul, from acceptable to anti-Semitic.” 40  Unfortunately, the long history of Christian anti-Semitism provides a rich and remarkably resilient resource for that singling out of the Jewish state for consistently and univocally negative judgments unreflective of the complexity of the historical facts. 41

This latest mutation of anti-Semitism has indeed produced a virulent strain; only time will tell how hearty it is. Remarkably, another central figure in the history of Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School spotted the danger early on. Krister Stendahl, (1921–2008), an influential New Testament scholar who became dean of Harvard Divinity School (1968–1979) and, later, a Lutheran bishop, wrote in these pages in the wake of the Six-Day War (1967):

In the months and years to come, difficult political problems in the Middle East call for solutions. Christians both in the West and in the East will weigh the proposals differently. But all of us should watch out for the ways in which the ancient venom of Christian anti-semitism might enter in. A militarily victorious and politically strong Israel cannot count on half as much good will as a threatened Jewish people in danger of its second holocaust. The situation bears watching. . . . The present political situation may well unleash a type of Christian attitude which identifies Judaism and Israel with materialism and lack of compassion, devoid of the Christian spirit of love. 42

But if the goal is to think comparatively and contextually and with fairness to the full range of facts, as Dershowitz recommends, then some small solace can be found in the history of scholarship on ancient Judaism and early Christianity since Moore, in which precisely that type of analysis has grown in strength (Stendahl’s own work is an example), 43  and dramatically so in the decades since Sanders voiced his lament. As always, it will take far more than scholarship to counter large cultural and social forces, but, in the face of the new challenge, scholars should underestimate neither their own responsibilities nor the lessons embedded in the history of their own disciplines and the general enrichment that can come when Judaism has its own station and the study of it is pursued for its own sake.

A postscript:  Although I have not intended these reflections as comprehensive and have necessarily omitted reference to several notable figures, I cannot close without mentioning one more. My own teacher, Frank Moore Cross (1921–2012), taught at Harvard Divinity School from 1957 until his retirement in 1992, holding the Hancock Professorship, by then in NELC, from 1958. Trained, like his father, as a Presbyterian minister, Cross presided over a genuinely nonconfessional program, which produced a large number of the most prominent Jewish figures in what is now the senior generation of Hebrew Bible scholars. Like Stendahl a great admirer and supporter of Jewish scholarship, he invited a number of prominent scholars from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to be visiting professors, including such influential figures as Moshe Goshen-Gottstein and Shemaryahu Talmon.

• This is also a tradition of immense historical importance to the emergence of ideas of religious tolerance in political thought, as brilliantly analyzed by Eric Nelson of Harvard’s Department of Government in  The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought  (Harvard University Press, 2010).
• Samuel Eliot Morison,  The Founding of Harvard College  (Harvard University Press, 1935), 220–21. Morison thanks Harry A. Wolfson for tracking down the reference ( Mishneh Torah, Tefillah  11:14).
• Robert H. Pfeiffer, “The Teaching of Hebrew in Colonial America,”  Jewish Quarterly Review  45 (1955): 363–73, at 369.
• Lee M. Friedman, “Judah Monis: First Instructor in Hebrew at Harvard University,”  Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society  22   (1914): 1–24, at 2–3.
• See Shalom Goldman,  God’s Sacred Tongue: Hebrew and the American Imagination  (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 41–45.
• “Rules and Statutes of the Professorships in the University at Cambridge” (Metcalf and Company, 1846), 7–8.
• William T. Baxter,  The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724–1775  (Harvard University Press, 1945), esp. 55–56, 69–74, and 114–18 .
• Baruch de Spinoza,  A Theological-Political Tractate and Political Treatise  (Dover Publications, 1951), 106 and 103. The  Tractatus Theologico-Politicus  was first published in 1670.
• www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/george-rapall-noyes . James de Normandie, “Memoir of Rev. Edward James Young, D.D.” in  Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society  44 (October 1910–June 1911): 529–42, at 531–32.
• D. G. Lyon, “Crawford Howell Toy,”  Harvard Theological Review  13 (1920): 1–21.
• The name was changed in 1961 to Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures and then to its current name at some point in the early 1970s, when your humble—nay, overrated—scribe was a graduate student there.
• See David G. Lyon, “Semitic,” in  The Development of Harvard University since the Inauguration of President Eliot, 1869–1929 , ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (Harvard University Press, 1930), 231–40.
• Ibid., 235.
• Willam Wallace Fenn, “George Foot Moore: A Memoir,”  Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society  64 (February 1932): 3–11, at 3.
• Quoted in Leo W. Schwarz,  Wolfson of Harvard: Portrait of a Scholar  (Jewish Publication Society of America, 5738/1978), 38–39, with no indication of the source of Moore’s quote.
• Samuel A. Meier, “Moore, George Foot (15 October 1851–16 May 1931),”  American National Biography  (online version, 2000),  www.anb.org .
• George Foot Moore, “Christian Writers on Judaism,”  Harvard Theological Review  14 (1921): 197–254.
• Ibid., 197.
• Ibid., 250.
• Ibid., 202.
• Ibid., 251. On this last point, see Nelson,  The Hebrew Republic .
• Moore, “Christian Writers on Judaism,” 251–52. On the latter point, Moore refers specifically to Ferdinand Weber but certainly sees the pattern as much more general.
• Ibid., 252.
• E. P. Sanders,  Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion  (Fortress Press, 1977), 56.
• Fenn, “George Foot Moore,” 8.
• For a fine introduction to this important subject, see now Chaim Saiman,  Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law  (Library of Jewish Studies; Princeton University Press, 2018).
• A very useful new introduction to the Talmud and contemporary scholarly approaches to it is Barry Scott Wimpfheimer,  The Talmud: A Biography  (Lives of Great Religious Books; Princeton University Press, 2018).
• Jacob Neusner, “ ‘Judaism’ after Moore: A Programmatic Statement,”  Journal of Jewish Studies  31 (1980): 141–56, at 147. The whole article is a good discussion of what Neusner found inadequate in Moore’s procedures.
• Ibid., 142.
• Schwartz,  Wolfson , 38–39, 49.
• Ibid., 171.
• Isadore Twersky, “Harry Austryn Wolfson, in Appreciation,”  American Jewish Year Book  76 (1976): 99–111, at 107.
• Moore, “Christian Writers,” 241, n. 47. The second comment (on 241 itself) was made about Emil Schürer and Wilhelm Bousset.
• Sanders,  Paul , 33.
• E.g., ibid., 55–56.
• Augustine,  Contra Faustum  12:12.
• Jonathan Sacks, “A New Anti-Semitism,”  Chesterton Review  30 (2004): 199–207, at 202–03. For more detail, in this case involving the revival of the  adversus iudaeos  tradition among liberal theologians in particular, see Adam Gregerman, “Old Wine in New Bottles: Liberation Theology and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,”  Journal of Ecumenical Studies  41 (2004): 313–40, esp. 333–39; idem, “Israel as the ‘Hermeneutical Jew’ in Protestant Statements on the Land and State of Israel: Four Presbyterian examples,”  Israel Affairs  23 (2017): 773–93 (Gregerman is an alumnus of Harvard Divinity School); and Jonathan Rynhold,  The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture  (Cambridge University Press, 2015), esp. 130–31. Of course, the religious and racial versions of anti-Semitism are hardly incompatible and can readily energize each other. On this, see Susannah Heschel,  The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany  (Princeton University Press, 2008). The same can be said as well for the relationship of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism.
• Alan Dershowitz,  The Case for Israel  (John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 1.
• For examples, see Gregerman, “Israel as the ‘Hermeneutical Jew.’ ” It is important to recognize that (1) a great many Christians have successfully rid themselves of the penchant to vilify or even demonize the Jews, and (2) one can be subject to that penchant without being a believing Christian.
• Krister Stendahl, “Judaism and Christianity II—After a Colloquium and a War,”  Harvard Divinity Bulletin  1 (1967): 2–9, at 7. On the larger question of the range of Christian theological responses to the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, see, for example, Adam Gregerman, “Comparative Christian Hermeneutical Approaches to the Land Promises to Abraham,”  CrossCurrents  64 (2014): 410–25.
• See especially Stendahl’s influential essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,”  Harvard Theological Review  56 (1963): 199–215, reprinted in  Paul among Jews and Gentiles  (Fortress Press, 1976), 78–96.

Jon D. Levenson  is the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at HDS. His many books include  Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life  (Yale University Press, 2006), which won a National Jewish Book Award, and  The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism  (Princeton University Press, 2015).

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Opinion Guest Essay

The Great Rupture in American Jewish Life

Credit... Daniel Benneworth-Gray

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By Peter Beinart

Mr. Beinart is the editor at large of Jewish Currents and a journalist and writer who has written extensively on the Middle East, Jewish life and American foreign policy.

• March 22, 2024

F or the last decade or so, an ideological tremor has been unsettling American Jewish life. Since Oct. 7, it has become an earthquake. It concerns the relationship between liberalism and Zionism, two creeds that for more than half a century have defined American Jewish identity. In the years to come, American Jews will face growing pressure to choose between them.

They will face that pressure because Israel’s war in Gaza has supercharged a transformation on the American left. Solidarity with Palestinians is becoming as essential to leftist politics as support for abortion rights or opposition to fossil fuels. And as happened during the Vietnam War and the struggle against South African apartheid, leftist fervor is reshaping the liberal mainstream. In December, the United Automobile Workers demanded a cease-fire and formed a divestment working group to consider the union’s “economic ties to the conflict.” In January, the National L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force called for a cease-fire as well. In February, the leadership of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the nation’s oldest Black Protestant denomination, called on the United States to halt aid to the Jewish state. Across blue America, many liberals who once supported Israel or avoided the subject are making the Palestinian cause their own.

This transformation remains in its early stages. In many prominent liberal institutions — most significantly, the Democratic Party — supporters of Israel remain not only welcome but also dominant. But the leaders of those institutions no longer represent much of their base. The Democratic majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, acknowledged this divide in a speech on Israel on the Senate floor last week. He reiterated his longstanding commitment to the Jewish state, though not its prime minister. But he also conceded, in the speech’s most remarkable line, that he “can understand the idealism that inspires so many young people in particular to support a one-state solution” — a solution that does not involve a Jewish state. Those are the words of a politician who understands that his party is undergoing profound change.

The American Jews most committed to Zionism, the ones who run establishment institutions, understand that liberal America is becoming less ideologically hospitable. And they are responding by forging common cause with the American right. It’s no surprise that the Anti-Defamation League, which only a few years ago harshly criticized Donald Trump’s immigration policies, recently honored his son-in-law and former senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

Mr. Trump himself recognizes the emerging political split. “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” he said in an interview published on Monday. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.” It’s typical Trumpian indecency and hyperbole, but it’s rooted in a political reality. For American Jews who want to preserve their country’s unconditional support for Israel for another generation, there is only one reliable political partner: a Republican Party that views standing for Palestinian rights as part of the “woke” agenda.

The American Jews who are making a different choice — jettisoning Zionism because they can’t reconcile it with the liberal principle of equality under the law — garner less attention because they remain further from power. But their numbers are larger than many recognize, especially among millennials and Gen Z. And they face their own dilemmas. They are joining a Palestine solidarity movement that is growing larger, but also more radical, in response to Israel’s destruction of Gaza. That growing radicalism has produced a paradox: A movement that welcomes more and more American Jews finds it harder to explain where Israeli Jews fit into its vision of Palestinian liberation.

The emerging rupture between American liberalism and American Zionism constitutes the greatest transformation in American Jewish politics in half a century. It will redefine American Jewish life for decades to come.

“A merican Jews,” writes Marc Dollinger in his book “Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America,” have long depicted themselves as “guardians of liberal America.” Since they came to the United States in large numbers around the turn of the 20th century, Jews have been wildly overrepresented in movements for civil, women’s, labor and gay rights. Since the 1930s, despite their rising prosperity, they have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. For generations of American Jews, the icons of American liberalism — Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinem — have been secular saints.

The American Jewish love affair with Zionism dates from the early 20th century as well. But it came to dominate communal life only after Israel’s dramatic victory in the 1967 war exhilarated American Jews eager for an antidote to Jewish powerlessness during the Holocaust. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which was nearly bankrupt on the eve of the 1967 war, had become American Jewry’s most powerful institution by the 1980s. American Jews, wrote Albert Vorspan, a leader of Reform Judaism, in 1988, “have made of Israel an icon — a surrogate faith, surrogate synagogue, surrogate God.”

Given the depth of these twin commitments, it’s no surprise that American Jews have long sought to fuse them by describing Zionism as a liberal cause. It has always been a strange pairing. American liberals generally consider themselves advocates of equal citizenship irrespective of ethnicity, religion and race. Zionism — or at the least the version that has guided Israel since its founding — requires Jewish dominance. From 1948 to 1966, Israel held most of its Palestinian citizens under military law; since 1967 it has ruled millions of Palestinians who hold no citizenship at all. Even so, American Jews could until recently assert their Zionism without having their liberal credentials challenged.

The primary reason was the absence from American public discourse of Palestinians, the people whose testimony would cast those credentials into greatest doubt. In 1984, the Palestinian American literary critic Edward Said argued that in the West, Palestinians lack “permission to narrate” their own experience. For decades after he wrote those words, they remained true. A study by the University of Arizona’s Maha Nassar found that of the opinion articles about Palestinians published in The New York Times and The Washington Post between 2000 and 2009, Palestinians themselves wrote roughly 1 percent.

But in recent years, Palestinian voices, while still embattled and even censored , have begun to carry. Palestinians have turned to social media to combat their exclusion from the press. In an era of youth-led activism, they have joined intersectional movements forged by parallel experiences of discrimination and injustice. Meanwhile, Israel — under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu for most of the past two decades — has lurched to the right, producing politicians so openly racist that their behavior cannot be defended in liberal terms.

Many Palestine solidarity activists identify as leftists, not liberals. But like the activists of the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements, they have helped change liberal opinion with their radical critiques. In 2002, according to Gallup , Democrats sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 34 points. By early 2023, they favored the Palestinians by 11 points. And because opinion about Israel cleaves along generational lines, that pro-Palestinian skew is much greater among the young. According to a Quinnipiac University poll in November, Democrats under the age of 35 sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis by 58 points.

Given this generational gulf, universities offer a preview of the way many liberals — or “progressives,” a term that straddles liberalism and leftism and enjoys more currency among young Americans — may view Zionism in the years to come. Supporting Palestine has become a core feature of progressive politics on many campuses. At Columbia, for example, 94 campus organizations — including the Vietnamese Students Association, the Reproductive Justice Collective and Poetry Slam, Columbia’s “only recreational spoken word club” — announced in November that they “see Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation.” As a result, Zionist Jewish students find themselves at odds with most of their politically active peers.

Accompanying this shift, on campus and beyond, has been a rise in Israel-related antisemitism. It follows a pattern in American history. From the hostility toward German Americans during World War I to violence against American Muslims after Sept. 11 and assaults on Asian Americans during the Covid pandemic, Americans have a long and ugly tradition of expressing their hostility toward foreign governments or movements by targeting compatriots who share a religion, ethnicity or nationality with those overseas adversaries. Today, tragically, some Americans who loathe Israel are taking it out on American Jews. (Palestinian Americans, who have endured multiple violent hate crimes since Oct. 7, are experiencing their own version of this phenomenon.) The spike in antisemitism since Oct. 7 follows a pattern. Five years ago, the political scientist Ayal Feinberg, using data from 2001 and 2014, found that reported antisemitic incidents in the United States spike when the Israeli military conducts a substantial military operation.

Attributing the growing discomfort of pro-Israel Jewish students entirely to antisemitism, however, misses something fundamental. Unlike establishment Jewish organizations, Jewish students often distinguish between bigotry and ideological antagonism. In a 2022 study , the political scientist Eitan Hersh found that more than 50 percent of Jewish college students felt “they pay a social cost for supporting the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.” And yet, in general, Dr. Hersh reported, “the students do not fear antisemitism.”

Surveys since Oct. 7 find something similar. Asked in November in a Hillel International poll to describe the climate on campus since the start of the war, 20 percent of Jewish students answered “unsafe” and 23 percent answered “scary.” By contrast, 45 percent answered “uncomfortable” and 53 percent answered “tense.” A survey that same month by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that only 37 percent of American Jewish voters ages 18 to 35 consider campus antisemitism a “very serious problem,” compared with nearly 80 percent of American Jewish voters over the age of 35.

While some young pro-Israel American Jews experience antisemitism, they more frequently report ideological exclusion. As Zionism becomes associated with the political right, their experiences on progressive campuses are coming to resemble the experiences of young Republicans. The difference is that unlike young Republicans, most young American Zionists were raised to believe that theirs was a liberal creed. When their parents attended college, that assertion was rarely challenged. On the same campuses where their parents felt at home, Jewish students who view Zionism as central to their identity now often feel like outsiders.

In 1979, Mr. Said observed that in the West, “to be a Palestinian is in political terms to be an outlaw.” In much of America — including Washington — that remains true. But within progressive institutions one can glimpse the beginning of a historic inversion. Often, it’s now the Zionists who feel like outlaws.

G iven the organized American Jewish community’s professed devotion to liberal principles, which include free speech, one might imagine that Jewish institutions would greet this ideological shift by urging pro-Israel students to tolerate and even learn from their pro-Palestinian peers. Such a stance would flow naturally from the statements establishment Jewish groups have made in the past. A few years ago, the Anti-Defamation League declared that “our country’s universities serve as laboratories for the exchange of differing viewpoints and beliefs. Offensive, hateful speech is protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment.”

But as pro-Palestinian sentiment has grown in progressive America, pro-Israel Jewish leaders have apparently made an exception for anti-Zionism. While still claiming to support free speech on campus, the ADL last October asked college presidents to investigate local chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine to determine whether they violated university regulations or state or federal laws, a demand that the American Civil Liberties Union warned could “chill speech” and “betray the spirit of free inquiry.” After the University of Pennsylvania hosted a Palestinian literature festival last fall, Marc Rowan, chair of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York and chair of the board of advisers of Penn’s Wharton business school, condemned the university’s president for giving the festival Penn’s “imprimatur.” In December, he encouraged trustees to alter university policies in ways that Penn’s branch of the American Association of University Professors warn ed could “silence and punish speech with which trustees disagree.”

In this effort to limit pro-Palestinian speech, establishment Jewish leaders are finding their strongest allies on the authoritarian right. Pro-Trump Republicans have their own censorship agenda: They want to stop schools and universities from emphasizing America’s history of racial and other oppression. Calling that pedagogy antisemitic makes it easier to ban or defund. At a much discussed congressional hearing in December featuring the presidents of Harvard, Penn and M.I.T., the Republican representative Virginia Foxx noted that Harvard teaches courses like “Race and Racism in the Making of the United States as a Global Power” and hosts seminars such as “Scientific Racism and Anti-Racism: History and Recent Perspectives” before declaring that “Harvard also, not coincidentally but causally, was ground zero for antisemitism following Oct. 7.”

Ms. Foxx’s view is typical. While some Democrats also equate anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the politicians and business leaders most eager to suppress pro-Palestinian speech are conservatives who link such speech to the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda they despise. Elise Stefanik, a Trump acolyte who has accused Harvard of “caving to the woke left,” became the star of that congressional hearing by demanding that Harvard’s president , Claudine Gay, punish students who chant slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (Ms. Gay was subsequently forced to resign following charges of plagiarism.) Elon Musk, who in November said that the phrase “from the river to the sea” was banned from his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the following month declared , “D.E.I. must die.” The first governor to ban Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at his state’s public universities was Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who has also signed legislation that limits what those universities can teach about race and gender.

This alignment between the American Jewish organizational establishment and the Trumpist right is not limited to universities. If the ADL has aligned with Republicans who want to silence “woke” activists on campus, AIPAC has joined forces with Republicans who want to disenfranchise “woke” voters. In the 2022 midterm elections, AIPAC endorsed at least 109 Republicans who opposed certifying the 2020 election. For an organization single-mindedly focused on sustaining unconditional U.S. support for Israel, that constituted a rational decision. Since Republican members of Congress don’t have to mollify pro-Palestinian voters, they’re AIPAC’s most dependable allies. And if many of those Republicans used specious claims of Black voter fraud to oppose the democratic transfer of power in 2020 — and may do so again — that’s a price AIPAC seems to be prepared to pay.

F or the many American Jews who still consider themselves both progressives and Zionists, this growing alliance between leading Zionist institutions and a Trumpist Republican Party is uncomfortable. But in the short term, they have an answer: politicians like President Biden, whose views about both Israel and American democracy roughly reflect their own. In his speech last week, Mr. Schumer called these liberal Zionists American Jewry’s “silent majority.”

For the moment he may be right. In the years to come, however, as generational currents pull the Democratic Party in a more pro-Palestinian direction and push America’s pro-Israel establishment to the right, liberal Zionists will likely find it harder to reconcile their two faiths. Young American Jews offer a glimpse into that future, in which a sizable wing of American Jewry decides that to hold fast to its progressive principles it must jettison Zionism and embrace equal citizenship in Israel and Palestine, as well as in the United States.

For an American Jewish establishment that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, these anti-Zionist Jews are inconvenient. Sometimes, pro-Israel Jewish organizations pretend they don’t exist. In November, after Columbia suspended two anti-Zionist campus groups, the ADL thanked university leaders for acting “to protect Jewish students” — even though one of the suspended groups was Jewish Voice for Peace. At other times, pro-Israel leaders describe anti-Zionist Jews as a negligible fringe. If American Jews are divided over the war in Gaza, Andrés Spokoiny, the president and chief executive of the Jewish Funders Network, an organization for Jewish philanthropists, declared in December, “the split is 98 percent/2 percent.”

Among older American Jews, this assertion of a Zionist consensus contains some truth. But among younger American Jews, it’s false. In 2021, even before Israel’s current far-right government took power, the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 38 percent of American Jewish voters under the age of 40 viewed Israel as an apartheid state, compared with 47 percent who said it’s not. In November, it revealed that 49 percent of American Jewish voters ages 18 to 35 opposed Mr. Biden’s request for additional military aid to Israel. On many campuses, Jewish students are at the forefront of protests for a cease-fire and divestment from Israel. They don’t speak for all — and maybe not even most — of their Jewish peers. But they represent far more than 2 percent.

These progressive Jews are, as the U.S. editor of The London Review of Books, Adam Shatz, noted to me, a double minority. Their anti-Zionism makes them a minority among American Jews, while their Jewishness makes them a minority in the Palestine solidarity movement. Fifteen years ago, when the liberal Zionist group J Street was intent on being the “ blocking back ” for President Barack Obama’s push for a two-state solution, some liberal Jews imagined themselves leading the push to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Today, the prospect of partition has diminished, and Palestinians increasingly set the terms of activist criticism of Israel. That discourse, which is peppered with terms like “apartheid” and “decolonization," is generally hostile to a Jewish state within any borders.

There’s nothing antisemitic about envisioning a future in which Palestinians and Jews coexist on the basis of legal equality rather than Jewish supremacy. But in pro-Palestine activist circles in the United States, coexistence has receded as a theme. In 1999, Mr. Said argued for “a binational Israeli-Palestinian state” that offered “self-determination for both peoples.” In his 2007 book, “One Country,” Ali Abunimah, a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, an influential source of pro-Palestine news and opinion, imagined one state whose name reflected the identities of both major communities that inhabit it. The terms “‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ are dear to those who use them and they should not be abandoned,” he argued. “The country could be called Yisrael-Falastin in Hebrew and Filastin-Isra’il in Arabic.”

In recent years, however, as Israel has moved to the right, pro-Palestinian discourse in the United States has hardened. The phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which dates from the 1960s but has gained new prominence since Oct. 7, does not acknowledge Palestine and Israel’s binational character. To many American Jews, in fact, the phrase suggests a Palestine free of Jews. It sounds expulsionist, if not genocidal. It’s an ironic charge, given that it is Israel that today controls the land between the river and the sea, whose leaders openly advocate the mass exodus of Palestinians and that the International Court of Justice says could plausibly be committing genocide in Gaza.

Palestinian scholars like Maha Nassar and Ahmad Khalidi argue that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” does not imply the subjugation of Jews. It instead reflects the longstanding Palestinian belief that Palestine should have become an independent country when released from European colonial control, a vision that does not preclude Jews from living freely alongside their Muslim and Christian neighbors. The Jewish groups closest to the Palestine solidarity movement agree: Jewish Voice for Peace’s Los Angeles chapter has argued that the slogan is no more anti-Jewish than the phrase “Black lives matter” is anti-white. And if the Palestine solidarity movement in the United States calls for the genocide of Jews, it’s hard to explain why so many Jews have joined its ranks. Rabbi Alissa Wise, an organizer of Rabbis for Cease-Fire, estimates that other than Palestinians, no other group has been as prominent in the protests against the war as Jews.

Still, imagining a “free Palestine” from the river to the sea requires imagining that Israeli Jews will become Palestinians, which erases their collective identity. That’s a departure from the more inclusive vision that Mr. Said and Mr. Abunimah outlined years ago. It’s harder for Palestinian activists to offer that more inclusive vision when they are watching Israel bomb and starve Gaza. But the rise of Hamas makes it even more essential.

Jews who identify with the Palestinian struggle may find it difficult to offer this critique. Many have defected from the Zionist milieu in which they were raised. Having made that painful transition, which can rupture relations with friends and family, they may be disinclined to question their new ideological home. It’s frightening to risk alienating one community when you’ve already alienated another. Questioning the Palestine solidarity movement also violates the notion, prevalent in some quarters of the American left, that members of an oppressor group should not second-guess representatives of the oppressed.

But these identity hierarchies suppress critical thought. Palestinians aren’t a monolith, and progressive Jews aren’t merely allies. They are members of a small and long-persecuted people who have not only the right but also the obligation to care about Jews in Israel, and to push the Palestine solidarity movement to more explicitly include them in its vision of liberation, in the spirit of the Freedom Charter adopted during apartheid by the African National Congress and its allies, which declared in its second sentence that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and white.”

For many American Jews, it is painful to watch their children’s or grandchildren’s generation question Zionism. It is infuriating to watch students at liberal institutions with which they once felt aligned treat Zionism as a racist creed. It is tempting to attribute all this to antisemitism, even if that requires defining many young American Jews as antisemites themselves.

But the American Jews who insist that Zionism and liberalism remain compatible should ask themselves why Israel now attracts the fervent support of Representative Stefanik but repels the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Automobile Workers. Why it enjoys the admiration of Elon Musk and Viktor Orban but is labeled a perpetrator of apartheid by Human Rights Watch and likened to the Jim Crow South by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Why it is more likely to retain unconditional American support if Mr. Trump succeeds in turning the United States into a white Christian supremacist state than if he fails.

For many decades, American Jews have built our political identity on a contradiction: Pursue equal citizenship here; defend group supremacy there. Now here and there are converging. In the years to come, we will have to choose.

Peter Beinart ( @PeterBeinart ) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also the editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook , a weekly newsletter.

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Why I Converted to Judaism

My involvement with Judaism began with a Jewish boyfriend, but I ultimately converted for myself.

By Rabbi Heidi Hoover

That morning I had immersed in a mikveh, the Jewish ritual bath, and my declaration in front of the congregation concluded my conversion to Judaism.

As I left services that momentous evening, an older woman said to me, “Why would you want to convert to this?”

I didn’t know her. I didn’t know her story or anything about her experience of Judaism. I only know that while she hadn’t rejected Judaism, she also couldn’t understand why someone would affirmatively choose it. I imagine she may have experienced anti-Semitism, or had some other negative feeling related to her Judaism such that she considered being Jewish a mixed blessing — or maybe not a blessing at all.

People often assume that most Jews by choice convert because they have a partner or spouse who is Jewish. And while it’s true that my involvement with Judaism began with a Jewish boyfriend— now my husband of 28 years and the father of our two children — as Reform Jews, I would not have had to convert to participate in Jewish life and raise Jewish children. I converted because I wanted to be a Jew — for myself, separate from my relationship with my husband.

There are a number of reasons why I was attracted to Judaism and ultimately converted.

Growing up Lutheran, my religious practice was centered in the church. Aside from reciting grace before meals, any rituals that took place at home — Christmas trees or Easter eggs, for example — were essentially secular rituals that came to be associated with Christian holidays. The religious parts of the holidays were celebrated at church.

But for Jews, so much religious ritual takes place at home, from Shabbat candles to the Hanukkah menorah to the Passover seder to the sukkah we build in the fall. I love how much home-based ritual there is.

Judaism is also a great religion for kids. Take Passover , for example. The point of our Passover celebration is to teach the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt to our children. When the rabbis developed the Passover seder in the first century CE, they used food as symbols for the different parts of the story. What better way to teach people than to use food? It’s genius.

I also find Jewish traditions to be very sensible. They seem to meet people where they are on the level of basic human needs. When someone very close to you dies, you sit shiva . For seven days (though many people only observe it for three days), you stay home. You don’t go out, you don’t shower, you don’t look in the mirror. People bring you food and sit with you in your grief. It strikes me that this is exactly what a lot of people need in that situation, and our tradition developed to give it to them.

Another example: At Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur , we confess our sins and ask forgiveness. But Judaism doesn’t consider humans to be essentially bad or sinful—rather, it considers us to be humans, and part of being human is to make mistakes, to sometimes do things that are wrong. So you make amends and you ask for forgiveness, and you go on trying to be a decent person in the world.

Judaism also focuses on behavior more than belief (though belief also matters). We focus on doing the best we can in this world instead of looking toward a reward after we die. And we recognize that we cannot understand God or know what God is like, so there is no dictated way to be in relationship with God.

Every Jew is free to determine their own relationship with God. If that relationship is primarily intellectual rather than emotional, that’s fine. When I first got involved with Judaism, that was how I was most comfortable relating to the divine, so it gave me a way in.

Finally, Judaism values questioning and learning. Jews delve deep into our sacred texts, wrestling with them and finding meaning in them for ourselves. There are many ways to understand our texts, and different interpretations — even contradictory ones — can coexist and be valid. I love that — and it’s so amazing for me to discover new interpretations. Every time, it feels like a revelation from God.

After I converted, I became a rabbi , and now I have the opportunity to open doors for others interested in Judaism, both Jewish and not. My motivations for conversion are not the same as other converts, and that is as it should be.

Jewish tradition is incredibly rich and deep, with so much that is worth exploring. Those who come to Judaism as adults often bring a different perspective than those who were born Jewish and grew up as Jews. The experience of those who convert isn’t better or worse: it’s just different. Every Jew, whether born Jewish or Jewish by conversion, brings more richness to our tradition.

Rabbi Heidi Hoover is the spiritual leader of Beth Shalom v’Emeth Reform Temple in Brooklyn, New York.

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Judaism is among the oldest religions in history. The origin of the religion can be traced back to nearly four thousand years whereby the religion was initially practiced near Canaan, that is the modern day Palestine and Israel. The religion is said to have similar traits as the beliefs and practices of the Jewish or Israeli people who were rescued from Egyptian slavery by God. The heritage of the Jewish religion practices and beliefs is reflected on the covenant that God made with Moses. The beliefs and practices of Judaism including the belief in one God, eternal afterlife and Holy Scriptures and narratives are similar to those of other major religions mainly Christianity and Islam. The only difference is presented in terms of how each religion interprets these beliefs (Cohen, 18). Judaism was the first religion to believe in monotheism, a belief in one supreme God who controls the universe. Jewish faith beliefs in God’s teachings contained in the Tanakh, which is the Hebrew bible particularly Torah that consists of the first five books of the Christians bible. Other beliefs include the sacred narratives especially about creation, and the redemption and exodus from slavery; rituals and ceremonies especially sacrifices, sacred space of worship which is the synagogue, and devotion and worship of one God. Despite being the oldest religion in history, Judaism followers have faced endless persecution and seclusion in the Diaspora which involved the countries dominated by Christians and Muslims, especially after several Jews willingly or forcefully migrated from their ancestral land in Eretz Israel. After settling in new countries after moving from their homeland, few Jews assimilated with the residents in the Diaspora while others were persecuted or fled to tertiary countries after a prolonged seclusion in anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic countries such as France and Germany. The persecution of Jews in Islamic countries has been in existence for a long time especially as a result of the belief that Islam is the only true religion. For instance, the Jewish persecution by Islamic believers can be traced to historical events such as the public execution that involved crucifying of a Jewish vizier Joseph HaNagid on December 1066 in Granada, Spain. A similar case occurred in 1465 at Fez, morocco where thousands of Jews were slaughtered with a claim that a Jewish Vizier had inappropriately treated a Muslim woman. Such cases have occurred in history with massive slaughters of Jewish people and destruction of synagogues in Muslim countries with the period between eighth to nineteenth centuries being the most intense (Bergen, 63). The persecution became rampant especially as a result of the Israel-Palestine clashes, with the recent massacre occurring in 1940’s in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, thus resulting in mass exodus of the Diaspora Jews living in Islamic populated countries. The systematic mass killing of the Jews by the German Nazis during the holocaust period is one of the historical significance of the persecution of Judaism believers in the Diaspora. According to the Nazis, Germans were superior racially and as such, the presence of Jews and other minor races such as Gypsies, and Slavic’s people was a threat to the superiority of the Germans, and thus, they had to be executed or segregated. According to Bergen (156), the Nazis and other European collaborators killed millions of Jews in their ‘final solution’ strategy between 1941 and 1945. By the end of the World War II, approximately seven hundred Jews had survived the holocaust and these immigrated to Israel and other allied countries such as the US. These series of events indicates that the ongoing religious and social conflicts that have created hatred even in the modern world have existed for a long time. Thus, unless the people learn to respect and appreciate religious diversity, the existence of hatred on the basis of religious beliefs is likely to continue.

Works Cited

Bergen, Doris. War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Print Cohen, Shaye. The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Print

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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

Judaism Introduction

Religions of the World and Ecology Series

Judaism and ecology.

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, ed.

“ Introduction: Judaism and the Natural World ” Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

  Jews and Nature in Historical Perspective

The Jewish voice has joined the environmental movement relatively recently. Jews are not among the leaders of the environmental movement, and environmental activists who are Jews by birth have not developed their stance on the basis of Judaism. 1 With the marked exception of the Bible, the literary sources of Judaism have remained practically unknown to environmental thinkers, and Jewish values have only marginally inspired environmental thinking or policies. Moreover, since the famous essay of Lynn White, Jr., 2 many environmentalists have charged that the Bible, the foundation document of Judaism, is the very cause for the contemporary ecological crisis. The biblical command to the first humans “to fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28) is repeatedly cited as the proof that the Bible, and the Judeo-Christian tradition based on it, is the direct cause of the current environmental crisis.

Jews, too, have not regarded the well-being of the physical environment a Jewish issue. 3 In the post-Holocaust years, the physical and spiritual survival of the Jewish people, rather than the survival of the earth and natural habitats, has dominated Jewish concerns. While environmentalism was gaining momentum in the industrialized West, Jews were preoccupied with other issues, such as the prolonged Israeli-Arab conflict, relations between the State of Israel and the Diaspora, Jewish-Christian dialogue, and pluralism within Judaism. The desired relationship between the earth and the human species has not been at the forefront of the Jewish agenda.

The lack of interest in the natural world among Jews has deep historical and religious causes that go beyond the contemporary Jewish anguish about survival. For most of their history, Jews have been an urban people. In the Greco-Roman world, although Jews dwelled in urban centers, agriculture remained the primary mode of Jewish livelihood in Palestine and Babylonia. After the rise of Islam, heavy taxation on Jews made agriculture unprofitable and accelerated the process of urbanization, leading Jews to concentrate in commerce, trade, finance, and crafts. In medieval Christian Europe the Jewish estrangement from the land was even more pronounced because feudal relations excluded Jews. Although in some parts of Western Europe landed property was granted to Jews as late as the thirteenth century, Jews were increasingly forced to engage in moneylending, an economic activity that was odious to Christians. Frequent expulsions and voluntary migrations further estranged Jews from land cultivation, turning the ancient agrarian past into a distant memory. No longer in practice, the prescribed land-based rituals of Judaism fueled the hope for the ideal Messianic Age in the remote future, when the exiled people will return to the Land of Israel. For two millennia of exilic life, Jews continued to dream about their return to the Holy Land, but they waited for divine intervention to bring it about. Until then, Jewish life was to be shaped by the norms of rabbinic Judaism whose comprehensiveness enabled Jews to remain loyal to their religious tradition, despite the loss of political sovereignty and in the face of hostility and discrimination.

Nature, nonetheless, was not absent from traditional Jewish life. Through prescribed blessings and prayers the traditional Jew acknowledged natural phenomena and expressed thanks for God’s benevolent creation. Yet the natural world was not understood to be independent of God’s creative power. To venerate the natural world for its own sake or to identify God with nature is precisely the pagan outlook that Judaism rejects as idolatrous. 4 The world created by God is good, but it is not perfect; it requires human action to perfect it in accord with God’s will. While nature is not in itself holy, it can be sanctified through performance of prescribed commands from God, the source of holiness. 5 In Judaism, the system of revealed commandments stands in contrast to nature, prescribing what should be done to that which already exists. Steven S. Schwarzschild captured this ethical stance when he coined the phrase “the unnatural Jew.” 6

The prescriptive stance toward nature was compatible with attempts to fathom how the natural world works. During the Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers sought to understand the laws by which God governs the world and availed themselves of contemporary science based on the study of natural phenomena and their causes. Medieval philosophers regarded the study of God’s created world a theoretical activity whose reward was the immortality of the rational soul, or the intellect. It was a religious activity that enabled the philosopher-scientist to come closer to God. Moreover, the study of nature was never divorced from the study of the revealed Torah. Even though from the twelfth century onward medieval Jewish philosophers did not use biblical verses as premises of their philosophical reasoning, they all presupposed that in principle there could be no genuine contradiction between the truths of the revealed text and scientific knowledge about the world; both were believed to manifest the Wisdom of God. In premodern Judaism, then, all reflections about the created world, the doctrine of creation, and the doctrine of revelation functioned as the matrix within which Jews speculated about the natural world.

The religious outlook of premodern Judaism reached a crisis in the late eighteenth century. The rise of the centralized, modern nation-state, and, thereafter, the spread of democratic principles, made it impossible for Jews to continue to live in autonomous communities and be governed by their own laws and by special laws imposed by the state. If Jews were to remain in their country of residence, they had to be granted citizenship and civil rights. Many Jews wished to end age-old social and religious segregation and integrate into Western society and culture. For many, especially those who were open to the ideals of the Enlightenment, the sacred myth of Judaism and its traditional lifestyle became untenable. For the first time in their history, Jews evaluated their own tradition by criteria derived from the surrounding society, which they now regarded to be superior to their own. The Emancipation of the Jews during the nineteenth century was accompanied by a rapid process of modernization of Jewish religious practices, beliefs, and social customs. It was helped by more positive attitudes toward finance and commerce in modern mercantile and later capitalist economies. Yet precisely because Jews in Western and Central Europe so successfully and rapidly integrated into modern society, anti-Semitism emerged as a backlash, culminating in the elimination of one-third of world Jewry in the Holocaust. The multiple causes of the Holocaust cannot be discussed here, but it is appropriate to ponder the causal connection between the collective destruction of the Jews and the current environmental crisis. 7

Zionism was the most radical Jewish response to modern anti-Semitism. A secular, nationalist movement, Zionism called on Jews to leave their country of residence and settle in the Land of Israel where they would rebuild the Jewish homeland and enjoy political sovereignty. For many Zionist ideologues, especially those associated with Labor or Socialist Zionism, the return to the Land of Israel was not merely a political act; it was also a deliberate attempt to create a new kind of a Jew, a person who will be rooted in the soil rather than in the study of sacred texts and the performance of religious rituals. 8 The return of the Jews to nature was supposed to liberate the Jews from the negative character traits they had acquired during their long exilic life and to lead to personal redemption not in the afterlife but in this world, and not through observance of divine commands but through manual labor. 9 The “religion of labor” through land cultivation was the most profound transformation of traditional Jewish values. 10 Along with the return to nature, the Zionists created a new, Hebrew culture that highlighted the agricultural basis of many Jewish festivals and designed new rituals that celebrated the abundance of the land without referring to God or to the sacred sources of Judaism. 11

Despite the Zionist return to land cultivation and the emotional link to the Land of Israel, the physical environment did not fare well in the State of Israel. Since its establishment, the nascent state has been struggling to survive in a hostile environment, and nature preservation has not been at the top of the national agenda. In fact, the rapid population growth of the Jewish state after 1950, industrialization, and the perpetual state of war with its Arab neighbors dictated overuse of preciously scarce natural resources, especially water. 12 Furthermore, the influx of Jews from the Arab world, which had not been exposed to Western modernization, reintroduced traditional Jewish life and values to the young state, including a certain indifference to the physical environment. The social agenda of these immigrants, as well as of the refugees from Europe after the Holocaust, has had little to do with protection of the land and its limited natural resources.

Environmentalism does exist in Israel, 13 but its forms indicate the complex relationship between Judaism and ecology. On the one hand, intimate familiarity with the landscape, its flora and fauna, and concern for the preservation of the physical environment are popular among secular Israelis. Yet these activities are not legitimated by appeal to the religious sources of Judaism. Even when the Bible is employed to identify plants and animals in the Land of Israel, the Bible is not treated as a revealed text, 14 but as a historical document about the remote, national past. For secular Israelis, attention to environmental issues has more to do with a Western orientation and links to environmental movements in Europe and North America than with the religious sources of Judaism. On the other hand, Jews who are anchored in the Jewish tradition tend to link their love of the Land of Israel to a certain religious nationalist vision. Even though the religious, nationalist parties now promote outdoor activities for their constituents, these activities were not grounded in the values and sensibilities of the environmental movement. Nonetheless, in recent years attempts have been made to include ecological awareness in the religious-nationalist school system.

The creative weaving of Judaism and ecology took place in North America and began in the early 1970s as an apologetic response to the charges that the Judeo-Christian tradition was the cause of the environmental crisis. Defensive responses came first from Orthodox thinkers who showed that the accusations were based either on misunderstanding of the sources or on a lack of familiarity with the richness of the Jewish tradition. 15 Since then, Jews from all branches of modern Judaism—Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Humanistic Judaism—have contributed to Jewish ecology thinking, giving rise to a distinctive, albeit still small, body of literature. 16

If reflections about nature from the sources of Judaism began with religiously committed Jews, environmental activism, by contrast, was initiated by Jews who were already involved in the environmental movement and who found their way back to their Jewish roots as part of the Jewish Renewal movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. At the forefront of the Jewish environmental movement was the organization Shomrei Adamah (Keepers of the Earth), whose goal was to raise Jewish awareness about ecological problems, such as pollution of natural resources, deforestation, erosion of top soil, the disappearance of species, climatic changes, and other ecological disasters brought about by the Industrial Revolution and by human greed and unbridled consumerism. 17 Jewish environmentalists have shown how ancient Jewish sacred texts and practices expressed concern for the protection of the earth and its inhabitants and urged Jews to reconnect with the rhythms of nature that are the foundation of many Jewish festivals. 18 In 1993 the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) was founded as an umbrella organization of diverse groups in North America to coordinate Jewish educational efforts and influence environmental policies. The final essay in this volume, by Mark X. Jacobs, the current executive director of the organization, documents the political and educational activities of Jewish environmentalists and reflects on the challenges that face them

Existing Jewish ecological literature has shown that the sacred sources of Judaism are compatible with the sensibilities of the environmental movement, especially the value of stewardship, and that the values of Judaism could be used to formulate viable environmental policies. Contrary to the accusations of secular environmentalists, the Bible itself serves as the point of departure of Jewish environmentalism. Three main areas are commonly cited as evidence of the ecological usefulness of the Bible and rabbinic literature: protection of vegetation, especially fruit-bearing trees; awareness of the distress of animals; and predicating social justice on the well-being of the earth itself. 19 All three areas are framed in the context of covenantal theology, the bond between Israel and God. 20

The causal relationship between human conduct and the thriving of the natural environment is spelled out in the relationship between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel: when Israel conducts itself according to divine command, the land is abundant and fertile, benefiting its human inhabitants with the basic necessities of life. But when Israel transgresses divine commandments, the blessedness of the land is temporarily removed and the land becomes desolate and inhospitable (Lev. 26:32). When the alienation from God becomes so egregious and injustice fills up God’s land, God brings about Israel’s removal from the land by allowing Israel’s enemies to overcome her. The well-being of the land and the quality of Israel’s life are causally linked, and both are predicated on Israel’s observance of God’s will. In short, the covenant between Israel and God implied specific laws intended to protect God’s land and ensure its continued vitality.

Jewish ecological discourse has shown that Judaism harbors deep concern for the well-being of the natural world. 21 To date, however, the movement has not articulated a Jewish theology of nature, nor has it submitted the sources of Judaism to a systematic, philosophical examination. This volume is a first attempt toward that goal. The volume comprises essays presented in February 1998 at a conference at the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, as part of the larger study of religion and ecology, spearheaded by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim of Bucknell University. Organized by Rabbi Steven Shaw and Moshe Sokol, the conference brought Jewish academics, environmental activists, and educators to reflect about Judaism’s attitude toward the natural world. Unlike other gatherings of academics in Jewish studies, this conference intended to bridge the gap between objective scholarship and subjective commitment, between theoretical reflections and recommendations for action. The volume reflects this vision.

Constructive Jewish Theology of Nature

The volume commences with two attempts to construct a Jewish theology of nature in order to address the current ecological crisis. Arthur Green and Michael Fishbane both take their inspiration from kabbalah. Green believes that in kabbalah we can find the correct view of the relationship between God and the universe and that such a view offers useful insights for our environmental predicament inasmuch as it is compatible with the evolutionary model of the life sciences and with the orientation of contemporary physics and cosmology. Green boldly asserts that in order to address the concerns of the “environmental age,” it is necessary to formulate “a Judaism unafraid to proclaim the holiness of the natural world, one that sees creation, including both world and human self, as a reflection of divinity and a source of religious inspiration.” Adopting the ontological schema of kabbalah, Green maintains that all existents are in some way an expression of God and are to some extent intrinsically related to each other.

Contrary to Michael Wyschogrod, who holds that in Judaism “nature per se is not sacred,” 22 because holiness belongs only to the Creator, Green obliterates the ontological gap between the Creator and the created. Instead he adopts the monistic, emanationist ontology of kabbalah, according to which “multiplicity is the garbing of the One in the coat of many colors of existence, the transformation of Y-H-W-H, singularity itself—Being—into the infinite variety of H-W-Y-H, being as we know, encounter, and are it.” Green also endorses the kabbalistic tendency to blur the distinction between creation and revelation. Both are forms of God’s self-disclosure and both should ultimately be understood as linguistic processes. The natural world is ultimately a linguistic structure that requires decoding, an act that only humans can accomplish because they are created in the image of God. “Each human mind,” says Green in accord with kabbalah, “is a microcosm, a miniature replica of the single Mind that conceives and becomes the universe. To know that oneness and recognize it in all our fellow beings is what life is all about.” Thus, Green unambiguously privileges the human in the order of things, a view that is vehemently rejected by many environmentalists, especially those associated with deep ecology. 23 From the privileged position of the human, Green derives an ethics of responsibility toward all creatures that acknowledges the differences between diverse creatures while insisting on the need to defend the legitimate place in the world of even “the weakest and most threatened of creatures.” For Green, a Jewish ecological ethics must be a torat hayim, namely, a set of laws and instructions that truly “enhances life.” He does not specify what these can be, but he does provide a Jewish way of thinking about environmental ethics and the policies that could derive from it.

Like Green, Michael Fishbane illustrates how the traditional language of Judaism could be reinterpreted to think about nature in light of contemporary ecological concerns. But if Green takes his point of departure from the paradox of unity and multiplicity, Fishbane reflects on the paradox of God’s creative act. The Bible depicts the creation of the world as the result of divine speech: God spoke and the world came into being. If nature is God’s speech, nature itself reveals God. Fishbane’s implicit indebtedness to kabbalah is evident when he regards creation as an act of God’s self-revelation. In Fishbane’s own words: “God’s speaking is the world’s fullness, an infinite revelation at the heart of creation.” The creative/revelatory act, however, has two aspects: one is the creative energy that brings things into existence, and the other is the perception of what exists. Fishbane captures these two aspects by differentiating between “Breath” and “Speech.” The divine Breath is the creative power that vitalizes everything, whereas Speech is that which articulates things, making them distinct and accessible to human perception. Fishbane then identifies “Speech” and “Breath” with the two central categories of rabbinic Judaism—“Written Torah” and “Oral Torah,” respectively. He states: “the Oral Torah is eternally God’s breath as it vitalizes being, ruha be-ruha (‘spirit within spirit’), whereas the Written Torah is this same reality contracted into the vessels of human cognition, language, and experience.”

In Fishbane’s poetic theology of nature, the terms “Written Torah” and “Oral Torah” no longer denote a certain body of Jewish literature, Scripture and rabbinic deliberations respectively, but two coordinates that invite Jews to organize their experience vis-à-vis the natural world. As much as the Written and Oral Torah are interdependent in traditional Jewish thinking, so are humans interdependent on the natural world and the divine creative energy that vitalizes it. Fishbane expresses the duality of the human condition by using yet another set of terms: “natural eye” and “spiritual eye.” As part of nature, human beings have a physical body and perceive the world through “the natural eye,” namely, through their bodily senses. But humans are also possessed with the ability “to perceive the world with God’s Oral Torah in mind.” That is to say, humans are aware of being different from other creatures, but they are also able to see what they have in common with other beings. When we become aware of the “organic coherence” of which we are a part, we are able to exhibit “precious attentiveness to the multiform character of God’s Written Torah … [while being] attuned to the Oral Torah speaking in and through it.” Becoming aware of the “Godly nature” of everything that exists is precisely the purpose of Jewish prayers, blessings, and acts of sanctification, according to Fishbane. These are ways in which Jews acknowledge the limits of human speech, while using language. At the same time we also become aware of and attuned to “the rhythms of other persons and things by adjusting our breathing patterns to them and their way of being.” Fishbane’s theology of nature calls people to live as part of nature and at the same time to seek to transcend the natural.

The ethical conclusions of Fishbane are the same as Green’s: we must be attuned to the rhythm of nature, we must do our best to protect God’s nature, and we must recognize that we and everything else in the natural world are linked to each other. Whether kabbalah and Hasidism, its modern offshoot, could be legitimately used to anchor contemporary Jewish ecology, is questioned by other scholars in this volume.

The Human Condition: Origins, Pollution, and Death

From constructive Jewish theology of nature the volume moves to consider the Bible and rabbinic literature, the foundation documents of Judaism. The essays of the second section advance this conversation in interesting, new directions. Evan Eisenberg presents a comparative reading of the biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden in light of the sacred narratives of other Near Eastern cultures and what is known today about the civilizations of the ancient Near East: the riverbed civilization of Mesopotamia and the terraced-hills civilization of the Canaanites, of which ancient Israel was a part. By establishing the ecological facts behind the Garden of Eden narrative, Eisenberg proposes a rather somber reading of the biblical narrative that carries a moral lesson about the relationship between humans and natural wilderness.

In Eisenberg’s comparative study, the Garden of Eden is a mountain that functioned as a “cosmic center,” a “world-pole,” or the “navel of the world.” It is the source of life. Eden, however, was not a place fit for human dwelling, since humans are animals with a unique capacity to make tools and produce farming, writing, and urban dwellings, in short, to create civilizations. 24 In Eisenberg’s secular, anthropological reading of the biblical narrative, the Fall of Man was a necessary process of self-expulsion, or self-alienation from nature. Eden belongs to God, and not even gods or angels could remain in it, let alone humans. To develop their potential, humans had to leave Eden and create civilization, which inevitably destroys the very natural resources at human disposal. According to Eisenberg, the tragic human condition cannot be avoided, but its scope can be minimized, if we become aware of it. The biblical Garden of Eden narrative, therefore, should function not as a place to which we aspire to return but as a source of wilderness: “we must revere it, draw sustenance from it, [and] keep it alive.” Conversely, we must be cognizant of the fact that our civilizational accomplishments have separated us from the sources of life, and that the quality of our life has been drastically reduced since the dawn of civilization. Eisenberg does not offer a way out of the human conundrum, but he suggests that if we become aware of our tragic ecological situation, we may be able to minimize its scope.

How are humans to negotiate their tragic relationship with the natural world? In traditional Judaism answers to such a question have to be sought, in principle, in rabbinic sources that apply divinely revealed Scripture to concrete human situations. The essays by Eliezer Diamond and David Kraemer treat these sources from two distinct, but complementary perspectives. Whereas Diamond focuses on halakhic (i.e., legal) discourse, Kraemer looks closely at aggadic, that is, the nonlegal, homiletical, and speculative aspect of rabbinic Judaism. From their detailed textual analyses emerge general principles that could be most useful for contemporary thinking about ecological problems.

Humans are social animals and their interaction with each other requires cooperation as well as mechanisms for conflict resolution. Diamond wrestles with one aspect of contemporary ecological problems: pollution. He considers the effects of pollution, not on natural environment, but on humans. More specifically, he is concerned with the problem of environmental justice. 25 Since conflicts about pollution pit the interest of the individual against the interest of the community, Diamond examines how the Mishnah and subsequent medieval and modern legal sources, including rulings by the Supreme Court in Israel, deal with such conflicts. Diamond shows that halakhic sources struggled with the tension between personal and conventional standards, established the parameters of unacceptable pollution, were aware of the difference between inflicting nuisance or discomfort and causing economic deprivation, and that they have evolved over time because they addressed changing life circumstances. While Diamond reasons within the parameters of Jewish legal sources, the ramifications of his essay extend beyond the boundaries of Jewish society, for whom this reasoning is normative. He convincingly argues that halakhic reasoning about notions of conventionality and equity in environmental matters could be applied meaningfully to the problem of global warming. Such application requires a careful analysis of concrete human situations as well as a creative analysis of Jewish legal sources.

The same interpretative creativity can be applied to the nonlegal rabbinic sources that expressed rabbinic theology and shaped religious practices. Kraemer advances our understanding of Jewish views on the relationship between humans and nature by looking at death rituals. On the basis of a comparative analysis with Zoroastrian and Egyptian death rituals, he argues that in all human societies death rituals are rooted in a certain view about the origins of humanity. In rabbinic death rituals the dead body was to be placed in the ground immediately after death. While one can rationalize this ritual by appealing to the hot climate of the Near East and the need to avoid early decomposition of the body, Kraemer cogently argues that the rabbinic rationale for the practice was linked to the biblical narrative of human creation. The Bible, however, has two creation narratives: Genesis 2:7 depicts the creation of the first human from the earth, whereas Genesis 1:26 highlights that the human was created “in the image of God” ( be-tzelem ’elohim ). The two creation narratives have very different consequences concerning the relationship between humans and the natural world. According to the earthbound story, the human ( ’adam ) comes from the earth ( ’adamah ) and must return to it at death; according to the second narrative, humans are in some sense “above” the earth. Kraemer shows that rabbinic death rituals privileged the earthbound narrative, thereby signifying the essential link to the natural world. From this, Kraemer derives a rabbinically based ecological ethics: the relations between humans and the earth is “a relationship not of subduing or conquest, but of natural partnership. An act of abuse against the natural world is an abuse against humanity, and vice versa.” It follows that humans must not “view the natural world as ‘other,’ something to serve our needs, something to exploit.” Rather, “our needs are part of, and must be harmonized with, the needs of the natural world.” 26 Kraemer does not tell us how to accomplish the reconciliation between conflicting needs, but it stands to reason that further exploration of halakhic sources could provide an answer.

In his response, Eilon Schwartz clarifies Jewish approaches to the natural world by delineating four models. The first focuses on human rationality and posits an instrumental attitude toward nature. Schwartz admits that this model, in which human rationality manipulates the world to satisfy human needs, makes Judaism susceptible to the accusation of the environmental movement that Judaism endorses human domination of nature. Yet, the Bible offers a second model that affirms human responsibility toward the earth, highlighting the partnership of humans with the earth and its inhabitants. These two models, Schwartz argues, need not be understood as mutually exclusive, as Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik proposed in his famous essay, 27 because human physicality can be “a source of deep spiritual meaning.” While Schwartz agrees that the second model is attractive, he confesses to a certain discomfort with it, given his own environmentalism that is inspired by the wilderness tradition. Therefore, Schwartz finds the teachings of Abraham Joshua Heschel akin to his own sensibility, because Heschel highlighted the “radical amazement model.” Whereas this model belittles the human and calls for humility in light of nature’s awesomeness, the fourth model, the “holy sparks model” of Lurianic kabbalah and Hasidism, makes the human deeply involved with the transformation of nature. Schwartz insightfully suggests that this religious model was given a secular twist in Zionism, where it cohered with Romantic nationalism, on the one hand, and with Nietzsche’s philosophy of life, on the other hand. With a greater awareness to the diverse models within Judaism, Jewish environmental education has more options and can avoid the sense of crisis and despair articulated by Soloveitchik’s religious existentialism.

The Doctrine of Creation

All Jewish reflections about the natural world, as Michael Wyscho-grod has already noted, take their point of departure from the belief that God created the world and that God is the source of the moral order. The third section of the volume examines more carefully the doctrine of creation in the Bible, rabbinic texts, and Jewish philosophy.

Stephen A. Geller’s analysis of the Book of Job captures the core problem in Judaism: the tension between the belief that God created the world and the belief that God revealed His Will to Israel in the form of law, the Torah. The Book of Job is the earliest manifestation of this problem. According to Geller, the book reflected a crisis of faith in Israel during the sixth century BCE, after the destruction of the First Temple. The crisis pitted the “Old Wisdom tradition” against a “new militant monotheism” and its covenantal theology, articulated in the Book of Deuteronomy. The ancient Wisdom tradition saw the origin of nature and the origin of the moral order to be the same. Wise is the one who observes nature and knows how to live rightly in accord with it. By contrast, the new Deuteronomic faith posited a covenant law that is discussed in terms of Sinaitic revelation. Geller highlights the tension between the Old Wisdom tradition that proceeded “from God through creation and nature to morality,” and the covenant faith that ‘deriv[ed] all morality from revelation to humankind, i.e., Israel.” According to Geller, then, the Book of Job is a hybrid of intellectual piety and covenantal piety, a mixture that is best evident in the speeches of Job’s friends. The author of the Book of Job does not resolve the tension logically, but the book ends with an emotional solution to the tension. In chapters 38–42, the climax of the book, the author of Job “wants to rescue a role for nature, but he realizes that this can be achieved only by abandoning the demand for understanding itself.” The proper attitude toward nature, according to the Book of Job, is expressed in the category of the “sublime” as understood by the English poets of the eighteenth century. The sublime combines humility, terror, awareness of one’s insignificance, and fear with feelings of exaltation, forgetfulness of self, and fascination. The conclusion of the Book of Job is that “Revelation and nature cannot be reconciled by human wisdom.”

Although Geller succinctly captures the tension between the doctrines of creation and revelation, the history of Judaism did not follow his conclusion. What is true about the Book of Job, if one accepts Geller’s reading, is not true about Jewish philosophy. The Jewish philosophic tradition was grounded in the assumption that human reason can indeed bridge revelation and nature and that the same rational ability to fathom the laws of nature can and should be applied to the interpretation of God’s revealed Will and Wisdom in Scripture. For the philosophers, the laws of nature, in principle, could not contradict the truths of revealed Scripture, and it is the task of the Jewish wise man to sort out the relationship between knowledge about the natural world and the true meaning of revealed Scripture.

Focusing on the Jewish philosophical tradition, David Novak explores how the doctrine of creation relates to the idea of nature, and more specifically to the concept of natural law. Writing both as a historian of Jewish thought and as a constructive Jewish theologian, Novak argues that in the classical sources of Judaism—especially in medieval Jewish philosophy—there is an elaborate discussion of natural law. The relationship between the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of revelation has to be configured in the context of a natural law theory. Novak argues that all theories of natural law are necessarily teleological and that they presuppose a hierarchical order of the universe. After elucidating four possible ways to configure the telos of the universe, and critiquing the relationship between creation and revelation in the thought of Saadia Gaon (882–942) and Moses Maimonides (1135/8–1204), Novak proceeds to articulate his own understanding of the interplay of creation, revelation, and redemption. His views are shaped by the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929). Properly understood, Novak argues, creation is not in time; it is prior to the experience of every creature; and redemption is “not yet,” that is, it is beyond what humans can know or experience in the present. All that humans have is revelation, yet revelation is not a one-time historic event, but is “God’s presence in us, with us, and for us.” It is the ever-present “Giving of the Torah to Israel,” an act which organizes all meaning for Jews. Novak argues, therefore, that nature cannot be grasped as a mere given, or an abstraction of the human mind. Instead, nature is “something that can only be grasped abstractly from within our historical present, a present whose content is continually provided by revelation.” On the basis of Rosenzweig’s philosophy, Novak proceeds to present what he considers to be the best theory of natural law in Judaism. Novak’s theological position can be endorsed by Orthodox, Conservative, and even Reform Jews who accept the primacy of revelation in organizing Jewish life, but it may be difficult for secular Jews for whom the category of revelation is meaningless or who view Judaism as the culture of the Jewish people.

Whereas Novak focused on the philosophical interpretations of the doctrine of creation, Neil Gillman looks at the link between the doctrine of creation and Jewish liturgy and ritual. Gillman’s assumption coheres with the claim of Kraemer in the previous section: Jewish rituals express the underlying theology of rabbinic Judaism better than Jewish philosophical theology. Gillman shows how the Jewish marriage ceremony and the prayer of the morning service are organized on the basis of the doctrine of creation that is the linchpin of the sacred narrative of Judaism. Again in agreement with Kraemer, Gillman shows that the rabbis privileged the earthbound creation narrative in Genesis 2:7 and that they ascribed deep spiritual meaning to the physicality of creation. Gillman’s interpretation of the doctrine of creation is decidedly critical of the intellectualism of Maimonides as much as it is at odds with Soloveitchik’s reading of the creation narrative. In Gillman’s exposition of the marriage ceremony, the ritual should be understood as a reenactment of the act of creation that fuses “the two worlds, the transcendent mythic world of the creation story and the actual, real world of the two people who are getting married.” Liturgical acts are not mere ceremonies; they are theology in action. Gillman then looks carefully at three elements from the morning service in which God’s creative activity is blessed. He shows how the rabbis intentionally changed the biblical phrase (Isaiah 45:7) to convey their theological views about God, the world, and the origin of Evil. The liturgical language posits God as an omnipotent creator ex nihilo, who renews nature daily and whose “power ranges not only over nature but over history as well.” The Jewish normative attitude toward the natural world is expressed not through systematic reflections of the philosophers but through the daily liturgy obligatory to observant Jews.

In the response to these three papers, Jon D. Levenson clarifies Geller’s reading of the Book of Job while raising questions about Geller’s claim that the fusion of intellectual piety and covenantal piety in Job is similar to that found in late Stoicism. Levenson is most critical of Novak’s “Judaizing the classical and Roman ideal of natural law” and of Novak’s understanding of revelation. Levenson argues that Novak “leaves it unclear about how we are to derive any specific norms from natural law and what we are to do when these norms and those of the revealed law conflict.” With a veiled critique of philosophical discourse, Levenson expresses preferences to the study of liturgy as the authentic expression of Jewish views on creation and revelation, in accord with the essay by Gillman.

Nature and Revealed Morality

If it is true, as Novak claims, that verbal revelation is the only context through which Jews can experience the natural world, how does revelation organize Jewish attitude toward nature? In traditional Judaism revelation is understood to be the origin of morality, and so how does morality, the prescriptions and prohibitions of Judaism, relate to the natural world? Does morality, as articulated in the Torah, stand in opposition to nature? Is the human called by God to transform nature? Does Judaism bridge the distinction between nature and morality? The essays in this section wrestle with these questions.

Shalom Rosenberg’s essay documents the diverse conceptions of nature in Judaism that flow from different understandings of revelation. In Jewish sources, Rosenberg correctly notes, the term “nature” has a variety of meanings. “Nature” is used generally to denote “the cosmos or … the biological world,” as well as more specifically to denote the nature of humans, which for some philosophers was identified with the human capacity to reason. Moreover, the meaning of the term “nature” has varied over time in accordance with the function assigned to it. For example, in the modern period “nature” is evoked as a way to criticize existing ethical and legal situations, but it can also be used to justify existing morality presumably anchored in the social order. “Nature” can also refer to the belief in the existence of more basic laws that cut across traditions and create a bond between all people. Or, “nature” and “natural law” can be presented as something that “transcends not only space but also time and allows us to judge different historical cultures.” Since morality can be said to relate to nature in different ways, it is incumbent on those who generalize about these issues to be attuned to the rich canvas of Jewish views on the interplay between nature and revealed morality in Judaism.

In the Bible, claims Rosenberg, ethics stands in opposition to the natural world. In rabbinic Judaism a more subtle view emerges in the context of recognizing the stability of nature, on the one hand, and the ability of humans to learn from the ways animals conduct themselves, on the other. In medieval philosophy one finds extensive discussion of the natural world as well as of human nature, which the philosophers identified with rationality. The philosophers articulated a teleological natural morality, where nature is established as a means to reach the unique goals of man. Most instructively, Rosenberg shows that the medieval philosophers regarded the Torah itself as natural law, because it is the Torah that “brings one to perfection.” The inherent identity between Torah and nature was challenged by the sixteenth-century Jewish theologian R. Judah Loew of Prague (c. 1525–1609), for whom “morality rises beyond nature” and acts of loving kindness surpass nature. In kabbalah, Rosenberg correctly states, “reality becomes a language. Nature is transformed into a symbol of the divine.” The relationship between Torah (and hence morality) and the natural world is ambiguous in kabbalah. For some kabbalists the Torah stands for nature, whereas for others the Torah is the paradigm of nature. Of the modern thinkers who reflected on the relationship between morality and nature, Rosenberg singles out Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), the founder of Neo-Orthodoxy in Germany, and shows that in Hirsch’s analysis of the commandments nature “is not only a model for us in its fulfilling law … [I]t places on humans its own demands, its own mitzvot [commandments].” Rosenberg concludes that human obligations toward nature include not only respect for nature, but also the specific commandments that are detailed in the Bible. These commandments specify the boundaries within which humans should interact with the natural world.

A different and novel attempt to articulate Jewish ecological philosophy is offered by Lenn E. Goodman within the matrix of “an ontological theory of justice.” 28 In such a theory, all things that exist are good and their intrinsic value is the foundation of their deserts. Goodman’s point of departure is the intrinsic deserts of animals, plants, and eco-niches that flow from the particular “project” of each thing. Using Spinoza’s language, Goodman refers to this project as “ conatus ,” 29 and claims that this is the basis of human respect for “all beings—to the extent possible.” Goodman admits that this theory is a form of naturalism, but he denies that it is a form of materialism. Instead, Goodman shows that his hierarchical theory of deserts can be derived from the language of the Bible as elaborated by rabbinic sources. Good-man successfully demonstrates that the Bible and rabbinic sources recognized the inherent deserts of animals or the human obligation to alleviate the suffering of an animal. The command to be compassionate toward animals affirms both human superiority over other animals as well as human responsibility toward nature. Good-man’s ecological ethics exemplifies the notion of human stewardship of nature, 30 even though Goodman explicitly rejects vegetarianism, in contrast to Rosenberg who endorses it. 31 Goodman does not explain how the killing of animals for the sake of human consumption is compatible with recognizing the inherent value and desert of the killed animals. Likewise, he does not account for the fact, noted by both Fishbane and Rosenberg, that destruction is integral to nature and that species naturally engage other species in a struggle for survival.

Some of the issues left open by Goodman are addressed by Moshe Sokol. He begins by rejecting Steven Schwarzschild and Michael Wyschogrod, who highlight the opposition between Judaism and nature. Such a claim, Sokol avers, is simply incoherent because “Judaism cannot disapprove of trees and grass.” He maintains that it is more accurate to say that “the Bible and rabbinic Judaism objected to certain conceptions of nature but not to nature’s constituents.” In agreement with Rosenberg, Sokol notes that the category “nature” is a human construct that has changed over time. If one is to explain the presumed conflict between Jews and the natural world, one must turn to the sociology of the Jews as urban people to find the proper explanation. Sokol differentiates between two questions: 1) what are Jewish constructions of nature and how do they relate to each other? and 2) what, if any, are the implications of the varying constructions of nature for developing a useful environmental ethics? The first question is addressed by Shalom Rosenberg in this volume. Sokol attempts to answer the second question.

Sokol’s main concern is to explore dominant paradigms about the relationship between God and the world and to ponder whether they can be used as a foundation for a Jewish ecological ethics. He differentiates between the “transcendist position,” whose main exponent is Maimonides, and the “immanentist view,” represented by kabbalah and Hasidism. Sokol shows that one cannot simplistically equate either of these views with a given ethical implication or recommendation in regard to the natural world. Respect toward the natural world is not a necessary outcome of an immanentist outlook, as is commonly argued, since respect for nature is specifically stated by Maimonides, the advocate of the transcendist position. Conversely, Hasidism, which has served as inspiration for contemporary Jewish environmentalists, cannot be said to be more “green” than its opposition, either in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or today. Sokol then examines three models for the relationship between morality and nature—“environmental anthropocentrism,” “environmental biocentrism,” and “environmental theocentrism”—and shows what is problematic about each of them and why none of them could tell us how to treat the natural world.

Sokol’s original contribution to Jewish ecological reflections is the suggestion that we should shift our focus from an ecological ethics of duty toward nature to an ecological ethics of virtue. Environmental virtue ethics will include “a deep sense of humility, not only individually but species-wide; the capacity for gratitude; the capacity to experience awe and sublimity; the virtues of temperance, continence, and respectfulness, among others.” The data for the desired character traits of the environmentally virtuous person could come from the very sources of the Jewish tradition, both halakhic and homiletic.

In his response, Barry S. Kogan’s exposes Goodman’s indebtedness to medieval Neoplatonic ontology and questions Goodman’s attempt to ascribe rights of persons to nonhumans, especially after a century that has seen the catastrophic results of the failure to respect human life as such as sacred. Kogan finds Rosenberg’s reading of Hirsch more attractive because “the study of ecology, the policy implications that follow from its findings, and the practical intent of the huqqim, as explained by Hirsch, would all be religiously mandated.” As for Sokol, Kogan challenges his misrepresentation of Schwarzschild and Wyschogrod. While Kogan agrees that theology that emphasizes transcendence does not necessarily desacralize the world and that those that highlight immanence do not necessarily culminate in unqualified reverence and awe toward all things natural, Kogan challenges Sokol’s overly schematic classifications of Jewish approaches to nature.

Nature in Jewish Mysticism

The complexity of Jewish approaches to nature is manifested most acutely in the Jewish mystical tradition. The essays in this section prob-lematize any attempt to anchor Jewish theology of nature in kabbalah. Neither kabbalah nor its eighteenth-century offshoot, Hasidism, accepted the natural world as a given that must be preserved and hallowed. In both cases, the corporeality of the natural, especially as manifested in the human body, is viewed either as a veil that hides the truly spiritual, namely, God, or as a negative obstacle that prevents the human from attaining unity with God. To the mystic, who claims to possess knowledge of the linguistic foundation of nature, the world of nature is a symbol of divine reality that has to be decoded and thereby either spiritualized or transcended. Nature is not to be celebrated for its own sake.

Elliot R. Wolfson shows that the key to the kabbalistic approach to nature lies in the claim that nature is a mirror of the divine. This is not a mere metaphor but a metaphysical claim about the very structure of reality. In kabbalah, as Wolfson succinctly states, “the ten resplendent emanations ( sefirot ), which make up the divine pleroma, are the archetypal spiritual beings that function as the formal causes for all that exists in the physical universe.” For the kabbalists, there is “one ultimate reality, the divine light, which manifests itself in the garb of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet that derive, in turn, from the four-letter name, YHWH, the root word of all language, the mystical secret of the Torah.” The corporeal world that we perceive through the senses is by no means ultimate reality. Rather, “the corporeal world reflects the spiritual forms in the manner that a mirror reflects images. Just as the image is not what is real but only its appearance, so nature is naught but the representation of that which is real.”

Wolfson argues that kabbalistic ontology cannot be labeled as either “pantheism” or “immanentism,” as is commonly done, because kabbalah harbored competing pantheistic and theistic views. Most importantly, Wolfson explains that the kabbalists were not interested in the natural world encountered outdoors, but in the mysterious, esoteric events within the Godhead that are ultimately manifested in the physical environment. What matters to kabbalah is not nature itself— which functions as a veil of divine reality—but the act of penetrating the hidden nature of God. Wolfson then moves on to show that the poetics of nature as the mirror of God is heavily genderized. Nature is identified with the Female, the Shekhinah, but “she is no more than the looking glass that reflects what is genuinely real, the masculine image, which is attributed more specifically to the phallic gradation,” Tife’eret. Wolfson’s careful unmasking of the androcentric nature of kabbalistic symbolism undermines any attempt to use kabbalah in order to recover the lost Goddess. Wolfson concludes by showing the connection between the kabbalistic, spiritualist ontology and the ascetic practices and makes it patently clear that the kabbalists were not only de facto remote from the natural world, but that they denied that the natural world as we know it is holy.

Kabbalah, especially as developed in the Land of Israel during the sixteenth century, was the ideational basis of Hasidism. Indeed, it was Hasidism, as popularized by Martin Buber, which brought kabbalah to the knowledge of the Western world and to the attention of the environmental movement. 32 In Buber’s representation, Hasidism articulated a positive attitude toward nature, since the I-Thou relationship could be had not only with persons but also with trees and animals. Buber’s rendering of Hasidism was vehemently criticized by Ger-shom Scholem and Rivkah Schatz-Uffenheimer. Jerome (Yehudah) Gellman revisits the critique and further endorses it on the basis of a close reading of those very sources that Buber claimed to have used. Defending himself against his critics, Buber admitted that his reconstruction of Hasidic theology and practice cannot be derived from the teachings of the founder of Hasidism, R. Israel Baal Shem Tov (known as the Besht) (1698–1760), but from the teachings of his disciple, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, and his disciples. By analyzing the texts that Buber used in his reconstruction of Hasidism, Gellman shows that Buber ascribed to his Hasidic authors views that they did not in fact hold. Gellman concludes that neither Buber’s portrayal of Hasidism nor Hasidism itself could serve as a foundation of Jewish ecological theology.

Gellman’s skepticism about Hasidism is further corroborated by Shaul Magid, who focuses on the works of the Besht’s grandson, R. Nahman of Bratslav (1772–1810). R. Nahman wrote homiletical discourses and symbolic tales. In the former, the attitude of the Hasidic master to the natural world is “exclusively pejorative.” Magid explains that for R. Nahman “nature is not identical with the natural world.” Instead, “nature” ( teva ) is a human construct on the basis of our perception. Nature is deceptive because it “appears perfect … in its stability and predictability.” This appearance “is actually the source of its imperfection.” In contrast to “nature,” R. Nahman posited the “world” ( ‘olam ), a term that is used to “refer to the natural world in a constant state of renewal” from its divine source. It is “unstable, dynamic, and unpredictable.” When we perceive the stability of nature, we actually sever the natural world from its divine creative source. In his homiletical discourses, then, R. Nahman placed nature in “diametrical opposition to miracle and divine providence.” The symbolic tales of R. Nahman, however, reveal a more tolerant attitude toward nature, enabling humanity to live simultaneously within and apart from its external environment. On the basis of a close reading of R. Nahman’s last tale, “The Seven Beggars,” Magid uncovers a view of nature that enables humanity to co-exist with nature but not be part of it.

In her response to the three presenters on the Jewish mystical tradition, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson further problematizes the kabbalistic approach to nature. The notion that nature is a mirror of the divine actually gave rise to two different attitudes toward nature. According to one, the corporeality of nature was to be transcended through kabbalistic sanctifying acts. According to the other, the belief that kabbalah contains the knowledge of the linguistic foundation of the natural world led to a proto-experimental approach to nature, characteristic of so-called practical kabbalah. Tirosh-Samuelson agrees with Gellman and Magid that eighteenth-century Hasidism could not serve as the basis of environmental theology, since its application of the rabbinic sanctification of nature through observance of divine commandments leads to spiritualization, and hence, annihilation of the empirical world.

From Speculation to Action

The rich Jewish tradition, this volume demonstrates, can support a deep respect toward nature that translates into human stewardship of nature. In the twentieth century the Jewish thinker who reconfigured the relationship between God and natural world most elaborately was Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972). Edward E. Kaplan presents Heschel’s “depth theology” of the caring God who “calls for human beings actively to redeem [the world].” Approaching the Bible, not as “human theology but as God’s anthropology,” Heschel’s point of departure was the notion of wonder or radical amazement, which Schwartz has also discussed in this volume in support of his own environmental sensibilities. Kaplan explains how Heschel’s writings were designed to enable the reader to shed or question all habitual ways of thinking, and gradually to begin “to perceive the world as ‘an allusion’ to God, as an object of divine concern.” While Heschel’s outlook was rooted in kabbalah and Hasidism, he used the kabbalistic notion of “allusion” to reawaken in Jews the reverence toward nature. Reinterpreting the Jewish tradition, Kaplan shows, Heschel instructed twentieth-century Jews to develop the notion of “kinship with the visible cosmos” and to grasp the reciprocal relationship between God and the world. The world is the object of God’s concern or love. Heschel presented a vision of interrelatedness of humans, other beings, and God, and emphasized human responsibility to God, “who is both within and beyond nature and civilization.” Kaplan, along with Eilon Schwartz, correctly views Heschel as a major ecological Jewish thinker whose theology could inspire sound environmental policies.

Translating Jewish ecological reflection into action is by no means a simple matter. The volume concludes with essays by Tsvi Blanchard and Mark X. Jacobs that reflect on the challenges to Jewish environmental activism. Blanchard notes the tension between the secular nature of the environmental discourse and Jewish religious commitments. Before Jews could join the environmental discourse, it has been important to realize three things. First, even if Jewish sources harbor a certain conception of the natural world, they did not imagine the ecological situation we face today. It is not self-evident that the solution to the environmental crisis could be found in the traditional Jewish sources. Second, Jews were never in a position to formulate policies for the society at large, but only for their own communities. Third, the ecological movement regards the Bible very critically as the source of a negative attitude toward nature that gave rise to destructive policies. Blanchard proposes a way to overcome these difficulties by focusing on select Talmudic sources that blend religious and secular aspects. This model, he claims, would enable Jews to join the general environmental discourse and to speak as committed Jews. Blanchard shows that the rabbis considered human action and were attentive to scientific information, implying that there is room within the religious tradition itself to consider nondivine aspects. He illustrates how the rabbis considered intentional modifications of the environment and the harmful side effects of improper positioning of certain substances. Like Diamond, Blanchard invites Jews and non-Jews to grasp the general principles of Jewish legal sources and to realize how they can be applied to very practical issues that confront the environmental movement. He concludes that “analysis of the Jewish material might help in drafting possible policy strategies as well as in framing the key questions to be asked and answered.”

The volume concludes with Mark X. Jacobs’s overview of the Jewish environmental movement, its history, accomplishments, and challenges. There is no doubt that the movement has succeeded in raising the awareness of Jews about environmental and ecological matters. The movement has also added a significant Jewish presence to other faith communities in the United States which are deeply concerned about the environmental crisis. However, Jacobs admits that the leadership of the Jewish community lacks passionate commitment to environmentalism and that the very affluence of Jews in North America militates against it. Jacobs voices concern over the tension between the Jewish environmentalists, who are motivated by deep religious insights, and the “relative weak role of Judaism in the lives of American Jews.” Thus, contemporary Jews rather than Judaism are the obstacle to a vital Jewish environmentalism.

This volume intends to contribute to the nascent discourse on Judaism and ecology by clarifying diverse conceptions of nature in Jewish sources and by using the insights of Judaism to formulate a constructive Jewish theology of nature. Given the complexity of the Jewish tradition, it is impossible to generalize about Judaism and ecology. Some voices within Judaism are compatible with contemporary environmentalism, and others are either in direct conflict with it or manifest uneasiness about it. Thus, one voice expresses a deep respect for the natural world created by God that is translated into obligations to protect the natural world from human abuse. This voice is rooted in the view that the human is but a steward of God’s earth and is totally compatible with conservationist policies. Another voice within Judaism highlights the opposition between the human and the natural. Only humans can receive and respond to divine obligations “to be holy as I the Lord am holy,” and only humans can transform the natural world through prescribed acts that sanctify the natural. From this perspective any attempt to identify nature with God is a form of idolatry that Judaism is determined to eradicate. And finally, there is the voice that denies reality to the natural world. The natural world, the world that is accessible to us through the senses, is but a mirror of a divine, noncorporeal reality. Created in the image of God, human beings are most capable of transcending their natural veil, and to fathom or penetrate the ultimate reality beyond the veil. However one interprets this idea, it leads to negative attitudes toward nature, be they indifference, suppression, or manipulation of nature. In short, whatever stance one wishes to highlight results in a different understanding of Judaism vis-à-vis the natural world.

Generalizing about Judaism and ecology is also difficult because Jews today do not agree about the meaning of Judaism. Not only is Judaism defined in both religious and secular terms—and the gulf between religionists and secularists grows ever deeper—religiously committed Jews do not agree about the meaning of the foundational tenets of Judaism or the way of life that should flow from them. Whether one considers the sources of Judaism to be normative, compelling, suggestive, or troubling shapes how one treats what Judaism has to say about environmental matters. This volume respects pluralism in contemporary Judaism and does not seek to impose unanimity and consensus. Yet, precisely because the volume includes thinkers of all branches of contemporary Judaism, it implicitly argues that the current ecological crisis is indeed a Jewish issue. I will go even further and say that because Jews have faced the threat of extinction on account of radically evil, human acts, Jews have a distinctive vantage point from which to speak against the destruction that humans now inflict on God’s creation. If Jews stand in covenantal relationship, and are called to mend the world, Jews cannot ignore ecological matters in the name of more pressing social issues. To protect God’s world from further abuse by humans is a Jewish moral obligation.

As Jews become more ecologically aware, however, Jewish thinkers will have to become more familiar with the contemporary environmental discourse and its nuances debated among deep ecology, social ecology, political ecology, ecofeminism, and conservationism. 33 Each of these perspectives has a different understanding of the place of the human in the order of things and the attitudes toward nature that flows from it. A future reflection by Jewish thinkers on ecological matters will also require a deeper immersion in contemporary science, especially the sciences of physics, cosmology, the life sciences, and the cognitive sciences. To speak theologically and philosophically about the desired relationship between humans and the natural world requires holding informed views about the natural world. A Jewish discourse on ecology is thus inseparable from the so-called dialogue of science and religion, in which the Jewish voice is still underrepresented. When Jews enter the dialogue of science and religious dialogue in greater number, they will affirm what medieval Jewish philosophers have taken for granted: since God is truth, there can be no conflict between what is true in science and what is true in Judaism.

As Jews become more conversant with this literature and, hopefully, environmentalists become more informed about Judaism, it may become clear not only how Judaism is compatible with conservationism, but also where Judaism conflicts with the radical activism of Earth First! or with the metaphysical claims of deep ecology. Conversely, as the conversation between Judaism and ecology develops, it might question a strict secularist approach to being Jewish. Judaism is a religious civilization and the sources of Judaism are all religious sources. To speak about environmentalism from a Jewish perspective entails a religious outlook. The volume cannot tell Jews how to define the meaning of being Jewish for themselves. It only charts the issues that must concern anyone who takes Judaism and ecology seriously.

Endnotes 1 The extensive ecological literature cannot be cited here. For readers unfamiliar with it, a good introduction is provided in Ecology: Key Concepts in Critical Theory , ed. Carolyn Merchant (Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press, 1994). A quick perusal of this volume bears my point: environmentalism has had little or nothing to do with Judaism. Return to text

2 Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155 (1967): 1203–1207. Return to text

3 That Arthur Waskow, a Jewish environmental thinker and activist, had to make the case for Jewish involvement in environmentalism in the 1990s attests to the relative limited interest in this topic in the organized Jewish community. See Arthur Waskow, “Is the Earth a Jewish Issue?” Tikkun 7, no. 5 (1992): 35–37. Return to text

4 For further discussion of this point among contemporary Jewish thinkers, consult Eilon Schwartz, “Judaism and Nature: Theological and Moral Issues to Consider while Renegotiating a Jewish Relationship to the Natural World,” in Judaism and Environmental Ethics , ed. Martin D. Yaffe (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2001), 297–308. Return to text

5 This position is explained most succinctly by Michael Wyschogrod, “Judaism and the Sanctification of Nature,” Melton Journal 24 (spring 1991): 5–6; reprinted in Judaism and Environmental Ethics , ed. Yaffe, 289–96. Most modern Orthodox thinkers share this viewpoint. Return to text

6 See Steven S. Schwarzschild, “The Unnatural Jew,” Environmental Ethics 6 (1984): 347–62. This essay elicited a serious debate and some serious criticism. See Jeanne Kay, “Comments on the Unnatural Jew,” Environmental Ethics 7 (1985): 189–91, reprinted in Judaism and Environmental Ethics , ed. Yaffe, 286–88; and David Ehrenfeld and Joan G. Ehrenfeld, “Some Thoughts on Nature and Judaism,” Environmental Ethics 7 (1985): 93–95, reprinted in Judaism and Environmental Ethics , ed. Yaffe, 283–85. The debate is discussed in Martin D. Yaffe’s introduction to his volume. Return to text

7 See Eric Katz, “Nature’s Healing Power, the Holocaust and the Environmental Crisis,” Judaism: A Quarterly Journal 46 (1997): 79–89; reprinted in Judaism and Environmental Ethics , ed. Yaffe, 309–20. Return to text

8 It is true that Zionism included religious positions as well. For the religious Zionists the return to the land was understood in terms of being able to perform the land-based commandments of Judaism and thus coming closer to God. For an overview of the function of the land in Zionist thought, consult Arnold M. Eisen, “Off Center: The Concept of the Land of Israel in Modern Jewish Thought,” in The Land of Israel: Jewish Perspectives , ed. Lawrence A. Hoffman (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 263–96. Return to text

9 The main ideologue of Socialist Zionism who provided the rationale for the Jewish return to nature was Aharon David Gordon (1856–1922). For analysis of Gordon’s philosophy, see Eliezer Schweid, The Land of Israel: National Home or Land of Destiny, trans. Deborah Greniman (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985); idem, The Individual: The World of A. D. Gordon (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1970). Return to text

10 It is instructive to note that Zionism regarded the purchase of land from Arabs as “redemption of land” (ge’ulat ha-qarqa), thus framing a secular activity in religious terms. See Ge’ulat ha-Qarqa be-’Eretz Israel Ra‘aion u-Ma‘aseh, ed. Ruth Kark (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi Publication, 1990). I thank Dr. Ada Schein for directing me to this book. Return to text

11 The kibbutzim, the agricultural settlements created by Socialist Zionism, were most creative in developing new rituals for the Jewish festivals. While rooted in the Jewish tradition, these innovative rituals all celebrated the seasonal cycle of nature and the fertility of the land, but they did not refer to God and did not seek justification in rabbinic sources. Return to text

12 See Susan H. Lees, The Political Ecology of the Water Crisis in Israel (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998); Water and Peace in the Middle East, ed. Jad Isaac and Hillel Shuval (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1994); and Miriam Lowi, Water and Power: The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Return to text

13 For an overview of Israel’s environmental perils and the activities of the environmental movement, see Alon Tal, “An Imperiled Promised Land,” in Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought, ed. Arthur Waskow, 2 vols. (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2000), 2:42–71. Return to text

14 The works of Nogah Hareuveni, listed in the bibliography of this volume, are typical examples of this trend. Return to text

15 For responses by modern Orthodox thinkers to White’s charges, see Norman Lamm, “Ecology in Jewish Law and Theology,” in his Faith and Doubt: Studies in Traditional Jewish Thought (New York: Ktav, 1972), 162–85; Jonathan Helfand, “Ecology and the Jewish Tradition: A Postscript,” Judaism 20 (1971): 330–35; idem, “‘Consider the Work of G-d’: Jewish Sources for Conservation Ethics,” in Liturgical Foundations of Social Policy in the Catholic and Jewish Traditions, ed. Daniel F. Polish and Eugene J. Fisher (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 134–48; idem, “The Earth Is the Lord’s: Judaism and Environmental Ethics,” in Religion and Environmental Crisis, ed. Eugene C. Hargrove (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 38–52; Aryeh Carmell, “Judaism and the Quality of the Environment,” in Challenge: Torah Views and Science and Its Problems, ed. Aryeh Carmell and Cyril Domb (London and Jerusalem: Feldeim Publishers, 1976), 500–25. Return to text

16 The rise of Jewish interest in environmental issues reflects in part a growing realization that the ecological crisis is a religious issue and that world religions have been crucial to the shaping of human attitudes toward the physical environment. The emergence of a religious ecological discourse during the 1970s and 1980s was concomitant with the flourishing Religious Studies as an academic discipline committed to the comparative study of world religions. Typical examples of comparative religious ecological discourse in which Judaism is represented are Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue, ed. Steven C. Rockefeller and John C. Elder (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); and Worldviews and Ecology, ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1993; reprint, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996). Return to text

17 The organization was associated with the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, and its main activity was to publish educational material. The materials are available in Judaism and Ecology, 1970–1986: A Sourcebook of Readings, ed. Marc Swetlitz (Wyncote: Shomrei Adamah, 1990). Return to text

18 A representative sample of Jewish environmental writings in America is Ecology and the Jewish Spirit, ed. Ellen Bernstein (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1998). Return to text

19 For an overview of these themes, consult the essays in Judaism and Ecology, ed. Aubrey Rose (London: Cassell, 1992). Return to text

20 For a succinct expression of the covenantal model for Jewish ecology, see Bradley Shavit Artson, “Our Covenant with Stones: A Jewish Ecology of Earth,” Conservative Judaism 44, no. 1 (1991): 25–35; reprinted in Judaism and Environmental Ethics, ed. Yaffe, 161–71. Return to text

21 For an overview of the relevant sources, consult Torah of the Earth, ed. Waskow, 1:212–14, which includes information about Jewish organizations committed to environmentalism. Return to text

22 Michael Wyschogrod, “The Sanctification of Nature in Judaism,” in Judaism and Environmental Ethics, ed. Yaffe, 294. Return to text

23 On Deep Ecology, consult Deep Ecology for the Twenty-first Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism, ed. George Sessions (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1995). In many respects, however, there is quite an overlap between Green’s reflections and the views of deep ecology. The reason for it is historical. Many of the insights of deep ecology, especially as outlined by Arne Naess, are indebted to the philosophy of Spinoza, who was, in turn, familiar with kabbalah. Return to text

24 Eisenberg’s reading is in accord with the consensus among developmental anthropologists who believe that toolmaking is the determining mark of homo sapiens. For a summary of the debates among anthropologists, consult Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know about Human Evolution (New York: Oxford University, 1995). Return to text

25 A main concern of the environmental justice movement is the dumping of toxic wastes in poor neighborhoods that are populated predominantly by African Americans. Environmental justice is thus commonly conflated with the accusation of racism and pertains as well to Mexican Americans and to Native Americans. See Robert Bullard, “Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement,” in Ecology, 254–65, and the literature cited there. Return to text

26 Kraemer’s conclusion, as well as that of other contributors in this volume, accord with ecological thinking that highlights respect for nature. See Paul W. Taylor, “The Ethics of Respect for Nature,” in Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, ed. Michael Zimmerman et al. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993), 71–86. Return to text

27 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “The Lonely Man of Faith,” Tradition 7 (1965): 5–67.

Return to text

28 See Lenn E. Goodman, On Justice: An Essay in Jewish Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). Return to text

29 For exposition of Spinoza’s theory, see Richard Mason, The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 142–46. Return to text

30 See David Ehrenfeld and Philip J. Bentley, “Judaism and the Practice of Stewardship,” Judaism: A Quarterly Journal 34 (1985): 301–11; reprinted in Judaism and Environmental Ethics, ed. Yaffe, 125–35. Return to text

31 Whether Jews should be vegetarians is one of the themes of Jewish ecological discourse. For an overview, see Louis A. Berman, Vegetarianism and the Jewish Tradition (New York: Ktav, 1982). Return to text

32 For an example of Buber’s influence on the contemporary ecological discourse, consult Brian J. Walsh, Marianne B. Karsh, and Nik Ansell, “Trees, Forestry, and the Responsiveness of Creation,” in This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb (New York: Routledge, 1996), 423–35. The most influential aspect of Buber’s philosophy was his utopian communitarianism that envisioned “a cooperative world culture emerging out of regenerated regional cultures that arise in turn out of a regenerated human spirit”; see John Clark, “A Social Ecology,” in Environmental Philosophy, ed. Zimmerman et al., 419. Return to text

33 An excellent anthology of environmental writings that presents the various schools of environmental thinking is Zimmerman’s volume cited above. Return to text

  // //

Judaism Essay: Summary of Judaism, Its Origin and History

Introduction, summary of judaism history, works cited.

Judaism is the religious practices and beliefs and the way of life of the Jews. It began as a religious conviction of the diminutive nation of the Hebrews. The followers of the religion have through the thousands of years since its inception been persecuted, dispersed and faced intense suffering physically and psychologically (Lynch1).

Occasionally, the religion has experienced victory. It continues to have intense influence on culture and religion. In the world today, the religion has a following of more than 14 million people (Judaism1). They identify themselves as Jewish. Contemporary Judaism is a complex occurrence that involves both religion and a nation.

The history is written in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). The first five books of the Bible describe the emergence of Jews. There is the description of the choice of God on Jews to be the living example for other humans to emulate.

The Hebrew Bible explains how the relationship between Jews and God worked. God chose Abraham be the father figure of a populace that would be unique to God. They would be a mark and symbol of holiness and good behavior to the entire world (BBC1). History asserts that the Jewish people were guided by God through many challenges and troubles.

During the time of Moses, God gave the Jewish people life guidelines that they should live with. These included the Ten Commandments. This was the period which the Judaism emerged as a structure religion. Under the guidance of God, the Jews turned into powerful communities with renowned kings such as Solomon, David and Saul (BBC 1).

The construction of the first great temple by Solomon made the Jews to focus the worship of God in the temple. The temple housed the Ark of the Covenant. It was the only place where rituals would be carried out. In 920 BCE, the Jewish kingdom disintegrated and the people tore into small groups. Many Jews were exiled into Babylon.

This was the beginning of the Jewish culture in the Diaspora. Majority of the Jews in exile opted not to return to Israel. The next 300 years that followed were marked by gradual and steady growth in Jewish strength and number. Their land was in the mean time being governed by foreign authorities. The teachers and scribes who emerged during this period helped the population to interpret and explain the Bible.

The Jews from then were able to freely practice their faith. In 175 BCE, there was a Jewish revolt against the Syrian King who implemented a number of rules that sought to completely wipe out Judaism. He dishonored the temple and wanted the population to worship Zeus. The temple was eventually restored after the revolt which is celebrated by Jews in the Hanukah festival.

The Romans took advantage of the weakening of the Jewish kingdom due to internal splitting up and established their rule. This was followed by years of oppression and taxation by Roman rules who despised Judaism. The Sadducees became allies of the Roman rulers subsequently loosing the support and faith of the Jews. The people opted to have Pharisees as their teachers (BBC1).

The Catholic encyclopedia suggests that Judaism was the original of a variety of religions including Islam and Christianity (Judaism 1). The Jewish people established settlements in Arabia before the birth of Mohammed. They commanded considerable influence on the Arabian citizenry. At one point in South Arabia, the Jews had an Arab-Jewish empire which was eventually terminated by a king of Abyssinia in 530.

The Jews lost the royal estate but remained considerably powerful in the northern Yemen. In Mecca, there was a small Jewish population. Mohammed interacted with the Jews and became acquitted with the religion. When he fled to Medina, the acquaintance became and more established as the location was populated by Arabian Jews.

Abraham was the first Jew according to religious Jews. He was the first to preach monotheism and despised idolatry. As a reward, he was promised to have many children by God. This promise fulfillment came in the form of Isaac. Isaac carried on Abraham’s work and inherited Canaan. Isaac’s son, Jacob, was sent to Egypt by God together with his children. They were eventually enslaved by Egyptians. Moses was subsequently sent to Egypt to redeem the Jews from slavery.

This period was tempting to Moses who eventually gave the Torah to the Jews. He managed to take the people to Israel after many years in the jungle. Torah is the Hebrew translation of instruction or teaching particularly law. It refers to the first five books of the Old Testament. On a larger scale, Torah is used by Jews to refer the broad range of commanding Jewish religious wisdom in history (Space and motion 1).

In view of the first five books of the Bible, many ideas and concepts are expressed in form of stories as opposed to being listed as laws. The book of Deuteronomy is reiteration of the previously mentioned laws in the first four books. Most of the laws that govern Judaism are got from textual clues because they are not mentioned straightforwardly in the Torah. The Torah is the fundamental document of the Jewish religion. In a principled framework, it is the basis of all the biblical commandments.

The period covering 1000 CE saw Jews establish themselves in Spain. They co-existed happily with the Islamic rulers. They developed a thriving study of Hebrew literature, science and the Talmud. There was severally the attempt to convert all the Judaism followers to Islam.

When all this failed, the millennium that followed saw the increased operations of military by Christian states to recapture the holy land. In German, the Christian armies attacked Jewish communities. They succeeded in capturing Jerusalem where thousands were slaughtered and many other enslaved. The victims included Muslims and Jews. Jews were banned from entering the city just like Romans had previously done. In the meantime, the Jewish population was increasing in Britain. They enjoyed the protection by Henry I.

The Babylonian exile presented new ideas to Jews. It is during this period that the notions of particular angels arose. Evil was personified as Satan. The idea of resurrection from the dead emerged (Neusner2). Alexander the Great played a significant role in entrenching the idea of immortality of the soul.

The level of Hellenization brought about conflict within the Jewish community. The Maccabees revolted against the Syrian Seleucid rulers. There was extensive martyrdom that increased the momentum to the notion of collective resurrection of the deceased. The soul was perceived to be immortal. They formulated the belief that while the physical body awaited resurrection, the soul existed in another realm (Seltzer6).

Life conditions deteriorated and apocalyptic beliefs increased. Messianic kingdom and national catastrophe were considered imminent. As time passed, Rabbanic Jews completed the process of replacing the Temple with the Synagogue. The Rabbanical Judaism arose from the Pharasiac movement as a response to the destruction of the Second Temple (Smith 1).

This was in a move to codify and redact oral law. The Rabbis wanted to interpret the practices and concepts of Judaism in the absence of the Temple and the people being in exile. It dominated the Jewish religion close to 18 centuries. In the process, it developed the Midrash, the Talmud and the great icons of the medieval philosophies.

In 1492, Jews were expelled from Spain which led to Sephardic influence of South France, North Italy and the Levant. There was the Berber invasion and anti-Jewish incidents became common in Europe (BBC1). Jews had been forced to take up Christianity. However, they continued to secretly practice their religion. Eventually, majority emigrated and returned to the Jewish fold. The 18 th century remained largely turbulent with hardening of the Jews as a reaction to philosophical liberalism and Sabbatianism.

The first five books of the Bible describe the emergence of Jews. Under the guidance of God, the Jews turned into powerful communities with renowned kings such as Solomon, David and Saul. The emergence of Judaism in the Diaspora was as result of being exiled. Alexander the Great played a significant role in entrenching the idea of immortality of the soul.

There was extensive martyrdom that increased the momentum to the notion of collective resurrection of the deceased.Contemporary Judaism was split by the law (halakal) in the 19 th century. Orthodox Jews maintain the traditional practice while Reform Jews only uphold rituals that they believe will God-oriented, Jewish life.

The attempt to define the essence of Judaism is a process that has existed for ages. At anyone point, there is intense emphasis on one aspect of the three major concepts of the Jewish religion (God, Israel, Torah).

BBC. “ Judaism at a glance ”. Web.

Lynch, Damon. “ Judaism. There we sat down ”. 1972. Web.

Smith, Huston. “ Judaism: Religion facts ”. Web.

Seltzer, Robert. Jewish people, Jewish thought: the Jewish experience in history. London, UK: Macmillan, 1980.

Spaceandmotion. “ Theology: Judaism.History and Main Beliefs of Jewish Religion / the Jews ”. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 28). Judaism Essay: Summary of Judaism, Its Origin and History. https://ivypanda.com/essays/brief-summary-about-judaism/

"Judaism Essay: Summary of Judaism, Its Origin and History." IvyPanda , 28 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/brief-summary-about-judaism/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Judaism Essay: Summary of Judaism, Its Origin and History'. 28 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Judaism Essay: Summary of Judaism, Its Origin and History." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/brief-summary-about-judaism/.

1. IvyPanda . "Judaism Essay: Summary of Judaism, Its Origin and History." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/brief-summary-about-judaism/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Judaism Essay: Summary of Judaism, Its Origin and History." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/brief-summary-about-judaism/.

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Ancient Jewish diaspora: essays on Hellenism

Jocelyn burney , university of missouri. [email protected].

For over a century, scholars of ancient Judaism have asked how diaspora Jews adapted to living as a minority population in towns and cities around the Mediterranean. To what degree did Jewish communities want to—or, conversely, to what degree were they permitted to—integrate into Greco-Roman civic and cultural life? How did their liturgical and textual practices compare to those in their homeland, and how central to their identity was that homeland? These questions remain unresolved, in large part due to the conflicting nature of the evidence. In cities like Alexandria and Rome, which boasted robust Jewish populations, ancient sources preserve misunderstandings, confusion, and prejudice-driven fears about Judaism that occasionally boiled over into violence. On the other hand, we also possess evidence for Jewish stability and success in the diaspora: synagogue buildings funded by wealthy community members (Sardis is the preeminent example), epigraphic evidence for non-Jewish patrons, and, of course, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, the beneficiary of a good Greek education who famously called Hellenistic Egypt his fatherland ( patris ). How, then, should we understand what it was like to live as an ancient Jew in diaspora?

The present volume takes up this big question, drawing much of its evidence from Hellenistic Alexandria. The volume collects sixteen of Bloch’s essays published between 1999 and 2022, dividing them into four thematic sections. Four essays appear here in English for the first time (chapters 2, 6, 12, and 14). Covering a range of topics, from Philo’s depiction of Moses to ancient Jewish tourism and theater-going, Bloch sheds light on the sophisticated negotiation necessitated by life in the diaspora. On the whole, Bloch argues that diaspora Jews, especially in Alexandria, were well integrated into their Hellenistic milieu. Rather than seeing their cultural negotiation as a symptom of outsiderness and discomfort, Bloch suggests instead that such negotiation was inherent to the Hellenistic Period. In an era of globalism, migration, and new religious movements, diaspora Jews “did not really differ from other peoples of the Hellenistic age, least of all from the Greeks” (3). As such, Bloch argues, those interested in any aspect of Hellenism will benefit from studying the experience of diaspora Jews in the Hellenistic world.

The volume opens with four chapters on “Moses and Exodus.” These chapters investigate how Philo’s depiction of Moses in De vita Mosis sheds light on Philo’s own life and the position of Alexandrian Jews, whom Bloch characterizes as “at times embracing and at other times resisting acculturation” (2). In “Alexandria in Pharaonic Egypt: Projections in De vita Mosis ,” Bloch outlines the autobiographical parallels that Philo wrote into his story of Moses: both Philo and his Moses consider Egypt their fatherland, are philosophers, and reluctantly assume the role of political leader in times of trouble. On this basis, Bloch makes two arguments. First, Philo’s portrayal of Moses as a reluctant leader suggests that De vita Mosis was written near the time of the embassy to Rome in 38 CE, rather than at the beginning of Philo’s career. The second argument is vaguer. “I am not suggesting that Philo was presenting himself as a Moses redivivus, ” Bloch says, but rather that Philo occasionally “slipped” into the role of Moses and used Moses to evaluate his own life. Thus, a study of Philo’s Moses should shed light on the character of Philo, about whom we know very little. Chapters 2–4 also focus on Philo’s Moses to make the case that Philo and his Alexandrian community had mixed feelings about their diasporic status. Like Moses, they were both Jewish and Egyptian, recipients of Greek education, and more concerned with local issues in Alexandria than distant Jerusalem. Few will disagree with this middle ground approach. Bloch does not push the envelope, but his close readings of Philo are insightful and employ a refreshing mix of rabbinic and Greco-Roman comparanda.

The three essays in part 2, “Places and Ruins,” center on issues of memory, or how Jews remembered their past and how they were described by others. One of the highlights is chapter 5, “Geography without Territory: Tacitus’s Digression on the Jews and Its Ethnographic Context,” in which Bloch makes an astute observation about Tacitus’s commentary on Jews and Judaism in book 5 of the Histories . Whereas Tacitus typically follows the tradition of Greek anthropogeography by attributing the ethos of a particular people to the physical environment of its homeland, he fails to mention many of the standard ethnographic topoi in his description of Judaism, including clothing, housing, and armor and customs of war. According to Bloch, Tacitus omitted these topoi because ancient Jews lived in many lands, not just their ethnic homeland of Judea, causing them to fall outside the standard dichotomy of Greek and barbarian. While some aspects of Judaism were consistent from place to place—abstaining from eating pork, observance of the Sabbath, circumcision—Tacitus could not cover the standard range of cultural topoi because of the diversity within diaspora Judaism.

Chapter 7 offers a thought experiment: “What If the Temple of Jerusalem Had Not Been Destroyed by the Romans?” Bloch argues that if Titus had spared the Temple, the practice of animal sacrifice would nevertheless have petered out on its own within a few centuries (136). Citing critiques of sacrifice in Isaiah 1:11–17 and Matthew 9:13 (quoting Hosea 6:6), Bloch argues that Second Temple Judaism was already moving away from animal sacrifice before 70 CE. Furthermore, diaspora Jews had operated without access to the Temple for generations, illustrating the waning importance of the sacrificial cult. Thus, the chapter’s title is somewhat misleading. It is really about the decline of the sacrificial cult over the course of the late Second Temple period, not about the decreasing importance of the Temple in general (which held significance for ancient Jews beyond the sacrificial cult), nor the historical circumstances in the first to fourth centuries CE that would have impacted how long the Temple cult could actually have continued to function. Setting aside whether or not Hadrian would have taken control of the Temple when he rebuilt Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, once Jerusalem came under Christian rule, it is reasonable to assume that Christians would have seized the Temple and put an end to the sacrificial cult. As Bloch points out, the destruction of the Temple was critical for Christians, who viewed it as confirmation that God had abandoned the Jews. This would be sufficient reason to capture and/or destroy the Temple in the fourth century, if not earlier. Bloch also raises the possibility that the survival of the Temple after 70 would have suppressed the growth of the rabbinic movement, a fascinating hypothetical worthy of further discussion.

Part 3, “Theater and Myth,” contains chapters on Philo’s reconciling of Jewish myth and allegorical interpretation, Jewish attendance of and participation in the theater, and Egyptian-Jewish relations in Joseph and Aseneth . As in part 1, Bloch characterizes diaspora as a state of constant cultural negotiation. In chapter 8, he argues that Philo struggled to reconcile widespread belief in the historicity of Jewish mythological stories, such as the transformation of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26), with his method of allegorical interpretation. Such struggle, according to Bloch, makes Philo “part of a common and widespread intellectual discourse” among Hellenistic writers, who likewise doubted the historicity of Greek myths but accepted that myths had some heuristic value, especially for the common person. Likewise, chapter 9 argues for a spectrum of Jewish responses to the theater, from rabbinic prohibitions on entering theaters except in dire circumstances to evidence for Jewish actors and reserved seating for Jews in public theaters. Finally, in chapter 10, Bloch outlines the similarities between Joseph and Aseneth and early Greek novels: an initially reluctant couple eventually falls in love; the occasional erotic moment; suffering and longing; and final resolution. Bloch argues that Joseph and Aseneth has been unjustly singled out as a “Jewish novel” despite its clear embeddedness in Greek literary tradition. “It is not a Jewish reaction to the literary genre of the Greek novel,” Bloch argues, but rather a very early example—perhaps even the earliest—of what came to be known as the Greek novel. Moreover, Aseneth’s shift from frenetic and preoccupied to tranquil and poised after her conversion to Judaism suggests to Bloch “a confident Diaspora Judaism that is less interested in a confrontation with the Egyptians than in highlighting Jewish presence and competence” (215).

Part 4, “Antisemitism and Reception,” is truly the highlight of the book and will be of great interest to scholars of diaspora Judaism in all periods, ancient or modern. Chapter 11, “Antisemitism and Early Scholarship on Ancient Antisemitism,” surveys the efforts of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars to understand the origins of antisemitism—a quest that was inspired by their desire to know whether Jews had a place in the modern nation-states of Europe, especially Germany. Bloch identifies two major discourses on the origins of antisemitism among scholars from this period. First, following Wellhausen, scholars divided Jewish history into two phases: the “early Judaism” of the Hebrew Bible, characterized by revolutionary monotheism, and the ossified, legalistic “late Judaism” of the rabbis. Early understandings of diaspora Judaism emerged in parallel to this model: the formation of the diaspora was initially a positive development because it exposed Judaism to Hellenistic philosophy, but, after 70, the diaspora came to symbolize Judaism’s ossification and the triumph of Christianity. Second, antisemitism developed in response to the perceived qualities of “late Judaism”: misanthropy, legalism, and superstition. Chapters 13–15 examine historiographies of specific topics related to Hellenistic Judaism: the Philo-Lexikon , reception of Tacitus’s excursus on the Jews and Judea in the Histories , and Jan Assman’s thesis on monotheism in Moses the Egyptian . The volume concludes with the fascinating investigation of a Roman bust of a young, bearded man on display in the Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen that was—and continues to be—erroneously identified as Flavius Josephus on the basis of antisemitic physiognomic tropes.

This volume serves two audiences. On their own, parts 1–3 will be of greatest interest to those who study Philo and the Alexandrian Jewish community. Bloch’s depiction of the Alexandrian diaspora is fairly standard: Alexandrian Jews had a hybrid identity and carefully negotiated their place within the city’s Hellenistic milieu. His secondary argument—that such negotiation really characterized all of the Hellenistic world, not just diaspora Jews—is compelling but unfortunately does not feature heavily in the case studies. Research on identity and hybridity in the Greco-Roman world—evidenced by language use, naming styles, and visual and material culture—has boomed in recent decades. Bloch’s essays on Philo will be of interest to those who study these dynamics in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt.

For those interested in diaspora Judaism beyond Hellenistic Alexandria, or ancient Judaism in general, the essays in part 4 will be of great interest. Bloch’s familiarity with German scholarship makes the analysis particularly insightful, and English readers will appreciate his engagement with (and translation of long quotations from) both familiar and lesser-known German, French, and Italian scholars of the early modern and modern periods. The scope of the essays in this volume—ranging from close readings of Philo to the twenty-first–century misuse of a Roman bust of identified as Josephus—is a credit to the author. Bloch reminds us that the complex negotiation that defines life in diaspora continues to this day, making close study of ancient evidence and careful detangling of historiography equally critical.

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Introduction to Judaism

Judaism is a monotheistic religion, believing in one god. It is not a racial group. Individuals may also associate or identify with Judaism primarily through ethnic or cultural characteristics. Jewish communities may differ in belief, practice, politics, geography, language, and autonomy.  Learn more about the practices and beliefs of Judaism.

Jews have lived in many different countries around the world through the centuries.

Major events in the history of Judaism include the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

Judaism in the 21st century is very diverse, ranging from very Orthodox to more modern denominations.  

• Jewish communities before the war

Jewish Life and Religious Practices

There is a wide variety of acceptance and observance of the following practices by denominations and individual Jews.

Jewish life is guided by its annual and life cycle calendars. The annual calendar is a lunar calendar with approximately 354 days in one year on a 12-month cycle, with an extra month (Adar II) added occasionally to compensate for the difference between the lunar and solar calendars.

The Torah is read ritually in synagogue three times a week, on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, following a yearly cycle through the entirety (or a third, depending on community) of the Five Books of Moses. Additionally, on holidays, special sections are read in synagogue that tie to the themes or origin story of the holiday being observed.

Jewish prayer services are conducted in the Hebrew language in the more traditional denominations of Judaism, and include varied levels of English (or the native language of the community’s Jews) in denominations such as Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal. A rabbi can lead services but is not required. On weekdays, daily prayers are recited three times—morning, afternoon, and evening—with a fourth prayer service added on the Sabbath and holidays. While many prayers can be recited individually, certain prayers and activities, such as the reading of the Torah, the mourner’s prayer (the kaddish ), require a minyan or quorum of ten Jewish adults. As with the distinctions regarding English in the prayer service, some traditional denominations only count male adults in a minyan , while others count all adults.

Other central aspects of Jewish ritual observance include the dietary laws (laws of kashrut ) which forbid consumption of certain foods (like pork or shellfish), prohibit the mixing of milk and meat, and prescribe special rules for the slaughter of meat and poultry. Denominations and individual Jews may or may not follow these dietary laws strictly.

Major life-cycle events in Jewish tradition include the brit milah (ritual circumcision on the eighth day of a Jewish boy’s life), Bnai Mitzvah (a ceremony marking the passage from childhood to adulthood, at 12 years for a girl and 13 for a boy), marriage, and death.

Following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the synagogue (derived from a Greek word meaning “assembly”), or Jewish prayer and study house, became the focal point of Jewish life. The role of the priesthood, so central to the Temple service, diminished, and the rabbi (literally, “my master”), or scholar versed in Jewish law, rose to a position of prominence in the community.

After the Holocaust

Before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, Europe had a vibrant and mature Jewish culture.

By 1945, after the Holocaust , most European Jews—two out of every three—had been killed. Most of the surviving remnant of European Jewry decided to leave Europe. Hundreds of thousands established new lives in Israel , the United States , Canada, Australia, Great Britain, South America, and South Africa.

As of 2016, there were approximately 15 million Jews around the world. About 85% of world Jewry lives in Israel or the United States.

Critical Thinking Questions

• Investigate the wide range of observances and traditions in the Jewish communities before, during, and after the Holocaust.
• Learn about the history of the Jewish community in your country.

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"Perfectly predictable": Dr. John Gartner on why "a malignant narcissist like Trump" sells Bibles

"it fits perfectly into both his personality disorder’s hypomanic grandiosity and its paranoid sense of grievance", by chauncey devega.

American fascism is a form of political religion. It is a social force based on faith and emotion and corrupt power more than a coherent ideology grounded in reason, facts and the truth. As such, fascism is antithetical to real democracy and normal politics.

Trumpism and the MAGA movement are American fascism’s largest and most popular denomination and sect. Donald Trump is the high priest and Dear Leader.

On Monday of the Easter Holy Week, Donald Trump shared a post on his Truth Social disinformation platform where he appeared to compare himself to Jesus Christ being tortured on the Cross. Why? Because Trump is finally facing some type of real accountability from the law for his decades-long obvious crime spree.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump continued to honor Holy Week by announcing that he is selling his own version of the Bible . Trump has publicly and repeatedly stated that he is a Christian. But by definition, his behavior is blasphemous and an example of idolatry. Of course, Trump does not worship God or Jesus Christ; he has shown himself to be a megalomaniac and malignant narcissist who only worships himself (and of course money and other forms of power). Trump basically views his MAGA followers and other “Christians” as useful idiots who are a source of narcissistic energy, money and other resources for him.

"One of America’s most enduring faiths isn’t Christianity, Islam or Judaism - it’s White supremacy."

On Friday (“Good Friday” in the Christian Holy Week), Trump wallowed in his love of violence by sharing an image of President Biden, bound and gagged in the back of a pickup truck. This is another threat of assassination and murder by Donald Trump against President Biden .

Trump then “celebrated” Easter Sunday by issuing the following paranoid, conspiratorial, lie, and threatening pronouncement on his Truth Social disinformation platform:

HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION, LIKE “DERANGED” JACK SMITH, WHO IS EVIL AND “SICK,” MRS. FANI “FAUNI” WADE, WHO SAID SHE HARDLY KNEW THE “SPECIAL” PROSECUTOR, ONLY TO FIND THAT HE SPENT YEARS “LOVING” HER, LONG BEFORE THE GEORGIA PERSECUTION OF PRESIDENT TRUMP BEGAN (AND THEREBY MAKING THE CASE AGAINST ME NULL, VOID, AND ILLEGAL!), AND LAZY ON VIOLENT CRIME ALVIN BRAGG WHO, WITH CROOKED JOE’S DOJ THUGS, UNFAIRLY WORKING IN THE D.A.’s OFFICE, ILLEGALLY INDICTED ME ON A CASE HE NEVER WANTED TO BRING AND VIRTUALLY ALL LEGAL SCHOLARS SAY IS A CASE THAT SHOULD NOT BE BROUGHT, IS BREAKING THE LAW IN DOING SO (POMERANTZ!), WAS TURNED DOWN BY ALL OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES, AND IS NOT A CRIME. HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE! 

As the 2024 election approaches, and the pressure from the hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and legal expenses increases, and his criminal trials (finally) begin, Trump will only escalate his claims of godhood and divine status and power. Trump’s followers are desperate and eager to earn his blessings and will do almost anything – including violence – for the personal fascist lord and savior and cult leader.

In an attempt to better understand Trump’s Bibles and how they relate to the larger democracy crisis, I recently spoke to a range of experts.

These interviews have been lightly edited for clarity and length :

Federico Finchelstein is a professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York. His most recent book is " A Brief History of Fascist Lies ."

The MAGA movement pushes its religiosity into the most bizarre form of greed. Trump's conflation of the Bible with doing business and his own comparisons with Jesus's suffering ideas are separate dimensions of the same phenomenon, namely the fascist tendency to make the leader a God-like figure who is not exempted from corrupted practices. In this case Trump desperately needs money. Hitler and Mussolini enriched themselves by writing and selling their writings but Trump's also wants to make money with sacred texts.

There is no question that Trumpism is an extreme political religion. Like the fascists, Trump not only makes alliances with religious actors but also appropriates Christianity for its own political and economic gains.

Dr. John Gartner , is a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President."

Of course, a malignant narcissist like Trump, physically sitting at the defendant’s table being prosecuted for his multiple crimes, would liken himself to the crucified Christ. It fits perfectly into both his personality disorder’s hypomanic grandiosity and its paranoid sense of grievance and persecution. And to complete the package, because malignant narcissists are also anti-social con men, he’s grifting off of Trump Bibles. It’s all perfectly in character and perfectly predictable. History is full of strongmen who declared themselves to be divine. It follows that anyone who does not bow down mindlessly in obeisance to them is evil, and must be purged, for society to be cleansed, to usher in the “Great Leap Forward” or “Thousand Year Reich.”

I’ve always found the image of Trump holding the Bible upside down to be profoundly meaningful and revealing. He’s the epitome of everything anti-Christian. Christ is reputed to have said: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” I don’t think anyone has accused Trump of displaying any of those traits even once in his 77 years on Earth.

Julie Ingersoll is a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Florida. She teaches and writes about the Christian Right. She is the author of numerous books and articles including “Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles” and “Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction."

Last week started with Trump embracing how his supporters identify him as a Christ figure in a way that other Christians see as out-and-out idolatry,  Through Holy Week they amped up the Christian persecution narratives as a shield against accountability or the former President .  As if that wasn’t enough, we then watched Trump hawking Bibles like they’re Trump steaks or tacky ballcaps. But before we collectively shake our heads in disbelief or disgust, it’s worth thinking about where these views come from and paying careful attention where they can go. There is a long history of Christians rhetorically identifying with Jesus' persecution —but the focus has become so pronounced that many use their own perceived level of “persecution” as a measure for the degree to which they can claim to be authentic Christians.

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Of course, in a society dominated by Christianity—and increasingly dominated by their brand of Christianity, it’s hard to see actual persecution. But that’s when mythic narratives are most helpful. Facts be damned; Trump is the victim of “evil accusers.” Scholars who look at Religion and Violence point to the unique dangers of the ”cosmicization” of conflict. With mundane conflict, disagreement between individuals over material, earthly issues, compromise and resolution is possible. But once conflict is infused with a cosmic framework in which real live people are identified as forces of good or the forces of evil, literal representatives of God or Satan, resolution becomes impossible. Violence is made much more likely. This is dangerous language and we need to be prepared that no matter how the next few months unfold our freedom, our safety and our democracy are at risk.

Darrin Bell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, creator of the syndicated comic strip Candorville, and author of the graphic novel “The Talk." He is also a contributing cartoonist for the New Yorker.

There’s a reason why autocrats tend to portray themselves as messianic figures: religious faith doesn’t require logic, facts, or evidence, or compromise with those who are outside the faith. It only requires a belief that your view of the world is correct, that anyone who disagrees with your worldview is either unenlightened or purposely trying to lead you astray from the one true path, and that any opposition to your religious leaders are actually attacks upon your faith.

One of America’s most enduring faiths isn’t Christianity, Islam or Judaism - it’s White supremacy. Those who believe in that faith suspected they found their messiah when he came down that escalator in 2015 and proudly spewed bigotry about Mexican immigrants. Their faith in him grows in inverse proportion to the skyrocketing evidence of his criminality, his bigotry, his corruption, and his sociopathy. Trump’s many critics and prosecutors are just heretics trying to lead them astray. Donald Trump is cultivating that foolishness because that’s what aspiring dictators do. It’s the best way to stay out of prison while they’re lining their pockets and destroying their countries’ traditions and institutions in their pursuit of “absolute immunity” and absolute control.

André Gagné is a professor and the chair of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of "American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times."

Trump has once again skillfully managed to compare himself to Jesus to bolster his supporters’ view that he has been “chosen by God,” and this during Holy Week which leads to Easter, which is celebrated by many Christians (Easter comes in early May this year for Orthodox Christians). The comparison to Jesus came from a Trump supporter who made a parallel between Trump’s legal troubles, seen as a form of persecution, with Jesus’ persecution and trial during Holy Week. The supporter’s message is then followed by a quote from Psalm 109:3-8 (from the New King James Version). Of course, the immediate context of Psalm 109 does not refer to Jesus (and even less so to Donald Trump!), it is rather a lament attributed to King David labeled against false accusers. The lament also contains an imprecatory prayer asking God to bring judgment on David’s oppressors. But for those familiar with the biblical text, Psalm 109:8 (“Let his days be few; and let another take his office.”) was reinterpreted in the New Testament, by the writer of the Book of Acts, and applied to one of the 12 apostles, Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus. What is therefore meant here is that Trump (and his supporter) sees those who persecute him as “Judases,” and that ultimately, Trump and his supporters believe that he will vindicate by God. The words “… and let another take his office” (Ps 109:8b) most likely meant for the Trump supporter that he prays God for Trump to replace Biden as president.

Among other things, the analogy between Trump and Jesus is completely off mark. Psalms of lament serve to highlight how righteous individuals fall prey to persecution, despite being good to others. This is what David writes and what happened to Jesus of Nazareth. Can this be said of Trump? Also, the person described in these verses says: “I give myself to prayer… they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.” Can this also be said of Trump? A recent Pew survey noted that few Americans see Trump as religious, even if Republicans “think he stands up at least to some extent for people with their religious beliefs.”

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It is ironic that Trump is now promoting a new “God Bless the U.S.A.” Bible. People can certainly be skeptical when it comes to Trump having ever read the Bible – despite him saying that he has many Bibles in his home. One can have many books without ever reading any of them! We remember when Trump was asked a few years ago to tell people what his favorite Bible verse was, and could not name one verse, but just said “I wouldn’t want to get into it. Because to me, that’s very personal… The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.” And the time at Liberty University when Trump quoted from “two Corinthians” (those familiar with scriptural referencing know that it’s “Second Corinthians”). There is little evidence of biblical literacy on the part of Trump, and this new stunt will likely serve him through his financial problems.

David L. Altheide is the Regents' Professor Emeritus on the faculty of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University and author of the new book " Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump ."

Social scientists have long studied how politicians and dictators couch their agendas in religious terms. Donald Trump is an entertainer, entrepreneur, propagandist, and cult figure. His latest attempt to make money by proclaiming that the United States is a Christian nation violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” Defendant Donald Trump’s legal bills and payment of massive fines leads him to curry the favor of religious zealots as he promotes Christian Nationalism. He needs money for his campaign, and he needs votes for president.

He is using the politics of fear to promote the lie that Christianity is under attack by our established institutions, including state and federal courts. Trump cajoles followers to salvage his financial soul and send him money because he, like Christ, is being persecuted. Trump stated: Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.

Unlike organizations that give away Bibles, Trump’s company is selling “God Bless the USA Bible” for sixty bucks. The Trump Bible will include the Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, words to the song, God Bless the USA, and a likeness of Donald Trump. A similar deal was proposed in 2021 but was scrapped because of complaints by Christians.

There have been many attempts to market specialty Bibles, including for political purposes. For example, in 1970, President Eisenhower’s picture was featured in “Good News for Modern Man,” Dwight David Eisenhower Memorial Edition. But more is involved than mere money grubbing with religious documents. Trump is promoting Christian Nationalism by combining religious and political symbols. Notwithstanding that Donald Trump was incapable of discussing the Bible intelligently in several interviews, he has joined forces with those who proclaim that public life and religious commitment must be uniform. Christian religious leaders traditionally have opposed aligning sacred text with political tracts like the U. S. Constitution because this would suggest that both documents are equal. And this is what many Christians objected to just a few years ago. As the First Amendment implies, democracy can only work if citizens of varied religious and political views separate their private and personal religious preferences from public life and discourse.

Trump continues to promote Gonzo Governance by attacking established institutions, principles, and political practices. The former president advocates for a Christian nation and demeans the Bible by pandering to pay his legal bills. Indeed, many religious Americans may find scriptures in the Bible to dissuade them from following this crass appeal. Consider Second Timothy, 3: 2: “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy.”

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Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at  Chaunceydevega.com . He also hosts a weekly podcast,  The Chauncey DeVega Show . Chauncey can be followed on  Twitter  and  Facebook .

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