The Jewish Faith

1. The Jewish Faith Rebekah Stewart Kathleen Wilson

2. Race or Religion? • In the 1980s, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Jews are a race, at least for purposes of certain anti-discrimination laws. Their reasoning: at the time these laws were passed, people routinely spoke of the "Jewish race" or the "Italian race" as well as the "Negro race," so that is what the legislators intended to protect. • Many Jews were deeply offended by that decision, offended by any hint that Jews could be considered a race. The idea of Jews as a race brings to mind nightmarish visions of Nazi Germany, where Jews were declared to be not just a race, but an inferior race that had to be rounded up into ghettos and exterminated like vermin. But setting aside the emotional issues, Jews are clearly not a race. Race is a genetic distinction, and refers to people with shared ancestry and shared genetic traits. You can't change your race; it's in your DNA. Common ancestry is not required to be a Jew. Many Jews worldwide share common ancestry, as shown by genetic research; however, you can be a Jew without sharing this common ancestry, for example, by converting.

3. What is Judaism? • Judaism, or the Jewish faith, is one of the oldest religions known to man. It originated over 4,ooo years ago and was the first monotheistic religion of its time. There is much debate over whether Judaism is a religious faith or an ethnic group. Jewish people share a common heritage and face a world in which their religion is part of their identity and is also their ethnicity. There are extremes on the religious and political spectrums. They are a people who share a common bond that unites them in terms of how they relate to each other and to the outside world. • To believe in God. Divine affirmation is the foundation of Judaism. Everything else comes after. • Jewish people believe that God gave them the Torah, and that the path to a holy life is laid out in the Torah.

4. There are four division of the Jewish faith: Orthodox, Masorti, Reform and Liberal. • The Torah is Judaism's most important text. It contains stories and commandments that teach us about life and death. It contains the 10 Commandments as well as the 613 commandments (mitzvot). All Jews consider the 10 Commandments to be the most important commandments in the Torah, though not all Jews adhere to the 613 mitzvot (one of the main differences between the different branches of Judaism). • In 1988, at its Second Biennial Conference in Brussels, the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews declared: ". . . a Jew is a person of Jewish descent or any person who declares himself or herself to be a Jew and who identifies with the history, ethical values, culture, civilization, community, and fate of the Jewish people."

5. The Jewish faith is founded on traditions that have been handed down for centuries and are still very much in practice today. Some of the traditions are: • Exchanging Chanukah gifts, hamantashen, and singing niggunim on Shabbat are just a few of the wonderful customs that have evolved from the religion and its people

6. History • The history of Jewish people has been a difficult one.  From the slavery in Egypt to the Holocaust in Europe, the Jewish people have lived a life filled with prejudice. Abraham is identified as the first Jewish person.  It is Jewish belief that he made a covenant with God and was promised that he would be the father of a great nation.  That nation became the Jewish people. Abraham and his sons and grandsons were called the “patriarchs”.  They were Isaac, his son, and Jacob, his grandson. It was because of Jacob’s sons and their wrongdoings that Joseph ended up in Egypt, eventually leading many Jewish people into the land of Egypt. Moses was one of the most famous Jewish prophets.  He led the Jewish people out of slavery, led them to Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments, a set of rules that people even today still follow.          After Moses, the Jewish people had different leaders called judges, and then kings such as David and Solomon to guide them in the land called Israel.  Jewish people lived in the land of Israel until 586BCE when they were exiled by the Babylonians.  It wasn’t until 1948, about 2000 years later, that Jewish people were able to return to that land.

7. Family Life • The very first mitzvah(commandment) in the Torah is "to be fruitful and multiply." A nurturing family is considered of utmost importance in the Jewish tradition. • Creating a Jewish family is thought of not only as a matter of personal desire but also as an act that will have lasting impact on the greater community. As a minority culture in the world at large, the creation of Jewish families concerns emotional and spiritual issues of legacy and continuity

8. Judaism believes that Jews are uniquely connected with each other. Regardless of where they live in the world, they believe that all Jews are part of a global Jewish community.

9. Holidays • There are many holidays observed by Jewish families. Some of them are: • Passover which commemorates the Exodus from Egypt • Rosh Hashanah which is considered the Jewish New Year • Yom Kippur is the Jewish day of atonement • Chanukah is the festival of lights; begins between Thanksgiving and Christmas and lasts for eight days. • Sukkot is a festival that celebrates the Biblical period of wandering in the desert. • There are many other Jewish holidays, but most American Jews do not celebrate these holidays as strictly or as regularly as the holidays above, and most do not expect gentiles to be aware of them.

10. Views Towards Education

11. What Every Teacher Should Know

12. References • Levenson, J. D. (2012). What are they? Modernity and Jewish self-understanding.(How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought)(Book review). Commonweal, (4), 21. • Benjamins, M. R. (2012). Religious Beliefs, Diet, and Physical Activity Among Jewish Adolescents. Journal For The Scientific Study Of Religion, 51(3), 588-597. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2012.01658.x • Deeb, I., Segall, G., Birnbaum, D., Ben-Eliyahu, A., & Diesendruck, G. (2011). Seeing isn't believing: The effect of intergroup exposure on children's essentialist beliefs about ethnic categories. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 101(6), 1139-1156. doi:10.1037/a0026107 • Society for Humanistic Judaism Supports Statement:What Does It Mean to Be Jewish? Retrieved 11/10/13 from http://www.shj.org/mean.htm