Jewish Theology

Judaism is first and foremost monotheistic.  We believe in one G-d, and actually, we credit ourselves with introducing monotheism to the world.  We’re quite proud of that.  The G-d stuff is probably pretty much what you’d assume- all powerful, all knowing, infinite, you can’t physically see him, that kind of stuff.  Although we might say “He,” G-d is neither male nor female but has attributes of both masculinity and femininity.

Most of you are probably familiar with the 5 Books of Moses.  We refer to that as the Torah, and it is the center of Orthodox Jewish life.  There’s also something called the Tanakh.  That’s an acronym, standing for Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim.  That’s Torah (five books), Prophets, and Writings.  We believe that G-d gave the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai. We also believe that all of the Jewish people were at the foot of Mt. Sinai when this happened, and that for the first bit, G-d spoke directly to everybody.  This is known as “mass revelation,” and to my knowledge, we’re the only religion with that as a piece of the theology.  We’re also pretty pumped about that.  Now, I said that G-d gave the Torah to Moses at Mt. Sinai, but what exactly “The Torah” means in this context gets a little messy.

In addition to the “written” Torah, we believe that there was an “oral” Torah that came with it, that got passed down through the generations.  It wasn’t meant to be written down, but eventually, when things were getting really bad for the Jews and we were worried we would lose it, Judah the Prince wrote it down around 200 CE (a long time after we believe we received it).  This is what we refer to as the Mishnah.  For generations after Judah the Prince wrote down the Mishnah, Jewish scholars commented on and interpreted it; those commentaries are known as the Gemara.  The Mishnah and the Gemara together make up the Talmud.  The Talmud is the core of Jewish life; it has all the laws that determine how we live from day to day and year to year.  The Talmud has 63 tractates!  It’s superrrr long.  And when Jews engage in Torah study, it generally means they’re studying the Talmud.  People spend years and years studying the Talmud to get the designation of Rabbi.  You could spend your entire life studying it (and many people do), and always feel like you have more to learn and review.

If I had to sum up Orthodox Jewish theology, I would explain it as a legal system.  This is very different from the Western conception of religion that I most often see, and it’s something my non-Jewish friends often have the hardest time grasping.  Judaism isn’t a simple, straight-forward model of “do the right thing,” which is the very simplistic way that I might boil down a lot of other religious models I’ve stumbled across.  Don’t get me wrong; of course Judaism believes in doing the right thing, but we think “the right thing” is very specifically dictated by a system of laws found in the Talmud.

We believe that the Torah has 613 commandments for Jews to follow (and actually, just 7 commandments for non-Jews known as the Noahide laws).  These laws help us understand how to act morally in the world, whether it’s explaining how much of your fields need to be donated to the poor or what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath (Shabbat) or how many and what kind of people need to hear a man say a specific sentence for him to be officially considered married to a woman.  Judaism is not primarily about what makes you feel good or what feels meaningful.  It’s about following commandments, and from those commandments, the hope is that one will find meaning.

A few things Judaism is not:

-We do not believe that everyone should be Jewish.  We don’t proselytize, and actually, even if you want to convert, it’s customary for a Rabbi to turn you away 3 times before letting you proceed.

-It’s not really a religion of punishment and reward.  I know that “do this or you’ll go to Hell” is a central paradigm in others religions; that’s really not how Judaism works.  We don’t believe in Hell (there’s something somewhat similar called Gehenem but it’s not eternal, it’s kind of a long story to explain, and the threat of going there is just not a central part of how Judaism works).  There are definitely commandments and you’re supposed to follow them, but it’s not a “do this or you’ll get struck by lightning” kind of a thing.  People always ask me, “What happens if you eat something that isn’t Kosher?”  The answer is “Um, well, it would just kind of suck.”  Judaism isn’t about doing X to avoid a threat so much (these elements exist in various texts, but it’s not a focus the same way it is in other religions).  It’s more about being the best that you can be and developing a close relationship with G-d.

-We don’t believe that rabbis have any sort of special powers.  We also don’t have any sort of saints.  Rabbis are just people like the rest of us with a higher level of knowledge in Torah (and ideally, good teachers and role models).

-We do believe in the coming of the Messiah (in Hebrew “moshiach”), but we don’t think he’s come yet.  We think he’ll be a descendant of King David, and we think that following commandments will help bring about his coming and the messianic age.  What exactly the “messianic age” will look like, though, is very vague in our texts.  There are different ideas about it (whether it’ll pretty much be like things are now but have world peace versus a more surreal idea of a perfect world).  One commonality between all of these visions is that we will have the Third Temple in Jerusalem (the first two were destroyed 2500ish and 2000ish years ago, respectively).  With a few exceptions, most Orthodox Jewish sects don’t heavily focus on “the world to come,” rather believe that we’re supposed to focus on this world.  The whole messiah coming thing is more in the background and a motivator to make the world a better place, but we are supposed to care about and function etc. in this world first and foremost.  That said, there is definitely an idea that doing “mitzvot” (or commandments) will help bring about the Messiah.