Basic practices and institutions
The hallowing of everyday existence
Systematic presentations of the affirmations of the Jewish community were never the sole mode of expressing the beliefs of the people. Maintaining an equal importance with speculation—Haggadic, philosophic, mystical, or ethical—was Halakhah (Oral Law), the paradigmatic statement of the individual and communal behaviour that embodied the beliefs conceptualized in speculation. Life in the holy community was understood to embrace every level of human existence. The prophets vigorously resisted attempts to limit the sovereignty of the God of Israel to organized worship and ritual. The Pharisees, even while the cult of the Jerusalem Temple was still in existence, sought to reduce priestly exclusiveness by enlarging the scope of sacral rules to include, as far as possible, all the people. Rabbinic Judaism, Pharisaism’s descendant, continued the process of democratization and sought to find in every occasion of life a means of affirming the presence of the divine. Some critics of Rabbinic Judaism, however, have seen the legal aspect of Jewish life as stifling. Although legalism is always a danger, spontaneity is not necessarily lacking in a world governed by Halakhah. Moreover, the intention of the Halakhic attitude is to remind Jews that every occasion of life is a locus of divine disclosure. This is most clearly seen in the berakhot, the “blessings,” that are prescribed to accompany the performance of a broad spectrum of human actions, from the routines of daily life to the restricted gestures of the cultic-liturgical year. In these God is addressed directly in the second person singular, his sovereignty is affirmed, and his activity as creator, giver of Torah, or redeemer—expressed in a wide variety of eulogies—is proclaimed. There are no areas of human behaviour in which God cannot be met, and the Halakhic pattern is intended to make such possibilities realities. The situation of the Jewish community, however, determines how this intention is realized. On more than one occasion, the Halakhic pattern has served as a defense against a hostile environment, thus becoming a kind of scrupulousness (an obsessive concern with minute details), but, just as often, the dynamic of the intention has broken through to reestablish its integrity and to hallow life in its wholeness
The traditional pattern of individual and familial practices
The traditional pattern of an individual’s life can be discerned by examining a passage from the Babylonian Talmud (tractate Berakhot 60b) that was reworked into a liturgical structure but which in its original form exhibits the intention discussed above. In this passage, the blessings accompanying one’s waking and returning to the routines of life are prescribed. There is a brief thanksgiving on awakening for being restored to conscious life; then a benediction is offered over the cock’s crowing; following this, each ordinary act—opening one’s eyes, stretching and sitting up, dressing, standing up, walking, tying one’s shoes, fastening one’s belt, covering one’s head, washing one’s hands and face—has its accompanying blessing, reminding one that the world and the life to which he has returned exist in the presence of God. These are followed by a supplication in which the petitioner asks that his life during the day may be worthy in all of its relationships. Then, as the first order of daily business, Torah, both written (Bible) and oral (Mishna), is briefly studied, introduced by doxologies to God as Giver of Torah. Finally, there is a prayer for the establishment of the kingdom of God, for each day contains within itself the possibility of ultimate fulfillment. As indicated, this was originally not a part of public worship but rather was personal preparation for a life to be lived in the presence of God (even today it is not, strictly speaking, part of the synagogue service, though it is frequently recited there).
Such individual responsibility marks much of Jewish observance, so that the synagogue—far from being the focus of observance—shares with the home and the workaday world the opportunities for divine-human encounter. The table blessings, Kiddush (the “sanctification” of the Sabbath and festivals), the erection of the booth (sukka) for Sukkoth (the Feast of Tabernacles), the seder (the festive Passover meal) with its symbols and narration of the Exodus, and the lighting of the lamps during the eight days of Hanukkah (the Feast of Dedication) are all the obligation of the individual and the family and have their place in the home. It is here too where the woman’s role is defined and where, as contrasted with the synagogue, she functions centrally. Given the traditional dietary regimen of the Jewish community—the exclusion of swine, carrion eaters, shellfish, and certain other creatures, the separation of meat and dairy products, the ritual slaughtering of animals, the required separation and burning of a small portion of dough (ḥalla) when baking, the supervision of the Passover food requirements, and many other stipulations—there exists a large and meticulously governed area in the home that is the sphere of woman’s religion. There seems not to have been a hierarchy of values in which the home-centred—as contrasted with the synagogue-oriented—practices were given an inferior status. In modern times, however—particularly in Western societies, where the pervasiveness of religious obligation has been replaced by ecclesiastical institutionalism on the prevailing Christian model—this whole crucial area has lost much of its meaning as a place of divine-human meeting. Thus, for many it is only the synagogue that provides such an opportunity, and the individual act has been reduced on the scale of values. With this downgrading, woman’s religion has lost much of its significance. However attenuated personal religious responsibility may have become, the intention of the Halakhic structure, the hallowing of the individual’s total existence, remains a potent force within the Jewish community.
The traditional pattern of synagogue practices
The other focus of observance is the synagogue. The origins of this institution are obscure, and a number of hypotheses have been proposed to account for the appearance of this lay-oriented form of worship. According to various ancient sources, during the period of the Second Temple—following the return from Babylon and continuing until the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE—various non-sacrificial modes of worship emerged that were independent of the priesthood and the official cult. The reports by the philosopher Philo Judaeus and the historian Flavius Josephus in the 1st century, buttressed by the Dead Sea Scrolls, provide some knowledge of the practices of the contemporary Essenes. Rabbinic sources, including the earliest layers of the traditional order of worship, provide insights into an apparently Pharisaic mode, and passages from the Acts of the Apostles concerning James and other Jewish Christians suggest still other varieties. In any case, the practitioners of what eventually became Rabbinic Judaism observed a form of worship that, with the destruction of the Temple cult, provided a new centre and even absorbed enough from the defunct priestly institution to suggest continuity and legitimacy with the Judaic past. This was probably the basic pattern for synagogal liturgy in the millennia that followed.
At the heart of synagogal worship is the public reading of Scriptures. This takes place at the morning service on Sabbaths, holy days, and festivals, on Monday and Thursday mornings, and on Sabbath afternoons. The readings from the Pentateuch are currently arranged in an annual cycle so that, beginning with Genesis 1:1 on the Sabbath following the autumnal festivals, the entire five books are read through the rest of the year. The texts for festivals, holy days, and fasts reflect the particular significance of those occasions. In addition, a second portion from the prophetic writings (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, as well as the three major and 12 minor Prophets, but not Daniel) is read on many of these occasions. The readings take place within the structure of public worship and are incorporated into ceremonies in which the Sefer Torah (“Book of the Torah”), the pentateuchal scroll, is removed from the ark (cabinet) at the front of the synagogue and carried in procession to the reading desk; from it, the pertinent text is chanted by the reader. The text for the service is divided into subsections varying from seven on the Sabbath to three at the weekday morning service, and individuals are called forward to recite the blessings eulogizing God as Giver of Torah before and after each of these. The order of worship is composed of the preparatory blessings and prayers, to which are added passages recalling the Temple sacrificial cult (thus relating the present form of worship to the past); the recitation of a number of Psalms and biblical prayers; the Shema and its accompanying benedictions, introduced by a call to worship that marks the beginning of formal public worship; the prayer (tefilla) in the strict sense of petition; confession and supplication (taḥanun) on weekdays; the reading of Scripture; and concluding acts of worship. This general structure of the morning service varies somewhat, with additions and subtractions for the afternoon and evening services and for Sabbath, holy days, and festivals.
The prayer (tefilla) is often called the shemone ʿesre, the “Eighteen Benedictions”—though it actually has 19—or the ʿamida, “standing,” because it is recited in that position. It is made up of three introductory benedictions (praise of the God of the Fathers, of God the Redeemer who resurrects the dead, and of God the Holy One who fills the earth with his glory) and three concluding acts (a prayer for the acceptance of the service, a thanksgiving, and a prayer for peace). Between the introductory and concluding sections there is a series of intermediate petitions for knowledge, well-being, acceptance of repentance, forgiveness of sin, and others. On the Sabbath and on festivals the petitions are replaced by benedictions that mention the specific occasion but are not petitionary; it is considered inappropriate to attend to workaday concerns at these times.
The general outline of this order of service is found throughout the entire Jewish world, but the details have varied in different periods and geographic and cultural areas. The public service, requiring the presence of at least 10 males, the minyan (“quorum”), is generally led by a synagogal official, the ḥazzan, or cantor, but any Jewish male with the requisite knowledge may act in this capacity, since there is no clerical class in the community to whom such leadership is limited.
The synagogue room itself has a very simple basic form, though it may be embellished considerably. The only requirements are a container for the Torah scroll(s), called the aron ha-qodesh (“the holy ark”), a chest against the east wall or a recessed closet with doors and a curtain; a prayer desk (ʿamud) facing the ark, at which the reader stands when reciting the service; and the pulpit (bima)—in or close to the centre of the room, according to some requirements—from which the Torah is read. In the Spanish-Portuguese tradition, only one desk (called teva) is used. The ark contains one or more scrolls, on which are written the Five Books of Moses. These are variously ornamented, depending upon the cultural region: European communities deck them in coverings of cloth, and Eastern communities (North African and Near Eastern) place them in wooden or metal containers. In addition, silver ornaments (rimonim) in the form of towers or crowns are often set on the tops of two rods on which the scroll is wound, and a breastplate (hoshen) and a pointer (yad) are suspended from them.
Accommodations for the worshippers vary according to the cultural milieu, from rugs and cushions in Eastern synagogues to pews and standing desks in European ones. Given this essential simplicity, the synagogue room itself may be used for purposes other than worship—e.g., study and community assembly. Again, this varies with the cultural pattern.
Ceremonies marking the individual life cycles
The life of the individual is punctuated by observances that mark the notable events of personal existence. A male child is circumcised on the eighth day following birth, as a covenantal sign (Genesis 17); the rite of circumcision (berit mila) is accompanied by appropriate benedictions and ceremonies, including naming. Females are named in the synagogue, generally on the Sabbath following birth, when the father is called to recite the benedictions over the reading of Torah. A firstborn son, if he does not belong to a priestly or a levitical family, is redeemed at one month (in accordance with Exodus 13:12–13 and Numbers 18:14–16) by the payment of a stipulated sum to a cohen (a putative member of the priestly family). At age 13 a boy is called to recite the Torah benedictions publicly, thus signifying his religious coming-of-age; he is thenceforth obligated to observe the commandments as his own responsibility—he is now a bar mitzvah (“son of the commandment”). Many Conservativeand Reform congregations have instituted a similar ceremony, called the bat mitzvah, to celebrate the coming-of-age of girls. Marriage (ḥatuna, also qiddushin, “sanctifications”) involves a double ceremony, performed together in modern times but separated in ancient times by one year. First is the betrothal (erusin), which includes the reading of the marriage contract (ketubba) and the giving of the ring with a declaration, “Behold you are consecrated to me by this ring according to the law of Moses and Israel,” accompanied by certain benedictions. This is followed by the marriage proper (nissuʾin), consisting of the reciting of the seven marriage benedictions. The ceremony is performed under a ḥuppa, a canopy that symbolizes the bridal bower.
The burial service is marked by simplicity. The body, prepared for the grave by the ḥevraʾ qaddishaʾ (“holy society”), is clad only in a simple shroud and interred as soon after death as possible. In Israel no coffin is used. There are observances connected with death, many of which belong to the realm of folklore rather than Halakhic tradition. A mourning period of 30 days is observed, of which the first seven (shivah) are the most rigorous. During the 11 months following a death, the bereaved recite a particular form of a synagogal doxology (Kaddish) during the public service as an act of memorial. The doxology, devoid of any mention of death, is a praise of God and a prayer for the establishment of the coming kingdom. It is also recited annually on the anniversary of the death (yahrzeit).
Holy places: the land of Israel and Jerusalem
The land of Israel, as is evident from the biblical narratives, played a significant role in the life and thought of the Israelites. It was the promised home, for the sake of which Abraham left his birthplace; the haven toward which those escaping from Egyptian servitude moved; and the hope of the exiles in Babylon. In the long centuries following the destruction of the Judean state by the Romans, it was a central part of messianic and eschatological expectations.
During the early period of settlement, there apparently were many sacred localities, with one or another functioning for a time as a central shrine for all the tribes. Even the establishment of Jerusalem as the political capital by David and the building of a royal chapel there by Solomon did not bring an end to local cult centres. It was not until the reign of Josiah of Judah (640–609 BCE) that a reform centralized the cult in Jerusalem and attempted to end worship at local shrines. Although Josiah’s reform was not entirely successful, during the Babylonian Exileand the subsequent return, Jerusalem and its Temple defeated its rivals and became—in law, in fact, and in sentiment—the centre of Jewish cultic life. This did not inhibit, however, the rise and development of other forms of worship and even—on a few occasions—other cult centres. Nonetheless, no matter how unpopular the priesthood of the Jerusalem Temple became with some segments of the population—the Qumrān community seems to have denied its legality, and the Pharisees complained bitterly about its arrogance and exactions, attempting, when feasible, to impose and enforce Pharisaic regulations upon it—reverence for the Temple seems to have remained a widespread sentiment. With the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, such reverence was transformed both by messianic expectations and by eschatological hopes into fervent devotion, which, over the following centuries, became idealized and even supernaturalized. The most ardently articulated statement of the crucial role of the land of Israel and the Jerusalem Temple is found in the Sefer ha-Kuzari of Judah ha-Levi, in which the two are seen as absolutely indispensable for the proper relationship between God and his people.
Symbolizing the significance of the land and of the city is the practice of facing in their direction during worship. The earliest architectural evidence derived from synagogue remains in Galilee indicates that the attempt was made to arrange the building in such a way that the worshippers faced directly toward Jerusalem. This practice may have continued even in the Diaspora, but at a later date the present practice of setting the holy ark in or before the east wall was established, so that “facing Jerusalem” is now more symbolic than actual.
The sacred language: Hebrew and the vernacular tongues
The transformation of Hebrew into a sacred language is closely tied to the political fate of the people. In the period following the return from the Babylonian Exile, Aramaic, a cognate of Hebrew, functioned as the international or imperial language in official life and gained a foothold as a vernacular. It did not, despite claims made by some scholars, displace the everyday Hebrew of the people. The language of the Mishna, far from being a scholar’s dialect, seems to reflect popular speech, as did the Koine (common) Greek of the New Testament. Displacement of Hebrew—both in its literary form in Scriptures and in its popular usage—occurred in the Diaspora, however, as illustrated by the translation of Scriptures into Greek in some communities and into Aramaic in others. There seems also to have been an inclination on the part of some authorities to permit even the recitation of the Shema complex in the vernacular during the worship service. Struggles over these issues continued for a number of centuries in various places, but the development of formal literary Hebrew—a sacred tongue, to be used side by side with the Hebrew Scriptures in worship—brought them to an end. Although the communities of the Diaspora used the vernaculars of their environment in day-to-day living and even—as in the case of the communities of the Islamic world—for philosophical, theological, and other scholarly writings, Hebrew remained the standard in worship until modern times, when some western European reform movements sought partially—and a very small fraction even totally—to displace it.
The rabbinate
Legal, judicial, and congregational roles
The rabbinate, with its peculiar nature and functions, is the result of a series of developments that began after the disastrous second revolt against Rome (132–135 CE). The term rabbi (“my teacher”) was originally an honorific title for the graduates of the academy directed by the nasi, or patriarch, who was the head of the Jewish community in Palestine as well as a Roman imperial official. The curriculum of the school was Torah, written and oral, according to the Pharisaic tradition and formulation. The nasi appointed rabbis to the law court (the bet din) and as legal officers of local communities; acting with the local elders, they supervised and controlled the life of the community and its members in all aspects. A similar situation obtained in Babylon under the Parthian and Sāsānian empires, where the resh galuta, or exilarch (“head of the exile”), appointed rabbinical officials to legal and administrative posts. In time the patriarchate and exilarchate disappeared, but the rabbinate, nourished by independent rabbinical academies, survived. An authorized scholar, when called to become the judicial officer of a community, would at the same time become the head of the local academy and, after adequate preparation and examination, would grant authorization to his pupils, who were then eligible to be called to rabbinical posts. There was thus a diffusion of authority, the communities calling, rather than a superior official appointing, their rabbis. The rabbis were not ecclesiastical personages but communal officials, responsible for the governance of the entire range of life of what was understood to be the qehilla qedosha, the “holy community.”
In modern times, particularly in the Western world, the change in Jewish communal existence required a transformation of this ancient structure. The rabbinate became, for the most part, an ecclesiastical rather than a communal agency, reflecting the requirements of civic life in modern nation states. The education of rabbis is now carried on in seminaries whose structure and curriculum have been influenced by European and American academic institutions. The majority of their graduates serve as congregational rabbis, in roles similar to those of ministers and priests in Christian denominations but with some other functions deriving from the particular situation and nature of the Jewish community.
In the State of Israel certain larger areas, such as that of family law, are still reserved for the rabbinate. Even here, however, the rabbinate functions more as a counterpart to other ecclesiastical organizations, such as Christian and Muslim, than as an overarching and all-inclusive communal agency.
Chief rabbinates
The existence of the offices of chief rabbi in the State of Israel derives from the situation in the Ottoman Empire, where the various religious communities functioned as quasi-political entities in a multiethnic conglomerate. Israel has two chief rabbis, one for the Ashkenazic(European) and one for the Sephardic (Eastern) community; they no longer function as the heads of whole communities but only of ecclesiastical organizations. The same is true in countries outside Israel that have the office of chief rabbi (e.g., Great Britain and France); in these countries the chief rabbi’s relationship with the government is like that of his ecclesiastical counterparts in the Christian churches. While the chief rabbis have certain kinds of limited authority because of their official position, they have jurisdiction only over those members of the Jewish community who are ready to accept it; others form their own ecclesiastical units and act without reference to the chief rabbinate. In some situations—particularly in the United States, where there is no similar structure—the title chief rabbi or grand rabbi has been assumed occasionally by individuals as a means of asserting superior dignity or even (fruitlessly) authority.
General councils or conferences
The nature of the Sanhedrin in the last years of the Jewish commonwealth is a much disputed matter. The several councils mentioned in Talmudic literature are equally difficult to define with any precision. References scattered throughout medieval literature suggest the existence of councils and synods, but their composition and authority are uncertain. About the year 1000 a synod was held in the Rhineland in which French and German communities participated under the guidance of Rabbenu Gershom, the leading rabbinic authority of the region. In the late Middle Ages, representatives from the communities of Great Poland, Little Poland, Russian Poland (Volhynia), and Lithuania came together to form the Waʿad Arbaʿ Aratzot (Council of the Four Lands). At the beginning of the modern era, Napoleon in 1806 summoned the Assembly of Notables—representatives of communities under French dominion—to deal with questions arising from the dissolution of the older status of the Jews and their naturalization as individuals into the new nation-states. Decisions of the assembly that involved questions of Jewish law were subsequently submitted to a Grand Sanhedrin called by Napoleon to provide Halakhic justification for acts that the French imperial government had required of the Jewish communities.
During the 19th century the demand for the reform of Jewish life—principally the liturgy of the synagogue but many other aspects as well—prompted a series of rabbinical conferences and synods. A similar course of events took place in the United States. In both instances, after an initial period in which radicals, moderates, and conservatives argued their respective cases in the same forum, polarization set in and intellectual differences were transformed into competing organizations. In the 1970s the several tendencies within the Jewish communities in North America were institutionalized in rabbinical conferences and congregational unions—Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform—whose influence was in large measure limited to their adherents. There is also a worldwide body of Reform or Liberal Judaism—the World Union for Progressive Judaism. One result of these developments was the hardening of denominational differences, particularly in North America, especially between Orthodox and non-Orthodox (Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative) Judaisms.
Modern variations
The preceding sketch of basic practices and institutions has attempted to describe the so-called traditional situation, though it has been indicated that even here there are variations—actually more than have been noted. Reference has also been made to changes that represent the abandonment of traditional practices on the basis of intellectual decisions about the nature of Judaism, its beliefs, practices, and institutions. Such changes are far too numerous to describe in detail, but it is important to indicate their motivation. The Halakhic system, both as a whole and in all of its parts, is viewed not as divinely revealed but rather as a human process that seeks to expose in mutable forms the meaning of the divine-human encounter. The practices and institutions, therefore, are understood as historically determined, reflecting the multifaceted experience of the people of Israel as they have sought to live in the presence of God. Historical scholarship has disclosed the origins, rise, development, and decline of these structures in the past and thus suggests the propriety of changes in the present and future that appear to fulfill the needs of the community and its members. However, this kind of historicism (the explanation of values and forms in terms of their historical conditions) has been applied in widely different ways since it was first used in the 19th century. Some have seen it as justifying a disengagement from much if not all of the traditional pattern and a recognition that only the spiritual essence is of consequence for Judaism. Others have argued that the burden of proof is always upon those who would introduce changes. Since the end of World War II, the question has been whether a reconstituted Halakhic system might not be a requirement of the day.
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