The Judaic Tradition

The literature of Judaism

General considerations

A paradigmatic statement is made in the narrative that begins with Genesis and ends with Joshua. In the early chapters of Genesis, the divine is described as the creator of humankind and the entire natural order. In the stories of Eden, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel, humans are recognized as rebellious and disobedient. In the patriarchal stories (about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph), a particular family is called upon to restore the relationship between God and humankind. The subsequent history of the community thus formed is recounted so that God’s desired restoration may be recognized and the nature of the obedient community may be observed by his people: the Egyptian servitude, the Exodus from Egypt, the revelation of the “teaching,” the wandering years, and finally fulfillment through entrance into the “land” (Canaan). The prophetic books (in the Hebrew Bible these include the historical narratives up to the Babylonian Exile—i.e., Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) also address the tension between rebellion and obedience, interpreting it within the changing historical context and adding new levels of meaning to the motif of fulfillment and redemption.

From this “narrative theology,” as it has been recited throughout the centuries, new formulations of the primal affirmations have been drawn. These have been clothed in philosophical, mystical, ethnic, and political vocabularies, among others. The emphases have been various, the disagreements often profound. No single exposition has exhausted the possibilities of the affirmations or of the relationship between them. Philosophers have expounded them on the highest level of abstraction, using the language of the available philosophical systems. Mystics have enveloped them in the extravagant prose of speculative systems and in simple folktales. Attempts have been made to encompass them in theoretical ethical statements and to express them through practical ethical behaviour. Yet, in each instance, the proposed interpretations have had to come to terms with the spiritual and intellectual demands arising out of the community’s experience. The biblical texts, themselves the products of a long period of transmission and embodying more than a single outlook, were subjected to extensive study and interpretation over many centuries and, when required, were translated into other languages. The whole literature remains the basis of further developments, so that any attempt to formulate a statement of the affirmations of Judaism must, however contemporary it seeks to be, give heed to the scope and variety of speculation and formulation in the past.

Sources and scope of the Torah

The concept “Giver of Torah” played a central role in the understanding of God, for it is Torah, or “Teaching,” that confirms the events recognized by the community as the acts of God. In its written form, Torah was considered to be especially present in the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch), which themselves came to be called Torah. In addition to this written Torah, or “Law,” there were also unwritten laws or customs and interpretations of them, carried down in an oral tradition over many generations, which acquired the status of oral Torah.

The oral tradition interpreted the written Torah, adapted its precepts to ever-changing political and social circumstances, and supplemented it with new legislation. Thus, the oral tradition added a dynamic dimension to the written code, making it a perpetual process rather than a closed system. The vitality of this tradition is fully demonstrated in the way the ancient laws were adapted after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and by the role played by the Talmud in the survival of the Jewish people in exile. By the 11th century, Diaspora Jews lived in a Talmudic culture that united them and that superseded geographical boundaries and language differences. Jewish communities governed themselves according to Talmudic law, and individuals regulated the smallest details of their lives by it.

Central to this vast structure was, of course, the Jewish community’s concern to live in accordance with the divine will as it was embodied and expressed in Torah in the widest sense. Scripture, Halakhic and Haggadic Midrash, Mishna, and Gemara were the sources that Jewish leaders used to give their communities stability and flexibility. Jewish communities and individuals of the Diaspora faced novel and unexpected situations that had to be dealt with in ways that would provide continuity while making it possible to exist with the unprecedented.

Prophecy and religious experience

Torah in the broad sense includes the whole Hebrew Bible, including the books of the Prophets. According to the Prophets, God was revealed in the nexus of historical events and made ethical demands upon the community. In Rabbinic Judaism the role of the prophet—the charismatic person—as a source of Torah ended in the period of Ezra (i.e., about the time of the return from the Babylonian Exile in the 5th century BCE). This opinion may have been a reaction to the luxuriant growth of apocalyptic speculation, a development that was considered dangerous and unsettling in the period after the Bar Kokhba revolt, or Second Jewish Revolt (132–135 CE). Indeed, there seems to have developed a suspicion that reliance on unrestrained individual experience as a source of Torah was inimical to the welfare of the community. Such an attitude was by no means new. Deuteronomy (13:2–19) had already warned against such “misleaders.” The culmination of this attitude is to be found in a Talmudic narrative in which even the bat qol, the divine “echo” that announces God’s will, is ignored on a particular occasion. Related to this is the reluctance on the part of teachers in the early centuries of the Common Era to point to wonders and miracles in their own time. Far from expressing an ossification of religious experience—the development of the siddur (prayer book) and the Talmudic reports on the devotional life of the rabbis contradict such an interpretation—the attitude seems to be a response to the development of religious enthusiasm such as that exhibited in the behaviour of the Christian church in Corinth—as Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians reveals—and among gnostic sects and sectarians. Thus, even among the speculative mystics of the Middle Ages, where allegorization of Scripture abounds, the structure of the community and the obligations of the individual are not displaced by the deepening of personal religious life through mystical experience. The decisive instance of this is Joseph Karo (1488–1575), who was thought to be in touch with a supernal guide but who was at the same time the author of an important codification of Jewish law, the Shulḥan ʿarukh.

Admittedly, there have been occasions when Torah, even in the wide sense, has been rigidly applied. In certain historical situations the dynamic process of Rabbinic Judaism has been treated as a static structure. What is of greater significance, however, is the way in which this tendency toward inflexibility has been reversed by the inherent dynamism of the rabbinic tradition.

Modern views of Torah

Since the end of the 18th century, the traditional position has been challenged both in detail and in principle. The rise of biblical criticism has raised a host of questions about the origins and development of Scripture and thus about the very concept of Torah, in the senses in which it has functioned in Judaism. Naturalistic views of God have required a reinterpretation of Torah in sociological terms. Other positions of many sorts have been and undoubtedly will be forthcoming. What is crucial, however, is the concern of all these positions to retain the concept of Torah as one of the central and continuing affirmations of Judaism.Haim Zalman Dimitrovsky

Basic beliefs and doctrines

Judaism is more than an abstract intellectual system, though there have been many efforts to view it systematically. It affirms divine sovereignty disclosed in creation (nature) and in history, without necessarily insisting upon—but at the same time not rejecting—metaphysical speculation about the divine. It insists that the community has been confronted by the divine not as an abstraction but as a person with whom the community and its members have entered into a relationship. It is, as the concept of Torah indicates, a program of human action, rooted in this personal confrontation. Further, the response of this particular people to its encounter with God is viewed as significant for all humankind. The community is called upon to express its loyalty to God and the covenant by exhibiting solidarity within its corporate life on every level, including every aspect of human behaviour, from the most public to the most private. Thus, even Jewish worship is a communal celebration of the meetings with God in history and in nature. Yet the particular existence of the covenant people is thought of not as contradicting but rather as enhancing human solidarity. This people, together with all humanity, is called upon to institute political, economic, and social forms that will affirm divine sovereignty. This task is carried out in the belief not that humans will succeed in these endeavours solely by their own efforts but that these sought-after human relationships have their source and their goal in God, who assures their actualization. Within the community, each Jew is called upon to realize the covenant in his or her personal intention and behaviour.

In considering the basic affirmations of Judaism from this point of view, it is best to allow indigenous formulations rather than systematic statements borrowed from other traditions to govern the presentation.

God

An early statement of basic beliefs and doctrines about God emerged in the liturgy of the synagogue some time during the last pre-Christian and first Christian centuries; there is some evidence to suggest that such formulations were not absent from the Temple cult that came to an end in the year 70 CE. A section of the siddur that focuses on the recitation of a series of biblical passages (Deuteronomy 6:4–9; Deuteronomy 11:13–21; Numbers 15:37–41) is named for the first of these, Shema (“Hear”): “Hear, O Israel! the Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (or “…the Lord our God, the Lord is one”). In the Shema—often regarded as the Jewish confession of faith, or creed—the biblical material and accompanying benedictions are arranged to provide a statement about God’s relationship with the world and Israel (the Jewish people), as well as about Israel’s obligations toward and response to God. In this statement, God—the creator of the universe who has chosen Israel in love (“Blessed art thou, O Lord, who has chosen thy people Israel in love”) and showed this love by the giving of Torah—is declared to be “one.” His love is to be reciprocated by those who lovingly obey Torah and whose obedience is rewarded and rebellion punished. The goal of this obedience is God’s “redemption” of Israel, a role foreshadowed by his action in bringing Israel out of Egypt.

Unity and uniqueness

At the centre of this liturgical formulation of belief is the concept of divine singularity and uniqueness. In its original setting, it may have served as the theological statement of the reform under Josiah, king of Judah, in the 7th century BCE, when worship was centred exclusively in Jerusalem and all other cultic centres were rejected, so that the existence of one shrine only was understood as affirming one deity. The idea acquired further meaning, however. It was understood toward the end of the pre-Christian era to proclaim the unity of divine love and divine justice, as expressed in the divine names YHWH and Elohim, respectively. A further expansion of this affirmation is found in the first two benedictions of this liturgical section, which together proclaim that the God who is the creator of the universe and the God who is Israel’s ruler and lawgiver are one and the same—as opposed to the dualistic religious positions of the Greco-Roman world, which insisted that the creator God and the lawgiver God are separate and even inimical. This affirmation was developed in philosophical and mystical terms by both medieval and modern thinkers.

Creativity

This “creed,” or “confession of faith,” underscores in the first benediction the relation of God to the world as that of creator to creation. “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who forms light and creates darkness, who makes peace and creates all things.” It adds the assertion that his activity is not in the past but is ongoing and continuous, for “he makes new continually, each day, the work of creation”; thus, unlike the deity of the Stoic worldview, he remains actively present in nature (see Stoicism). This creed also addresses the ever-present problem of theodicy (see also evil, problem of). Paraphrasing Isaiah 45:7, “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil,” it changes the last word to “all” (or “all things”). The change was clearly made to avoid the implication that God is the source of moral evil. Judaism, however, did not ignore the problem of pain and suffering in the world; it affirmed the paradox of suffering and divine sovereignty, of pain and divine providence, refusing to accept the concept of a God that is Lord over only the harmonious and pleasant aspects of reality.

Activity in the world

The second and the third benedictions deal with divine activity within the realm of history and human life. God is the teacher of all humanity; he has chosen the people of Israel in love to witness to his presence and his desire for a perfected society; he will, as redeemer, enable humanity to experience that perfection. These activities, together with creation itself, are understood to express divine compassion and kindness as well as justice (judgment), recognizing the sometimes paradoxical relation between them. Taken together, they disclose Divine Providence—God’s continual activity in the world. The constant renewal of creation (nature) is itself an act of compassion overriding strict justice and affording humankind further opportunity to fulfill the divinely appointed obligation.

The basically moral nature of God is asserted in the second of the biblical passages that form the core of this liturgical statement (Deuteronomy 11:13–21). Here, in the language of its agricultural setting, the community is promised reward for obedience and punishment for disobedience. The intention of the passage is clear: obedience is rewarded by the preservation of order, so that the community and its members find wholeness in life; while disobedience—rebellion against divine sovereignty—shatters order, so that the community is overwhelmed by adversity. The passage of time has made the original language unsatisfactory (promising rain, crops, and fat cattle), but the basic principle remains, affirming that, however difficult it is to recognize the fact, there is a divine law and judge. Support for this affirmation is drawn from the third biblical passage (Numbers 15:37–41), which explains that the fringes the Israelites are commanded to wear on the corners of their garments are reminders to observe the commandments of God, who brought forth Israel from Egyptian bondage. The theme of divine redemption is elaborated in the concluding benediction to point toward a future in which the as-yet-fragmentary rule of God will be brought to completion: “Blessed is his name whose glorious kingdom is for ever and ever.”

Otherness and nearness

Within this complex of ideas, other themes are interwoven. In the concept of the divine creator there is a somewhat impersonal or remote quality—of a power above and apart from the world—which is emphasized by expressions such as the trifold declaration of God’s holiness, or divine otherness, in Isaiah 6:3: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts….” The development of surrogate divine names for biblical usage, as well as the substitution of Adonai (“my Lord”) for the tetragrammaton (YHWH) in the reading of the Bible itself, suggests an acute awareness of the otherness of God. Yet the belief in the transcendence of God is mirrored by the affirmation of God’s immanence. In the biblical narrative it is God himself who is the directly active participant in events, an idea that is emphasized in the liturgical narrative (Haggada; “Storytelling”) recited during the Passover meal (seder): “and the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt—not by an angel, and not by a seraph, and not by a messenger….” The surrogate divine name Shekhina, “Presence” (i.e., the presence of God in the world), is derived from a Hebrew root meaning “to dwell,” again calling attention to divine nearness. The relationship between these two affirmations, otherness and nearness, is expressed in a Midrashic statement, “in every place that divine awesome majesty is mentioned in Scripture, divine abasement is spoken of, too.”

Closely connected with these ideas is the concept of divine personhood, most particularly illustrated in the use of the pronoun “thou” in direct address to God. The community and the individual, confronted by the creator, teacher, and redeemer, address the divine as a living person, not as a theological abstraction. The basic liturgical form, the berakha (“blessing”), is usually couched in the second person singular: “Blessed art thou….” This relationship, through which remoteness is overcome and presentness is established, illuminates creation, Torah, and redemption, for it reveals the meaning of love. From it flow the various possibilities of expressing the divine-human relationship in personal, intimate language. Sometimes, especially in mystical thought, such language becomes extravagant, foreshadowed by vivid biblical metaphors such as the husband-wife relation in Hosea, the “adoption” motif in Ezekiel16, and the firstborn-son relation in Exodus 4:22. Nonetheless, although terms of personal intimacy are used widely to express Israel’s relationship with God, such usage is restrained by the accompanying sense of divine otherness. This is evident in the liturgical “blessings,” where, following the direct address to God in which the second person singular pronoun is used, the verbs are with great regularity in the third person singular, thus providing the requisite tension between nearness and otherness, between the personal and the impersonal.

Modern views of God

The Judaic affirmations about God have not always been given the same emphasis, nor have they been understood in the same way. This was true in the Middle Ages, among both philosophers and mystics, as well as in modern times. In the 19th century, western European Jewish thinkers attempted to express and transform these affirmations in terms of German philosophical idealism. Later thinkers turned to philosophical naturalism, supplemented with the traditional God language, as the suitable expression of Judaism. In the first half of the 20th century the meaningfulness of the whole body of such affirmations was called into question by the philosophical school of logical positivism. The destruction of six million Jews in the Holocaust raised the issue of the validity of concepts such as God’s presence in history, divine redemption, the covenant, and the chosen people.

Israel (the Jewish people)

Choice and covenant

The concluding phrase of the second benediction of the liturgical section—“who has chosen thy people Israel in love”—clearly states that God’s choice to establish a relationship with Israel in particular was determined by divine love. The patriarchal narratives, beginning with the 12th chapter of Genesis, presuppose the choice, which is set forth explicitly in Deuteronomy 7:6–8 in the New Jewish Version:

Later rabbinic traditions on occasion sought to base God’s choice upon some special merit of Israel, and the medieval poet and theologian Judah ha-Levi suggested that the openness to divine influence originally present in Adam continued only within the people of Israel.

The background of this choice is the recurring disobedience of humankind narrated in Genesis2–11 (the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, and the Tower of Babel). In the subsequent chapters of Genesis, Abraham and his descendants are singled out not merely as the object of the divine blessing but also as its channel to all humanity. The choice, however, demands a reciprocal response from Abraham and his lineage. That response is obedience, as exemplified in the first instance by Abraham’s readiness to leave his “native land” and his “father’s house” (Genesis 12:1). This twofold relationship was formalized in a mutually binding agreement, a covenant between the two parties. The covenant, thought by some modern biblical scholars to reflect the form of ancient suzerainty treaties, indicates (as in the Ten Utterances, or Decalogue) the source of Israel’s obligation—the acts of God in history—and the specific requirements those acts impose. The formalization of this relationship was accomplished by certain cultic acts that, according to some contemporary scholars, may have been performed on a regular basis at various sacred sites in the land before being centralized in Jerusalem. The content of the covenantal obligations thus formalized was Torah. Israel was bound in obedience, and Israel’s failure to obey provided the occasions for the prophetic messages. The prophets, as spokespersons for God, called the community to renewed obedience, threatened and promised disaster if obedience was not forthcoming, and sought to explain the covenant’s persistence even when it should have been repudiated by God.

The choice of Israel is expressed in concrete terms in the requirements of the precepts (mitzwot, singular mitzwa) that are part of Torah. The blessing recited before the public reading of the pentateuchal portions on Sabbath, festivals, holy days, fasts, and certain weekdays refers to God as “He who chose us from among all the peoples and gave us His Torah,” thus emphasizing the intimate relationship between the elective and revelatory aspects of God.

Israel’s role was not defined solely in terms of its own obedience to the commandments. Abraham and his descendants, for example, were seen as the means by which the estrangement of disobedient humankind from God was to be overcome. Torah was the formative principle underlying the community’s fulfillment of this obligation. Israel was to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) functioning within humanity and for its sake. This task is enunciated with particular earnestness in the writings of the Prophets. In Isaiah 43–44, Israel is declared to be God’s witness and servant, who is to bring the knowledge of God to the nations, and in 42:6–7 it is described as a “covenant of the people, to be a light of the nations, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prisons, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” This double motif of a chosen people and a witness to the nations, joined to that of the righteous king, developed in the biblical and postbiblical periods into messianism in its several varieties.

The intimate relation between choice, covenant, and Torah determined the modality of Israel’s existence. Religious faith, far from being restricted to or encapsulated in the cult, found expression in the totality of communal and individual life. The obligation of the people was to be the true community, in which the relationship between its members was open, in which social distance was repudiated, and in which response to the divine will expressed in Torah was called for equally from all. One of the important recurring themes of the prophetic movement was the adamant rejection of any tendency to limit divine sovereignty to the partial area of “religion,” understood as the realm of the priesthood and cult. Subsequent developments continued this theme, though it appeared in a number of other forms. Pharisaic Judaism and its continuation, Rabbinic Judaism, resolutely held to the idea of the all-pervasive functioning of Torah, so that however the various Jewish communities over the centuries may have failed to fulfill this idea, the self-image of the people was that of a “holy community.”

Israel and the nations

The double motif of “treasured people” and “witness” was not without its tensions as it functioned in ongoing history. Tensions are especially visible in the period following the return from the Babylonian Exile at the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century BCE. It is, however, doubtful whether the use of such terms as nationalism, particularism, or exclusivism are of any great help in understanding the situation. Emphasis has, for example, been laid upon Ezra 9:2 and 10:2, in which the reestablished community is commanded to give up wives taken from “the peoples of the land.” This is taken as an indication of the exclusive and nationalistic nature of Judaism, without reference to the situation in which a harassed contingent of returning exiles sought to maintain itself in a territory surrounded by politically unfriendly if not hostile neighbours. Nor does this recognize that foreigners were admitted to the Jewish community; in the following centuries, some groups engaged in extensive missionary activities, appealing to the individuals of the nations surrounding them to join themselves to the God of Israel, the one true God and the creator of heaven and earth.

A more balanced view recognizes that, within the Jewish community, religious universalism was affirmed by the same people who understood the nature of Jewish existence in politically particularistic (i.e., nationalistic) terms. To neglect either side is to distort the picture. In no case was the universalism disengaged from the reality of the existing community, even when it was expressed in terms of the ultimate fulfillment of the divine purpose, the restoration of the true covenantal relationship between God and all humankind. Nor was political particularism, even under circumstances of great provocation and resentment, misanthropic. The most satisfactory figure in describing the situation of the restored community, and one that continues to be useful in dealing with later episodes, is that of the human heartbeat, made up of two functions, the systole, or contraction, and the diastole, or expansion. There have been several periods of contraction and of expansion throughout the history of Judaism. The emphasis within the abiding tension has been determined by the historical situation in which the community has found itself. To generalize in one direction or the other is fatal to an understanding of the history and faith of the “holy community.”

The people and the land

Closely related to the concept of Israel as the chosen, or covenant, people is the role of the land of Israel. In the patriarchal stories, settlement in Canaan is an integral part of God’s fulfillment of the covenant. The goal of the Israelites who escaped from Egypt and of those who returned from the Babylonian Exile is the same land, and entry into it is understood in the same fashion. As there was the choice of a people, so there was the choice of a land—and for much the same reason. It was to provide the setting in which the community could come into being as it carried out the divine commandments. This choice of the land contrasts significantly with the predominant ideas of other peoples in the ancient world, in which the deity or divinities were usually bound to a particular parcel of ground outside of which they lost their effectiveness or reality. Although some such concepts may very well have crept into Israelite thought during the period of the kings (from Saul to Jehoiachin), the crisis of the Babylonian Exile was met by a renewal of the affirmation that the God of Israel was, as Lord of all the earth, free from territorial restraint, though he had chosen a particular territory for this chosen people. Here again the twofold nature of Jewish thought becomes apparent, and both sides must be affirmed or the view is distorted.

Following the two revolts against Rome (66–73 CE and 132–135 CE), the Jews of the ever-widening dispersion continued, as they had before these disasters, to cherish the land. Once again it became the symbol of fulfillment, so that return to it was looked upon as an essential part of messianic restoration. The liturgical patterns of the community, insofar as they were concerned with natural phenomena (e.g., planting, rainfall, harvest, and the annual cycle) rather than historical events, were based on geography, topography, and agricultural practices of the land. Although some Jews continued to live in the land, those in the distant dispersion idealized it, viewing it primarily in eschatological terms—their destination at the end of days, in the world to come. The 11th-century poet Judah ha-Levi not only longed for it in verse but also gave it a significant role in his theological interpretation of Judaism and eventually sought to return to it from his native Spain.

It was not, however, until the 19th century that the land began to play a role other than the goal of pilgrimage or of occasional settlement by pietists and mystics. At the end of the 19th century the power of the territorial concept was released in eastern Europe in a cultural renaissance that focused, in part, on a return to the land and, in western and central Europe, in a political movement coloured by nationalist motifs in European thought. The coming together of these two strains of thought gave rise to Zionism. This predominantly political movement reflected a dissatisfaction with the overall status of the Jewish people in the modern world.

The political emphasis of Zionism aroused considerable opposition from three competing views of the status of the Jewish people. The first opposition came from some traditionalist Jews (now called “Orthodox” or “ultra-Orthodox”) who were convinced that the Jewish nation must remain a solely religious community in the Diaspora and even in the land of Israel. They accepted the political rule of the Gentiles until the time when God will send his messiah to redeem the Jewish people by supernaturally returning all of them to the land of Israel in order to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

The second opposition came from acculturated Jews in western Europe and North Americawho believed that Jews are part of larger secular polities and that their role in them should be that of a communion of like-minded religious believers, similar to that of the Catholic and Protestant denominations.

The third opposition came from some eastern European Jews who maintained that the Jewish people should seek their own national status in the territories in which they were presently living, similar to the resurgence of nationalism among a number of smaller nations living under the Austro-Hungarian or Russian empires. It was not until the Nazi Holocaust in the middle of the 20th century that the vast majority of Jews regarded Zionism, if not as the solution to the “Jewish question,” then as something the Jews could not very well survive without. After this time, Jewish opposition to Zionism was confined to peripheral groups on the right who still saw Zionism as pseudo-messianism and to peripheral groups on the left who still saw Zionism as isolating Jews from more important universalist goals.

Modern views of the people Israel

The nature of the people Israel and of the land of Israel has been variously interpreted in the history of Jewish thought. In modern times some interpretations have been deeply influenced by contemporary political and social discussions in the general community. Thus, for example, Zionist theoreticians were influenced by concepts of political nationalism on the one hand and by socialist ideas on the other. Further, the challenge to traditional theological concepts in the 19th century raised issues about the meaning of the choice of Israel, and Jewish thinkers borrowed from romantic nationalism ideas such as the “genius” of the people. In the 20th century, attempts were made to approach the question sociologically, dismissing the theological mode as unhelpful. The concept of the chosen people was accordingly understood as indicating a specific role deliberately undertaken by the Jewish people and similar to that espoused by other groups (e.g., manifest destiny by the American people). The establishment of the State of Israel motivated some thinkers to call for a repudiation of the idea, in keeping with the position that normal existence for the Jews requires the dismissal of such concepts. Although only a small minority of Jewish thinkers espoused this position, the concept of the choice of Israel was not without theological difficulties. In the late 20th century there were also some important attempts by Jewish thinkers to develop a theology of election.

The most important scholarship on the concept of “chosenness” was Michael Wyschogrod’s The Body of Faith (1983) and David Novak’s The Election of Israel (1995). Wyschogrod held that the people of Israel were elected because of God’s exceptional love for them and that God’s love existed prior to the revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai. Novak also accepted the traditional belief that God formed a unique relationship with Israel but maintained that God extends his covenant to the world and that the particularity of Israel’s election is implicated in the general covenant with the world and vice versa.

Humanity

The image of God

In Genesis 1:26, 27; 5:1; and 9:6 two terms occur, “image” and “likeness,” that seem to indicate clearly the biblical understanding of essential human nature: humans are created in the image and likeness of God. Yet the texts in which these terms are used are not entirely unambiguous; the idea they point to does not appear elsewhere in Scriptures, and the concept is not too prominent in the rabbinic interpretations. What the image and likeness of God, or the divine image, refers to in the biblical texts is not made explicit, and, in light of the fact that the texts are dominated by psychosomatic conceptions of the nature of humanity (i.e., involving both soul and body), it is not possible to escape entirely the implication of “bodily” similarity. What the terms meant in their context at the time and whether they reflect mythological usages taken over from other Middle Eastern thought are by no means certain. However, according to Akiba, the most prominent 2nd-century-CE rabbi, the “image” of God seems to mean the unique human capacity for a spiritual relationship with him; this interpretation thus avoids any suggestion of a physical similarity between God and humans.

The earthly-spiritual creature

A dualistic interpretation of humanity was offered in parts of the ancient Jewish community that were deeply influenced by Greek philosophical ideas. In this understanding, the divine likeness is identified with the immortal, intellectual soul as contrasted to the body. Other ancient and modern thinkers have understood the likeness as ethical, placing particular emphasis on freedom of the will. Clearly, no doctrine of humanity can be erected on the basis of these several verses alone—a broader view must be taken. A careful examination of the biblical material, particularly the words nefesh, neshama, and ruaḥ—which are often too broadly translated as “soul” and “spirit”—indicates that these terms must not be understood as referring to the psychical side of a psychophysical pair. A human being does not possess a nefesh but rather is a nefesh, as Genesis 2:7 says, “wayehi ha-adam le-nefesh ḥayya” (“…and the man became a living being”). Humans are, for most of the biblical writers, “a unit of vital power,” not a dual creature separable into two distinct parts of unequal importance and value. While this understanding of human nature dominated biblical thought, in apocalyptic literature (2nd century BCE–2nd century CE) the term nefesh was viewed as a separable psychical entity with existence apart from the body. This conception of human nature was not entirely divorced from the unitary biblical view, but a body-soul dualism (see mind-body dualism) was effectively present in such literature. In the Alexandrian version of Hellenistic Judaism, the orientation toward Greek philosophy, particularly the Platonic view of the soul imprisoned in the flesh, led to a clear-cut dualism with a negative attitude toward the body. Rabbinic thought remained closer to the biblical position, at least in its understanding of the human being as a psychosomatic unit, even though the temporary separation of the components after death was an accepted position.

The biblical view of the human as an inseparable psychosomatic unit meant that death was understood to be human dissolution. Although a human being ceased to be, this dissolution was not utter extinction. Some of the power that functioned in the unit may have continued to exist, but it was not to be understood any longer as life. The existence of the dead in sheol, the netherworld, was not living but the shadow or echo of living. For most biblical writers this existence was without experience, either of God or of anything else; it was unrelated to events. To call it immortality is to empty that term of any vital significance. The concept of sheol, however, along with belief in the possibility of the miraculous restoration of dead individuals to life and even the idea of the revival of the people of Israel from the “death” of exile, provided a foothold for the development of belief in the resurrection of the dead body at some time in the future. The stimulus for this may have come from ancient Iranian religion, in which the dualistic cosmic struggle is eventually won by life through the resurrection of the dead. This idea appeared in sketchy form in postexilic writings (Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2). In this view there is life only in the psychosomatic unit now restored. This restoration was bound up with the eschatological hope of Israel and was limited to the righteous. In subsequent apocalyptic literature, a sharper distinction between body and soul was entertained, and the latter was conceived of as existing separately in a disembodied state after death. Although at this point the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was not put aside, the direction of thinking changed. The shades of sheol were now thought of as souls, and real personal survival—with continuity between life on earth and in sheol—was posited. Greek ideas, with their individualistic bent, influenced Jewish thought, so that the idea of a resurrection that was in some way related to a final historical consummation began to recede. True life after death was now seen as release from the bondage of the body, so that in place of or alongside of the afterlife of physical resurrection was set the afterlife of the immortal soul.

It was not the status of the soul, however, that concerned the biblical and rabbinic thinkers. Instead, the latter’s discussions of biblical themes emphasized the ethical import of the composite nature of human beings. Humans are in a state of tension or equilibrium between the two foci of creation, the “heavenly” and the “earthly.” They necessarily participate in both. But this means that they are the only creatures who can truly serve their creator, for they alone, partaking of both sides of creation, may choose between them. It is this ability to make an ethical choice that is the distinguishing mark of humans. It is not derived from the “heavenly” side but resides in the dual nature of human existence. This view is clearly not a type of body-soul dualism in which the soul is the source of good and the body the basis of evil. Such an attitude, however, did appear in some rabbinic material and was often affirmed in medieval philosophical and mystical speculations and by some of the later moralists. An important development of biblical-rabbinic ideas, these later commentaries represent authentic attempts to come to terms with other currents of thought and with the problems and uncertainties inherent within the earlier materials themselves.

The ethically bound creature

Humankind is then viewed as ethically involved. The central theme of the first 11 chapters of Genesis focuses on this responsibility, for the implicit assumption of the pre-patriarchal stories is the human ability to choose between obedience and disobedience. Rabbinic Judaism, taking up the covenant-making episode between God and Noah (Genesis 9:8–17), developed it as the basis of humanity’s ethical obligation. All humanity, not merely Israel, is engaged in a covenant relationship with God, which was spelled out in explicit precepts—variously enumerated as 6, 7, or even 10 and occasionally as many as 30—that reflect general humanitarian behaviour and are intended to assure the maintenance of the natural order by the establishment of a proper human society. The covenant with Israel was meant to bring into being a community that would advance the development of this society through its own obedience and witness.

Human nature, viewed ethically, was explained in Rabbinic Judaism not only as a tension between the “heavenly” and “earthly” components but as a tension between two “impulses.” Here again, fragmentary and allusive biblical materials were developed into more-comprehensive statements. The biblical word yetzer, for example, means “plan,” that which is formed in human minds. In the two occurrences of the word in Genesis (6:5; 8:21), the plan or formation of the human mind is described as raʿ, perhaps “evil” in the moral sense or maybe no more than “disorderly,” “confused,” “undisciplined.” Other occurrences in the Bible do not have this modifier. Nonetheless, the Aramaic translations (Targumim) invariably replaced it with bisha (“wicked”) wherever it occurred. Rabbinic literature created a technical term, ha-raʿ(“the evil impulse”), to denote the source within humans of their disobedience, and subsequently the counter-term yetzer ha-ṭov (“the good impulse”) was used to indicate humans’ obedience. These terms more clearly suggest the ethical quality of human duality, while their opposition and conflict point to human freedom and the ethical choices humans must make. Indeed, it is primarily within the realm of the ethical that Judaism posits freedom, recognizing the bound, or determined, quality of much of humans’ natural environment or physiological makeup.

This ethically free creature stands within the covenant relationship and may choose to be obedient or disobedient. Sin, then, is ultimately deliberate disobedience or rebellion against the divine sovereign. This is more easily observed in relation to Israel, for it is in this connection that the central concern of Judaism is most evident and discussed in greatest detail. The covenant relationship is not limited to Israel, because, according to Judaic tradition, all humankind stands within a covenant relation to God and is commanded to be moral and just; therefore, the same choice is made universally. In technical language, the acceptance of divine sovereignty by the people of Israel and by individuals within that community is called “receiving the yoke of the kingship.” This involves intellectual commitment to a basic belief, as expressed by the Deuteronomic proclamation: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one!” It also imposes obligations regarding communal and individual behaviour. These two responses are understood to be inextricably bound, so that rejection of the divine sovereign is manifest as denial of God both intellectually and practically. It amounts to “breaking the yoke of the kingship.” In more specific terms, sin is sometimes summed up under three interrelated headings: idolatry, murder, and illicit sexual behaviour, each of which involves rebellion, for it involves activities that deny—if not God’s existence—his commanding relationship and the requirement of human response. Such behaviour destroys the community and sets individual against individual, thus thwarting the ultimate purpose of God, the perfected human society.

If humans are free to choose rebellion and to suffer its consequences, they are also able to turn back to God and to become reconciled with him. The Bible—particularly the prophetic writings—is filled with this idea, even though the term teshuva (“turning”) came into use only in rabbinic sources. Basically, the idea grows out of the covenant: the opportunity to return to God is the result of God’s unwillingness—despite human failures—to break off the covenant relationship. Rabbinic thought assumed that even the direst warnings of utter disaster and rejection imply the possibility of turning back to God, motivated by remorse and the desire for restoration. Divine readiness and human openness are the two sides of the process of reconciliation. What was expressed in prophetic literature in relation to the immediate historical and political situation was stated in the synagogal liturgy in connection with pentateuchal and prophetic lessons and the homilies developed from them. Thus, the divine invitation was constantly being offered. Humans are called upon to atone for their rebellion by positive action in the other direction and are summoned to reconstitute wholeness in their individual and communal life.

Jewish existence, as it developed under rabbinic leadership following the two disastrous rebellions against Rome, was an attempt to reconstitute a community of faith expressed in worship in an ordered society in which the individual would live a hallowed life of response to the divine will. Although this plan was not spelled out in detail, it was probably understood to be the paradigm for the eventual reconstruction of humanity.

Medieval and modern views of man

Although the Jewish view of human nature was centrally concerned with ethics, metaphysicalissues, however rudimentary in the beginning, were also included in the developing discussion. Medieval philosophers, for example, sought an accommodation between the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and the concept of the immortality of the soul. The greatest of them, Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), propounded an extremely subtle position that equated immortality with the cleaving of the human intellect to the active intellect of the universe, thus limiting it to philosophers or to those who accepted a suitable philosophical theology on faith. Little or no consensus was evident in the modern period, though the language of resurrection or immortality was still used, even when its content was uncertain. Alongside this lack of agreement, however, Judaism’s basic affirmation about human nature remained the same: a human being is to be understood, however else, as a creature who makes free ethical choices for which he is responsible.

Ethics and society

The ethical emphasis of Judaism

Jewish affirmations about God and humans intersect in the concept of Torah as the ordering of human existence in the direction of the divine. Humans are ethically responsible creatures who are responsive to the presence of God in nature and in history. Although this responsiveness is expressed on many levels, it is most explicitly called for within interpersonal relationships. The pentateuchal legislation sets down, albeit within the limitations of the structures of the ancient Middle East, the basic patterns of these relationships. The prophetic messages maintain that the failure to honour these demands is the source of social and individual disorder. Even the most exalted members of society are not free of ethical obligations, as is seen in the ethical confrontation of David by Nathan (“Thou art the man”) for seducing Bathsheba and arranging to have her husband killed (2 Samuel 12).

What is particularly striking about Jewish ethical concerns is the affirmation that God is not only the source of ethical obligation but is himself the paradigm of it. In the so-called Code of Holiness (Leviticus 19), imitation of divine holiness is offered as the basis of human behaviour in both the cultic-ceremonial and ethical spheres. The basic injunction, “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am Holy,” underlay the concern for economically vulnerable members of the community; obligations toward neighbours, hired labourers, and the physically handicapped; interfamilial relationships; and attitudes toward strangers (i.e., non-Israelites). Acceptable human behaviour was therefore “walking in all His ways” (Deuteronomy 11:22). The dialectical relation between God and man in the literary prophets also exhibits divine righteousness and divine compassion as patterns to be emulated in the life of the community.

This theme, imitatio Dei (“imitation of God”), is expressed succinctly in a commentary on Deuteronomy 11:22 that answers the question of how it is possible to walk “in all His ways”: “As He is merciful and gracious, so be you merciful and gracious. As He is righteous so be you righteous. As He is holy, strive to be holy” (Sifre Deuteronomy 85a). Even more daringly, God is described as clothing the naked, nursing the sick, comforting the mourners, and burying the dead, so that human beings may recognize their own obligations.

Interpenetration of communal and individual ethics

What stands out in the entire development of Jewish ethical formulations is the constant interpenetration of communal and individual obligations and concerns. A just society requires just people, and a just person functions within a just society. The concrete expression of ethical requirements in legal precepts takes place with both ends in view, so that the process of beginning the holy community and the process of forming the ḥasid (“pious”), the person of steadfast devotion to God, are concomitant. The relationship between the two is, of course, often mediated by the historical situation, so that in some periods one or the other moves to the centre of practical interest. In particular, the end of the Judaean state (70–135 CE) truncated the communal aspect of ethical obligations, often limiting discussion to apolitical responsibilities rather than to the full range of social involvements. The reestablishment of the State of Israel in the 20th century therefore reopened for discussion areas that for millennia were either ignored or treated as mere abstractions. This implies that the full ethical responsibility of Jews cannot be carried out solely within the realm of individual relationships but must include involvement in the life of a fully articulated community

This double involvement is most vividly apparent in the biblical period, when both were equally present as divine command and demand. In the rabbinic period, because of the new political context, the communal aspect receded, so that discussion was mainly oriented toward relationships between members of the Jewish community or between individuals as such and away from political responsibilities. Nonetheless, the virtues that were understood to govern these relationships were, in their biblical setting, communal as well. Righteousness and compassion had been obligations of the state, governing the relationship between political units, as the first two chapters of Amos make evident. At the same time, as Micah 6:8 shows, doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God were obligations of the individual as well. Given the situation of the Jewish Diaspora following the revolts against Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, the individual pattern became the primary object of concern. Theoretical ethical systems were not developed until the Middle Ages, but even in the early period it was understood that the dynamic of ethical theory stood behind the practical system of Halakhah, the enumeration of legal precepts. This meant that the law assumed an ethical core that existed prior to revelation and that the laws were just and merciful because God was just and merciful. Thus an attempt was made to reduce the hundreds of precepts to a small number expressing the ethical essence of Torah.

The key moral virtues

In keeping with the rabbinic understanding of Torah, study also was viewed as an ethical virtue. Passages from the Mishna, which are repeated in the traditional prayer book, enumerate a series of virtuous acts—honouring parents, deeds of steadfast love, attendance twice daily at worship, hospitality to wayfarers, visiting the sick, dowering brides, accompanying the dead to the grave, devotion in prayer, peacemaking in the community and in family life—and conclude by declaring that the study of Torah is the premier virtue. The extracts enumerated in the Mishna and the prayer book exhibit the complex variety of ethical behaviour called for within the Jewish tradition. To parental respect and family tranquillity are added the responsibility of parents for children, the duties of husband and wife in the establishment and maintenance of a family, and ethical obligations that extend from the conjugal rights of each to the protection of the wife if the marriage is dissolved. The biblical description of God as upholding the cause of the fatherless and the widow and befriending strangers, providing them with food and clothing (Deuteronomy 10:18), remained a factor in the structure of the community. Ethical requirements in economic life are expressed concretely in passages such as Leviticus 19:35–36: “You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin” (ephah and hin are units of measure); another example is Amos’s bitter condemnation of those who “sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes” (Amos 2:6). Such injunctions, together with many other specific precepts and moral requirements, established the basis for a wide-ranging program that sought to govern, both in detail and in general, the economic life of the individual and the community.

Relations within the human sphere are not the only object of ethical concern; nature also is so regarded. The animal world, in the biblical view, requires merciful consideration, so that on the Sabbath not only humans but also their domestic animals are required to rest (Exodus 20:10; 23:12). Mistreatment of beasts of burden is prohibited (Deuteronomy 22:4), and wanton destruction of animal life falls under the ban (Deuteronomy 6–7). In the rabbinic attitude toward creation, all of nature is the object of human solicitude. Thus, the food-yielding trees of a city under siege may not be destroyed, according to Deuteronomic legislation (Deuteronomy 20:14–20). The enlargement of this and other biblical precepts resulted in the generalized rabbinic prohibition, “You shall not destroy,” which governs human use of the environment.

The relation to non-Jewish communities and cultures

Although the end of the Jewish state reduced the scope of ethical judgments in the political sphere, relations between the Jewish community and other polities—particularly the Roman and Christian empires and the Islamic states—provided opportunities for the exploration of the ethical implications of such encounters. Because most of these situations were characterized by gross disparities of power, with the Jews the weaker party, prudential considerations were dominant. Despite this, Jewish authorities sought to bring to bear upon these external arrangements the ethical standards that governed the internal structures.

The problem of the relationship between the Jewish community, in whatever form it has existed, and other social units has been vastly complicated. The relation is ideally that of witness to the divine intent in the world. Practically, it has swung between the extremes of isolation and assimilation, in which the ideal has, on occasion, been lost sight of. Culturally, from its earliest beginnings, the people of Israel have met and engaged the ideas, forms, behaviours, and attitudes of their neighbours constructively. Israel reformulated what it received in terms of its own commitments and affirmations. On more than a few occasions, as in the period of settlement in Canaan, it rejected the religious and cultural ideas and forms of the indigenous population. On other occasions—as in Islamic Spain from the 8th to the 15th century—it actively sought out the ideas and cultural patterns of its neighbours, viewing them from its own perspective and embracing them when they were found to be of value. Indeed, the whole history of Israel’s relationship with the world may be comprehended in the metaphor, used previously, of the heartbeat with its systole and diastole. No period of its existence discloses either total rejection of or abject surrender to other cultural and political structures but rather a tension, with the focal point always in motion at varying rates. Judaism’s adjustment to and relation with other social and political units has involved larger aspects of communal and individual life. Whether or not under such circumstances it is helpful to describe Judaism as a civilization, it is important to recognize that, viewed functionally, much more must be included than is usually subsumed under the term religionin modern Western societies.

The formulation of Jewish ethical doctrines

The ethical concerns of Judaism have frequently been expressed in literary works. Not only were rabbinic writings constantly directed toward the establishment of legal patterns that embody such concerns, but in the medieval period the issues were dealt with in treatises on morals; in ethical wills, in which a father instructed his children about their obligations and behaviour; in sermons; and in other forms. In the 19th century the traditionalist Musar (“Moral Instructor”) movement in eastern Europe and the philosophical discussions of the nascentReform movement in the West focused upon ethics. Indeed, since the political and social emancipation of the Jews, ethical and social rather than theological questions have been given priority. Often the positions espoused have turned out to be “Judaized” versions of ethical theories or political programs. In some instances, as in the case of the distinguished German Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), the result has been a compelling restatement of a secular philosophical ethics in Jewish form. In others it has resulted in no more than a pastiche. More crucial, however, is the question of the uniqueness and authority of Jewish ethics. The reestablishment of the Jewish state renewed the possibility that the full range of ethical decisions, communal and individual, may be confronted. In such a situation the ethical task of the people moves out of the realm of speculation to become actual again.

The universe

Creation and Providence: God’s world

Although Genesis affirms divine creation, it does not offer an entirely unambiguous view of the origin of the universe, as the debate over the correct understanding of Genesis 1:1 discloses. (Was there or was there not a preexisting matter, void, or chaos?) The interest of the author, however, was not in the mode of creation—a later concern perhaps reflected in the various translations of the verse, “In the beginning God created,” which could signify what medieval philosophers designated creatio ex nihilo (“creation out of nothing”). He was concerned rather to affirm that the totality of existence—inanimate (Genesis 1:3–19), living (20–25), and human (26–31)—derived immediately from the same divine source. As divine creation, the universe is transparent to the presence of God, so that the Psalmist said, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims [that it is] the work of his hands” (19:1). Indeed, the repeated phrase, “And God saw how good it was” (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 25, 31), may be understood as the foundation of this affirmation, for the workmanship discloses the workman. The observed order of the universe is further understood by the biblical author as the direct result of a covenantal relationship between the world and God: “So long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). This doctrine of the providential ordering of the universe, reaffirmed in Rabbinic Judaism, is not without its difficulties, as in the liturgical change made in Isaiah 45:7 to avoid ascribing evilto God. Despite the problem of theodicy, Judaism has not acquiesced to the mood reported in the Palestinian Targum to Genesis 4:8: “He did not create the world in mercy nor does he rule in mercy.” Rather, Judaism has affirmed a benevolent and compassionate God.

God’s creation, the physical world, provides the stage for history, which is the place of the human encounter with the divine. An early Midrash, responding to the question of why Scripture begins with the story of creation, asserts that it was necessary to establish the identity of the Creator with the giver of Torah, an argument basic to the liturgical structure of the Shema. This relationship is further emphasized in the Kiddush, the prayer of sanctification recited at the beginning of the Sabbath. That day is designated “a remembrance of creation” and “a recollection of the going-forth from Egypt.” Thus, creation (nature) and history are understood to be inextricably bound, for both derive from the same divine source. This being so, redemption—the reconciliation of God and man through and in history—does not ignore or exclude the natural world. Using the imagery of an extravagantly fecund world of nature, rabbinic thought expressed its view of the all-inclusive effects of the restored relationship.

Humanity’s place in the universe

The human creature is, of course, subject to the natural order. Humans carry on their relationship with God in the world and through the world. The commandments of Torah are obeyed not solely as observances between humans and God but as actions between humans themselves and between humans and the world. The creation story describes the human as ruler over the earth and its inhabitants (Genesis 1:26–28; Psalms 8:5–9); nonetheless, far from being an arbitrary master, human dominion is limited by Torah. The regulations in the Torah are concerned not only with transactions between humans but also with human responsibilities to cultivated land, to the produce of the soil, and to domesticated animals. Bound in the network of existence, humans as moral creatures are responsible for creation in all its parts.

Even the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE did not alienate Jews from these responsibilities, as the elaborate system of Mishna and Gemarareveals. The gradual but consistent exclusion of the Jews from immediate connection with large segments of the natural world, through legislation in Christendom and Islam, tended to dull their awareness of it. The recurring references to the natural world in the religious calendar, however, and the observation of harvest festivals even by city dwellers continued to remind the community of its ties. Thus, at the end of the 19th century, the nascent Zionist movement recognized that the regeneration of the Jewish people involved, among other requirements, a responsible relation to the natural order expressed in its attitude toward and treatment of the land.

If nature as the place of divine disclosure has, during long periods of Jewish existence, assumed a somewhat subordinate role, it has never been rejected or been seen to be irrelevant to the divine purpose. Indeed, in Jewish eschatology, its restoration is part of the goal of history.

Intermediary beings: angels and demons

The exact nature of nonhuman beings mentioned in Scripture—angels, or messengers (angelis derived from the Greek word angelos, which is the equivalent of the Hebrew word mal’akh, “messenger”)—is not altogether clear, and their roles seem ephemeral (see angel and demon). In the postexilic period, perhaps under Iranian influence, and in the late biblical and postbiblical literature, these beings emerge as more complete and often as clearly identifiable individuals with their own personal names. The unfocused biblical view gave way to an elaborate hierarchy of functionaries who acted, in some apocalyptic visions, as a veritable heavenly bureaucracy. Despite a consensus concerning their existence, there was little agreement about their role or importance. In some Midrashim, God takes counsel with them; in other sources, the rabbis urge Jews not to involve them but to approach God directly.

Like their counter-figures the demons, angels have a residual existence rooted in various layers of the Jewish experience and interpretation of the universe. At some times they are highly individualized and sharply realized; at others they are much more imaginary. The medieval philosophers and the early mystics saw them through Aristotelian or Neoplatonic categories. The Kabbalists continually invented new angels and fitted them into their complicated network of cosmic existence. Their role, however, even in periods of considerable emphasis, was peripheral, and they were outside the great movements and meanings of Jewish thought.

Contemporary philosophical speculation about the nature of the universe has, of course, required a response from Jewish thinkers. But, given the particular temper of a period in which metaphysics has not been central to much of theological discussion, no major statement has developed that has taken hold of the dominant positions and attempted to view them from the Jewish creationist perspective. The attempt within Reconstructionism to provide a naturalistic framework for Judaism, while courageous, seems to be based on a philosophical naturalism that many consider outmoded.

Eschatology

The future age of humankind and the world

The choice of Israel, according to the Bible, occurred because of humankind’s continual failure, by rebellion against its creator, to fulfill its divine potential. The subsequent inability of Israel to become the holy community and thereby a witness to the nations gave rise to the prophetic movement that summoned the people to obedience. An integral part of prophetic summoning, side by side with threats of punishment and warnings of disaster, was the vision of a truly holy community, a society fully responding to the divine imperative. This kingdom of the future was conceived of as entirely natural, functioning as any normal social and political unit. The future kingdom would be governed by a human ruler, who would carry out his tasks within the sphere of divine sovereignty, serving primarily to exhibit his own obedience and thus to stimulate the obedience of the entire people. This future monarch was often, though not always, portrayed in terms of an idealized David, using features of his life and reign that would emphasize submission to God, social stability, economic satisfaction, and peace. During the period of the monarchy, the prophetic demand was directed toward each succeeding king, with the hope—or even the expectation—that he would be or become the new David, the ideal ruler.

The Babylonian Exile added a new measure of urgency to this expectation, but it was not expressed in any uniform fashion. The later chapters of the Book of Ezekiel provide the constitution for the new commonwealth but do not describe the peculiar characteristics of the ruler, while the later chapters of the Book of Isaiah focus on several figures—including Cyrus IIthe Mede, who conquered the Babylonian Empire and freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity—who are seen as the divine instruments ushering in a new era. Although the virtues ascribed to these figures are extraordinary, they are neither superhuman nor suprahuman; indeed, they are required of all Israel and of all humanity. The frustrations of the postexilic period, when several attempts to bring the holy community into being were largely thwarted by the imperial designs of the great powers—as they had been in the preexilic period—led to an emphasis on the futuristic quality of messianic hope. This was abetted undoubtedly by external influences, such as Iranian thought, in which the cosmic rather than the historic aspect of a future era dominated. Because ancient cosmic myths had been part of the Israelite intellectual inheritance, as seen in literary usages throughout Scriptures, the impact of such ideas was to reinvigorate the mythic elements in Judaism. Thus, hopes for the future at the end of the Persian period and through the Hellenistic period comprised both historical expectations focused upon an earthly community and cosmic-mythic visions that moved on a broader stage. The latter were, of course, never entirely absent from historical expectations, for a renewal of nature was viewed as integral to the functioning of true society. The obedient community required, and was to be granted, a natural world in which true human relations could exist. In its most vivid form, the apocalypse (i.e., a visionary disclosure of the future), the literature of the period affords a remarkable insight into the agonies and urgencies of the people (see apocalyptic literature). After the disappointments of the past are recounted, the present, in transparent disguise, is portrayed, and the imminent and desired intervention of God is described in awesome detail as a means of affirming and confirming the faith of those who saw themselves as the remnant, or perhaps the promise, of the holy community.

The king-messiah and his reign

Israel’s hope was for the restoration of divine sovereignty over all of creation. Among the variety of expressions of such hope, that which centred around the idealized king assumed an ever more important (but never exclusive) role. Many of the writings that report the ideas and attitudes of the Jewish community in the period immediately preceding and following the rise of Christianity are either ignorant of or more probably indifferent to the personal element. God is envisioned as the protagonist of the end, actively intervening or sending his messengers (i.e., angels) to perform specific acts in ending the old era and inaugurating the new one. On the other hand, in some writings of the period the anointed king-messiah (Hebrew: mashiaḥ, “anointed”)—the title reflects the episode in 1 Samuel 16 in which David is thus singled out as the divinely chosen ruler—becomes more sharply defined as the central figure in the culminating events and, given the cosmic-mythic components, assumes suprahuman and, in some instances, even quasi-divine aspects. Although the doctrine of last things in Judaism is not necessarily messianic, if that term is properly limited to an inauguration of a future era through the action of a human, suprahuman, or quasi-divine person, the messianic version of eschatology played a more compelling role in Rabbinic Judaism than other modes. The same is true with regard to the locus of the “world (or age) to come.” Given the ingredients noted above, it was possible to construct various eschatological landscapes, ranging from the mundane to the celestial, from Jerusalem in the hills of Judah to a heavenly city. Indeed, medieval theologians, confronted with an embarrassment of riches, sought to combine them into an inclusive system that involved as many of the possibilities as could be brought together. In such patterns the messianic this-worldly emphasis was understood as a preliminary movement toward an ultimate resolution. The ideal ruler, the new David, would reestablish the kingdom in its own land (in Zion, or Palestine) and would reign in righteousness, equity, justice, and truth, thus bringing into being the holy nation and summoning all humankind to dwell under divine sovereignty. As a component of this reestablished kingdom, the righteous dead of Israel would be resurrected to enjoy a life in the true community that did not exist in their days. This kingdom, however long it was destined to endure, was not permanent. It would come to an end either at a predetermined time or as a victim of unrepentant nations and cosmic foes, at which point the ultimate intervention by God would take place. All the wicked throughout history would be recalled to life, judged, and doomed, and all the righteous would be transformed and transported into a new world; i.e., creation would be totally restored.

The particular emphases that one or the other of these ideas received and the ways in which they were interpreted—philosophically, mystically, and ethically—were determined most frequently by the situations and conditions in which the Jewish community found itself. With a considerable body of ideas at its disposal and with the details of none of them ever receiving the kind of affirmation given to statements about God, Torah, and Israel, freedom of speculation in the realm of eschatology was little restricted. Thus, Joseph Albo, in his work on Jewish “dogmas”—the Sefer ha-ʿiqqarim (1485; “Book of Principles”)—was not inhibited from denying that belief in the messiah was fundamental. The mystical movements of the Middle Ages found in eschatological hopes a crucial centre. The early Kabbala was little interested in messianism, for it reoriented such expectations in the direction of personal redemption. However, following the disasters of the late 15th–17th centuries (e.g., the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the Cossack massacre of the Jews in Poland), messianic speculation in all its varieties underwent a luxuriant growth, finally running wild in the movements surrounding Shabbetai Tzevi of Smyrna and later Jacob Frank of Offenbach. These tragedies for the Jewish communities once again resulted in deferring eschatological hopes or at least limiting their application.

Secularization of messianism

In the 19th century, with the political emancipation of the Jews in western Europe and the development of an optimistic evolutionism, messianism was transformed by many liberal thinkers into a version of the idea of progress, a goal that was often thought of as immediately attainable through enlightened social and political action. When disillusionment with emancipation set in, messianism was even more completely secularized by segments of the community who saw its meaning and fulfillment in some form of socialism. In others it was absorbed into the emerging political nationalism—Zionism. Similar developments took place in eastern Europe, with parallel transformations. In the 20th century, particularly after the events symbolized by Auschwitz (a Nazi death camp in Poland, where more than one million Jews were killed), the earlier modern interpretations, particularly of messianism, but also of eschatology as a whole, were considered inadequate. Although no compelling statement was forthcoming, Jewish thinkers beginning in the second half of the 20th century attempted once again to come to grips with eschatological concepts in all their varieties and forms.

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