Judaism

Judaism is the religion and culture of the Jewish people and one of the first recorded monotheistic faiths. It is also one of the oldest religious traditions still practiced today. The tenets and history of Judaism constitute the historical foundation of many other religions, including Christianity and Islam; sometimes known as the Abrahamic religions, these three have been major shaping forces in the Western world.

Judaism does not easily fit into common Western categories, such as religion, race, ethnicity, or culture. This is because Jews understand Judaism in terms of its 4,000-year history. During this stretch of time, Jews have experienced slavery, anarchic self-government, theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile; they have been in contact, and have been influenced by ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment and the rise of nationalism. Thus, Daniel Boyarin has argued that "Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension."

According to both traditional Jews and critical historical scholars, a number of qualities distinguish Judaism from the other religions that existed when it first emerged. One characteristic is monotheism. The significance of this idea lies in that Judaism holds that an omniscient and omnipotent God created humankind. While in polytheistic religions, the gods are limited by the preoccupation of personal desires irrelevant to humankind, by limited powers, and by the interference of other powers, in Judaism, God is unlimited and fully available to care for Creation.

Second, the Torah (i.e. The Hebrew Bible) specifies a number of laws to be followed by the Children of Israel. Other religions at the time were characterized by temples in which priests would worship their gods through sacrifice. The Children of Israel similarly had a temple, priests, and made sacrifices -— but these were not the sole means of worshiping God.

As a matter of practical worship (in comparison to other religions) Judaism seeks to elevate everyday life to the level of the ancient temples worship by worshipping God through the spectrum of everyday life and actions. It has traditionally maintained that this is how the individual would merit rewards in an afterlife, called gan eden (Hebrew: "Garden of Eden") or olam haba ("World to Come").

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