judaism beliefs essay

Judaism, an introduction

Judaism is a monotheistic religion that emerged with the Israelites in the Eastern Mediterranean (Southern Levant) within the context of the Mesopotamian river valley civilizations . The Israelites were but one nomadic tribe from the area, so named because they considered themselves to be the descendants of Jacob, who changed his name to Israel.

The Levant (underlying map © Google)

Judaism stems from a collection of stories that explain the origins of the “children of Israel” and the laws that their deity commanded of them. The stories explain how the Israelites came to settle, construct a Temple for their one God, and eventually establish a monarchy—as divinely instructed—in the ancient Land of Israel. Over centuries, the Israelites’ literature, history, and laws were compiled and edited into a series of texts, now often referred to as the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh ). Although the Hebrew Bible was compiled by the end of the first (or possibly second) century C.E., many of the stories it contains may be much older. The Hebrew Bible contains three major sections: the Torah (Five Books of Moses) the Prophets, and the Writings.

Hebrew Bible, Italy, 13th century, decorated opening to the Book of Isaiah, Harley 5711, f.1r. ( The British Library )

An oral tradition emerged alongside the written Bible. Sometimes called the “Oral Torah,” the Mishnah is a minimalistic set of debates attributed to the great religious scholars, or Rabbis, transcribed and published in the second century C.E. The Rabbis’ intellectual descendants recorded and expounded upon the Mishnah in a series of writings called the Gemara and later generations compiled the Mishnah and Gemara into the Talmud.

Relief depicting a triumphal procession into Rome with loot from the temple, including the menorah, panel in the passageway, Arch of Titus , Rome, c. 81 C.E., marble, 6’–7” high (photo: Jebulon , CC0 1.0)

While the Hebrew Bible is Judaism’s most sacred text, many of the laws it delineates concern the practice of Temple sacrifice and priestly behavior. But when the Roman Emperor Titus sacked Jerusalem in response to a revolt of the Israelites in 70 C.E., his armies demolished the Temple of Jerusalem and brought the spoils back to Rome (an event recorded in a relief on the Arch of Titus in Rome, see image above). The loss of the Temple resulted in the end of ritual sacrifice and the priesthood; Judaism became a religion based on the interpretive discussions and practices that were eventually compiled into the Talmud. Sometimes, Judaism is referred to as “rabbinic Judaism,” since centuries of rabbinic interpretation, rather than the Bible, informs Jewish practice.

Judaism and time

Jewish law, called Halakhah , having been interpreted and re-interpreted over millennia, has changed over time. Even so, religious Judaism operates cyclically, and the linear way that modern historians view history does not correspond to this worldview. As historian Yosef Yerushalmi explained, the Rabbis “seem to play with time as though with an accordion, expanding and collapsing it at will.”[1] Major holidays, such as the weekly Sabbath or the annual Jewish New Year, provide a rhythm in order to structure a distinction between the sacred and the mundane. Other festivals rehearse ancient events, connecting modern Jews to the ancient Israelites. For instance, they mark the reception of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, the exodus from Egypt , the fall harvests, and the Maccabee victory over the Hellenistic Persian kingdom.

Isidor Kaufmann, Friday Evening , c. 1920, oil on canvas, 72.7 × 91.1 cm ( The Jewish Museum , New York)

A collection of essays about Jewish cultures around the world opens with the phrase, “culture is the practice of everyday life.”[2] Judaism is a way of life that honors the cycle of days, weeks, months, years, and lives.  Shabbat, the Sabbath, serves as the ultimate reminder of the Jewish cycle of time. Based on the idea that on the seventh day of Creation God rested, Shabbat is a marker of sacred time. Religious Jews refrain from all types of work on the Sabbath, and spend the day with their families and communities, praying, listening as a portion of the Torah is chanted (readings are determined by a fixed schedule), and eating luxurious meals. A great twentieth-century rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, described the Sabbath as “a cathedral in time.”

The debate continues

Despite the authority of the rabbinic voice in the Talmud, Judaism is non-hierarchical. There is not—nor has there ever been—a single authority; the religion is embodied by a collection of learned voices, which often disagree. We tend to conceive of Judaism as an ancient religion—based out of the Levant where God gave the Israelites the Torah. But an essential piece of the religious tradition was the fact that rabbinical scholars continued to debate, discuss, and re-conceive ancient laws.

Torah Case, Iraq, 19th–early 20th century, silver overlaid on wood, with coral set cresting ( The Jewish Museum , London)

Ancient tribal divisions, as well as later sectarian movements, including early Christianity , set a precedent for Jewish cultural diversity. But the religion is unified under the umbrella of the library of sacred texts, beginning with the Hebrew Bible, through the Talmud, and on to various ritual prayer books and mystical tracts. Judaism the religion, however, is distinct from the Jewish people. While it is clear that not all Jews practice Judaism, all those who practice Judaism consider themselves Jews. In other words, there are Jews without Judaism, but there can be no Judaism without Jews.

While the library and calendar unite Jews across the world, there are deep cultural and political divides. Jewish foods, music, literature, language, and interpretive practices vary immensely depending on a community’s ancestry. American Judaism, for example, is divided into movements, or denominations, much like American Christianity. These denominations have committees of rabbis who vote to determine the philosophy and types of observance their communities will uphold. But internal disputes are not only a standard feature of the denominations, they are part of the longstanding tradition of Jewish debate.

[1] Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (New York: Schocken Books, 1989).

[2] David Biale, Cultures of the Jews: A New History (Schocken, 2002).

Bibliography

Anatomy of a Talmudic page (BBC)

David Biale, ed. Cultures of the Jews: A New History ( New York: Schocken, 2006).

Nicholas De Lange, An Introduction to Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

John Efron, et al. The Jews: A History (Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall, 2008).

Abraham Joshua Heschel,  The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951).

Barry W. Holtz, ed. Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1984).

Robert Seltzer,  Jewish People, Jewish Thought  (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1980).

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (New York:Schocken Books, 1989).

Opening up the Hebrew Manuscript Collection at The British Museum

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A Guide to Jewish Studies: Beliefs

• Geographical Identities
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General resources, jewish beliefs, table of contents - beliefs, specific beliefs, print books.

God ( Hashem )

The Torah (The Hebrew Bible)

Covenants ( Brisim)

For more resources, see the subject headings  Jews Election, Doctrine of History of doctrines  and  Covenants Religious aspects Judaism .

Avoiding confusion: Most Jews will understand the word bris to mean the custom of bris milah (circumcision), unless you clarify otherwise.

Exile ( Galut /  Golus ) and Redemption ( Moshiach /  Messiah )

Death and Afterlife

Tikkun Olam = Healing the World

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To write an essay about Judaism (Part 1)

In today's lesson, we will be writing an essay about Judaism. You will need to write all about what makes Judaism unique as a religion, which will give you a chance to apply everything that you have learnt in this unit!

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• Pupils will review and bring together their knowledge to plan a synoptic essay aimed at answering the question of what makes Judaism unique

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Starter quiz

7 questions, 5 questions, lesson appears in, unit religious education / judaism, religious education.

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• Introduction
• Nature and characteristics
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Unity and uniqueness

Activity in the world, otherness and nearness, modern views of god.

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Basic beliefs and doctrines

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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 Ezekiel 16, 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.

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.

Judaism: Basic Beliefs

Jewish people believe in the Torah, which was the whole of the laws given to the Israelities at Sinai. They believe they must follow God's laws which govern daily life. 

How did Judaism begin?

Judaism began about 4000 years ago with the Hebrew people in the Middle East. Abraham, a Hebrew man, is considered the father of the Jewish faith because he promoted the central idea of the Jewish faith: that there is one God. At the time many people in the Middle East worshipped many gods. It is said that Abraham and his wife Sarah, who were old and childless, were told by God that their children would be as plentiful as the stars in the sky and that they would live in a land of their own -- the Promised Land. This gradually came true.

Abraham's son, Isaac had a son, Jacob, also called Israel. In this way the descendants of Abraham came to be known as the Israelites. God promised the Israelites he would care for them as long as they obeyed God's laws. While still traveling, the Hebrews lived in Egypt where they were enslaved. Moses, a Hebrew, was chosen by God to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt. Moses led the Hebrew people out of the Sinai Desert toward the promised land. At Mt. Sinai, God gave Moses the Law which would guide the Israelites to today. The laws were called the Ten Commandments and form the basis of the Torah, the book of Jewish law.

It took many years for the Israelites to finally get to what they thought was the Promised Land - Canaan. After some fighting the Jews established the Israelite kingdom. After many years, Canaan was conquered by the Assyrians, the Babylonians and then eventually the Romans. The Israelites once again found themselves enslaved, this time by Babylonians. The Israelites were then taken over by Romans who destroyed much of what had been built in Jerusalem by the Israelites. Most of the Jews were scattered all over the region and eventually moved from place to place to avoid persecution which continues to this day. The dispersion of the Jews is called the Diaspora.

The worst persecution of the Jews was during World War II by the Nazis who murdered more than six million Jews or a third of the world's Jewish population. This was called the Holocaust. Beginning in the 1880's Jews began returning to their homeland in growing numbers, this time to avoid persecution where they lived. After World War II, many Jews believed that for the Jewish people and culture to survive, Jews needed to live in their own country where all Jews from anywhere in the world would have the right to live and be citizens. In 1948, Palestine was divided up and a Jewish state of Israel was formed in the land that was once called Canaan, surrounded by countries with predominantly Muslim populations. Since Muslims also claimed rights to the land where the Jews were living, there was conflict, which continues to this day in the Middle East.

Today nearly fourteen million Jewish people live all over the world. Approximately half of them live in the United States, one quarter live in Israel, and a quarter are still scattered around the world in countries in Europe, Russia, South America, Africa, Asia and other North American and Middle Eastern countries. Anyone born to a Jewish mother is considered a Jew.

What do Jewish people believe?

Jewish people believe in the Torah, which was the whole of the laws given to the Israelities at Sinai. They believe they must follow God's laws which govern daily life. Later legal books, written by rabbis, determine the law as it applies to life in each new place and time.

The Ten Commandments, as written in the Torah, are:

• Worship no other God but Me.
• Do not make images to worship.
• Do not misuse the name of God.
• Observe the Sabbath Day (Saturday). Keep it Holy.
• Honor and respect your father and mother.
• Do not murder.
• Do not commit adultery.
• Do not steal.
• Do not accuse anyone falsely. Do not tell lies about other people.
• Do not envy other's possessions.

There are three basic groups of Jewish people who have a different understanding of the interpretation of the Torah.

Orthodox Jews believe that all of the practices in the Torah which it is practical to obey must be obeyed without question.

Conservative and Reform Jews believe that the ancient laws and practices have to be interpreted for modern life with inclusion of contemporary sources and with more concern with community practices than with ritual practices.

Reform Jews also allow everyone to sit together, men and women, and both Hebrew and the local language are spoken in services.

What are the sacred texts of the Jewish people?

The Tenakh is the ancient collection of writings that are sacred to the Jews. They were written over almost a thousand years from 1000 to 100 BCE. The word Tenakh comes from the three first letters of the three books included in this text: the Torah, plus the Nev'im (prophets) and the Ki'tuvim (writings, which include histories, prophecies, poems, hymns and sayings).

The Torah is written on scrolls and kept in a special cabinet called the aron hakodish, the holy ark, in synagogues. The Torah is read with a pointer called a yad (hand) to keep it from being spoiled. Each week, one section is read until the entire Torah is completed and the reading begins again.

The Talmud is also an important collection of Jewish writings. Written about 2000 years ago, it is a recording of the rabbis' discussion of the way to follow the Torah at that time. Later texts, the Mishnah Torah and the Shulhan Aruch, are recordings of rabbinic discussions from later periods.

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Jewish Ideas of Peace and Nonviolence

In Judaism, peace is not merely the opposite of war, but denotes an ideal state of affairs.

By My Jewish Learning

The Hebrew word for peace, shalom , denotes a sense of completion, perfection — shlemut (“wholeness”). In fact, in the Bible , shalom means “well-being” or “prosperity,” not just “peace.”

Thus, in Judaism , peace is not only the opposite of war, it is an ideal state of affairs. In this sense, peace — perfection — is something that will not be totally achieved until the messianic era . When the Messiah comes, “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4), but this will be part of a general societal harmony and perfection.

The fact that true peace is an eschatological dream, however, does not mean that it is not a Jewish value in the present. In the Talmud , peace is one of the most esteemed values.

According to Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel , three things preserve the world: truth, justice, and peace ( Avot 1:18). Peace , however, seems to take precedence even over truth, as the Talmud permits deviation from truth in order to establish peace. In addition, there is a whole category of rabbinic ordinances established mipnei darkhei shalom , in the interest of peace. And there is also a concept of  shalom bayit — peace in the home — which refers to the interest of family living together in harmony.

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There is even a sense that peace is more important than loyalty to God. In response to Hosea 4:17 (“Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.”), the Midrash says, “even if Israel is tied to idols, leave him, as long as peace prevails within it” (Genesis Rabbah 38:6). Elsewhere the Talmud says, “If in order to establish peace between husband and wife, the name of God , which was written in holiness, may be blotted out, how much more so to bring about peace for the world as a whole.” (Shabbat 116a)

Perhaps nothing exhibits the importance of peace more than the fact that almost every major Jewish prayer — the Amidah , Kaddish , Priestly Blessing , Grace After Meals — concludes with an appeal for peace.

And yet, Judaism is hardly pacifistic . There are clearly times when Judaism permits and even requires war . Jews have on occasion embraced nonviolence, even martyrdom , as a response to conflict, but not out of a sense that violence is categorically inappropriate, rather because in those situations nonviolence was the best tactical option. Nonetheless, the minimization of violence is certainly a Jewish value.

Avoiding Conflict and Violence

Indeed, when war is declared, the Torah requires that peace be offered prior to commencing an attack. “When you come near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim shalom to it” (Deuteronomy 20:10). Admittedly, in this context, shalom means something more like “submission” than “peace.” Nonetheless, biblical morality opposes a violent solution when a nonviolent solution is possible.

In addition, the rabbis of the Talmud established parameters for discretionary wars of aggression that make them virtually impossible to declare today. For one, the Sanhedrin (the traditional Jewish high court) must be consulted. Today there is no Sanhedrin, though some thinkers would extend this ruling to any equivalent body of representation, such as the Israeli Knesset (parliament). In addition, the urim v’tumim , the priestly breastplate and oracle, must be consulted to determine the probability of victory. The urim v’tumim, however, no longer exist.

Finally, permitted wars do not trump obligations to fulfill commandments, and thus one is not allowed to begin a non-commanded war (i.e., any war that is not either defensive, or against the seven nations of biblical Israel or the biblical nation of Amalek ) unless it is probable that commandments will not need to be transgressed. This is hardly feasible (imagine a war that takes a break every Saturday!).

Some People Don’t Have to Fight

The laws of war listed in Deuteronomy include a list of those exempt from battle. The Talmud extends all these exemptions, and notes that they only apply to discretionary wars. In commanded wars, “all go forth, even a bridegroom from his chamber and a bride from her canopy.” (Sotah 44b)

Broadly speaking, exemptions were granted to those who were in the midst of a lifecycle event, those who have “built a new house but has not dedicated it…or planted a vineyard but has never harvested it…or spoken for a woman in marriage but has not married her.” (Deuteronomy 20:5-7) In addition, the Torah provides exemptions for the fearful and the tender-hearted. Most scholars and rabbinic authorities believe that these psychological exemptions were meant to exclude soldiers whose attitude would hurt the morale of the army.

However, others — such as Arthur Waskow — have suggested that this exemption is akin to an exemption for conscientious objectors.

Pronounced: TALL-mud, Origin: Hebrew, the set of teachings and commentaries on the Torah that form the basis for Jewish law. Comprised of the Mishnah and the Gemara, it contains the opinions of thousands of rabbis from different periods in Jewish history.

Pronunced: TORE-uh, Origin: Hebrew, the Five Books of Moses.

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• Jewish Americans in 2020
• 2. Jewish identity and belief

Table of Contents

• 1. The size of the U.S. Jewish population
• 3. Jewish practices and customs
• 4. Marriage, families and children
• 5. Jewish community and connectedness
• 6. Anti-Semitism and Jewish views on discrimination
• 7. U.S. Jews’ connections with and attitudes toward Israel
• 8. U.S. Jews’ political views
• 9. Race, ethnicity, heritage and immigration among U.S. Jews
• 10. Jewish demographics
• 11. Economics and well-being among U.S. Jews
• 12. People of Jewish background and Jewish affinity
• Acknowledgments
• Model-based population estimates
• Appendix B: Mode experiment

Religion is not central to the lives of most U.S. Jews. Even Jews by religion are much less likely than Christian adults to consider religion to be very important in their lives (28% vs. 57%). And among Jews as a whole, far more report that they find meaning in spending time with their families or friends, engaging with arts and literature, being outdoors, and pursuing their education or careers than find meaning in their religious faith. Twice as many Jewish Americans say they derive a great deal of meaning and fulfillment from spending time with pets as say the same about their religion.

And yet, even for many Jews who are not particularly religious, Jewish identity matters: Fully three-quarters of Jewish Americans say that “being Jewish” is either very important (42%) or somewhat important (34%) to them.

U.S. Jews do not have a single, uniform answer to what being Jewish means. When asked whether being Jewish is mainly a matter of religion, ancestry, culture or some combination of those things, Jews respond in a wide variety of ways, with just one-in-ten saying it is only a matter of religion.

Many American Jews prioritize cultural components of Judaism over religious ones. Most Jewish adults say that remembering the Holocaust, leading a moral and ethical life, working for justice and equality in society, and being intellectually curious are “essential” to what it means to them to be Jewish. Far fewer say that observing Jewish law is an essential part of their Jewish identity. Indeed, more consider “having a good sense of humor” to be essential to being Jewish than consider following halakha (traditional Jewish law) essential (34% vs. 15%).

Orthodox Jews are a striking exception to many of these overall findings. They are among the most highly religious groups in U.S. society – along with White evangelicals and Black Protestants – in terms of the share who say religion is very important in their lives. A plurality of Orthodox Jews say that being Jewish is mainly about religion alone (40%), and they are the only subgroup in the survey who overwhelmingly feel that observing halakha is essential to their Jewishness (83%). Fully three-quarters of the Orthodox say they find a great deal of meaning and fulfillment in their religion, exceeded only by the share who feel that way about spending time with their families (86%). And 93% of Orthodox Jews say they believe in God as described in the Bible, compared with a quarter of Jews overall.

Identification with branches of American Judaism

More than half of U.S. Jews identify with the Reform (37%) or Conservative (17%) movements, while about one-in-ten (9%) identify with Orthodox Judaism. One-third of Jews (32%) do not identify with any particular Jewish denomination, and 4% identify with smaller branches – such as Reconstructionist or Humanist Judaism – or say they are connected with multiple streams of U.S. Judaism. Among Jews by religion, branch affiliation generally mirrors the broader pattern among Jews overall. Most Jews by religion identify with either Reform (44%) or Conservative (23%) Judaism, and fewer say they do not belong to a particular denomination (15%). Most Jews of no religion, on the other hand, do not identify with any institutional branch or stream of Judaism (79%), while the remainder largely describe themselves as Reform Jews (17%).

It is often assumed that for U.S. Jews, branch affiliation goes hand in hand with synagogue membership – e.g., they belong to a Conservative synagogue, and so they identify as Conservative, or they belong to a Reform temple, and so they identify as Reform. But this is not always the case, because the percentage of Jewish adults who identify with some branch of U.S. Judaism (67%) is considerably higher than the percentage who are synagogue members or have someone in their household who is a synagogue member (35%).

Among Jews who are neither synagogue members themselves nor live in a household where anyone else belongs to a synagogue, 47% do not identify with any institutional branch or stream of Judaism. But roughly half identify as Reform (36%), Conservative (11%), Orthodox (1%) or another Jewish denomination (4%), even though they indicate that, at present, they have no formal connection to a synagogue. This pattern is similar when looking only at respondents who are themselves not members of a synagogue, regardless of the status of others in their household. There could be multiple reasons for this, including Jewish denominational attachments retained since childhood, participation in Chabad or other synagogues that do not have a formal membership structure, and financial barriers to synagogue membership, among other possibilities. (The survey asked separate questions about branch affiliation, synagogue membership and synagogue attendance, without probing the exact connections; it did not ask people who identify as Reform Jews, for example, whether the synagogue they attend, or belong to, is a Reform synagogue.)

Jewish adults ages 18 to 29 are particularly likely to identify as Orthodox (17%), compared with those who are 30 and older, of whom 7% are Orthodox. The youngest Jewish adults also are more inclined than their elders to have no branch affiliation (41%), while smaller shares are Reform (29%) or Conservative (8%).

At the other end of the age spectrum, 44% of Jews ages 65 and older identify with the Reform movement, and a quarter say they are Conservative.

Jews less inclined than U.S. adults as a whole to consider religion very important

Nearly half of U.S. Jews say religion is either “very” (21%) or “somewhat” (26%) important in their lives, while 53% say religion is “not too” or “not at all” important to them personally.

Jews by religion are far more likely than Jews of no religion to say religion is at least somewhat important in their lives (61% vs. 8%). And Orthodox Jews are especially likely to say that religion is important: Nearly nine-in-ten (86%) say religion is very important to them, compared with a third of Conservative Jews (33%) and 14% of Reform Jews who consider religion very important in their lives.

Religion is more important to Jewish women, on average, than to Jewish men. Jewish adults ages 30 and older are more likely than those under 30 to say religion is at least somewhat important to them (49% vs. 39%). And two-thirds of married Jews who have a Jewish spouse say religion is very (35%) or somewhat (31%) important to them, while far fewer intermarried Jews say this (8% very important, 20% somewhat important).

Jews who did not obtain college degrees are more inclined to say that religion is very important in their lives. For example, about a third of U.S. Jews whose formal education stopped with high school (32%) say religion is very important, compared with 13% of those with bachelor’s degrees and 15% of those with postgraduate degrees.

Compared either with U.S. Christians or with the adult public overall, U.S. Jews are far less likely to say that religion is important in their lives. However, Orthodox Jews rank among the most religiously devout subgroups in the country by this measure; 86% say religion is very important in their lives, as do 78% of Black Protestants and 76% of White evangelical Protestants, two of the most highly religious Christian subgroups. Meanwhile, Jews of no religion are even more likely than religiously unaffiliated Americans to say religion is “not too” important or “not at all” important to them (91% vs. 82%).

The fact that many Jews say religion is relatively unimportant in their lives does not necessarily mean their Jewish identity is not meaningful to them. In fact, three-quarters of U.S. Jews say that “being Jewish” is either very important (42%) or somewhat important (34%) in their lives, while only 23% say it is not too or not at all important to them.

Jews by religion are far more likely than Jews of no religion to say that being Jewish is very important to them (55% vs. 7%); 55% of Jews of no religion say being Jewish is of little importance to them.

Nearly all Orthodox Jews in the survey (95%) describe being Jewish as very important in their lives. A majority of Conservative Jews also say being Jewish is very important (69%). Fewer Reform Jews (40%) and Jews of no denomination (17%) say the same.

Married Jews are more likely than those who are not married to say that being Jewish is central to their lives (48% vs. 33%). Being Jewish tends to be particularly important for Jews who have a Jewish spouse (64% say it is very important).

To U.S. Jews, being Jewish is not just about religion

There is no one way that American Jews think about being Jewish, as the survey makes clear. When asked whether being Jewish is mainly a matter of religion, ancestry or culture, some Jewish respondents pick each of those things, and many choose some combination of them. In fact, among the most common answers – expressed by about one-in-five U.S. Jews (19%) – is that being Jewish is about religion, ancestry and culture.

Similar shares say being Jewish is mainly a matter of just culture (22%) or just ancestry (21%). About half as many (11%) say being Jewish is mainly about religion alone. The remainder give other responses, such as that being Jewish is about both ancestry and culture (10%).

All told, about half mention ancestry among their responses (52%). A similar share point to culture either alone or in combination with other answers (55%). But fewer mention religion (36%), suggesting that most U.S. Jews do not see being Jewish as primarily about religion.

Even among Jews by religion, just 44% mention religion as a primary facet of Jewish identity, although Orthodox Jews stand out in this regard: 40% say being Jewish is about only religion, and an additional three-in-ten Orthodox adults say it is about some combination of religion, ancestry, and culture, or all three of these.

The vast majority of Jews of no religion say that for them, being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry (41%), culture (25%) or both (15%).

The survey asked Jews whether each of 10 attributes and activities is essential, important but not essential, or not important to what being Jewish means to them. The answers show that to U.S. Jews, being Jewish is about many things. Fully three-quarters (76%) say remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of what being Jewish means to them, and nearly as many (72%) say leading an ethical and moral life is essential. Majorities of U.S. Jews say working for justice and equality in society (59%) and being intellectually curious (56%) are essential to being Jewish.

Half of U.S. Jews say continuing family traditions is an essential part of their Jewish identity (51%), and 45% say caring about Israel is essential. One-third or fewer mention having a sense of humor (34%), being part of a Jewish community (33%), eating traditional Jewish foods (20%) or observing Jewish law (15%) as essential aspects of their Jewish identity.

The survey also asked respondents to describe in their own words anything else that is essential to what being Jewish means to them; see topline for results.

Nine of these items (along with the final, open-ended question) were included in the 2013 survey, while the item about continuing family traditions is new. In terms of relative importance, respondents ranked the items similarly in each of the two surveys. For instance, remembering the Holocaust, leading an ethical and moral life, and working for justice and equality were the top three responses in both 2013 and 2020. 21

While Jews by religion are more likely than Jews of no religion to consider each of the 10 attributes or activities in the 2020 survey essential to being Jewish, both groups generally rank the items in a similar order. Majorities of both Jews by religion and Jews of no religion cite remembering the Holocaust as essential, and both groups rank observing Jewish law and eating traditional foods toward the bottom of the list.

Despite these similarities, there are large gaps between the two groups on a few aspects of Jewish identity. For example, Jews by religion are far more likely than Jews of no religion to say that continuing family traditions is essential to what it means to them to be Jewish (61% vs. 24%). And Jews by religion are nearly twice as likely as Jews of no religion to say that caring about Israel is essential (52% vs. 27%).

Those with a Jewish spouse differ significantly from those without one on the importance of continuing family traditions. Among Jews with a Jewish spouse, seven-in-ten say continuing family traditions is essential to what it means to them to be Jewish, while far fewer Jews married to spouses who are not Jewish (37%) say the same.

Older Jews are more likely than younger generations to see certain things as essential to being Jewish. Compared with Jewish adults under the age of 30, larger shares of those 65 and older rank remembering the Holocaust, caring about Israel, being intellectually curious and having a good sense of humor as essential parts of their Jewish identity. However, younger Jews more likely than the eldest cohort to say that observing Jewish law is essential to being Jewish (19% vs. 12%).

What’s essential to being Jewish also tends to vary according to the respondent’s branch or stream of Judaism. Orthodox Jews are more likely than the non-Orthodox to say that following Jewish law and being part of a Jewish community are essential to what it means to them to be Jewish. Non-Orthodox Jews are more likely than the Orthodox to say that remembering the Holocaust, being intellectually curious and having a good sense of humor are essential.

Three-quarters of Jews believe in higher power of some kind, but just one-quarter believe in God as described in the Bible

Three-quarters of U.S. Jews say they believe in God or some spiritual force in the universe, including 26% who say they believe in “God as described in the Bible” and about twice as many (50%) who believe in some other spiritual force. Belief in God is much more widespread among Jews by religion than among Jews of no religion. But even among Jews by religion, 14% say they do not believe in any higher power or spiritual force. Meanwhile, 44% of Jews of no religion say they do not believe in any higher power.

Nine-in-ten Orthodox Jews (93%) say they believe in the God of the Bible, compared with 37% of Conservative Jews, 18% of Reform Jews and 12% of Jews with no denomination.

U.S. Christians are far more likely than U.S. Jews to say they believe in God as described in the Bible, and far less likely to say they believe in some other higher power – or no higher power at all.

American Jews derive a great deal of meaning from spending time with family and friends

The survey also included a set of questions asking respondents to rate how much meaning and fulfillment they draw from each of seven possible sources: spending time with family; spending time with friends; their religious faith; being outdoors and experiencing nature; spending time with pets or animals; their job, career or education; and arts and literature, such as music, painting and reading.

Three-quarters of U.S. Jews say they derive a great deal of meaning from spending time with their family (74%), and six-in-ten find a great deal of fulfillment in spending time with friends (61%). Arts and literature (55%), spending time outdoors (51%), spending time with pets (43%) and jobs (38%) also are common sources of meaning and fulfillment. Among Jews, religious faith is by far the least common source of meaning of all the options presented by the survey; just one-in-five U.S. Jews say they get a great deal of meaning and fulfillment from their religion.

Jews by religion are somewhat more likely than Jews of no religion to say they draw a great deal of meaning from their families and from their faith, although even among Jews by religion, only a quarter say their religious faith carries a great deal of meaning.

There are also differences in where Jews find meaning based on their denominational affiliation. Nearly nine-in-ten Orthodox Jews say they find spending time with family very meaningful (86%), compared with three-quarters of Conservative and Reform Jews. And three-quarters of the Orthodox find a great deal of meaning in their religious faith, versus 32% of Conservative and just 13% of Reform Jews. Conversely, non-Orthodox Jews are far more likely than the Orthodox to find meaning in arts and literature as well as pets or animals.

Jewish Americans are less likely than U.S. adults as a whole to find a great deal of meaning in their religious faith (20% vs. 40%).

• Due to differences in how the surveys were conducted, the exact percentages of Jews who cite several of these items as essential to their Jewish identity are not directly comparable to the 2013 survey. See Appendix B for details. ↩

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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

Overview Essay

See also Hava Tirosh-Samuelson's article on Judaism from the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Arizona State University

Any generalization about Judaism and ecology should take into consideration the ambiguity of the term “Judaism” and the fact that the Jewish experience encompasses both religious and secular forms.  Indeed, the various conceptualizations of “nature” or “environment” illustrate the complexity of the modern Jewish experience.  Thus the contribution of Jews to environmentalism is more extensive and the impact of environmentalism on contemporary Judaism is more profound than is commonly acknowledged.  In Israel and in the diaspora the ecological crisis has generated many Jewish responses as Jewish theologians, scholars, educators and activists have subjected the entire Jewish tradition to rigorous reinterpretation, identified relevant literary sources, distilled the ecological insights of the tradition, articulated new ecological theologies, and spelled out policies and educational programs (Tirosh-Samuelson 2002a; 2005; 2006). 

Judaism and Ecology: Ambiguities and Possibilities

As the oldest of the Western monotheistic religions, Judaism is indispensable to the discourse on religious and ecology (Bauman, Bohannon and O’Brien 2010; Grim and Tucker 2014), but Judaism also occupies an ambiguous position in this discourse.  To begin, Judaism problematizes a generic definition of “religion.”  Although Judaism had articulated the concepts that framed the western religious vocabulary (e.g., creation, revelation, covenant, prophecy, Scripture, redemption, and messiah), Judaism differs from other traditions because it is a religion of one group of people—the Jews.  Thus Jewishness consists not only of beliefs, rituals, norms and practices that cohere into a way of life, but also a collective identity, be it ethnic or national.  In the modern period, however, processes of secularization have problematized Jewish existence, giving rise to secular Jews, namely born Jews who do not live by the strictures of the Jewish religious tradition.  Interestingly, secular (i.e., non-observant) Jews have been at the forefront of the environmental movement, a point that has received little recognition. 

For example, Barry Commoner, the Jewish ecologist and who led the campaign for nuclear disarmament made environmentalism into a political cause (Commoner, 1971). Murray Bookchin, another son of East-European Jewish immigrants in America, articulated Social Ecology, insisting that human responsibility toward nature could be carried out only if humans first eliminate social exploitation, domination and hierarchy by developing communitarianism (Bookchin 1990; Biel 1997; Light 1998). Peter Singer, the son of Jewish refugees from Austria who settled in Australia, theorized the Animal Liberation  movement, arguing that humans have an obligation to serve the interests or at least to protect the lives of all animals who suffer or are killed, whether on the farm or in the wild (Singer 1975[1990]).  Hans Jonas, the German-Jewish philosopher and student of Heidegger, is regarded as the “father” of the European Green movement because he applied the “imperative of responsibility” to the environment criticizing modern technology (Jonas 1984).   Starhawk (aka Miriam Simos), an American Jewish feminist, environmentalist and peace activist, has promoted the Goddess religion, giving rise to Earth-based feminist spirituality (Starhawk 1995; Salomonsen 2002).  Finally, David Abram is an American eco-phenomenologist who coined the term “the more-than-human world” to signify the broad commonwealth of earthy life which both includes and exceeds human culture (Abram 1996; 2010).  These are all born Jews who have profoundly shaped the theory and practice of contemporary environmentalism, but without appealing to Judaism as an authoritative tradition.  In some cases, their ideas reflect the secularization of traditional Jewish ideas and beliefs, and more often their environmentalist vision either substitutes for a commitment to Judaism or directly critiqued Judaism for its presumed limitations or failures.

In the context of the discourse on religion and ecology Judaism is ambiguous for yet another reason: the Bible, the foundation document of Judaism, was accused of being the very cause of ecological crisis (White 1967).  Lynn White Jr., the medieval historian, was the first to charge that the Bible commanded humanity to rule the Earth (Gen. 1:28), giving human beings the license to exploit the Earth’s resources for their own benefit.  A lay Presbyterian, White intended the charge as prophetic self-criticism that will generate self-examination (Santmire 1984), and indeed he was exceedingly successful: his short essay compelled Jews and Christians to examine the Bible anew in light of the ecological crisis.  Is the Bible and “inconvenient text” (Habel 2009) or is the Bible a text whose ecological wisdom has been ignored or misinterpreted? Does the Bible authorize human domination and exploitation of the Earth or rather does the Bible set clear limits on human interaction with the non-human world and commands humans to care responsibly for the Earth and all its non-human inhabitants? Since 1970 Jewish religious environmentalists have examined the Bible in light of the ecological crisis whether to defend the Bible against various (Christian) misreadings (e.g., Cohen 1989), identify a distinctive ecological sensibility (Kay 1988 [2001]; Artson 1991-92 [2001]; Bernstein and Fink 1992; Bernstein 2000; 2005; Benstein 2006; Troster 2008), or articulate Jewish environmental ethics of responsibility (E. Schwartz 1997 [2001]); Waskow 2000; Troster 1991-92 [2001]).  For the past four decades the close study of the Bible has made clear that the Jewish sacred text espouses deep concern for the well-being of the Earth and all its inhabitants, because it asserts that “the Earth belongs to God” (Ps. 24:1) and humans are but temporary care takers, or stewards, of God’s Earth; their task is “to till and protect” the Earth (Gen. 2:15) not as controlling managers but as loving gardeners (Tirosh-Samuelson 2017). 

A third source of ambiguity is the fact that in Judaism ecological wisdom is found not in the natural order itself but in divinely revealed commands that instruct humans how to treat the Earth and its inhabitants.  Scripture declares that the world God had created is “very good” (Gen. 1: 31) but it is neither perfect nor intrinsically holy.  Only human beings, who are created “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:28), are able to perfect the world by acting in accordance with divine command.  At Sinai God revealed His Will to the Chosen People, Israel, by giving them the Torah (literally, “instruction) which specifies how Israel is to conduct itself in all aspects of life, including conduct toward the physical environment.  In the Judaic sacred myth, divine revelation establishes the eternal covenant between God and Israel, an unconditional contract whose collateral is the Land of Israel.  As long as Israel observes the Will of God, the Land of Israel is fertile and fecund and Israel flourishes, but when Israel sins, the Land loses its fertility and the people suffer (Deut. 6:10-15).  When the sins become egregious, God punishes Israel by exiling the people from the Land.  In this manner the Bible set up the causal connection between religious morality and the wellbeing of the environment. 

Biblical law spells how Israel is to treat the Earth, vegetation and animals.  Viewing Israel as God’s tenant-farmers, Scripture commands that a portion of the land’s yield be returned to its rightful owner, God (Leviticus 19:23). Since creation was an act of separation, Scripture prohibits mixing of plants, fruit trees, fish, birds, and land animals thereby protecting biodiversity (Deut. 22: 9-11).  The human being is indeed given responsible authority over other animals and is allowed to consume animals, but human consumption of animals is presented as divine concession to human craving, suggesting that vegetarianism is the ideal (R. Schwartz  2001) and radically limiting what humans are allowed to consume.  Scriptural legislation is also attentive to the perpetuation of species by prohibiting the killing of the mother hen with her off-springs (Deut. 22:6) or the cutting of fruit-bearing trees in time of siege (Deut. 20:19).  Compassion to domestic animals is evident in the prohibition on the yoking together of animals of uneven strength and is praised as a desired virtue.  Since Scripture allows for human sacrifice of animals, the relationship between humans and animals exhibits inequality, but “this inequality is relative not absolute … because it is based on an analogy: as God is to Israel, so is Israel to its flocks and herds” (Klawans 2006, 74).  Most importantly, the Bible commands rest on the Sabbath for humans and domestic animals putting “moral limits to economic exchange and commercial exploitation” (Sacks 2012, 169).  Extending the Sabbath to the land, the laws of the Sabbatical year ( shemitah ) protects the socially marginal (i.e., the poor, the hungry, the widow, and the orphan) by making sure that crops that grow untended are to be left ownerless for all to share including poor people and animals.  In the Bible the allocation of nature’s resources is a religious issue of the highest order and social justice is eco-justice. Divinely revealed environmental legislation enables Israel to sanctify itself and the Land of Israel.

In the Second Temple period (516 BCE-70 CE) the Bible became the canonic Scripture of the Jews, shaping the life of the People of Israel in the Land of Israel and in the diaspora.  With the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, Jewish political sovereignty in the Land of Israel came to an end, but Jewish religious and legal autonomy remained intact under the leadership of small scholarly elite, the rabbis.  Seeking to fathom the meaning of the divinely revealed Torah, the rabbis expanded biblical legislation through creative exegesis, giving their interpretations the status of Oral Torah which became normative Judaism. For example, from Deuteronomy 22:19 the rabbis derived the principle “Do not Destroy” ( bal tashchit ) which prohibits wanton destruction, a precept that defines the unique Jewish contribution to environmentalism: Judaism focuses on the duties of humans toward nature as opposed to the intrinsic or inherent rights of nature (Schwartz 1997 [2001])).  Similarly, on the basis of Deut. 22:6 the rabbis articulated the general principle of tza`ar ba`aley hayyim prohibits the affliction of needless suffering of animals.  Although rabbinic ethics is undoubtedly hierarchical and human centered, for example, cruelty to animals is forbidden because it leads to cruelty toward humans (Kalechowsky 1992; 2006; R. Schwartz 2012; ), the rabbis often presented animals as moral exemplars and recognized special animals as “animals of the righteous,” who live in perfect harmony with their Creator (Rosenberg, 2002). 

While the rabbis praised virtues that can be conducive to creation care, rabbinic Judaism also generated a certain distance between Jews and the natural world, which is the fourth source of ambiguity.  Because the rabbis regarded Torah study to be the ultimate commandment, equal in value to all the other commandments combined, the Torah itself (both Written and Oral) became the prism through which Jews experienced the natural world.  From the second century onward rabbinic Judaism has evolved as a textual, scholastic culture that privileges the study of sacred texts at the expense of interest in the natural world for its own sake.  The urbanization of Roman Palestine in the 3 rd and 4 th centuries, the Jewish transition from agriculture to commerce and trade in the early centuries of Islam and the limits on Jewish ownership of land in the Christian West exacerbated the departure of Jews from agriculture and the emergence of Jewish culture as a text-based community.  This is not to say that Jews were oblivious to their physical surroundings, but that pre-modern Jews interacted with the natural world through textual exegesis.  Thus rationalist Jewish philosophers in Spain and Italy sought to fathom how the laws of nature (as understood by Aristotle) reflect the inner esoteric structure of Torah; Pietists in Germany regarded nature as a secret code that could be decoded by the use of secret magical, verbal, and numerical formulas; and kabbalists in Spain saw nature as a symbolic text that mirrors the structure of the Godhead (Shyovitz 2017).  All three intellectual strands of pre-modern Judaism treated nature as a linguistic text that has to be interpreted rather than a physical reality that can be sensually experienced by embodied humans (Tirosh-Samuelson 2002; 2011a).     

The centrality of sacred texts in Jewish life was critiqued in the modern period first by the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and later by Zionism.  For the proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment ( maskilim ), knowledge of physical nature was necessary for the modernization of the Jews and their entry into European society and culture.  In their journals, novels, and satires, the maskilim presented knowledge about the natural world as conditional to the healing of Jews from excessive bookishness and called for the return of Jews to productive labor, especially agriculture. Going further, Zionism, the Jewish nationalist movement which was an offshoot of the Haskalah, preached the return of Jews to the Land of Israel as the solution to the ills of exilic life.  The Zionist movement generated a fifth source of ambiguity in the Jewish relationship to nature.  Zionism sought to create a new type of Jews as well as a new, Hebraic, modern culture that will be rooted in the remote agricultural past of ancient Israel, by passing rabbinic Judaism.  Zionism endowed the physical environment of the Land of Israel, its topography, flora and fauna, with spiritual (albeit secular) significance, inculcating intimate knowledge of the Land through nature hikes, field trips, and camping.

Paradoxically, the resulting outdoor culture has enabled secular Israelis to understand the natural imagery and metaphors of the Bible (Feliks 1990; Hareuveni 1980), the document that legitimized the Zionist national project (Schweid 1985).  More problematically, the successes of the Zionist project exacted a toll on the fragile environment of the Land of Israel (Tal 2002): steep rise in population, rapid urbanization, the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, and initial mistakes about natural resource management have generated a long list of environmental problems (e.g., air and water pollution; soil erosion, over use of water, etc.) requiring legislative solutions (Tal, Orenstein and Miller 2013).  Today the state of Israel addresses these environmental challenges through a mixture of policies, legislation, and alternative technologies and environmentalism thrives in Israel through green political parties, numerous environmental NGOs, and creative educational and training programs (Tirosh-Samuelson 2012).  Many of these environmental initiatives and organizations (e.g., Adam, Teva ve-Din; Sevivah Israel, or Hayyim u-Sevivah) deal with concrete environmental problems without reference to Judaism, but some organizations (e.g., Teva Ivri, Shatil, and the Heschel Center for Sustainability) draw direct inspiration from Jewish religious sources in their theoretical justification and educational programs.  The degree to which Israeli environmentalism should be grounded in traditional Jewish sources is hotly debated in Israel and the movement is quite different from its American counterpart (Mann 2012, 148-15).    

Eco-Judaism: Practice and Theology

In Israel, where Jews are the majority, environmentalism encompasses advocacy, education, public policy, legislation, sustainable architecture and agriculture, science and technology with limited appeal to the religious sources of Judaism.  By contrast, in the diaspora, where Jews are small religio-ethnic minority, Jewish environmental public discourse has to be carried explicitly in religious categories.  Since its emergence in the mid-1980s, Jewish environmental activism has brought about the “greening” of Jewish institutions (e.g., synagogues, schools, communal organizations, Jewish community centers, and youth movements).  Today, a variety of organizations, programs, and initiatives promote sustainable practices (e.g., energy efficiency, elimination of plastics, recycling and waste reduction programs), reduce consumption and promote new eating habits, plant community gardens, link sustainable agriculture to urban Jewish life and education, include environmental issues in the education of youngsters and adults, organize nature walks and outdoor activities, celebrate Jewish holidays (especially Sukkot, Shavuot and Tu Bishvat) with attention to environmental agricultural themes; promote justice in food production with attention to sustainable agriculture and compassionate treatment of farm animals, and encourage Jews to live sustainably. These programs transcend congregational and denominational boundaries and are often carried out in inter-faith settings in collaboration with non-Jewish organizations.  Eco-Judaism consists of environmental activism and eco-theology.

As a grass root movement, Jewish environmental activism educates Jews about environmental matters, inspires Jews to lead an environmentally correct life, implements “green” communal practices, and rallies Jews to support environmental legislation and interfaith activities. The main activities of Jewish environmental organizations and initiatives consist of nature education, environmental awareness, advocacy on environmental legislation, and community building. The programs of Teva Learning Alliance (previously called Teva Learning Center) exemplify how activities are structured to sensitize the participants to nature’s rhythms, inspiring them to develop a meaningful relationship with nature and their own Jewish practices.  Through traditional Jewish rituals (e.g., blessings, prayers, and reflections) participants become aware of nature as divine creation or learn about the vital connection between Judaism and environmental stewardship.  Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality is another example where various programs promote environmentally concerned Judaism as a spiritual practice.   One of its programs, ADAMAH: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship, offers leadership training program that teaches the Fellows to live communally and engage in a hands-on curriculum that integrates organized agricultural and sustainable living skills, Jewish learning and living, leadership development and community building.  The newly reconstituted Aytzim: Ecological Judaism is an example how environmental education, advocacy, and activism link the Jewish religion with Zionism and how the Internet is used to advance environmentalism: the website Jewcology is now managed by Aytzim.  These programs and the Coalition of Jewish and Environmental Life (COEJL), which focuses on educational, legislative, and interfaith programming, illustrate eco-Judaism in practice. 

An important aspect of contemporary eco-Judaism is attention to food, since food is the intersection point of humans and animals as well as the intersection between diverse social groups of producers and consumers.  Hazon: Jewish Lab of Sustainability is a case in point because it has given rise to the Jewish Food Movement that stresses the redemptive aspect of land cultivation and just production, distribution, and consumption of food. The Jewish Food Movement, which supports organic farming attempts to change the relationship between farm workers, processing/packing house workers, truckers, hospitality and hotel workers and other people involved in the food production industry.  As an educational effort the Jewish Food Movement is connected with other environmental initiatives, including the Jewish Farm School in Philadelphia (which focuses on urban permaculture), the Eden Village Camp in Putnam Valley NY (an eco-summer camp that teaches sustainability and outdoor activities), Shomrei Adamah (a Hazon program for Jewish day schools that emphasizes energy flow, natural cycles, biodiversity and interdependence), Kayam Farm at the Pearlstone Center in Maryland (which harvests food for the retreat center and teaches stewardship and sustainability), Ekar Farm in Denver (a communal project that combines food security, environmentalism and urban farming) and Farm Forward in Oregon (a non-profit organization that promotes humane and sustainable animal agriculture) are all designed to bring Jews to integrate knowledge about food and farming with the Jewish tradition.

The concept that gives coherence to eco-Judaism is Eco-Kosher Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi coined the term in 1968 during the labor protests in California led by Cezar Chávez.  Schachter-Shalomi defines Eco-Kosher as “a new kind of kashrut that would combine the ancient ways of thought, consumption, and avoidance of cruelty and violence with the new awareness of the wider repercussions of some of our actions” (Schachter-Shalomi and Segel 2013, 157).   Eco-Kosher connects concerns about industrial agriculture, global warming, and fair treatment of workers with the Jewish dietary laws about food production, preparation and eating. Eco-Kosher means that Jews should only consume products that meet both Jewish dietary laws as well as Jewish ethical standards, and eco-kosher consumers should encourage food producers to care for the environment, animals and their workers.  Since the 1970s Arthur Waskow translated the concept into a full-fledged program of environmental justice in regard to economic and racial inequity, the unjust labor practices, and the causal connection between the exploitation of the Earth resources and unjust political policies, especially in Israel (Waskow 1996).  Other rabbis have fused Eco-Kosher with kabbalistic principles as well as with non-Jewish traditions such as the ancient Chinese art of Feng Shui, an ecologically based art of spatial arrangement that incorporates human-made objects with natural surroundings.  The concept of Eco-Kosher has also inspired Jewish entrepreneurs to market eco-kosher meat products and the Conservative Movement to issue the Magen Tzedek Initiative, a certification program that assures consumers and retailers that “kosher food products have been produced in keeping with exemplary Jewish ethics in regard to labor, animal welfare, environmental impact, consumer issue and corporate integrity” ( http://www.magentzedek.org )

Combining sustainable agriculture, fair labor practices, and ethical treatment of animals, “eco-Kosher” generates a comprehensive life style whose goal is to bring about Tikkun Olam (literally, “repair of the world”).  In rabbinic texts (e.g., Mishna, Gittin 4:2) “ letaken olam ” means to act in accordance to Jewish law so as to usher the Kingdom of God.  This utopian notion was given an abstract, cosmic, metaphysical meaning in medieval Kabbalah, especially the 16 th century version of Lurianic Kabbalah.  According to Lurianic Kabbalah, rituals performed with kabbalistic intention can bring about not only the amelioration of the human world or even the physical cosmos, but also the divine world (the world of the ten Sefirot) which experiences brokenness and disharmony (symbolized by the separation of the masculine and feminine aspects of the Godhead), due to human sinfulness.  In the second half of the 20 th century Tikkun Olam has become the slogan of Jewish social activism, including environmentalism, although few Jews who invoke the term understand its original kabbalistic meaning.  In Jewish environmental organizations, the goal of Tikkun Olam is usually linked to two other ethical values: responsibility and interconnectedness . The former highlights human responsibility toward the Earth and its inhabitants and the latter insists on the relationality of all living beings.  Both of these values are derived from biblical and rabbinic sources and are invoked in a wide variety of educational programs (Tirosh-Samuelson 2012).      

If Jewish environmental activists use “Tikkun Olam” as slogan to mobilize Jews to social actions, with little understanding of its kabbalistic underpinning, several Jewish eco-theologians deliberately build on Kabbalah and Hasidism to articulate Jewish ecological spirituality that could address the ecological crisis.  Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of Jewish Renewal Movement, was the first to call for a “paradigm shift” within Judaism, signifying a shift from transcendence to immanence, from monotheism to pantheism, from dualistic to non-dualistic thinking, from patriarchy to egalitarianism (Schachter-Shalomi, 1993).  He called this shift “Gaian Consciousness” and argued that Judaism has a distinctive (albeit not exclusive) role to play in the healing of the cosmos: the key ecological precept of Judaism—“Do Not Destroy”—enables Jews to act in ways that prevent what he called, the crime of “planetcide.”  Recasting Judaism as pantheistic monism that reframes all the major themes of traditional Judaism and gives rise to new rituals, this New-Age thinker saw his project as “trying to help the Earth rebuild her organicity and establish a healthy governing principles” (Magid 2006, 65; Magid 2013). 

Schachter-Shalomi’s friend and colleague, Rabbi Arthur Green has gone further to articulate a systematic ecological Jewish spirituality promoted as “Neo-Hasidism” (Green and Mayse 2019; 2019a)  In Green’s “mystical panentheism” Kabbalah and Hasidism are fused with the theory of evolution into a worldview that depicts the “bio-history of the universe” as “sacred drama” (Green 2003, 111).  Green presents a holistic view of reality in which all existents are in some way an expression of God and are to some extent intrinsically related to one another (Ibid, 118-119; Green 2010).   Although Green’s lyrical depiction of evolution is closer to medieval Neoplatonism than to Darwinism, Green offers contemporary Jews “a Kabbalah for the environmental age” (Green 2002).  The systematic fusion of Kabbalah, Hasidism, and environmentalism is presented in the work of Rabbi David Seidenberg who argues that by “applying the principles of Kabbalah to constructive theology, we can train ourselves to see the image of God in all of these dimensions, in a species, in an ecosystem, in the water cycles, in the entirety of this planet, and so on” (Seidenberg 2015, 312).  Seidenberg is one example of Jewish spiritual teachers, artists, story tellers, and healers who find in Kabbalah, as well as other spiritual traditions (either Native American or Asian) resources for a syncretistic Jewish ecological spirituality.  This ecological spirituality is given a feminist twist in the work of Rabbi Jill Hammer (Hammer 2016; Hammer and Shere 2015), the founder of Tel Shemesh, a web-based spiritual resource center that merges kabbalah and Earth-based feminist spirituality ( http://www.telshemesh.org ).  The syncretism of Jewish ecological spirituality brought some critics to question the Jewishness of Jewish environmentalism and to view it as an unacceptable revival of paganism (e.g., Gerstenfeld 1999).

Jewish Environmentalism and Environmental Humanities

The humanities are the disciplines that inquire about the values, norms, meanings, languages and cultures.  Beginning in the 1970s, but increasingly in the 1980s and 1990s, a growing number of humanities scholars have begun to argue that ecological matters are not marginal but foundational to their disciplines. The discourse of religion and ecology is considered today part of the environmental humanities, a multi-disciplinary and multi-perspectival inquiry that comprises also of environmental history, environmental philosophy and ethics, ecocriticism, animal studies, queer ecologies, ecofeminism, environmental sociology, political ecology, eco-materialism and posthumanism) (Glotfelty and Fromm 1996; Buell, 2005; Clark 2011; Opermann and Iovino  2017). 

The ecological reinterpretation of Judaism has developed with relatively little attention to the environmental humanities.  Why?  First, the discourse of the environmental humanities is decidedly secular, whereas Jewish environmentalism (at least in the diaspora) is a religious endeavor that uses religious categories.  Second, the environmental humanities are theoretical discourses carried out within the bounds of the academy, whereas Jewish environmentalism is a grass-root movement of non-academic activists who care about praxis rather than theory.  Third, the academic discourse of environmental humanities is inherently critical, displaying skepticism, distance, and irony, whereas Jewish environmentalism calls for conviction, action, and social transformation.  Finally, while some environmental humanities, especially eco-criticism, have attempted to bring the material sciences to the foreground of the humanities in order to understand the relationship between human and non-human organisms, Jewish environmentalism (and one could say Jewish public discourse in general) has been insufficiently attentive to the natural sciences.  This is not to say that Jewish environmentalism cannot or should not become informed of the environmental humanities.  To the contrary: familiarity with the environmental humanities (i.e., the various strands of environmental philosophy and ethics and eco-criticism) can enrich Jewish environmentalism immensely, but such dialogue could take place only if the academic interlocutors become more informed about and interested in Judaism not as the culprit of the ecological crisis, but as a tradition that could creatively address the crisis.

The dialogue between Jewish environmentalism and environmental humanities could begin in the context of postmodern environmental thought (Oeschlaeger 1995; Zimmerman 1994) and the field of eco-phenomenology (Brown and Toadvine 2003), since Jewish philosophers have greatly contributed to them.   Eco-phenomenology is the merger of phenomenology and contemporary environmental thought, according to which the human cognition that “nature has value, that it deserves or demands a certain proper treatment from us, must have its roots in an experience of nature” (ibid, xi).  Eco-phenomenology consists of two claims: “first, that an adequate account of our ecological situation requires the methods and insight of phenomenology; and, second, that phenomenology, led by its own momentum, becomes a philosophical ecology, that is, a study of the interrelationship between organism and world in its metaphysical and axiological dimensions” (ibid., xii-xiii).  Jewish philosophers trained in the phenomenological tradition—Martin Buber (d. 1965), Hans Jonas (d. 1993), and Emmanuel Levinas (d. 1995) and Derrida (d. 2004)— contributed to eco-phenomenology by framing the relationship between humanity to the natural world in dialogical terms, emphasizing nature as a subject to whom humans are deeply responsible , and by erasing rigid boundaries between humans and animals.

Martin Buber was the first to speak about nature as a subject and to call for a non-instrumental (I-Thou) relationship with nature.  Although Buber was not an environmentalist, his relational, dialogical philosophy has exerted deep influence on Christian environmental ethics (McFague 1997; Santmire 2008).  If Buber made nature into a moral subject with whom humans can have personal relationship, Hans Jonas endowed life itself with intrinsic moral value as he exposed the ontological basis of the ethics of responsibility, and conversely made ontology informed by ethics (Jonas 1984).  Jonas’s philosophy of nature highlighted the purposiveness of all life, arguing that nature commands ultimate respond, allegiance, and final moral commitment (Donnelley 2008).  It is the objective goodness of things that determines not only what ought to be but also what humans ought to feel, think, and do, since humans are an integral part of organic life.  For Jonas, the “imperative of responsibility” encompasses human responsibility for the continued existence of life in a planet where life is seriously endangered by modern technology.  Awareness of the looming disaster generates a “heuristic of fear” that guides us to act so as to protect nature from the possibility of destruction.  Humanity is responsible for its own future and must act with concern toward future generations, ensuring that they will have the conditions for life.  Jonas’s philosophy of nature was developed in response to the devastation of WWII in which Auschwitz and Hiroshima came about because of modern technology.  

Like Jonas, Emmanuel Levinas (yet another student of Heidegger) saw responsibility as the core of the ethical, but went further than Jonas by arguing that responsibility comes first: each person is responsible for the other who faces him.  If Jonas argued for collective responsibility of humanity, Levinas argues for infinite individual responsibility : every person has an obligation to his/her neighbor, expanding gradually to cover all living humanity.  Levinas’ ethics is decidedly human-centered since he insisted that ethics is “against-nature, against the naturality of nature (Levinas 1998, 171).  However, several postmodernist environmentalists have applied Levinas’ ethics to nature which is identified with the absolute Other (Llewelyn 1991; Atternon 2004, and Edelgrass, Hatley and Diehm 2012).  How should Levinas’s ethics be applied to nature is still a matter of debate but no one can correctly understand Levinas without acknowledging his Jewishness.  

Even more influential than Buber, Jonas, and Levinas, another Jewish philosopher trained in phenomenological tradition—Jacque Derrida—has stimulated postmodernist environmental thought and the field of eco-phenomenology.  Derrida’s deconstruction of traditional binary dichotomies characteristic of Western philosophy (e.g., nature/culture; human/animal; transcendence/immanence) exposed the connection between phallologocentrism and “carnivorous virility” (Gross 2015, 142).  Derrida criticized the “sacrificial structure of subjectivity” and exposed the links between the hatred of the Other, the hatred of animals, and the hatred of Jews that run throughout Western history and culture (Benjamin 2011).  The deconstruction of human/animal boundaries (Derrida 2008) has stimulated the newly emerging field of Animal Studies (e.g., De Mello 2012; Gross and Vallely 2012; Waldau 2013) although the Jewishness of Derrida is often glossed over.  Recently scholars of Judaism have begun to interpret the canonic sources of Judaism in light of the insights and methodologies of Animal Studies and environmental humanities (e.g., Belser 2015; Wasserman 2017; Berkowtiz 2018; and Geller 2018), highlighting the connection between constructions of Jews, animals, and difference. Jewish Animal Studies consists of reflections on textual representation of otherness rather than on addressing environmental problems that result from the ecological crisis. 

Jewish environmentalism is still a small but growing strand in contemporary Judaism that is attractive to previously unaffiliated Jews, to Jews who have limited or no Jewish education, to seekers who have walked other spiritual and religious paths, and to Jews who are traditionally observant.  Commitment to Jewish environmentalism can mean different things: for some, Jewish environmentalism means extending the ethics of responsibility to include the environment, for others environmentalism means a new, holistic, ecological consciousness that overcomes the disruptive dualism of scripture and nature, and for still others, environmentalism signifies the return to earth-based spirituality that links Judaism to other traditions.  However interpreted, a plethora of Jewish environmental organizations promote communitarianism, environmental and social justice, and a range of educational programs based on outdoors activities that inculcate respect for nature.  Benefiting from the creation of the Internet, Jewish environmental activism disseminates ideas and information about activities through social media and the websites of these organizations make available relevant literary sources, commentaries, organized activities, fellowship programs, and leadership training.  While the work of Jewish environmentalism rarely engages the environmental humanities, the dialogue between these discourses could enrich both:  Jewish environmentalism could become more theoretically informed and the environmental humanities could openly acknowledge its debt to Jewish ethics of responsibility.   

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