Quotes About Judaism

The Torah and Judaism are behaviorist in their approach to life. How we behave is ultimately more important than how we think or feel. This is one of the greatest differences between the Torah and the contemporary mind, which attaches far more importance to how people feel.

Judaism has consisted of four components: God,Torah, Israel, and Chosenness; that is, the God introduced by the Jews, Jewish laws, Jewish peoplehood, and the belief that the Jews are God's chosen people. Jews' allegiance to any of these components has been a major source of antisemitism because it not only rendered the Jew an outsider, but more important, it has often been regarded by non-Jews as challenging

As if the above were not enough, Judaism has also held from the earliest times that the Jews were chosen by God to achieve this mission of

From its earliest days, the raison d'être of Judaism has been to change the world for the better (in the words of an ancient Jewish prayer recited daily, "to repair the world under the rule of God"). This attempt to change the world, to challenge the gods, religious or secular, of the societies around them, and to make moral demands upon others (even when not done expressly in the name of Judaism) has constantly

The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them.

Jews know that although they may make a vow to do something or to refrain from something, they can annul their vow. What most Jews do not know is that, as stated previously, biblical law forbids nullification: once a person makes a vow the person must keep it. It was only in post-biblical times that the rabbis changed the law to allow vow repeals.

Many Jews are convinced that the "oral law" is comprised of interpretations and additions to what is written in the Torah and that both were revealed by God to the Israelites at Mount Sinai through Moses.

Many Jews are convinced that the "oral law" is comprised of interpretations and additions to what is written in the Torah and that both were revealed by God to the Israelites at Mount Sinai through Moses. Numbers 15:32–36 as well as many other biblical sources show that this is not true.

In 164 BC they defeat the Seleucid army, recapture Jerusalem, and cleanse the temple. To celebrate the cleansing of the temple, the Jewish festival of Hanukkah is instituted, a holiday that Jews continue to celebrate today.

It has frequently been asserted that low Christologies are "Jewish" ones, while high Christologies have come into Christianity from the Greek thought world. Oddly enough, this position has been taken both by Jewish writers seeking to discredit Christianity as a kind of paganism and by orthodox Christian scholars wishing to distinguish the "new religion" from the old one as far and as quickly as possible. This doubly defensive approach can no longer be maintained.

If it be true that our people represent a high percentage of mental vigor, the distinction is probably due, in some measure, to the extremely important part which Talmud studies have played in the spiritual life of the race.

The Ten Commandments are the most visible symbol because these commandments are recognized by Christians and Jews alike as being the foundation of our system of public morality.

They decreed that rabbis were no longer to function as rabbis, that they could not teach, or decide Jewish questions in rabbinical courts, or be paid by their community. Each of them had to announce in the Yiddish press that he had ceased all rabbinical duties and that no one was to consult him about anything. This was to be the end of hundreds and hundreds of years of religious life.

The Jewish people trusted thmself to do nothing except that what was commanded by God; they were without will even in external things; the authority of religion extended itself even to their food. The Christian religion, on the other hand, in all external things made humankind dependent on itself, i.e. placed in it what Judaism placed out of it. … Thus do things change. What yesterday was still religion is no longer such to-day; and what to-day is atheism, to-morrow will be religion.

Christianity has spiritualised the egoism of Judaism into subjectivity (though … this subjectivity is again expressed as pure egoism), has changed the desire for earthly happiness, the goal of the Israelite religion, into the longing for heavenly bliss, which is the goal of Christianity.

To be forgiven, the person has to be sorry. In Judaism, that's called teshuvah. It means 'turning away from evil.' It's not a one-time deal, either. It's a course of action. A single act of repentance is something that makes the person who committed the evil feel better, but not the person against whom evil was committed.

In Judaism, that's called teshuvah. It means 'turning away from evil.' It's not a one-time deal, either. It's a course of action. A single act of repentance is something that makes the person who committed the evil feel better, but not the person against whom evil was committed.

30 to 40 percent of the world's Jews were killed during World War II, but not that 80 to 90 percent of the Orthodox community perished, among them many who had kept alive an ancient tradition of mysticism and meditation reaching back to the Old Testament world of the prophets.

Most people know that 30 to 40 percent of the world's Jews were killed during World War II, but not that 80 to 90 percent of the Orthodox community perished, among them many who had kept alive an ancient tradition of mysticism and meditation reaching back to the Old Testament world of the prophets.

And yet the writer who first brought monotheism to full formulation and who so clearly felt that this idea was destined to sweep the world was, in point of historical fact, quite correct. The spread of this idea, principally through Christianity and Islam, has not been what he foresaw; and in the diffusion of the idea the Jews have been more often vilified than glorified. Yet Christianity and Islam do understand themselves to worship the same being that Israel first worshiped

Judaism is much more communal, and partly as a consequence of my religious switch, I am increasingly more suspicous of my previous view that what people do in the privacy of their own home is their business alone.

If you take away the Jewish contribution to Christianity, there would be no Christianity. Judaism does not need Christianity to explain its existence; Christianity, however, cannot explain its existence without Judaism.

Judaism, again, was rejected when it rejected the Messiah.

I am half-Jewish, and yet really hadn't been brought up within the Jewish faith. So I had felt culturally Jewish, if that's possible, without really understanding it.