Jewish Literacy Revised Ed

Joseph Telushkin

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780062046048
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

What does it mean to be a Jew? How does one begin to answer so extensive a question?

In this insightful and completely updated tome, esteemed rabbi and bestselling author Joseph Telushkin helps answer the question of what it means to be a Jew, in the largest sense. Widely recognized as one of the most respected and indispensable reference books on Jewish life, culture, tradition, and religion, Jewish Literacy covers every essential aspect of the Jewish people and Judaism. In 352 short and engaging chapters, Rabbi Telushkin discusses everything from the Jewish Bible and Talmud to Jewish notions of ethics to antisemitism and the Holocaust; from the history of Jews around the world to Zionism and the politics of a Jewish state; from the significance of religious traditions and holidays to how they are practiced in daily life. Whether you want to know more about Judaism in general or have specific questions you'd like answered, Jewish Literacy is sure to contain the information you need.

Rabbi Telushkin's expert knowledge of Judaism makes the updated and revised edition of Jewish Literacy an invaluable reference. A comprehensive yet thoroughly accessible resource for anyone interested in learning the fundamentals of Judaism, Jewish Literacy is a must for every Jewish home.

PART ONE

Bible

1

TANAKH TORAH

Nevi’im/Prophets
Ketuvim/Writings

TA-NAKH — rhymes with BACH —IS AN ACRONYM FOR THE THREE categories of books that make up the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). Observant Jews do not commonly refer to the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament—that is a Christian usage.

The first five books of the Hebrew Bible comprise the Torah, and are regarded as Judaism’s central document. Along with the stories about the *Patriarchs and *Moses and the Exodus from Egypt, they contain *613 commandments, the backbone of all later Jewish law. In Hebrew the five books are also called Chumash, from the Hebrew word chamesh (five). According to Jewish tradition, the books were dictated to Moses by God sometime around 1220 B.C.E., shortly after the Exodus from Egypt.

In Hebrew, each book of the Torah is named after its first or second word, while the English names summarize the contents of the book. Thus, the first book of the Torah is called Genesis in English, because its opening chapters tell the story of the creation of the world. In this one instance, the Hebrew name is very similar, since the Torah’s opening word, Brei’sheet, means “In the beginning.” In Hebrew, the Torah’s second book is called Sh’mot, or Names, because its opening verse reads “Ay-leh shemot b’nai yisrael—And these are the names of the children of Israel.” In English the book is called Exodus, because it tells the story of the liberation of the Jewish slaves from Egypt. Leon Uris wisely chose to call his novel Exodus rather than Names.

The Torah’s third book, Leviticus (Va-Yikra in Hebrew), delineates many of the laws concerning animal sacrifices and other *Temple rituals, which were supervised by the Israelite tribe of *Levites. The fourth book, Numbers (Ba-Midbar in Hebrew), is named for the census of Israelites that is carried out early in the book. It also tells the story of *Korakh’s rebellion against Moses’ leadership. The final book of the Torah is Deuteronomy (Devarim in Hebrew). Virtually the entire book consists of Moses’ farewell address to the Israelites as they prepare to cross over to the Promised Land. He knows that he will not be permitted to enter it, but before he dies, he imparts his last thoughts to the nation he has founded.

The second category of biblical books is the Nevi’im, twenty-one books that trace Jewish history and the history of monotheism from the time of Moses’ death and the Israelites’ entrance into Canaan, around 1200 B.C.E., to the period after the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple and the ensuing exile of Jews from Jerusalem to Babylon (586 B.C.E.).

The early books of the Nevi’im (Joshua; Judges; I and II Samuel; I and II Kings) are written in a narrative style and remain among the most dramatic and vivid histories that any civilization has produced. These books are sometimes referred to as the “Early Prophets.”

The later books, written in poetic form, are what we commonly think of when referring to the prophetic books of the Bible. They primarily consist of condemnations of Israelite betrayals of monotheism’s ideals, and of calls for ethical behavior. Here you find nonstop ruminations about evil, suffering, and sin. In English the primary meaning of “prophet” is one who predicts the future; however, the corresponding Hebrew word, navi, means “spokesman for God.”

The final books of the Tanakh are known as Ketuvim, and have little in common. Some are historical; the Books of *Ezra and Nehemiah, for example, tell the story of the Jews’ return to Israel following the Babylonian exile, while I and II Chronicles provide an overview of Jewish history. Ketuvim also contain *Psalms, 150 poems, some transporting in their beauty, about man’s relationship to God.

Another book, Job, grapples with the most fundamental challenge to religion: Why does a God who is good allow so much evil in the world? (see The Trial of Job and Theodicy). In Ketuvim are also found the Five Scrolls, which include perhaps the best-known biblical book aside from the Torah, *Esther.

The Hebrew Bible has been the most influential book in human history; both Judaism and Christianity consider it to be one of their major religious texts. Several of its central ideas—that there is One God over all mankind, and one universal standard of morality; that people are obligated to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; that people should refrain from work one day a week and dedicate themselves to making that day holy; and that the Jews have been chosen by God to spread His message to the world—have transformed both how men and women have lived, and how they have understood their existence. Even the last of the ideas just enumerated, Jewish chosenness, has powerfully affected non-Jews. Indeed, the idea was so compelling that Christianity appropriated it, contending that the special covenant between God and a people had passed from the Jews (Old Israel) to the Church (New Israel). Islam, in turn, similarly insisted that *Mohammed and his followers had become God’s new messengers (see Chosen People).

The Bible influences the thought patterns of nonreligious, as well as religious, people. The idea that human beings are responsible for each other, crystallized by *Cain’s infamous question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9), has become part of the backbone of Western civilization. Our values in every area of life, even if we have never seen the inside of a synagogue or a church, are suffused with biblical concepts and images. We deride excessive materialists for “worshiping the Golden Calf” (Exodus 32:4), and forgetting that “man does not live by bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3). The appeal to a man’s conscience can be like “a voice crying in the wilderness” (*Isaiah 40:3). “Pride goes before a fall,” Proverbs (16:18) warns us, while the cynical, jaded *Ecclesiastes teaches: “There is nothing new under the sun” (1:9). In daily speech, when we refer to a plague, we are of course harking back to that famous series of *Ten Plagues that struck ancient Egypt.

The Bible is so basic to Jewish life that when I drew up a list of terms that make up basic Jewish literacy, almost twenty percent came from the Bible. And yet, as important as the Bible is, few people today read it. Even religious Jews generally restrict their reading of Tanakh to the Torah, the Psalms, and the Five Scrolls. Yet, without a knowledge of the basic textbook of Judaism, how can any person claim to be Jewishly literate?

SOURCES AND FURTHER READINGS: One of the finest Jewish translations of the Tanakh is that of the Jewish Publication Society. Throughout this book, I generally have relied on the very readable JPS translation, though occasionally I have used other translations, or translated the verses myself. The JPS Torah, by the way, comes to only 334 pages: One can actually sit down and read it like a book. In recent years, several important new translations, with brief commentaries, have appeared: Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, Richard Friedman, Commentary on the Torah with a New English Translation, and Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. There are a number of longer, and well-done, Torah commentaries available, including Joseph Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (Orthodox), Nosson Scherman, The Chumash: The Stone Edition (Orthodox), David Lieber, ed., Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (Conservative), and W. Gunther Plaut, ed., The Torah: A Modem Commentary (Reform). Several prominent Bible scholars in the Conservative movement have recently produced a new, rather extensive commentary on the Torah, also published by JPS: Genesis and Exodus (Nahum Sarna), Leviticus (Baruch Levine), Numbers (Jacob Milgrom), and Deuteronomy (Jeffrey Tigay). While the books are all of high quality, I have had occasion to study Milgrom’s commentary in depth and found it to be brilliant. The late Nehama Leibowitz, a Torah scholar in Israel who popularized the study of Torah among many people, published six volumes of studies covering all five books of the Torah, entitled Studies in the Book of. … At the end of each chapter, Leibowitz usually poses questions to prompt further study and discussion. Joan Comay has written a very useful and readable work, Who’s Who in the Bible, an encyclopedic dictionary of all the people who appear in the Tanakh. A general introduction to and overview of the Bible are contained in my book Biblical Literacy: The Most Important People, Events, and Ideas of the Hebrew Bible. A popular guide to the prophets is Hannah Grad Goodman, The Story of Prophecy, which actually is a text written for teenagers; I have found it very helpful in understanding what was distinctive in the messages of the various prophets. A very important work is Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets. A good one-volume history of the Hebrews during the biblical period is John Bright, A History of Israel. The list of common biblical expressions used in English found near the end of this entry is taken from Gabriel Sivan, The Bible and Civilization, p. 207.

2

ADAM AND EVE THE GARDEN OF EDEN

THE TORAH’S OPENING CHAPTER DESCRIBES GOD’S CREATION OF THE world. Genesis’ goal is not to give a textbook lesson in science, but to affirm that nature, which many people in the ancient world worshiped as a deity, was created by God. In general, the biblical view of creation is optimistic. Repeatedly, the Torah notes concerning God’s creations: “And God saw that it was good” (1:10, 12, 18, 21, 31).

On the sixth day of creation, God creates the first person, Adam, whose name becomes the Hebrew word for human being. As John Milton noted, the first thing God ever specifies as being “not good” is Adam’s solitude: “It is not good for man to be alone,” He says. “I will make a helpmate for him” (2:18). God puts Adam into a deep sleep, takes a rib (actually, the Hebrew text is not really clear what it was) from his body, and fashions from it the first woman, Eve. The very first of the Torah’s *613 commandments is addressed to the couple: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and master it” (1:28).

Adam and Eve reside in paradise, in a land known as the Garden of Eden. God provides all their needs, imposing but one prohibition on the couple: They are not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The shrewd, and strangely talkative, serpent tells Eve that if she eats from the tree she will be as knowledgeable as God Himself: “God knows that as soon as you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). After a slight hesitation, Eve eats of the tree’s fruit—there is no reason, by the way, to suppose that the fruit she eats is an apple—and then persuades Adam to eat from it as well. God is displeased. There was only one command He asked the couple to keep, only one thing in the universe denied to them, yet they were disobedient. His punishment is severe: Adam and Eve are exiled from Eden, they are fated to die, and God will no longer supply their needs. Adam must now earn his living by the sweat of his brow, while Eve is to be subject to her husband’s domination, and will bring forth children in pain.

While traditional Jewish commentaries condemn Eve’s sin, the late Jewish educator Shlomo Bardin offered a brilliant parable to explain her act of disobedience. “Imagine,” Bardin taught, “that a young woman marries a young man whose father is president of a large company. After the marriage, the father makes the son a vice-president and gives him a large salary, but because he has no work experience, the father gives him no responsibilities. Every week, the young man draws a large check, but he has nothing to do. His wife soon realizes that she is not married to a man but to a boy, and that as long as her husband stays in his father’s firm, he will always be a boy. So she forces him to quit his job, give up his security, go to another city, and start out on his own. That,” Bardin concluded, “is the reason Eve ate from the tree.”

In Christian theology this story of disobedience became the Original Sin with which all of mankind was permanently stained. But Jews have never regarded it with the same seriousness. It was an act of defiance, to be sure, and because it transgressed God’s command, it was a sin. But the idea that every child is born damned for that sin is alien to Jewish thought.

Despite the harsh sentence, Adam lives more than nine hundred years, and he and Eve’s descendants eventually populate the entire world. Genesis’ assertion that all mankind descend from this one couple is the basis for the biblical view that human beings —of all races and religions—are brothers and sisters.

3

CAIN AND ABEL (GENESIS 4:1–16) “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”

PERHAPS NOTHING CONVEYS THE BIBLE’S SOBRIETY ABOUT HUMAN nature more effectively than this tale of the first two brothers in history, one of whom murders the other. The motive for the killing is envy. Both Cain and Abel had brought sacrifices before the Lord, but God was more pleased with Abel’s, because he “brought the choicest of his flock,” while Cain apparently tried to get by with something less generous. Instead of protesting to God for ignoring his gift, Cain attacks Abel in the field and kills him. Then, when God asks him, “Where is your brother Abel?” he arrogantly responds, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

In essence, the entire Bible is written as an affirmative response to this question. “What have you done?” God rails at Cain. “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the earth.” The Hebrew word used, d’mei, actually is the plural of the Hebrew word for blood, literally meaning “bloods”—“your brother’s bloods cry out to me from the earth” —which the rabbis understood to mean “his blood and the blood of his unborn descendants” (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5). From this perspective, most killers are mass murderers, since they bear responsibility not onl...