assignment

326 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

good, all-powerful God and evil exist at one and the same time? Zoroastrian's explan- ation is simple but at the same time profound: Ahura Mazda is the only God, and

ultimately order and goodness will win out over chaos and evil. But in the meantime

the existence of evil cannot be denied, and so it must be addressed. A great cosmic

struggle is being played out, with forces of evil aligned against forces of good. Ahura

Mazda, while not responsible for the origin of these forces of evil, orchestrates the

gradual process by which the cosmos will be purged of evil and good will prevail for all eternity.

We will investigate this cosmic struggle in detail shortly. First we note that Zoro-

astrianism embraces not just one but two forms of dualism. Interrelated with the dual-

ism of good and evil is the dualism of spirit and matter.

Spirit and Matter Zoroastrianism teaches that reality is divisible into two realms: that of spirit and thought and that of matter and physicality. Everything in existence embodies both realms. Readers familiar with Platonic philosophy will recognize simi-

larities with Zoroastrian spirit/matter dualism-and, indeed, Greek philosophy, Pla-

tonic and also Aristotelian, might have influenced Zoroastrian beliefs.

Human beings must orient themselves toward the spiritual realm in order to live

righteously and in accordance with order and ultimately to achieve salvation. And

yet, Zoroastrianism teaches a healthy regard for the body and its enjoyments, within appropriate limits. The realm of spirit and thought is the true origin of human life,

but embodiment is not a negative thing. In fact, as we will consider in more detail

later in the chapter, it is a general religious duty for Zoroastrians to have children,

thereby furthering the embodiment of the realm of spirit or thought within the

realm of matter or body. And ultimately, the final triumph of good over evil depends

on this. But in order to understand Zoroastrian teachings on this final triumph, we must first examine the dualism of good and evil and the opposing forces at work in

the cosmos.

Order and Chaos The Zoroastrian dualism of order and chaos involves two key concepts. Asha is "order," the true, cosmic order that pervades both the natural and social spheres of reality, encompassing the moral and religious life of individuals. Asha is symbolized by light, and therefore by the sun and by fire.

Asha is opposed by the "Lie," or druj. Whereas asha gives rise to good thoughts, words, and deeds, druj gives rise to evil thoughts, words, and deeds. The two are fun- damentally incompatible and locked in a cosmic struggle. Soon we will focus on the

relevance of this struggle for human beings. First, we investigate how this dualism

divides the Zoroastrian pantheon of divine beings.

The Divine Realm Earlier we noted that most Zoroastrians today consider their religion to be monothe-

istic. This section on the divine realm might therefore come as a surprise, given the extensive array of deities and other supernatural beings that it describes. But in fact,

The Teachings of Zoroastrianism 327

the case of Zoroastrianism is not so different from that of other notable monotheistic

religions. The Bible makes many references to supernatural beings-seraphim, cheru-

bim, angels-other than the one God of Judaism and of Christianity. Likewise the

Qur'an, while strongly emphasizing belief in only one God, Allah, assumes the exist-

ence of other supernatural beings, namely angels, devils, and jinn (who can be good or

evil; see Chapter 13). All three of these monotheistic religions acknowledge the exist- ence of an Evil One, named Satan.

Ahura Mazda Zoroastrianism emerged from an earlier Iranian religious perspective that undoubtedly was polytheistic. Zarathustra seems to have been responsible for

declaring that one god is primary and qualitatively above all others: Ahura Mazda, the "Wise Lord" (ahura in ancient Iranian means "lord"; there is no other known ancient

usage of the term Mazda) . In later centuries, Zoroastrians came also to use the name

Ohrmazd to refer to their God.

Zarathustra worshiped Ahura Mazda as the only eternal deity, responsible for the

creation of the world. This is not to say that Ahura Mazda is responsible for the evil

that also has existed since the beginning of time. Zarathustra taught that Ahura

Mazda ultimately will overcome evil, and that to do so he created this world. It is in the realm of the physical world that the embodied forces of order and good do battle

against the embodied forces of chaos and evil. The final triumph will be accomplished

through the forces of good aligned with Ahura Mazda.

Divine Forces of Good Especially prominent among the forces of good are the seven Amesha Spentas, the "Beneficial Immortals," angels who help Ahura Mazda

Integration of the dualism of spirit/matter and the dualism of order (good)-chaos (evil). The spirit of asha, personified in the yazatas ("ones worthy of worship"), is embodied in the physical world; so too is the spirit of druj, personified as the daevas, embodied in the physical world-the stage on which the cosmic struggle between good and evil is played out.

Thought World

Asha Yazatas

Druj Daevas

govern creation. Chief among these seven is Spenta Mainyu, Ahura Mazda's Holy Spirit. TheAmesha Spentas function together as semi-independent powers, all of

them in service of Ahura Mazda. Among them is Asha,

the cosmic principle of order that we have already en-

countered. Each of the Amesha Spentas constitutes an element of the cosmos; Asha, for example (whose full

name is Asha Vahishta, "Best Order"), constitutes fire.

The seven Amesha Spentas are assisted by a large

number of deities called yazatas, "ones worthy of wor- ship." Eventually the number was fixed at thirty, so that each day of the Zoroastrian month is represented by a

different yazata (this includes the seven Amesha Spentas,

~o ~ 0 roz

who sometimes are classified along with the yazatas). One

of the most important among them is Mithra, a god of

light who works to keep human beings in harmony with

asha. As we will see in the later section on the history of Zoroastrianism, Mithra was to become a very popular

z ~---~---~--~---~~~ WO 0~ Cl. C) Cl)

Possessing Truth Possessing Lie

Physical World

328 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

Compare other religions with Zoroastrianism on how they deal with the

problem of evil.

god in Roman culture, in the mystery religion ofMithras (his Greek and Latin name).

Another yazata of particular note is Sraosha ("Obedience"), the caretaker of the souls of the dead who also plays an important role in overseeing ritual practices.

The "Lie" and Forces of Evil From the beginning of time, Spenta Mainyu, Ahura Mazda's Holy Spirit, has battled against his adversary Angra Mainyu, the "Foul Spirit," who in later texts also is named Ahriman. This battle is at the basis of the

cosmic dualism between order and chaos, also manifested in the struggle between asha and the "Lie," or druj. One of Zoroastrianism's earliest texts provides us with insight

regarding the battle and its participants:

Truly there were two primal Spirits, twins renowned to be in conflict.

In thought and word, in act they are two: the better and the bad. And

those who act well have chosen rightly between these two, not so the

evildoers. And when these two Spirits first came together they created

life and not-life, and how at the end Worst Existence shall be for the

wicked, but (the House of) Best Purpose for the just man . Of these two

Spirits the Wicked One chose achieving the worst things. The Most Holy

Spirit, who is clad in hardest stone, chose right, and (so do those) who

shall satisfy Lord Mazda continually with rightful acts. The Daevas indeed

did not choose rightly between these two, for the Deceiver approached

them as they conferred. Because they chose worst purpose, they then

rushed to Fury, with whom they have afflicted the world and mankind. -Yasna 30.2-6,from the Gathas2

The daevas mentioned here are the various demonic powers (daevas in ancient Iranian originally meant "gods," but eventually came to mean "demons"). Notably, as

this text reports, the daevas came to be demonic because they chose "worst purpose." As we will see, this same opportunity for choice presents itself throughout the lifetime

of each human being.

Creation and the Nature of the World Zoroastrianism cosmology, or teachings on the nature of the world, posits three pro- gressive phases: the creation of the physical world; the mixing in the physical world of

the embodied spirits of evil forces with those of good forces; and the final transforma-

tion, in which the world will be cleansed of all evil.

According to Zoroastrianism's most prominent creation myth, in the beginning

Ahura Mazda conceived a plan for creation and also secured the support of the frav- ishis, preexisting higher souls and guardian spirits of individual human beings. Distinct from the lower souls that exist together with human bodies, the fravishis were to descend into the material world once it was created, where they combat the forces of evil and

gently guide human beings toward ethical lives and the realization of their true nature.

The Teachings of Zoroastrianism 329

After Ahura Mazda had taken these initial steps he over-

came Angra Mainyu, who fell into a kind of stupor for

3,000 years, and then created theAmesha Spentas ("Bene- ficial Immortals"). He also created asha, the cosmic order that underlies the universe, intended to serve as a bulwark

against the destructive actions of Angra Mainyu. During this period of 3,000 years, Ahura Mazda

and the Amesha Spentas created the physical world. As the primary textual account makes clear, the process of

creation took place in seven stages:

When the Evil Spirit was helpless in prostration, he lay prostrate for 3,000 years. During the helplessness of the Evil Spirit, Ohrmazd cre- ated the creation materially. First, He created the Sky as a defence; second, He created Water, to defeat the demon of thirst; third, He cre- ated the all-solid Earth; fourth, He created the Plant, to help the ben- eficient Animal; fifth, He created the beneficent Animal, to help the Just Man; sixth, He created the Just Man, to smite the Evil Spirit to- gether with the devs and to make them powerless. And then He cre- ated Fire and linked its brilliance to the Endless Light.

-Bundahishn 10.1-43

The "Just Man" is the first human being. (The "devs" are the daevas we have already discussed.) The "Fire" of the seventh stage is represented by the sun.

According to the same account, the entire span of time between creation and the final triumph of good over evil will be 12,000 years. After the 3,000-year period

during which the physical world was created comes the period of the Mixture, during

which Angra Mainyu is again active and the evil spirit forces are mixed together with

the spirit forces of good-hence the cosmic struggle that currently is ongoing. Angra

Mainyu and the evil forces destroyed the primordial Plant, Animal (a bull), and Just

Man. But these victories would prove to be only temporary. Eventually there will ensue the period leading up to the final triumph of good over

evil. This will be achieved through the separation of the evil from the good, culminat-

ing in complete purification. The ultimate purpose of human life is to help bring about

this purification through leading virtuous lives according to Zoroastrian teachings.

Human Nature and Human Destiny Dualism, the most significant feature of Zoroastrian teachings, lies at the heart of the

religion's perspective on human nature and human destiny. As is detailed in this sec- tion, the meaning of life rests in ethical choice: whether to comply with Zarathustra's

revelations and live in accordance with asha, cosmic order, or to deviate from this and succumb to the evil ways of druj, the Lie.

The best-known symbol of Zoroastrianism, the Faravahar is believed to represent the fravishis. This example is from Yazd, Iran.

330 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

Dualism in Human Life: Ethical Choice Zoroastrianism teaches that human beings are free to choose to live in harmony with asha. This way of living involves making Ahura Mazda, the transcendent God, immanent in one's own being, a bless-

ing made possible through Spenta Mainyu, the Holy Spirit of Ahura Mazda, whose

worldly creation is humankind. Zoroastrian teachings regarding human nature and destiny can be simplified by

considering a few parallels involving the basic dualism of good and evil. Asha is op- posed to druj. Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu are, respectively, spirits of good and

evil because of the choice they made. This choice is the prototype of the ethical choice

confronting every individual.

Judgment of the Soul The ethical choices made in life determine the fate of the soul in the afterlife. The outcome of these ethical choices is knowable by the individ-

ual's thoughts, words, and deeds. The goodness of these three must outweigh the evil

if the individual is to be saved and to live for eternity in heaven. The alternative is

eternal torment in hell.

Zoroastrian teachings on the judgment of the soul involve two aspects that are especially notable: the Daena and the Chinvat Bridge.

The Daena is a feminine being who embodies the individual's ethical quality and

who appears to the soul after death. If the individual has lived in harmony with asha, then the Daena appears as a beautiful young woman. To the soul of an evil individual,

however, the Daena appears as an ugly old hag.

The Chinvat Bridge needs to be crossed by the soul in order to reach the afterlife. For the good individual, the Chinvat Bridge is wide and easy to cross. But for the evil,

it is razor-thin, causing the soul to plummet down into hell.

The Final Triumph The ultimate purpose of individual striving for righteousness transcends the salvation of the individual soul. The combined efforts of each individ-

ual's striving will eventually overcome evil, bringing about the purification of the

world and the final triumph. At some point (the date is uncertain), new teachings arose that involved elabora-

tion on this doctrine of the final triumph. These teachings asserted that a messianic

savior figure, named Saoshyant, a son of Zarathustra (whose semen is said to have

been miraculously preserved in a lake), will appear to usher in the events that will

transform the wicked world into the glorious and eternal kingdom of Ahura Mazda.

The cosmic struggle will culminate in a battle between the yazatas, allied with righ- teous human beings, and the daevas, allied with evildoers, in which the good will emerge victorious. Then the dead will be resurrected, and all souls will be judged, the

evil being burned in molten metal. The righteous will be saved, to live forever in the

presence of Ahura Mazda.

The History of Zoroastrianism 331

THE HISTORY OF ZOROASTRIANISM Its roots reaching back 3,000 years to the ancient Iranian tribes, Zoroastrianism by

the sixth century B.C.E. had become the dominant religion in Iran. But the rise of Islam in the seventh century C .E. changed the religious culture of the Middle East,

pushing Zoroastrians into corners of the world where their numbers have dwindled.

Still, Zoroastrianism persists as a living religion, and its teachings and practices con-

tinue to fascinate scholars and other observers.

The Background of Zoroastrianism The lndo-lranians At some time about 2000 B.C.E., two nomadic peoples related by language and religion began moving southward from their ancestral home in Central

Asia. One was the Indo-Aryans, who migrated to what are now Pakistan and western

India. There, joining with the indigenous population, they produced Vedic culture and laid the foundations of Hinduism. The other was the Indo-Iranians, who found a

new homeland on the Iranian Plateau just east of Mesopotamia. Living apart from

their cousins, these ancient Iranians formed a religious tradition very different from

Hinduism. And yet both retained vestiges of their common past. Consider, for

instance, a linguistic example with clear religious implications: Iranian daevas and Indian devas both mean "gods" or "spirits."

Iranian Peoples and Languages There were several early Iranian peoples whose languages became the languages of Zoroastrianism. Avestan, spoken by tribes of

northeastern Iran, is the language in which the earliest Zoroastrian text, the Avesta, is written. In fact, the development of the Avesta over time resulted in some parts being written in Old Avestan and others in Younger Avestan.

Developing alongside Avestan was Old Persian, a language from the southwest-

ern region of Pars (also Parsa), from which "Persia" derives. Old Persian texts relat-

ing to Zoroastrianism are mostly cuneiform inscriptions written on clay tablets and

seals between 600 and 300 B.C.E. A later form of Old Persian is Middle Persian,

usually called Pahlavi in connection with Zoroastrian texts. Inscriptions in Pahlavi can be dated as early as the third century C.E. Most of the Zoroastrian scriptures

were written in Pahlavi in the eighth and ninth centuries C .E. after circulating orally

for centuries.

Pre-Zoroastrian Religion Ancient texts tell us that early Iranian religion had marked similarities with early Hinduism as described in the Vedas (Chapter 4). They describe worship of the daevas as widespread in Iran, just as devotion to the devas was

common in India. The daevas were personifications of the aspects of nature on which

all people depend: sky, sun, earth, fire, water, wind, and so forth. There was also a

higher order of deities, known as ahuras ("lords"), responsible for maintaining order in

the universe as a whole. These included Intar, a war god known as Indra in the

332 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

Hindu Vedas; Mithra (Vedic Mitra), a god of light who gave cattle and children to

the Iranians; and Yima (Vedic Yama), ruler of the dead. Finally, our sources describe

belief in asha, an underlying natural and moral order that promoted goodness in all

its forms-most notably light, truth, and justice. At times, order would be overcome

by chaos in its many aspects-such as darkness, falsehood, and injustice-only to

reestablish itselflater. The universe was the setting for an unending struggle between order and chaos.

Human beings could support the forces of order through religious practices de-

signed to strengthen them: sacrifices of cereal grains and, more commonly, animals;

fire worship; and the preparation and consumption of haoma, a sacred drink made from the sour, milky juice of the soma plant (and similar to the soma drink described in the Vedas) . In time, however, the violence involved in animal sacrifices, the cost of

sacred rituals, and the power of the priests who conducted them became oppressive to

many of the early Iranians. One of them was Zarathustra.

Zarathustra Scholars cannot agree on where and when we should locate the life of Zarathustra.

Some scholars go so far as to argue that he was not a historical figure at all. Most plau-

sibly, Zarathustra is indeed a historical figure, who lived in eastern Iran or in Central

Asia at some point between 1300 and 550 B.C.E. Legends preserved in Zoroastrianism's sacred texts say that Zarathustra dis-

played religious inclinations even as a child and that at the age of twenty he left

his family and the wife they had found for him in order to search for truth.

Ten years later he had a vision of Ahura Mazda. Lifted out of his material body,

Zarathustra was taken up into a heavenly court, where he beheld Ahura Mazda, the "Wise Lord," attended by his angels. Calling upon Zarathustra to be his

prophet, Ahura Mazda, leader of the forces of asha (order), revealed the grave

threat posed by Angra Mainyu, the "foul spirit" and leader of the forces of chaos.

In additional visions occurring over the next eight years, each of the six principal angels of Ahura Mazda appeared to Zarathustra and elaborated on the content of

the first vision. By the time the visions ended, Zarathustra understood the message Ahura Mazda wanted him to proclaim to human beings: Ahura Mazda was the

Supreme Being and the power upon which order depended. Human beings could

join in the struggle against Angra Mainyu by resolving to live lives of exemplary

morality. Any other decision would establish them as allies of Angra Mainyu. At

the end of time every human being would be judged on the moral quality of his or

her life and assigned to an eternity either in the paradise of Ahura Mazda or the hellish pits of Angra Mainyu.

There was much that was new in the revelations Zarathustra had received. Ahura

Mazda, formerly on equal terms with other ahuras, was now raised to a level far above

them. Ethical conduct on the part of the individual now displaced sacrificial rituals

performed by priests as the most significant form of human activity. Human beings

The History of Zoroastrianism 333

were now understood as full participants and no longer as semiengaged bystanders in the cosmic struggle between order and chaos, good and evil.

The unfamiliarity of ideas like these no doubt helps to explain the difficulty Zara-

thustra encountered in finding converts to the new religion-the one true religion-

he had learned from Ahura Mazda and his angels. It is also likely that many people resented certain reforms made by Zarathustra, who forbade sacrifices to the daevas, whom he saw as agents of Angra Mainyu, and sought to put an end to the drinking of

the intoxicating haoma at animal sacrifices because of the erratic behavior and sexual

license that resulted from this combination. It is said that he suffered through many years of discouragement and that Angra Mainyu himself urged him to give up. But

then Zarathustra came to the court of King Vishtaspa, whom legend describes as a

good man surrounded by a class of wicked priests. Profiting from their bloody animal sacrifices and from popular belief that their magic could ensure good harvests and

protection from the raids of nomadic tribes, the priests were able to arouse so great an

opposition to Zarathustra that he was thrown into prison. But when Zarathustra man-

aged to perform a miraculous cure for Vishtaspa's favorite horse, the king took a stand

against the priests and converted his kingdom to Zarathustra's new religion. From this

point on, Zarathustra and his followers had great success in bringing it to other parts of Iran. According to Zoroastrian scripture, Zarathustra died at the age of seventy-

seven, killed by a nomadic raider in the city of Balkh (in modern Afghanistan) while

performing a ritual at his fire altar.

Zoroastrian Scriptures The Avesta The oldest and most important of the Zoroastrian scriptures is the Avesta, a collection of sacred texts that preserve the teachings given to Zarathustra by

Ahura Mazda and a great deal besides. The history of the Avesta is described in later texts written in Pahlavi. According to the tradition, the Avesta we have today is a rem-

nant of a much larger collection of texts said to have been destroyed when Alexander

the Great conquered the Persian Empire in the fourth century B.C.E.

The Avesta is organized into five parts. The Yasna consists of material recited by

priests when performing their liturgical functions. At the core of the Yasna are the Gathas, hymns attributed to Zarathustra. Written in a very ancient dialect, the Gathas

are the part of the Avesta thought to most accurately reflect the life and thought of

Zarathustra. The Visperad is a collection of texts recited along with the Yasna in order

to solemnize seasonal celebrations, such as the Zoroastrian New Year's Day. Unlike

the Yasna and Visperad, which are liturgical collections, the primary purpose of the

Vendidad is to describe the many ways in which the daevas work evil in the world and various means for confounding them. The Vendidad also contains stories about the

creation of the world, the first human being, and the temptation of Zarathustra by

Angra Mainyu. The Yashts constitute a collection of hymns that venerate Zoroastrian

virtues such as wisdom, truth, justice, and obedience and the angels associated with

them. Originally, there were thirty Yashts, one dedicated to each day of the month.

Compare the role of Zarathustra as founder of Zoroastrianism with the roles of other founders of world religions: for example, the Buddha, Mahavira, Guru Nanak, Confucius, or Muhammad.

334 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

Only twenty-one survive today. The final part of the Avesta is the Khordeh Avesta.

Sometimes called the "concise Avesta," it consists of selections from the rest of the

Avesta that are used by laypeople in the course of their daily lives. These include Yashts

and special prayers recited during the five parts of the day, before undertaking certain

tasks, and before eating and drinking.

Pahlavi Texts In addition to the Avesta, there are numerous later texts written in Pahlavi. Two of the most important are the Denkard and the Bundahishn. The Den- kard is a compendium of materials relating to Zoroastrian beliefs and customs, some

of them much older than the Denkard itself. It includes doctrines; instructions for ethical behavior; the writings of Zoroastrian sages; observations on the arts and sci-

ences, as well as on philosophical and theological topics; a history of the world up to

the time of Zarathustra; and substantial material on Zarathustra himself. The Bunda- hishn ("Primal Creation") is technically not scripture, though it elaborates on ideas

found in the Avesta. Earlier in this chapter we studied the myth of creation as pre-

sented in the Bundahishn.

Zoroastrianism through the Centuries We will return soon to Zoroastrianism as a living religion, but it is important first to

survey the course of its history from ancient times to the present. As we do, we will pause briefly to take note of the great deal it had in common with other ancient reli-

gions and to comment on the fascination Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism have held

for Western artists and thinkers.

Zoroastrianism in the Persian Empire (550-330 e.c.E.) The history of Zoroas- trianism in the period immediately following the time ofZarathustra is uncertain. The

historical record begins in the sixth century B.C.E. with the Histories of Herodotus, a

Greek who lived a century later. Herodotus's interest in the Persian Empire-so-called because the ancestral home of its Achaemenid Dynasty was Pars ("Persia") in south-

western Iran-can be explained by the fact that it invaded Greece twice in the early

years of Herodotus's own century. Wanting to provide his countrymen with an ac-

count of the culture of the enemy, Herodotus included his observations on the religion

of the Persians and, in particular, the Magi. These appear to have been members of a

powerful Zoroastrian priestly caste in the empire of the neighboring Medes, which

was annexed to the newer Persian Empire by its founder, Cyrus the Great, in 550 B.C .E. Owing to the unwelcome political intrigues of the Magi, Cyrus and his son Cambyses

II curtailed their influence and sometimes persecuted them. But Zoroastrianism began

to gain momentum with the accession of Darius I (r. 549-485 B.C.E.), who credited Ahura Mazda with bringing him to power. Thereafter, the religious culture of the Per-

sian Empire became thoroughly Zoroastrian, and the role of the Magi as priests was

secured. Surviving monuments and inscriptions testify to the influence of Zoroastri- anism, as do a number of Avestan texts from this period.

The History of Zoroastrianism 335

Zoroastrianism in the Parthian Empire (247 e.c.E.- 224 C.E.) Achaemenid Persia fell to the Greeks and Macedonians under Alexander the Great in 330 B.C.E.

A century later, Iran made a resurgence under a new dy-

nasty of rulers from the region of Parthia. At its height, the Parthian Empire encompassed Iran, Mesopotamia,

and parts of the Arabian Peninsula and what is now

Turkey. Its culture was heterogeneous, combining the

Iranian and Greek cultures with features of many others

found within its borders. This can be seen, for example,

in the Parthian tendency to equate Iranian and Greek deities. Thus Ahura Mazda was identified with Zeus and

Angra Mainyu with Hades.

Because the Parthian kings did not give Zoroastrianism the endorsement it had

enjoyed under the Achaemenids, its status during this period was somewhat dimin-

ished. Still, there is evidence that some Parthian rulers built fire altars to honor Ahura

Mazda and had Magi serve as priests in their courts. The Magi (sometimes translated "wise men") described in the Gospel of Matthew as coming to visit the infant Jesus

would have begun their journey in Parthian Iran.

Zoroastrianism in the Sassanid Empire (224-651) Much larger than that of the Parthians, the Sassanid Empire included all of today's Iran, Iraq, Armenia, and Afghanistan, as well as parts of Turkey, Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, and Central

Asia. It was the last of the Iranian empires before the conquest of the Middle East by

Muslim Arabs and the only one to formally adopt Zoroastrianism as the state religion.

This was, however, a Zurvanite Zoroastrianism that differed from the traditional Maz-

dean form in teaching that Ahura Mazda (now known as Ohrmazd) and Angra

Mainyu were twin brothers produced by Zurvan, a higher creator god. Thus Zurva- nism departed from orthodox Zoroastrianism in demoting Ahura Mazda from his

status as the Supreme Being and in creating a link between good and evil that was

denied by other Zoroastrians, who saw these two principles as being completely sepa-

rate and absolutely opposed to each other. The Sassanids also encouraged the worship

of some of the old Iranian gods, such as Mithra, the god oflight, and Anahita, goddess

of water and the moon. The Sassanid rulers aggressively promoted their form of Zoroastrianism. With

their support, the basic features of its rituals were established, and a priestly hierarchy

was created, with the chief priests assigned to every region being supervised by a high

priest. The most important duty assigned to priests was the tending of the sacred flame

of Ahura Mazda in fire temples. Because fire, like water, was considered an agent of

purity, great care was taken to avoid pollution; thus Zoroastrian priests adopted the habit of wearing cloth masks that covered the mouth and nostrils to prevent any un-

clean element from coming into contact with the fire. Because the bodies of the dead

This wall carving features a Faravahar, thought to represent the fravishis. The wall is located in Persepolis, the ancient ceremonial center of the Achaemenid Empire.

336 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

had the potential to pollute fire, earth, and water, they were exposed on high places,

such as mountaintops, where vultures and other scavenging animals would pick the

bones clean before putrefaction could begin.

Zoroastrianism and Other Ancient Religions One of the most striking features of Zoroastrianism is the number of features it shares with other ancient religions.

The number of points of similarity in the Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian scrip-

tures is especially impressive. There are far too many to mention here, but a few good

examples will make the point. Just as the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda is an all-powerful,

all-knowing, and eternal being who exercises his creative power in the world through

his Spenta Mainyu (Holy Spirit), the God of Jews and Christians makes his presence

known in the world through the Spirit of God Qudaism) or Holy Spirit (Christianity). All three religions imagine God, supported by angels, locked in a struggle with Evil,

backed by demons. All three anticipate an end of the world that will involve the coming

of a savior, the resurrection of the dead, judgment, the restoration of the world to a state

of perfection, and life everlasting. All three describe God as intervening in human af-.

fairs in order to communicate his nature and will to human beings. The scriptures of all

three religions describe human beings as descended from a single, primordial couple. Finally, not long after their creation, a great catastrophe destroys all of humanity except

for a single righteous individual and his family-in Zoroastrianism (according to one

Avestan text), it is a cataclysmic winter; in Judaism and Christianity, a great flood.

Although noting such similarities is easy, explaining them is difficult. As it is well

known that Jews and Iranians were in dose contact beginning in the sixth century

B.C.E., most scholars believe that the religion of the Jews (and, through them, that of the Christians) was influenced by Zoroastrianism. Claims that Jews influenced Zoroastri-

ans have not won significant support. A more successful argument has been that the

shared beliefs of the two religions reached the forms they take in their respective scrip-

tures at roughly the same time, and so their similarity can be explained as the result

either of a collaborative creativity or of a parallel development nourished by a shared

cultural milieu. The matter of influence is much clearer with respect to Manichaeism, a religion

that appeared shortly after the founding of the Sassanid Empire in the mid-third cen-

tury. At that time Mani, an itinerant prophet, began preaching an extreme form of

dualism that combined elements of Zoroastrianism with aspects of other Iranian reli-

gions and Christianity. Manichaeism enjoyed great success in the third through fifth centuries, when it was one of the most visible religions in the Roman Empire and was

practiced as far east as China. Manichaeism's central teaching, that the world is di-

vided by the struggle between the forces of light and darkness, clearly derives from

Zoroastrianism. It is also true that Zoroastrian deities were included in its pantheon.

But Mani's teaching that all matter is evil and only spirit is good cannot have come

from Zoroastrianism, which teaches that spirit is indeed sometimes evil-most not- ably of course in the case of Angra Mainyu. Similarly, Mani's claim that all material

The History of Zoroastrianism 337

reality is formed from the substance of Satan differs radically from the

Zoroastrian teaching that matter was created by Ahura Mazda, the

source of all good things.

A final ancient religion with Zoroastrian associations is Mithraism.

Based on devotion to the ancient Iranian god Mithra, known as Mithras

in the West, Mithraism thrived in the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries C.E. It was one of the mystery religions of the Greco-

Roman world, so-called because membership was limited to initiates (in this

case, only men) into the secrets of their underlying myths. From Roman

times until the late twentieth century, Mithraism was understood as an

Iranian religion that had managed to make its way westward. But recent

scholarship has shown that although Mithras and his iconography (such as his slaying of a divine bull) had their origins in ancient Iran, where Mithra was in-

cluded in the Zoroastrian pantheon, the actual content of the religion was more closely

related to the speculations of intellectuals in what is now southeastern Turkey about

the stars and their relationship to human events. Still, the mere presence of Mithra

in the West speaks to the influence and prestige of Zoroastrianism far from its

Iranian homeland.

Zoroastrianism and the Coming of Islam In the seventh century the Sassanid Empire was overthrown by the Arabs, converts to Islam who were then conquering

much of the Middle East. Although the Zoroastrians of Iran now found themselves

living under an Islamic government, they managed at first to cope with their new

circumstances because the Qur'an called upon Muslims to be lenient in their treat- ment of non-Muslims to whom God had given a book of scripture. The Arab conquer-

ors were satisfied that the Avesta, like the Jewish and Christian scriptures, qualified as

just such a book. Zoroastrians were required to pay a special tax imposed on all non-

Muslims, and there were occasional acts of violence against them, but there was secu-

rity in the fact that they remained the majority in Iran.

But the position of Zoroastrians had deteriorated markedly within a century after the arrival of the Arabs. Zoroastrians were subjected to harassment and violence,

priests were executed, fire temples were destroyed or turned into mosques, and books

of scripture were burned. Worse, Zoroastrians lost their status as a "People of the

Book" and the protections it offered. The dangers of their situation were enough to

persuade many Zoroastrians to capitulate and convert to Islam. Conversion was made easier by a legend invented to link Shi'a Islam, the dominant form in Iran, with the

Zoroastrian royalty of the Sassanid Empire. According to the story, the fourth Shi'a

imam was the son of Husayn, Muhammad's grandson, and a Sassanid princess. The

effect of these and other factors on Iran's Zoroastrians was dramatic. By the end of the

eighth century they had become a religious minority.

By the tenth century Arab rule of Iran had come to an end. It was replaced by a series of Iranian dynasties, some with Turkish or Kurdish associations, that lasted

The tauroctony ("bull- slaying") was the universal symbol of Mithraism. The symbol includes several features drawn from ancient Iranian religion, including the slaying of a primordial bull and the figure of Mithras himself, known in Zoroastrianism as Mithra, one of the yazatas ("ones worthy of worship").

338 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

World Zoroastrian

population.

until the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979. Throughout this period the

number of Zoroastrians in Iran continued to decline steadily. Those who remained

faithful to their religious traditions continued to suffer discrimination, periodic perse-

cutions, and economic hardship.

Zoroastrianism in the Modern World There is some irony in the fact that there has been a fascination with Zarathustra

among artists and thinkers in the modern West-a time and place in which few people

have any contact with Zoroastrianism. In fact, the number of sizable communities of

Zoroastrians anywhere in the world is very small.

Zarathustra in the West Since the beginning of the early modern era in the six- teenth century, Zarathustra has made appearances in well-known works of art, music,

and literature, some of which make use of his image in ways he would certainly have

found surprising.

In The School of Athens (1510), the Italian painter Raphael placed Zarathustra in a

gathering of ancient Greek philosophers. Voltaire, an eighteenth-century leader of the

French Enlightenment, misunderstood the teachings of Zarathustra as a form of ra-

tional religion resembling the deism of his day. A leading character in Mozart's opera

The Magic Flute (1791), "Sarastro," is a wise and benevolent ruler who triumphs over

darkness and the Queen of Night. In his philosophical work Also Sprach Zarathustra

("Thus Spake Zarathustra," 1885), the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

~

CANADA? 3,500

UNITED ,.,__,. STATES .,- 17,800

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' AFGRANISTAN

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-/ INDIA ~ n,ooo ""t"GJ

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The History of Zoroastrianism 339

described a new Zarathustra, rather unlike his namesake, who condemns conventional

morality and its conceptions of good and evil. Inspired by Nietzsche's work, the

German composer Richard Strauss composed a tone poem also titled Also Sprach

Zarathustra (1896). Its initial and memorable fanfare ("Sunrise") became a best-selling

recording and earned a place in American popular culture after being featured in

Stanley Kubrick's 1968 science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Zoroastrians Today The largest community of Zoroastrians today is in western India, and particularly in the area of Mumbai. Known as Parsis ("Persians"), they are

the descendants of Zoroastrians who fled Iran in the ninth century to escape Muslim

persecution. The Parsis thrived in the more tolerant Hindu environment. The British,

who established rule over the Indian subcontinent in the mid-nineteenth century, tended to favor Zoroastrians, in part because they rejected distinctions based on caste

and because they placed a high value on education. Today, they are among the most

affluent oflndian ethnic groups and are highly regarded for their success as industrial-

ists and their generosity as philanthropists.

The second largest group of contemporary Zoroastrians is in Iran. Known to

themselves as Iranis and Zarathushtis, their history throughout most of the modern era has been one of continued marginalization and, in some cases, persecution. Like

the Parsis, the Iranis have been tenacious in hanging on to traditional beliefs and ritu-

als. Many still speak Dari, an Iranian language that is distinct from the Farsi (Persian)

spoken by other Iranians. As non-Muslims, the government prohibits Zoroastrians

from being elected to any representative body in government except for the few seats

set aside for religious minorities in the Islamic Consultative Assembly (the Iranian parliament). On the other hand, it appears that Zoroastrians have been gaining greater

acceptance among the general population because they represent a part of Iranian his-

tory in which Muslims, as well as Zoroastrians, can take pride.

Zoroastrian populations in other parts of the world are much smaller. As immi-

grants, or the descendants of immigrants, most continue to identify themselves as either Parsis or Iranis/Zarathushtis. Major Zoroastrian populations are indicated on the

map on page 338; Zoroastrian communities can also be found in Australia, Singapore,

Hong Kong, and other places in East Asia. The total worldwide Zoroastrian popula-

tion is about 194,000.

The number of Zoroastrians in the world is dwindling. For example, in the mid-

twentieth century there were about 115,000 Parsis in India, compared with 71,000 today. One reason for the decline might be that Zoroastrians have no interest in proselytizing.

Another reason, mentioned in this chapter's opening, involves rules against marrying

non-Zoroastrians. Furthermore, some Zoroastrians choose to leave the religion because

they find its strictures burdensome or its ancient teachings difficult to accept.

Because of the long-term decline in their numbers, Zoroastrians are concerned

about the future of their religion. Various opinions are voiced. Conservatives say that adherence to tradition is the key to the survival of Zoroastrianism. Liberal Zoroastrians

Zoroastrian Centre in London. With 4,800 Zoroastrians, the United Kingdom is one of several countries across the world with sizable

commun ities.

340 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

remind conservatives that Zarathustra himself was a reformer who broke with trad-

ition. They find the essence of their religion in the Gathas, the Avestan hymns said to

have been composed by Zarathustra, and take less interest in the beliefs, doctrines,

laws, and rituals that became a part of tradition after him.

ZOROASTRIANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE Like most any religious tradition, Zoroastrianism includes many rituals, festivals, and

rites of passage, the most important of which we will consider in this section. But more

so than most other religious traditions, perhaps because of its status as a minority reli-

gion, the Zoroastrian way of life is based in a tightly knit sense of community and the

routine practice of well-established customs. These customs in turn can be seen to

integrate fundamental religious teachings. For example, Zoroastrian reverence of fire

means that candle Barnes are not extinguished but rather allowed to burn out (al-

though today birthday candles commonly are blown out). More generally, the deep-

seated preference for light over darkness leads Zoroastrians to speak a blessing when a

light is lit and to avoid killing roosters once they have begun to crow, for a rooster

crowing signals the break of dawn and the return to daylight. Other customs are based

straightforwardly on Zoroastrian respect for life, which implies a general attitude of

kindness toward animals. Custom dictates, for instance, that at meal time dogs be fed

prior to people.

As we turn to considering religious rituals, festivals, and rites of practice, we will

observe how consistently these same fundamental teachings-reverence for fire, light,

and life itself-tend to underlie many aspects of the Zoroastrian way of life.

Ritual Practices We have seen that Zarathustra opposed traditional forms of Iranian ritual practice,

notably animal sacrifice and the ingestion of haoma. Within the first few centuries of

the Zoroastrian tradition, however, such ritual activities were revived. To this day,

Zoroastrianism is a tradition rich in ceremony and ritual, with regular activities car-

ried out both within temples or other religious buildings and without. The most com-

monly practiced ritual activity is prayer.

VOICES: An Interview with Rustom Ghadiali

Rustom Ghadiali is a resident of Singapore, home to a community of about 200 Zoroastrians. This community was founded in the early twentieth century by Parsis who immigrated from India. Mr. Ghadiali is a Zoroastrian priest with a strong interest in the history and transformations through time of the tradition.

Zoroastrianism as a Way of Life 341

Zoroastrianism is an ancient religion. Has it taken steps to adapt to new conditions in the modern world?

The Zoroastrian religion has taken steps to adapt to new conditions in the modern world in some countries. In Iran, as it is difficult to get young boys to join religious orders and become priests, eighteen girls for the first time have become initiated as priests and carry out all rituals. Zoroastrians in India are still very orthodox and do not accept the same.

What are the greatest challenges faced by Zoroastrians and Zoroastrianism today?

The greatest challenges faced by Zoroastrians and Zoroastrianism is that their numbers are dwindling. This is because of late marriages, not having children, and not being allowed to marry outside the community.

What features of Zoroastrianism are most important to you in your daily life? Why?

Prayers are the most important in our daily life, and thanking God for good health and happiness.

How common is the traditional Zoroastrian practice of exposing the bodies of the dead, and how it is carried out?

The practice of exposing the bodies of the dead to the birds is followed in India today, but it is slowly disappearing, as it is difficult to have vultu res in urban settings. Also, vultures are dying as the bodies of sick Zoroastrians contain medicine which kills the vultures. The orthodox Zoroastrians in India are strug- gling to accept changes in traditional practices and to accept burial or cremation. It is only a matter of time when the practice of exposing the dead will disappear and burial or cremation will be accepted.

You are a Zoroastrian priest. What are your most important responsibilities in worship and in serving the Zoroastrian community?

The most important responsibilities of the priest are the carrying out of rituals and praying for any and all Zoroastrians. The religion as practiced in India and as practiced abroad has a lot of variance. If all were to follow the Gathas, the original verses of the Prophet, then there would be harmony. Scholars and the High Priest, however, enforce their own views. Also, the priests are not being looked after by the temples where they work and must depend on the community to pay them as they pray. They prefer to study and get educated in commercial subjects, so that they can earn and be independent.

Prayer and Purification Zoroastrians pray five times daily, during five periods de- termined by the position of the sun: dawn until noon, noon until mid-afternoon, mid-afternoon until sunset, sunset until midnight, and midnight until dawn. For

many Zoroastrians, this amounts to more than one hour of prayer per day. Zarathustra

himself, despite his antiritual tendencies, is believed to have prescribed formal prayer.

Its importance has endured throughout the centuries.

Daily prayers often coincide with the kusti ritual, which also should be performed

several times per day. This involves untying and tying the kusti cord while standing in a lighted space and reciting ritual texts. Recalling Yasmin's investiture ceremony described

Rustom Ghad iali

342 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

Compare the Zoroastrian temple with places of worsh ip in

other rel igions.

in this chapter's opening, we can see that the kusti ritual is a repetition in shorter form of

this very important rite of passage. The kusti ritual and the recitation of prayers require that the worshipper undergo ritual

purification using water, washing the face, forearms, hands, and feet. Zoroastrians thus are

expected to undergo rituals of purification on a daily basis. These ritual ablutions take only

a few minutes. Longer, more elaborate rituals of purification also should be undertaken occasionally. The Barashnum, for example, takes ten days and must be performed by a

priest during the daylight hours and in rooms especially designated for this purpose. Spe- cial substances are consumed, including pomegranate leaves, ashes from a sacred fire, and

consecrated bull's urine. The Barashnum is needed in cases of severe pollution or as prepa-

ration for major ceremonial events, such as marriage or initiation into the priesthood.

Where Zoroastrians Worship The strong emphasis on purity is evident in the desig- nation of certain spaces as appropriate for worship. By definition, temples and other sacred

precincts are set apart from the impurities of the world outside. Spaces such as private homes can be used for religious activities so long as they are pure in a religious sense-

that is, there are no non-Zoroastrians present. And, indeed, rituals often are performed in

private homes, especially in Iran. Older homes, especially, are believed to be inhabited by

the spiritual presence of deceased ancestors-making these spaces desirable for rituals

performed on the souls' behal£ In India, most religious activities occur in temples. Temples include rooms and water wells specifically designed for purification ritu-

als. All temples provide a source of clean water. Special kitchens are equipped for

preparation of food, some to be used in rituals and some to be consumed in communal

meals. Temples have various other rooms, including at least one meeting hall. The

most important rooms are the ceremonial room and the fire chamber.

In the ceremonial room, site of several important rituals, the floor is inscribed with grooves that demarcate a rectangular space 3.5 meters by 2 meters. The rituals per-

formed within this space are of a special category, and are named "inner liturgies."

Open to the outside, the fire chamber consists of a stone floor with a domed cover-

ing, vented in order to permit the fire to burn. This in turn is protected from rain and

from the sun's rays by a partial roof.

Sacred Fire The supreme significance of fire for Zoroastrianism is clearly evident in the meticulous categorization and care of fire and in its central role in ritual activities.

A fire is consecrated through ritual practices. Once consecrated (and thereby

sacred), the dying out of the fire is held to be a catastrophe. Sacred fires therefore are

tended very carefully. As we have already observed, the fire chamber in a temple is

covered over in such a way as to prevent rain from falling on and extinguishing the

fire. We have also seen that fires generally are not extinguished but rather allowed to burn out. Fires are protected from coming into contact with various polluting objects,

including corpses and the bodily fluids of the living, such as saliva. Fires are tended and

fed with dried wood several times per day.

Zoroastrianism as a Way of Life 343

There are three main categories of sacred fires, the highest of which is the Atash

Bahram ("victorious fire"). In India, where by the twentieth century there were over 100

Zoroastrian temples, only eight of these fires exist, all having been consecrated in the late

eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. Consecration of the Atash Bahram takes a group

of priests nearly a full year to accomplish, involving intricate steps of purification.

Fire is employed in various ways in ritual practices. The most important of the inner liturgies, those that are performed within the specially marked rectangular space in a tem-

ple's ceremonial room, is Yasna, the sacrifice of the sacred drink haoma before a fire. The extensive preparations for Yasna include the preparation of the haoma, a mixture of water, pomegranate, ephedra, and goat's milk. During the three-hour ritual the entire Yasna, the seventy-two-chapter portion of the Avesta, is recited while the sacred fire is fueled.

Priests The Yasna liturgy and other ritual activities in the temples are orchestrated by priests. As we have observed in Yasmin's investiture ceremony, priests also lead ritu- als outside of the temple-in that case, in the family's home.

Priests have throughout the history of Zoroastrianism occupied an important

place in the religious society. As we have observed, the ancient Greek historian Herodo-

tus included in his account reference to Zoroastrian priests, whom he called Magi. The

training and precise roles of priests and the organizational features of priesthoods have

varied widely depending on cultural circumstances. Throughout the centuries, priest- hoods have been made up of men.

Today, the nature of the priesthood varies somewhat between India and Iran. In

India, training for initiation into the priesthood mainly involves memorization of

sacred texts used in rituals. The training normally begins when the candidate for ini-

tiation is still a youth, and it takes several years. In Iran, where in general Zoroastrians are less insistent on maintaining traditional rituals, priests are not expected to be

expert in the performance of rituals, and many work as priests in addition to having

careers. It is normal for all Zoroastrian priests to marry and raise a family, although

until the twentieth century priests were expected to marry within priestly families.

Women and Zoroastrianism As with most religions, the status of women in Zoroastrianism is much different today

than it was even a century ago. Traditionally, the religion has been highly patriarchal.

Texts such as the Arda Viraz Namag make clear that women are to be subordinate to men. Even a woman who is virtuous in every other way but who has not been obedient

to her husband is said to have no chance of crossing the Chinvat Bridge and proceed-

ing to heaven. Next to an obedient wife, the most important role for a woman is to be

a caring mother. Women have not been allowed to enter the priesthood until very re-

cently in Iran, where this measure has been thought necessary to preserve the religion.

In India, women still are not allowed to become priests. Special ethical norms and ritual practices apply to women, many of them stemming

from Zoroastrianism's stance on menstruation as being highly polluting, basically in the

same category as contact with a corpse. The Avesta, for example, sets forth rules governing

Parsi priests tend the sacred fire within a

temple in Ind ia.

344 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

the conduct of a menstruating woman, including the need to stay at least fifteen steps

away from water, fire, religious implements, and men. At the end of her period the woman

is to be cleansed with bull's urine, which was used as a disinfectant in ancient times.

In the modern period, such rules as these have become largely obsolete. Most Zoro-

astrians today support a general attitude of egalitarianism, even if some limits are still

imposed because of ritual regulations and other traditional aspects. The rationale for this attitude is not necessarily a modern invention. The Gathas sometimes address women and men together, suggesting a type of equality in the time of Zarathustra. As we have

observed, girls undergo the investiture ceremony (not as commonly in India as in Iran)

and become full members of the Zoroastrian community, thereafter wearing the kusti

cord and partaking in the kusti ritual and daily prayers. Women have equal right of

access to temples-unless they are menstruating, in which case still today they are not permitted to enter. In recent times, a category of rituals that can only be performed by women has become popular. Called Sofre-rituals, after the doth (sofre) on which Iranian meals traditionally have been served, they involve the consumption of special foods and

drinks. Overseen only by a select group of qualified women, the foods and drinks are

consecrated through recitation of Zoroastrian miracle stories.

One notable sign of women lagging behind men in terms of participation involves positions ofleadership. Women hold far fewer seats than men on committees in Zoro-

astrian organizations, regardless of the location. Among the Parsis oflndia, women are

not allowed to become priests. The degree to which Zoroastrianism becomes fully

egalitarian obviously remains to be seen.

Holy Days and Rites of Passage To this point we have considered Zoroastrianism's strong emphasis on ritual activities

as they are practiced daily and occasionally on a random basis. Here we consider the array of rituals and ceremonies that occur at specific times-on the various days of the

year that are designated as especially holy, and at the crucial points in a person's life-

time that are marked out as rites of passage from one stage to another, as, for example,

the investiture ceremony we observed in the chapter's opening.

The Zoroastrian Calendar Most religions feature their own special calendar of holy days and periods. The Zoroastrian calendar is more elaborate than most, connect-

ing days of the month and months of the year to various deities. Since ancient times, the Zoroastrian calendar has been based on twelve months of thirty

days each, although during the Achaemenid period five days were added to the twelfth

month. (Today, because of attempts at various times to align the calendar with the solar

year, there are three Zoroastrian calendars, one or the other favored by each community.)

The first day of the month is named for (and dedicated to) Ahura Mazda. The next six

days are named for the other six Amesha Spentas. The other days are named for various yazatas; for example, the sixteenth day is named for Mithra. The twelve months also bear names of divinities. Whenever one of the days aligns with the month, such that the same

deity is honored for both, Zoroastrians celebrate a feast for that deity. And so, for example,

Zoroastrianism as a Way of Life 345

the sixteenth day of the seventh month (September/October) is celebrated in honor of

Mithra. To cite another example, the fifth day of the twelfth month (February/March) is

celebrated in honor of Spenta Mainyu, the Holy Spirit of Ahura Mazda.

Annual Holy Days Zoroastrians observe seven obligatory holy days, traditionally be- lieved to have been established by Zarathustra. Each of these holy days honors one of the

Amesha Spentas, and each celebrates aspects related to its divine benefactor. For example, the holy day associated with Spenta Mainyu is named All Souls and celebrates, along

with the Holy Spirit of Ahura Mazda, humankind, Ahura Mazda's primary creation.

Of the seven obligatory holy days, the one that is most popularly observed is Nowruz (or No Ruz), the Zoroastrian New Year's Day. Nowruz honors the Amesha Spenta Asha Vahishta ("Righteousness"), who is associated with the creation of the very special element, fire. Nowruz originally was celebrated at the time of the vernal

(spring) equinox and still is by most Zoroastrians, regardless of which of the three

calendars they use. Throughout western Asia, people of all religious and ethnic back- grounds celebrate New Year's Day at the time of the vernal equinox. Even for non-

Zoroastrians, these New Year's celebrations tend to show vestiges of Zoroastrian

influence, for example, the symbolic significance of fire.

For Zoroastrians, the spring equinox is a symbol writ large of the triumph of light

over darkness. The holy day ofNowruz features a sense of renewal of personal commit-

ment to righteousness and of communal ties. It is richly celebrated, with a special meal made up of seven items, each with names beginning with the same Persian letter:

wine, sugar, milk, syrup, honey, candy, and rice pudding.

Death and Funeral Rites In this chapter's opening we witnessed the investiture ceremony of Yasmin, a nine-year-old Iranian girl. This is Zoroastrianism's primary rite

of initiation, marking the passage from youth to adulthood. The most elaborate reli-

gious activities marking a rite of passage occur at death. According to Zoroastrian teachings, death involves the separation of the soul, the

spiritual element of the person, from the physical body. As we have seen, the soul is be-

lieved to undergo judgment by crossing the Chinvat Bridge, where it encounters the

Daena, a feminine being who embodies the individual's ethical quality. Zoroastrian

funeral rites are intended to free the soul for this journey,

while also attending to the body in a manner that ensures

as much purity as possible. In Zoroastrian perspective, a corpse is inevitably a pol-

luting object. It needs to be kept at a distance from water,

fire, plants, and even fertile ground. This insistence on the

attempt to maintain purity helps to explain the famous

Zoroastrian practice of exposing corpses on dakhmas, or "Towers of Silence" (a British neologism from the colonial

period), elevated circular structures with a platform at the

top on which bodies would be left. Rather than cremating

The dakhma, or "Tower of Silence," provides a space for exposure of the dead body to vultures and to the sun. This dakhma is located in Yazd, Iran.

346 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

VISUAL GUIDE Zoroastrianism

Zarathustra. Copies of this

painting of Zarathustra are found

in fire temples and Zoroastrian

homes throughout the world.

The original is found in the fire

temple in Yazd, Iran.

Zoroastrian symbols: the sun, a

fire, the moon, and the Faravahar,

thought to represent the fravishis.

These symbols adorn a Parsi

temple in Ahmadabad in the state

of Gujarat, India.

Ateshkadeh Fire Temple. The Atesh-

kadeh Fire Temple in Yazd, in central

Iran, is perhaps the most famous of

the Fire Temples found worldwide in

Zoroastrian communities. Although

the structure itself was built in the

twentieth century, the sacred flame inside is said to have

burned continuously since 470 c.E. Zoroastrians believe

that fire is symbolic of purity and of Ahura Mazda.

or burying their dead-as fire is holy and unfit for

contact with a corpse, and the ground is sacred be-

cause it bears life-corpses are exposed to the ele-

ments, to be devoured by vultures and other

scavengers. This is deemed to be the manner of dis-

posal that best maintains purity. Today, in part be-

cause oflaws prohibiting this traditionally preferred

manner of disposal, sometimes bodies are buried,

provided that burial vaults are used that prevent

any chance of contact between the corpse and the

earth. A form of electric cremation, devoid of

flames, is also sometimes used.

The Zoroastrian Community: Social and Ethical Responsibilities At the outset of this section on the Zoroastrian way

of life, we noted the relatively tightly knit sense of

community and practice of traditional customs

that continue to characterize the tradition. Many

other features typify Zoroastrian social life. As we

have seen, religious festivals such as Nowruz in-

volve community and family celebrations. The

same is true of the other holy days throughout the

year and of rites of passage such as the investiture

ceremony. Zoroastrian communities take pride in

the care of their temples and other religious build-

ings and also in their social and cultural achieve-

ments. All Zoroastrians are expected to marry and

to raise families, and responsibilities for caring for

family members extend even beyond this life: indi-

viduals' moral behavior affects the fate of their de-

ceased ancestors' souls.

Ethical responsibilities have always been a cen-

tral feature of Zoroastrian life. Traditionally, even

such daily activities as eating food have been regulated by prescribed rituals, for ex-

ample, by the religious requirements to maintain purity. Zoroastrian texts from ancient

times have spelled out specific ethical requirements. The early medieval text Arda Vz"raz Namag (The Book of the Righteous Vz"raz) is one notable example. Similar to Dante's Divine Comedy (and, in fact, this book was one of Dante's influences), the Arda Vz"raz

Namag recounts a seven-day journey of the righteous Viraz through the afterlife, where he encounters the spirits of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu and many instances of

souls of the righteous enjoying heavenly rewards and souls of the evil suffering horrible

torments in hell. In each instance, the specific virtue or vice is identified. The book strongly condemns such vices as lying, greediness, and cruelty to animals.

Today, although general ethical norms such as admonition against these three vices

still guide behavior, many of the traditional rules and regulations tend to be over-

looked. With regard to the once prevalent purification rituals-some of which are

still very much in effect-a newfound emphasis on personal hygiene has become the equivalent of the older insistence on "purity." And rather than focusing on traditional

lists of virtues and vices, a more basic ethical outlook has taken hold, based on the

"motto" of the Zoroastrian religion: "good thoughts, good words, good deeds." Along

with aspiring to base their lives on these ideals, Zoroastrians are to practice daily

confession of sins, mostly as a means of improving upon their moral behavior.

CONCLUSION For Zoroastrians today, their motto, "good thoughts, good words, good deeds," is much

more than just a catchy slogan. Etched into the walls of some temples, this "triad of good"

provides a platform for Zoroastrian life in the modern age. And underlying this platform

is something more basic, and something that Zoroastrians have embraced since ancient

times: thoroughgoing emphasis on individual choice. As we have seen, following in the pattern of the primordial spirits Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu, all human beings

have freedom of choice between good and evil. This choice not only determines the indi-

vidual's fate in the afterlife, but also contributes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos itself

Much of the world now embraces individual freedom of choice, but for most cul-

tures this has happened only recently. That it has been a central tenet of Zoroastrianism from the time of its origins attests both to the profound insight of its founder, Zarathus-

tra, and to the special nature of the Zoroastrian religion down to the present day.

SEEKING ANSWERS

What Is Ultimate Reality?

Conclusion 347

Zoroastrians believe that Ahura Mazda, eternal and all-powerful, created the world and

human beings. Ahura Mazda, allied with forces of order (asha) and good, continues to over- see the world. Also preexistent, however, is Angra Mainyu, the "Foul Spirit" who leads the

forces of chaos and evil-those on the side of druj, the Lie. The cosmos is currently in a state of struggle between these opposing forces . This is cosmic dualism, the basis of Zoro-

astrian teachings. Zoroastrians believe, however, that in time good will triumph over evil.

How Should We Live in This World?

Human beings are constantly presented with a choice: to live righteously according to cosmic order (asha) or to live according to the Lie (druj) . Zoroastrian texts contain many

(continued)

348 Chapter 10 ZOROASTRIANISM

SEEKING ANSWERS (continued)

specific ethical commands. Today, however, many Zoroastrians focus on the more general ethical ideals set forth in the motto: "good thoughts, good words, good deeds."

What Is Our Ultimate Purpose?

Human beings are believed to participate in the cosmic struggle currently ongoing, and therefore to play a part in the future triumph of good over evil. In the meantime, each indi-

vidual strives for a heavenly afterlife, anticipating after death the judgment of the soul on

the Chinvat Bridge through the soul's encounter with the Daena, a feminine being who

embodies the person's ethical quality.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

For Review 1. Describe and distinguish between Zoroas-

trianism's two types of dualism. 2. Explain Zoroastrian teachings on creation

and cosmology. 3. Summarize the historical relevance of Iran

(or Persia) for Zoroastrianism.

4. Why is fire such an important symbol in

Zoroastrianism? In what specific ways does fire play a part in the practice of the religion?

5. Describe Zoroastrian funeral rites, noting

how Zoroastrian teachings relate to practices.

GLOSSARY

Ahura Mazda (uh-hoo'rah moz' dah; "Wise Lord") The God of Zoroastrianism; also known as Ohrmazd.

Amesha Spentas (ah-mesh'-ah spent'ahs; "Benefi- cial Immortals") Seven angels-including Spenta Mainyu, the Holy Spirit of Ahura Mazda-who help Ahura Mazda govern creation.

Angra Mainyu (ang' grah mine'yoo; "Foul Spirit") Evil adversary of Ahura Mazda; also called Ahriman.

asha (ah'shah) The true, cosmic order that pervades both the natural and social spheres of reality,

For Further Reflection ,. Many Zoroastrians today consider their

religion to be monotheistic. Do you agree? 2. Why do you think Westerners find Zarathus-

tra such a fascinating figure?

3. Imagine a Zoroastrian student talking about

religion with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim

students who know nothing about Zoroas-

trianism. Assuming the student wants to point out teachings Zoroastrianism has in

common with their religions, what do you

think he or she would say?

encompassing the moral and religious life of indi- viduals; opposed to druj.

Avesta The oldest and most important of Zoroas- trian scriptures, consisting of a collection of texts including the Yasna and Gathas.

Chinvat Bridge The bridge that needs to be crossed by the soul in order to reach the afterlife, wide and easy to cross for the good, razor-thin and impos- sible to cross for the evil.

(continued)

GLOSSARY (continued)

Daena (die'nuh) The feminine being who embodies the individual's ethical quality and who appears to the soul after death.

daevas (die'vuhs) The various demonic powers aligned with Angra Mainyu.

druj (drooj; "lie") Cosmic principle of chaos and evil, opposed to asha.

dualism In Zoroastrianism, of two types: cosmic dualism of order and chaos (or good and evil); du- alism of spirit and matter (or thought and body).

fravishis (frah-veesh'ees) Preexisting higher souls and guardian spirits of individual human beings.

haoma Sacred drink made in ancient times from the sour, milky juice of the soma plant; in modern times from water, pomegranate, ephedra, and goat's milk.

kusti (koo'stee) Sacred cord that is to be worn daily by Zoroastrians who have undergone the initia- tory rite of the investiture ceremony.

Online Resources 349

Nowruz (now-rooz') Zoroastrian New Year's Day coinciding with the vernal equinox, the most popularly observed annual holy day; celebrated in varying ways throughout western Asia by people of all religious and ethnic backgrounds.

SpentaMainyu (spen'tah mine'yoo) Ahura Mazda's Holy Spirit; one of the seven Amesha Spentas.

Yasna Seventy-two-chapter section of the Avesta containing material recited by priests in rituals; includes the Gathas. The Yasna liturgy, an impor- tant ritual, is the sacrifice of the sacred drink haoma before a fire.

yazatas (yah-zah'tahs; "ones worthy of worship") A large number, eventually fixed at thirty, of deities on the side of Ahura Mazda and order/good.

Zarathustra (zare'ah-thoos'trah) Called Zoroaster by the ancient Greeks; ancient Iranian prophet and poet, founder of the Zoroastrian religion; dates uncertain (between 1300 and 550 B.C.E.).

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Boyce, Mary. Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroas- trianism. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univer-

sity Press, 1984. An anthology of Zoroastrian

sacred texts, suitably thorough for an in-depth

study of the religion, and with reliable transla-

tions and commentary.

Rose, Jenny. Zoroastrianism: An Introduction. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011.A very engaging, dependable, and quite in-depth introductory

ONLINE RESOURCES

Religion Facts: Zoroastrianism http://www.religionfacts.com/zoroastrianism/

index.htm

A good resource for, as the site states, "just the

facts."

study, organized by historical period and geo- graphical locations.

Stausberg, Michael. Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism:

A Short Introduction, trans. Margret Preisler-

Weller. Postscript by Anders Hultgard. London:

Equinox, 2008. First published in German in

2005 (by Verlag C. H. Beck oHG), this slim volume provides a concise yet remarkably infor-

mative, clearly written overview.

The World Zoroastrian Organisation

http://www.w-z-o.org/

Created and maintained by Zoroastrians, a de-

pendable resource that provides an "insider's"

perspective on the religion.

JUDAISM

IT IS A SATURDAY morning, and Seth is waiting to read from the Torah- the most ancient of Jewish Scriptures. Seth has spent the past ten months preparing for this moment, and he is about to become a Bar Mitzvah (Hebrew, "son of the commandment"). In late antiquity, a young Jewish male became a Bar Mitzvah simply by turning thirteen years old, but by the later Middle Ages a formal rite of passage had de- veloped that signaled a young man's entry into religious manhood. By demonstrating that he can read directly from and comment on the Torah, Seth is proclaiming, before an entire congregation of worshippers, his intention to enter the Jewish community as a literate adult.

Moving a silver pointer shaped like an outstretched hand and index finger across the Torah scroll, Seth reads the passage assigned for that particular Sabbath morning. The sacred text before him is especially dif- ficult to decipher because, as in ancient times, it is written in the conso- nantal script (that is, without vowels of Hebrew); however, Seth has reviewed this passage many times and has practically memorized it. After the service, Seth will be joined by friends and family who will cel- ebrate his accomplishments with a party, gifts, and lavish praise. This coming-of-age ritual has been enacted countless times over the centu- ries in Jewish communities throughout the world, but it is only re- cently-since the 192os-that the privilege of participating in this ritual

The Bar Mitzvah stands behind a lectern, facing an open Torah scroll, preparing to read his scriptural passage in Hebrew.

352 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

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has been extended to young women (in which case the young woman in question becomes a Bat Mitzvah-a "daughter of the commandment"). Nevertheless, it has become quite common today for twelve- and thirteen-year-old Jewish girls to per- form the same ritual acts that their male counterparts do and to receive the same recognition.

Of all of the life-cycle events in Judaism, the Bar and Bat Mitzvah rite is the one ritual occasion at which we see the most fundamental of Jewish beliefs on display. For at the core of the Judaic belief system is the assumption that a very special historical and spiritual relationship-referred to, traditionally, as a covenant-exists between the one God of heaven and earth and the people of Israel. By demonstrating both a degree of religious literacy and a willingness to freely embrace a life of sacred duties and obligations, adolescent Jewish boys and girls renew that covenant in a public and deliberate way.

The Bar or Bat Mitzvah ritual is not, however, a prerequisite for membership in the Jewish community. Historically, the one and only precondition of Jewish identity has been biological: that is, whether or not one has been born to a Jewish mother. Although Judaism has always accepted converts, the majority of the world 's Jews have been per- sons whose ancestors are also Jewish. Nevertheless, this rite of passage has achieved its present popularity precisely because it symbolizes a commitment to a communal religious life and to Judaism as the collective faith experience of the Jewish people. ~i~

J udaism is one of the world's oldest extant reli-gions. In addition to examining the teachings and practices of the Jewish religion, we will also survey the historical context out of which they

emerged and to which they responded. But first,

an overview of Judaism's teachings.

THE TEACHINGS OF JUDAISM Judaism has undergone many changes in its long

history. For the purposes of our study, however, we

will start by looking at those concepts and values

that the majority ofJews living today would regard as "normative" or "enduring." Having done that,

we will consider the diversity of belief that increas-

ingly characterizes Judaism in the present age, be-

ginning with Judaism's concept of God.

God The Jewish religion is most commonly referred to

as a type of ethical monotheism, as it assumes the existence of a Creator-God whose benevolence and

goodness are reflected in His love of humanity and

who has imparted to the Jews ethical principles by which they (and the rest of the human race) are

expected to live. As Jewish philosophy developed over the centu-

ries, an understanding of God's nature deepened,

and additional qualities-such as omniscience and omnipotence-were added to the composite por- trait of the deity. Most important for Judaism, how- ever, is the concept of divine "oneness," which can be

understood to mean that there is only one divine

Being in the universe; this one Being is truly incom-

parable, and no human being (or anything we can

possibly imagine) can be compared to this Being. Judaism's idea of divine transcendence presupposes that a fundamental difference in reality exists

between God and the world He has brought into

existence, and that this difference precludes the

possibility of God's embodiment or "incarnation"

in a particular human personality.

TIMELINE Judaism

The Teachings of Judaism 353

c. 1210 s.c.E. Pharaoh Merneptah's victory over "Israel ."

c. 1000 s.c.E. King David unites kingdom.

922 s.c.E. Division of Kingdom of David and Solomon.

722 B.C.E. Israel conquered by Assyrians.

587 s.c.E. Destruction of First Temple; Babylonian exile.

539 s.c.E. Cyrus of Persia conquers Babylon.

333-323 s.c.E. Alexander the Great conquers Egypt, Palestine, and Persia.

167-140 s.c.E. Maccabean revolt against Seleucid rule.

140 s.c.E. Establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty.

63 s.c.E. Pompey invades Syria-Palestine; Judea becomes Roman province.

66-70 c.E. First Jewish War with Rome.

70 Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.

132-135 Second Jewish War with Rome.

135 The defeat of the would-be Messiah Bar Kochba.

c. 200 Rabbi Judah the Nasi compiles the Mishnah.

c. 500 Completion of the Babylonian Talmud.

882-942 Saadiah ben Joseph serves as Gaon of Sura, Babylonia.

1135-1204 Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) flees Spain for Egypt.

1492 Jews expelled from Spain.

1570-1572 Rabbi Isaac Luria establishes a community of mystics in Safed, Pa lestine.

1666 Shabbetai Tzevi declares himself the Messiah.

1700-1760 Israel ben El iezer establishes the Hasidic movement.

1792 France confers citizenship on the Jews.

1845 Reform Movement of Germany defines the movement's goals and beliefs.

1894-1899 The trial and retrial of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus.

1917 The Balfour Declaration.

1939-1945 World War II and Shoah.

1948 State of Israel established.

1951 The Israeli Parliament declares the 27th of Nisan as Yam HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).

1967 Six-Day War between Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

354 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

Yet for all its emphasis on God's "otherness," Judaism is not lacking a sense of

God's nearness, or immanence. The very fact that Jews pray to God-and do so with the expectation that their prayers will be heard and that those prayers may move the

deity to respond-suggests that there are limits to the distance between the divine

reality and human consciousness. Moreover, the ancient liturgical tradition of address-

ing God through the use of masculine nouns and pronouns (still preserved in many

prayer books today) suggests that, at the level of common speech, Jews have long thought of God in human terms. As we shall learn, contemporary feminist critics of

traditional Judaism have repeatedly challenged this practice, arguing that the attribu-

tion of gender-that is, employing masculine metaphors (or capitalizing the mascu-

line pronoun) to speak of God-subverts God's transcendent character. Humanist

critics have also challenged this practice, arguing that any anthropomorphic imaging of the divine is a false representation of an unknowable reality. Such contending

views constitute part of an ongoing conversation within modern Judaism over the

nature of the one God Jews have long proclaimed.

One of the great constants in Jewish theology, however, has been its assumption

that the Creator-God was also the shaping force or will behind our universe and our

human world. Judaism has never conceived of God as a deity who abandoned the universe once it was brought into being. On the contrary, Jews have always assumed

that God is determined to see His creative purposes fulfilled in time. Judaism assumes,

therefore, that God is moved to respond by every human act of goodness and

contrition.

The Problem of Evil How such a God can tolerate the continued existence of evil in a world that He has created is a question that has troubled Jewish philosophers for

many centuries. Like their counterparts in other monotheistic faiths, they have sought

various solutions to this possibly insoluble enigma. The oldest Judaic response to this question-a question that philosophers today often refer to as the "problem of evil"-

takes the familiar form of an accusation: the people of Israel have sinned against God

by violating His Covenant, and therefore God has no alternative but to punish those

who have rejected Him and His laws.

However, the Nazi genocide against the Jews during World War II has prompted

many Jewish theologians to reexamine this traditionalist argument and to reject this cause-and-effect pattern of thinking. For some, the spectacle of mass murder or, even

worse, the possibility of global annihilation makes the biblical idea of a just, compas-

sionate, and omnipotent Creator-God insupportable; indeed, according to this argu-

ment, such a God-concept is no longer acceptable to a post-Holocaust Judaism.1 Still

others, unwilling to embrace the agnosticism (or atheism) this argument inevitably leads to, insist on reviving the biblical idea of a divine "eclipse": the belief that God

periodically conceals Himself from human understanding, thereby creating a seeming

void in which evil, for a time, may prevail. 2

The Teachings of Judaism 355

Nevertheless, according to this counterargument, even during this period of divine

"absence," God remains present in many human hearts, and in time God will "return"

to our world in the form of humanity's moral striving and severe self-judgment. This

alternative view of God's role in the world holds that reconciliation with God, and a

renewal of those divine values that reside within all enlightened human cultures, is

still possible, and that one should never doubt God's continuing love for, and anguish over, the human race.

Torah In addition to a commitment to monotheism, Judaism also claims to be a "revealed" religion, in that its most basic teachings are believed to be the result of divine revela-

tion. Most of the books that make up the Hebrew Bible- twenty-four in total-

advance this claim. Furthermore, when Jews employ the Hebrew word to rah (Hebrew,

"teaching") in its most inclusive sense, they are referring to the totality of God's reve-

lation to the people of Israel. The very fact that Judaism possesses a sacred scripture

presupposes a belief in divine-human communication, as well as a belief in the trust- worthiness of those individuals-whether prophets or sages-who served as instru-

ments of divine speech and understanding.

The word Torah, however, has secondary and even tertiary meanings, and all of them are crucial to an understanding ofJewish faith. Thus, when reference is made to

the scrolls of the Torah (which Seth read from at the beginning of this chapter), what is meant are the parchment copies of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (known

in English as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Such scrolls

can be found in any synagogue in the world. Jews view this portion of Judaism's

ancient scriptures with particular reverence because these scrolls contain virtually all

of the sacred legislation contained within the Hebrew Bible, and given the centrality

of the idea of sacred law in traditional Judaism, it is hardly surprising, then, that the word Torah has often been translated as "the Law."

An even more expansive use of the word Torah can be found in the practice of

referring to a comprehensive collection of commentaries on biblical law as the "Oral

Torah." This multivolume anthology of interpretive and folkloristic writings, more

commonly called the Talmud, represents the final extension in Jewish history of the idea of revelation. The teachers-known as rabbis-whose comments are preserved in these volumes claimed to be passing on the oral instructions of the biblical Moses, to

whom God originally imparted His laws at Mt. Sinai. Though not every community

of Jews has accepted this claim as historically or theologically valid, the vast majority

of the world's Jews have accorded to the Talmud a degree of sanctity and intellectual

authority almost equal to that of the biblical Torah, thereby making the Talmud a

virtual second scripture in Judaism. Much of the education of rabbis today consists of studying the Talmud, as well as a vast body of interpretive literature (commentaries

upon a commentary) that has grown up around the Talmud.

356 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

Compare the idea of mitzvot in Judaism to the concept of divine commandments in Christianity and Islam.

Mitzvot At the core of the Torah tradition (whether understood as written or oral) lies the concept of the mitzvot (Hebrew, "commandments"), and it would not be

unreasonable to describe Judaism as religion of "divine commandments." By the

Rabbinic (or "Formative") Age, the number of such commandments that can be found

in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible was fixed at 613, and each of these mitzvot was viewed as an essential link in a chain of religious laws that could not be broken.

Over many centuries, rabbinic commentators have attempted to categorize these com-

mandments into positive and negative precepts, but the simple fact today is that at

least half of these laws are no longer applicable, either to contemporary society or to a

Judaism without a Temple in Jerusalem, and therefore without a priesthood and a

system of animal sacrifice. However, at the heart of this vast network of sacred laws lie the Ten Command-

ments, which can be found in two slightly different forms in the books of Exodus and

Deuteronomy. For all Jews, in every age and in every land, these ten pronouncements

have served not only as the bedrock of their faith but also as the basis of their social

and philosophical ideals. However, just like the term "Torah," the word mitzvot (singular, mitzvah) has

taken on another, more informal meaning-that of "good deeds." In ordinary conver- sation, Jews routinely refer to any act of generosity or good will as a mitzvah. In fact, a

glance at a traditional prayer book will reveal exactly which good deeds the rabbis

expected every adult to feel especially bound by in everyday life. The list includes hon-

oring one's parents, visiting the sick, outfitting a bride, and peacefully resolving quar-

rels between neighbors. But the greatest mitzvah, the rabbis go on to explain, is the study of Torah, because it contains all the moral wisdom God has imparted to the

Jewish people. Nevertheless, there are practical limits to how far anyone can go in the perform-

ance of a good deed or the fulfillment of a divine commandment. Those limits are

formally acknowledged in rabbinic law under the principle of pikuach nefesh, or "the preservation of life." Thus the rabbis taught that whenever carrying out a mitzvah

entails imminent risk to one's life or health, one is released from that obligation until

the threat to life has passed. The only exceptions to this rule-and these exceptions

became the basis for the concept of martyrdom in Judaism-are those situations in

which a Jew is commanded to worship another god, to commit adultery, or to murder

an innocent human being. In all other cases, the traditionalist view is that laws may be bent, but not permanently broken, to accommodate exigent circumstances.

Covenant and Election Throughout its long history, Judaism has thought of God's relationship with the

Jewish people as an intimate contractual relationship (rather like a marriage), freely

granted by God and freely entered into by the biblical Israelites and all their remote

descendants. In Hebrew this type of relationship is referred to as a b 'rit, commonly

translated into English as a "Covenant."

The Teachings of Judaism 357

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

1. I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 2 . You shall have no other gods besides Me. You shall not make for yourself a sculptured

image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below.

3. You shall not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God. 4 . Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

5. Honor your father and your mother. 6. You shall not commit murder. 7. You shall not commit adultery. 8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 10. You shall not covet anything that is your neighbor's.

In the Hebrew Bible, Israel's covenant with God is often portrayed as a kind of treaty, with reciprocal obligations and expectations. On God's side, an unconditional

promise is given to the patriarch Abraham that his "seed," or descendants, would be

numerous and that they would inhabit the land God had given Abraham as a legacy.

The people of Israel, however, are expected to live up to all of God's demands and to

obey His mitzvot. The penalty for disobeying God is a temporary dissolution of the

covenant connection, coupled with such punishments as famine, defeat in war, and ultimately exile from the very land first promised to Abraham and his heirs. Clearly,

this later understanding of the covenant idea is conditional and even punitive in

nature, and for many centuries it provided a theological rationale for the worldwide

dispersion of Jews and their subsequent statelessness. Since the establishment of the

State oflsrael in 1948, contemporary Jewish theology tends to deemphasize that theme and to stress, instead, the bond of enduring love, trust, and forgiveness that exists be-

tween Israel and God.

Much more problematic than the covenant idea, however, is the accompanying

belief in Israel's election, or, as this idea is more commonly expressed, a belief that the

Jewish people have been "chosen" by God to receive His laws and to live in His pres-

ence. No concept in Judaism has evoked more hostility and misunderstanding; yet despite the controversy, it would be difficult to imagine a historically credible form of

Judaism that completely lacked this concept. On one level, all that the idea of election

in Judaism affirms-and all that the Hebrew Bible attests to-is God's decision to

reveal Himself to the people of Israel in a way that is qualitatively different from the

way He has related to any other people on earth.

On yet another level of understanding, however, the covenant demands that Israel actively serve God's purposes in history: first, by becoming a "holy nation," completely

358 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

obedient to His will, and, second, by representing God to the peoples of the world who have no knowledge of His existence. This latter understanding of the doctrine of elec-

tion is precisely what the biblical prophet Isaiah had in mind when he spoke of Israel

becoming a "light to the nations," and after long centuries of living in a stateless

Diaspora, Jews have come to see their "chosenness" simply as an obligation to serve

both God and humanity, rather than as an assertion of moral or religious superiority.

Historically, Jews have thought of the Covenant in ancestral terms, as most Jews

are persons born to Jewish parents. Nevertheless, conversion to Judaism has long been open to any non-Jew who wishes to assume the responsibilities (and the hazards) that

are a part of membership in the covenant community. Those who enter Judaism by

choice are required by tradition to prove their sincerity and to undertake a term of

study to prepare for full participation in Jewish religious life. The final stage of conver- sion customarily entails circumcision for men who are not already circumcised and,

for both men and women, immersion in a ritual pool (known as a mikveh in Hebrew). From that moment on the convert is known as a "son" or "daughter" of Abraham, and

no Jew by birth is permitted to treat such a convert as anything but a spiritual equal.

Paradoxical as it may sound, therefore, it is possible for anyone to choose to become

part of the "chosen people." Nevertheless, because Jewish religious identity is tradi- tionally traced through the mother's line (matrilineal descent), the conversion of a

prospective bride is absolutely critical to determining the Jewishness of her offspring. Though the Reform Movement in the United States has attempted to trace Jewish

identity through the male line as well (patrilineal descent), the standard practice in

most Jewish communities worldwide remains, at present, matrilineal.

Israel Since 1948, the word "Israel" has been used to identify the Middle Eastern nation-

state that bears that name. But for many centuries, beginning with the Hebrew Bible,

"Israel" connoted both a political and a spiritual community, a double frame of refer-

ence that is still preserved within the synagogue liturgy. In the latter sense, therefore, Israel is that covenant community to whom God imparted Torah and to whom He is bound by promise and affection. Like the idea of election, however, the notion of

peoplehood implicit in the concept of Israel has seemed to some either confusing or

simply archaic, and its use today can still generate controversy. Biblical writers, however, had no difficulty reconciling ethnic identity and reli-

gious affiliation: God's covenant, they believed, was established with the b 'nei yisrael- literally, "the children of Israel" (that is, the lineal descendants of the patriarch

Jacob)-and that contractual bond was thought to be unique and therefore without

precedent in history. As a consequence, Jews continued to think of themselves over the

centuries as members of a single extended family and as a faith community held to- gether by a common set of beliefs.

However, during the modern era Jews found themselves faced with a political di-

lemma that soon took on religious implications: they could receive citizenship within

The Teachings of Judaism 359

the now largely secular nation-states of Europe, but only at the expense of their collect-

ive historical identity, and by denying all other "political" loyalties. For many Jews,

eager to assimilate into modern society and determined to secure civil rights that had

been denied them for centuries, the demand that Judaism redefine itself as a religious

creed and nothing more seemed a small price to pay for political emancipation.

On the other hand, Orthodox Jews, generally suspicious of secular values and distrustful of the process of acculturation, viewed this new understanding of Jewish

identity with alarm. In addition, by the end of the nineteenth century, a very different

group of secular dissident Jewish intellectuals-early advocates of Zionism, for ex-

ample, such as Theodor Herzl-also rebelled, though for completely different reasons,

against the notion that Jews had no claim to nationhood and were just another reli-

gious denomination among thousands in the world. Today, many of those who practice Judaism are comfortable with their double

identity as members of both a religious and an ethnic community, while at the same

time recognizing the inevitable tension between these two perspectives. For those Jews

who have chosen to make aliyah (Hebrew, "to ascend")-that is, to immigrate to Israel and become citizens of a Jewish state-this tension almost disappears, though secular/

nationalist and religious values continue to clash with one another in contemporary Israeli society. For those Jews who remain in the Diaspora-a majority of the world's

Jewish population-the need to establish a balance between national and religious

self-identification remains a challenge.

The Messiah and the Messianic Age One idea that emerged from the matrix of ancient Judaism that has had a profound

impact upon the Western world is the idea of a messiah. From its very beginnings in

the Hebrew Bible, however, this concept has meant different things to different audi-

ences. At its root, the term mashiach (Hebrew, "anointed one"; translated into English as "messiah") means any person who was ceremonially anointed with oil in prepar-

ation for becoming a priest or a king, and when most biblical writers used this term literally, that was all they had in mind.

Nevertheless, later prophets such as the Second Isaiah (c. late sixth century B.C.E.)

began to extend the use of this term metaphorically by applying it to either non-

Israelite kings or to an unnamed future "prince" who would redeem his people from

subjugation to foreign nations. As the beginning of the Common Era approached, the

idea of a messiah continued to evolve. In works that lie outside of the Hebrew Bible, such as the First Book of Enoch and the Fourth Book of Ezra, the term mashiach took on explicitly supernatural meanings, signifying a heavenly redeemer figure sent by

God to rescue Israel and the world from evil. This more imaginative use of the messiah

concept was linked in such books with end-of-the-world visions, complete with pre- dictions of a new world order emerging from a final era of chaos and destruction. Such

writers saw the Messiah as an instrument of divine power through whom God would

accomplish both the final judgment and the ultimate renewal of life on earth.

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When Christianity identified Jesus of Nazareth with this redemptive-supernatural messiah tradition, it prompted the rabbis of the Talmud to reevaluate the very notion

of a "messiah." What followed in their writings on this subject was a remarkably

diverse collection of views, with some religious authorities identifying the biblical king Hezekiah (late eighth century B.C.E.) as a "messiah," whereas others deferred the

appearance of an equally human messiah (albeit one from the line of David) to the indefinite future. Yet despite this uncertainty over the Messiah's precise identity, a

lively debate ensued, within and beyond rabbinic literature, on which tasks such a

messiah might be expected to accomplish and whether his mission would be accom-

plished within the span of human history or only at the "end" of time. Not surpris-

ingly, centuries of longing for the fulfillment of these messianic visions have produced

a succession of"false" messiahs in Judaism; what is more remarkable is the persistence of that belief into the modern era and its active advocacy among traditionalist com-

munities within contemporary Judaism.

The Afterlife Of all the basic beliefs of Judaism, belief in an afterlife (Hebrew, Olam Ha-Bah-in rabbinic literature, the "world to come"), along with accompanying beliefs in the res-

urrection of the dead and the immortality of the soul, are among the most elusive.

Historically viewed, these beliefs are largely postbiblical in their origin, or at least are

not fully articulated until the period of the Talmud. For most biblical writers, the

death of the body entailed the passage of the soul into an underworld (Hebrew, Sheol; "pit" or "abyss"), where it would remain forever. Still, various biblical texts contain

hints of a countertradition; for example, the Second Book of Kings depicts the prophet

Elijah as ascending directly into heaven on a fiery chariot (2 Kings 2:1-12). But such miraculous transitions from life to a mysterious afterlife are exceptional, and it is only

in a very late biblical work, the Book of Daniel, that we come upon an explicit refer-

ence to the dead rising again to life. By the rabbinic era, however, mainstream Judaism had already embraced the idea

of a postmortem existence in the "world-to-come," though the rabbis who espoused

this belief were notoriously vague as to just what this belief entailed. Thus questions

such as whether the departed enter the world-to-come automatically upon death or

only after some ultimate judgment has been passed upon that soul by God, or whether

a general resurrection of mankind would precede or follow the Messianic age, were left unanswered.

By the modern era, many reform-minded Jews, bent on reevaluating traditional

Judaic beliefs, concluded that any belief in an existence beyond this world was either

an archaic folk belief or an insupportable, unscientific hypothesis. Yet despite such

opposition, the classic phraseology of the afterlife, along with references to the resur-

rection of the dead, persists within most contemporary prayer books. In Orthodox communities, Jews continue to insist that these beliefs are an integral part of the

Judaism they uphold.

The Teachings of Judaism 361

Jewish Mysticism The origins of mystical thinking in Judaism can be found in the Hebrew Bible, in

which at least one prophet, the sixth-century figure of Ezekiel, recorded visionary

trances in which God appeared to him as a figure of infinite mystery, seated upon a

throne:

Above the expanse ... was the semblance of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and on top, upon this semblance of a throne, there was the semblance of a human form. From what appeared as his loins up, I saw a gleam as of amber-what looked like fire encased in a frame; and from what appeared as his loins down, I saw what looked like fire. There was a radiance all about him. Like the appearance of the bow which shines in the clouds on a day of rain, such was the appearance of the surrounding radiance.

-Ezekiel 1:26-28

Visionary passages like these testify to a tradition of ecstatic meditation in biblical

Judaism in which a prophetic writer experiences the presence of God in a manner that is at once direct and mysterious. For centuries, Ezekiel's vision of the heavenly throne

(which is also a chariot) served as an inspiration to mystics who sought a comparable

glimpse of God and of the heavenly beings who, according to biblical tradition, sur-

round His throne.

Another popular biblical text that served as inspiration for Jewish mystics was the

opening chapter of the Book of Genesis, in which the creation of the world and of mankind is described. What distinguished the Kabbalistic school of mystical writers

from other visionaries was a fascination with the mysterious process of world creation

and a deep curiosity over the role of the Creator in this process. This type of mystical

inquiry is often accompanied by some form of esoteric biblical interpretation, and it

often incorporates some of the boldest kinds of cosmological speculation Jewish writ-

ers have ever indulged in. Key to the writings of the Kabbalah (Hebrew, "received tradition") is one under-

lying cosmic metaphor, the image of the Sephirot. The Sephirot are ten in number, and

they can be visualized as connected "spheres" of divine power, or as stages in a process

of divine self-revelation. As such, they come to represent at least one of two things: the

primary attributes of God and the dynamic emanations of His creative force.

However, the goal of mystical meditation in Kabbalah goes well beyond a desire to describe God or His relation to our world in quasi-mythological terms. The kabbal-

ists were united in their desire to reconnect heaven and earth through a process of

contemplative prayer and restorative moral actions. Thus every blessing that a Jew

utters in praise of God, or every mitzvah that is performed in strict accordance with

tradition, they taught, can now be invested with an almost magical power to "heal" the world (Hebrew, tikkun olam) and is directly related to the soul's longing to reunite

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The traditional arrangement of the Sephirot is designed to evoke either the tree of life or the human body.

with its Creator. The end goal of this longing, kabbalists believe,

is devekut, or a "clinging" to God that represents the highest state

in mystical Judaism of the covenant relationship.

The Lurianic system of Kabbalah, in particular, has had tre-

mendous appeal. In the "beginning" before creation, Rabbi Isaac

Luria taught, God (whom kabbalists refer to as the Ein Sof, or "Infinite One") withdrew into Himself, thereby creating an

empty space within which a material universe could take shape.

Having performed this voluntary act of self-contraction (Hebrew,

tzimtzum), the Creator then allowed rays of light to penetrate the

void, resulting in a concentration of this creative force into ten spheres (the Sephirot). However, the ten "vessels" God had pre-

pared to hold this Sephirotic light mysteriously shattered, leaving

the material universe in disarray. According to Luria, this cosmic

event was the true origin of evil and disorder in the world, and

this partly inexplicable catastrophe resulted in the scattering of

divine "sparks" throughout the cosmos and within the human

soul. Within each of us, therefore, is an intermingling of good and evil; even the worst human beings, he believed, retain some

small portion of divine goodness. With the coming of the

Messiah, all of these sparks would be reunited with God. Until

that eschatological event transforms the world forever, each person has the potential to liberate that divine "spark" for himself

or herself through a process of repentance and return to God (Hebrew, teshuvah).

Ideas and images derived from Kabbalah continue to exert

some influence on contemporary Jewish thought, and particu-

larly for those associated with the Jewish "Renewal" movement.3

Admirers of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) and, more recently, followers of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

(1924-2014)-who are determined to bring about a reinvigora-

tion of Jewish spirituality-insist that such concepts as teshuvah

and tikkun olam cannot be confined to the synagogue or to a life of conventional reli-

gious observance. For some, teshuvah entails a sincere and disciplined internalizing of

our longing for God in the form of true piety, affecting every aspect of our behavior. For others, however, tikkun olam means, quite literally, actions that benefit human-

kind and promote peace in the world.

THE HISTORY OF JUDAISM The earliest reference we have to the Jews-known variously as "Hebrews," "Israelites,"

and "Judeans" (depending on the era and the context)-dates from the late thirteenth century B .C.E. On a commemorative stone, inscribed at the request of the reigning

The History of Judaism 363

Mediterranean S e a

_/

Egyptian ruler, Pharaoh Merneptah (c. 1210 B.C.E.), the following inscription appears:

"Israel is laid Waste, its seed is no more." No other reference to "Israel" or the "Israelites"

appears in Egypt or anywhere else for centuries. Most of what we know about ancient

Israel, as well as the beliefs and religious practices of the ancient Israelites, is derived from Jewish Scriptures, referred to in Hebrew as Tanakh. In English we refer to these books as the Hebrew Bible, though Christians commonly refer to these books as the

"Old Testament."

Dispersion, Assimilation, and Collective Identity The composite portrait of ancient Israelite society and its faith that one finds in the

books of the Hebrew Bible is one of seemingly endless conflicts and successive divine revelations. For the authors of the Hebrew Bible the central conflict was over one issue:

Would Israelites remain loyal to their one God (referred to, in Hebrew, by the conso-

nants YHWH), or would they worship the deities of the nations that surrounded them? This was a politically relevant question, as well as a spiritual one, as the people

of ancient Israel struggled to maintain their political and cultural independence for

several centuries. Eventually, however, the tides of imperial Near Eastern politics swept over them, and after a series of devastating military defeats-first at the hands

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of the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E. and later at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E.-

the once-independent Israelite kingdoms oflsrael and Judah were destroyed. Thousands

of the Israelites were driven into exile or simply absorbed into the Assyrian and

Babylonian empires.

Yet despite this history of conquest and dispersion, the Israelites retained their

national identity and their collective memory, and while living in exile they began to assemble a continuous history of their people and of their relationship with their God.

Once completed, that history became part of their sacred scriptures. With the earliest

copies of these books in hand, exiles from the kingdom of Judah began returning to

their homeland after 538 B.C.E., believing that YHWH had at last forgiven them.

Over the next few centuries, Jewish communities could be found not only in the his- torical land of Israel (which Greek and Roman geographers later named "Palestine")

but also in Mesopotamia and throughout the Mediterranean. These communities

were referred to as the Jewish Diaspora, and in the many centuries that followed, the number of Jews living outside of their historic homeland ultimately far exceeded those

living within its borders.

For more than two millennia, therefore, dispersion, acculturation, and resistance

to total assimilation have formed the larger pattern ofJewish life and must serve as the

backdrop to any discussion of Judaism as a historical religion.

The Biblical Period It has become customary to segment the history of Judaism into several discrete "epochs," each marked by certain key events that help to shape the direction of Jewish

religious behavior and thought. The earliest of these epochs is the Biblical period, which can be dated (speculatively) from the eighteenth century B.C.E. to the sixth

century B.C.E. The key events of this era are the rise of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac,

and Jacob); the Exodus from Egypt; the formation of the monarchy; and the rise and

fall of the two kingdoms-Israel and Judah-that followed. Viewed historically, the

Patriarchal period remains shrouded in myth and legend, with the towering figures of

Abraham as the principal bearer of the Covenant that YHWH first establishes with the people of "Israel."

The Exodus from Egypt remains a problematic event for which little credible his-

torical evidence exists today. Nevertheless, in the minds of biblical writers-and in the

consciousness ofJews for centuries thereafter-it remained one of the crucial turning

points in the history ofJudaism. For whether or not it occurred exactly as described in

the Hebrew Bible, the escape oflsraelite slaves from Egypt marked a significant rever- sal of fortune for the tribes that called themselves "Israel," and it served as proof of

God's power and willingness to intervene in history on their behalf.

More than that, however, the Exodus also marked a decisive moment in Israel's

history of divine revelation and lawgiving, for it was on a mountain peak in the Sinai

peninsula (variously identified as Mt. Horeb or Mt. Sinai) that divine instruction was

provided to their leader Moses, who then imparted these teachings to the assembled

The History of Judaism 365

Israelite masses. From this era on, "Israel" could no longer regard itself as a simple

tribal society, cherishing memories of remote patriarchal leaders. The moment Israel

encountered YHWH at Sinai it became a "confessional" community, bound together

by a common faith in a Creator-God and committed to His service. As for the land the

Israelites were poised to invade, that was understood to be a gift from YHWH, as well

as the fulfillment of promises made to their ancestor Abraham. But it was theirs only as long as they remained faithful to the God who had brought them into their "Prom-

ised Land" and true to the Covenant He had established with them.

Kingdoms of Israel and Judah As a nation in the making, Israel began to emerge as a distinctive political entity only in the tenth century B.C.E., with the establishment

of the dynasty of King David (c. 1000-961 B.C.E.). For a time, David managed to unite a warring tribal society under his leadership, finally passing on the throne to his

son Solomon (c. 961-922 B.C.E.), whose even more exalted reign-at least in the eyes of biblical writers-brought a united monarchy to its height of power and fame.

The most important achievement of Solomon's reign, however, was not the extent

of his legendary wealth and power, but rather the construction of the First Temple-a

permanent sanctuary, designed to replace the portable tent (or "Tabernacle") of

Moses's time, wherein prayers and animal sacrifices were offered to YHWH. By build-

ing this Temple in the capital city ofJerusalem, Solomon ensured not only that the political and religious life of Israel would be geographically concentrated within one

"holy" city but also that the Davidic monarchy would forever be associated with the

most sacred site in Judaism.

Following Solomon's death, the northern tribes seceded to form a kingdom of

their own, subsequently identified as the kingdom of Israel. The southern tribe of

Judah remained loyal to the house of David and his descendants, and it bore the name of the kingdom of Judah. Both of these kingdoms, as we have noted, were relatively

short-lived, and each in turn was overrun by the armies of more powerful empires. Of

the two invasions, it was the second, by the Babylonians (587 B.C.E.), that resonated

most powerfully with Jews for centuries thereafter, if only because it was the occasion

of the destruction of Solomon's Temple. In time, the loss of the First Temple and of the kingdom ofJudah became the archetype of all later tragedies of displacement that the

Jews were to endure and would be commemorated in both prayer and practice.

The Second Temple Period The second great epoch in the history ofJudaism, known as the Second Temple period,

began with the gradual return of a relatively small band of Judean exiles from

Babylonia, following the Persian conquest of the Babylonian Empire in 539 B.C.E. The rebuilding of the First Temple (c. 516 B.C.E.), which the Babylonians had earlier de- stroyed during their siege ofJerusalem in 587 B.C.E ., signaled the renewal of a central- ized ritual life for Jews in what was formerly the kingdom ofJudah, now merely a

province within the Persian empire. However, the movement of Jews between

366 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

Babylonia and "Yehud" (as the Persians called Judah) not only provided for the re-

population of Jerusalem and its restoration as a center of religious life but also pro- vided for the passage of ideas and literature from Mesopotamia to the land of Israel.

Even at the beginning of the Second Temple era, a "canon," or collection of sacred

Jewish writings, was slowly taking shape. Thus the formation ofTanakh can be dated

most reliably from this period, and the persons most likely responsible for the gather- ing and editing of these books were scribes and priests. Using the historical and theo-

logical perspectives of earlier prophets as their guides, these priestly editors selected works that embodied a recurrent pattern of teachings about divine promise, judgment,

and hoped-for restoration, binding together this diverse collection of sacred works

with an archetypal vision oflsrael 's past and anticipated future.

Though politically turbulent, the Second Temple period saw both the growth of

the Jewish Diaspora and an increase in the Jewish population of Palestine. In the ab- sence of a Jewish nation-state, religious leadership within the Jewish community fell

to the priesthood and to an intellectual class connected to the priesthood. These two

groups are said to have formed a leadership "council," known as the "Men of the Great

Assembly." Tradition assigns to this body the decision to "close" the canon of divinely

revealed (or inspired) Scripture. Scholars differ today on the probable period in which religious authorities-whether in Jerusalem or Babylonia-considered the period of

prophecy (and therefore the process of revelation) to have ended. However, it is com-

monly assumed that by the third century B.C.E. the writing and editing of the Torah

had already reached a sufficient state of finality to allow Greek-speaking Jews to trans-

late it from Hebrew into Greek. In time, additional portions of Tanakh were trans- lated from available texts; this translation is referred to as the Septuagint, and it played a significant role in introducing Judaism to the larger Greek-speaking world. It was this version of Jewish Scriptures, rather than the Hebrew original, with which most

early Christians were familiar.

Division and Revolt One important development within the Second Temple period was the increasing tension within the Jewish community between those who favored social and intellectual assimilation into Greek (and, later, Roman) culture and

those who resisted such assimilation in favor of preserving "traditional" values and

religious practices. This struggle became openly violent during the Maccabean revolt

of 167-164 B.C.E., as the leaders of the revolt found themselves fighting against not

only Syrian-Greek armies but also their more assimilated countrymen who sided with the Syrian king, Antiochus IV (c. 215-164 B.C.E.) . Although this conflict finally re-

sulted in the reestablishment of an autonomous Jewish state (c. 140-63 B.C.E.), one of

the results of this internal struggle was the gradual appearance of religious "parties"

whose influence on Jewish belief and practice grew during the period of Roman domi-

nation and occupation of Palestine.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus (37-c. 100 C.E.) identified the most important of these parties as the Pharisees, who appear to have commanded the

The History of Judaism 367

attention and the loyalty of the Jewish masses. Central to the Pharisees' form of

Judaism was their belief in the "Oral Torah"-that is, a body of teachings imparted

by God to Moses on Sinai (but never written down) and subsequently transmitted

orally to later generations. For the Pharisees, these interpretive readings of Scripture

were an integral part of "Scripture" itself, and therefore just as binding. Thus the

Pharisees taught that torah-that is, the totality of divine revelation to the Jews- incorporated a belief in both the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the

dead. In the eyes of the common people, the Pharisees' knowledge of the biblical text

and their familiarity with biblical law made them more reliable guides than the often

corrupt and politically compromised priesthood, and it is from the followers of the

Pharisees that we derive our sense of what the dominant form of Judaism may have

been like by the end of the first century C .E .

A second group that Josephus identified were the Sadducees, whose influence upon the Judaism of the time was much weaker. Drawing their constituents largely from

priestly families, the Sadducees regarded the written Torah as exclusively sacred and

authoritative and therefore rejected the very notion that an "Oral Torah" existed.

Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees tended toward literalism in their understanding

of Scripture and therefore could find no warrant for believing in either immortality or resurrection. In politics, they tended to be sympathetic to-or at least accommodat- ing of-Roman authority and therefore less likely than the Pharisees to favor revolu-

tionary leaders.

The third, and most reclusive, community Josephus refers to is that of the Essenes,

a general term designating groups of devout Jews who had withdrawn from society in

protest against the moral and spiritual corruption of their contemporaries. These tra- ditionalists viewed the Temple priesthood with disgust and held the radical view of

history that the "End-Time" of divine judgment and global catastrophe was at hand.

Such beliefs, which religious scholars refer to as eschatological, had become increas-

ingly widespread during the late Second Temple era, particularly when coupled with a

belief in a messiah. Although such beliefs were well known throughout the Jewish world, Essenes held to their faith in the imminence of the world's end with particular

fervor, and they looked forward to a Messianic Age, when the Temple would at last be

purified and the Romans defeated by armies of angels.

Many historians today associate the Essenes with a community of sectarian Jews

who withdrew from Judean society and built a settlement near the northwestern shore

of the Dead Sea, at a place called Khirbet Qumran, sometime during the second

century B.C .E.4 The religious literature written and preserved by this group was hidden away in caves near their settlement, and it was not until 1947-1956 that these ancient scrolls were discovered. Collectively, they are referred to as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and almost half of these are fragments of books from the Hebrew Bible. These copies of

biblical texts are the oldest copies of the Jewish Scriptures known to exist today.

Last, and most transitory in their influence on Judaism, were those revolutionaries Josephus termed the Zealots. Like the Pharisees and the Essenes, the Zealots were eager

368 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

Masada was the last stronghold Zealots held before taking their lives rather than yielding to the Roman army (73 c.E.).

The Touro Synagogue, built in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1759, is the oldest synagogue in the United States.

to see the Romans driven from the land of Israel

and looked forward to a restoration oflsrael's sov-

ereignty and of its monarchy. However, believing

that God would fight on their side, the Zealots

sought to expel the Roman army through direct

action, and Zealot agitation and rebellion were

underlying causes of the First Jewish War against Rome (66-70 C.E.). Even after this war ended in

the defeat of Jewish forces and in the destruction

of the Second Temple, a group of Zealots contin-

ued to hold out against the Romans until 73 c.E., when their mountain fortress of

Masada was besieged and overrun by the Roman army. Rather than surrender, the remnant of the Zealot fighters, along with their women and children, committed sui-

cide (according to Josephus) rather than be taken alive by their enemy.

The Formative Age The fall of Jerusalem and of Masada, and the destruction of the Second Temple, sig-

naled the end of the Second Temple era and the beginning of the third epoch ofJuda-

ism's history, known variously as the Rabbinic Age and the Formative Age (c. late first

century C.E.-sixth century C.E.). As long as the Temple stood, it served as both a treasured symbol oflsrael's biblical past and the operational center ofJewish ritual life

throughout the world. Once it lay in ruins, however, the Jewish people needed a new

institutional center-a replacement sanctuary, until such time as the Temple could be

rebuilt. The synagogue, whose remote origins can be traced back to the beginning of the Babylonian exile, provided just such a substitute, but unlike the Temple it was

never a place of animal sacrifice, nor was it under the control of a priesthood. In all likelihood, the synagogue began simply as a place of assembly at which Judean exiles could meet and study together. With the Temple gone, however, Jews turned increas-

ingly toward the synagogue as the place for reli-

gious leadership or for communal prayer.

Unlike the Temple, which could stand in only

one place (namely, Jerusalem), a synagogue could be built anywhere. Moreover, almost anyone

could build a synagogue or serve as a communal

leader. Priests had no role to play in the ritual or

social life of a synagogue, which made it a more

democratic institution from the start.

The Rabbis In time, the synagogue acquired a clerical leadership all its own, which brings us to

the second major historical change that defines

the Formative Age: the emergence of a class of

The History of Judaism 369

religious intellectuals known as Rabbis (Hebrew, "my master"). The word was a term

of honor conferred on someone whose piety and learning caused him to stand out

among his contemporaries and whose teachings (or legal rulings) were sufficiently

memorable that subsequent generations viewed him with respect and even reverence.

One such figure, who had come from Babylonia to study in Jerusalem, was Hillel

(fl. 30 B.C.E.-4 B.C.E.), whose compassionate nature was as remarkable as his scholar- ship. According to legend, it was Hillel who, when asked (mockingly) by a pagan to

teach him torah while he stood on one foot, replied: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; the rest is commentary"-a version of the so-called Golden Rule.

Like Hillel, many of the early Rabbis saw themselves as more than just legal scholars

whose expertise in biblical law allowed them to advise common folk on matters of cor-

rect observance. They also saw themselves as sages or wisdom teachers whose insights into human nature complemented their knowledge of divinely revealed law.

The Compilation of the Talmud The signature accomplishment of the rabbinic scholar class during the Formative Age was the writing and compilation of the Talmud,

a composite work that, in time, was seen as a second Torah, or at the very least, as an

indispensable addendum to the Tanakh. On one level, the Talmud is a collection of expansive (and occasionally imaginative) interpretations of biblical law. The format of

the Talmud is often dialogical (that is, a series of question-and-answer exchanges).

Nearly every page consists of some portion of a rabbinic debate over the alternative

ways in which a particular biblical statute can be understood or implemented. The

practical objective of all these debates was the creation of an authoritative form of ritual

behavior-referred to in Hebrew as halacha-that would enable the observant Jew to sanctify daily life and fulfill the commandments imparted to Moses on Sinai. God

gave torah to Israel, the Rabbis believed, and now it was their responsibility to clarify its terms and relate them to daily life. In the section of this chapter on sacred practices, we will see how halacha informs the ways many Jews today live their faith.

The Babylonian version of the Talmud, compiled at the beginning of the sixth

century C.E., consists of sixty-three separate volumes covering a wide range of legal issues. The historical process by which these volumes came into being, however, can be

studied in two stages: the earlier stage, known as the Mishnah (Hebrew, "repetition"), is written in Hebrew and consists of economical formulations of halacha, often accom- panied by an attribution to a particular rabbinic scholar; the later stage, referred to as the Gemara (Hebrew, "completion"), is written in Aramaic (a Semitic language, very close to Hebrew), and the rabbinic debates recorded there often take up where the

Mishnah leaves off.

This process of recording and summarizing rabbinic debates continued, in both

Palestine and Babylonia, during a period of roughly four centuries. As the body of rab-

binic commentary evolved toward the next stage of completion-first in Jerusalem in

the fifth century C.E. and later in Babylonia at the beginning of the sixth century C.E.- the Mishnah was combined with the far more elaborate text of the Gemara. Together

370 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

these two scholarly works make up the Talmud. Judaism's greatest challenge during this period, however, was not simply that of preserving the teachings of its religious elite

but was, more important, that of protecting itself from a rival "sister" religion-namely,

Christianity-whose political might increased throughout the Roman empire in the

course of the fourth and fifth centuries, at the same time that Judaism's declined.

The Conflict between Judaism and Christianity Christianity, as you will learn in Chapter 12, began life as a splinter movement within

Judaism, following the death by crucifixion of its central figure, Jesus of Nazareth, in 30 C.E. Over the next two generations the early Christian community gradually pulled away from mainstream Judaism and redefined both the nature and role of Jesus in

Christian thought, largely under the influence of an ex-Pharisee known as Paul of

Tarsus. Those early followers ofJesus, who may have thought of him as a prophet,

or even as a Messiah-figure, were soon displaced by those who saw Jesus as the "Son of God," and who eventually came to believe in him as the incarnate human form of

YHWH. As the letters of Paul (mostly written between 50 and 64 C.E.) clearly testify,

most contemporary Jews viewed these teachings as heresy and quickly banished Jewish followers ofJesus from the synagogue. By the turn of the second century the split be-

tween Judaism and Christianity was irreversible, and out of the matrix of Judaism a

new (and largely antagonistic) faith had been born.

The philosophical conflict between Judaism and Christianity sprang from a number of incompatible views on the nature of God, the covenant, salvation from sin,

and the proper interpretation of biblical texts. For rabbinic Judaism, any material

representation of God-either in the form of an image or a living human being-was

barely acceptable, and even then only as metaphor. For Christianity, on the other

hand, the embodiment of the divine in Jesus as the "Christ" soon became a central doctrine of the early Church. As for God's covenant with Israel, Paul argued that the

Christian community had-at least at that moment in time-displaced the Jews as

true heirs of the biblical promises made to the Patriarchs and the prophets; the Jews,

he insisted, had alienated God by their rejection ofJesus and had (if only temporarily)

forfeited their intimate relation to the deity. That the Christian and Jewish communi-

ties would, before long, rejoin each other in an expanded covenanted relationship with God was Paul's fervent wish and expectation. However, the first four centuries of

the Common Era saw only a widening theological and social gap between the two

communities.5

With the Roman Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity early in the

fourth century, Judaism found itself facing not only a determined religious antagonist in the Christian Church but also an even more powerful political antagonist, as a suc-

cession of Christian emperors sought to stifle Judaism throughout the Roman Empire

by imposing punitive legislation on the Jews and by condoning acts of violence against

synagogues. In the eyes of the late fourth-century Christian theologian St. John

Chrysostom (c. 347-407 C.E.), the Jews were the devil's spawn, their synagogues the

The History of Judaism 371

dwelling places of all evils, and any civil relations between Christians and Jews, he argued, represented a betrayal of God.6 Against such a background of institutionalized

hatred, the Jews of Christian Europe struggled for the next millennium to maintain

not just their faith, but their very lives.

The Age of Philosophy and Mysticism The fourth great epoch in the history of Judaism, extending from the Early Middle

Ages (sixth-seventh centuries C.E.) to the Early Modern period (sixteenth-seventeenth

centuries C.E.), can be thought of as the Age of Philosophy and Mysticism. During this period the Jewish Diaspora stretched from China and India in the East to England in

the West. Historians frequently employ the following terms to identify these historical/

cultural groupings: Ashkenazim, representing those Jews living in Europe; Sephardim,

or Jews living in Spain, Portugal, and parts of North Africa; and Mizrachim, or Jews

living in various parts of the Middle East. Each of these communities underwent pe-

riods of prosperity and decline, but throughout most of this period some of the most

creative developments in Judaism took place: first in Babylonia (present-day Iraq) and later in Spain.

As the Palestinian Jewish community dwindled in numbers and prestige in the

course of the sixth and seventh centuries, the center of Jewish intellectual life shifted

to Babylonia and to the principal rabbinic academies of Sura and Pumpeditha. And it

was Sura, in the early tenth century, that gave rise to one of the major figures in Jewish

philosophy: Rabbi Saadiah hen Joseph (882-942). Two challenges faced Saadiah during his career-the first, from within the Jewish community; the second, from an

entirely new religion.

The Karaites The challenge from within the Jewish community came from a group of anti-rabbinic Jews, known as Karaites, who (like the Sadducees of the first century)

rejected the very notion of an "Oral Torah," and therefore rejected both the Talmud

and whatever claims to religious authority the Rabbis had asserted since the beginning of the Common Era. For Karaite scholars the only sacred texts in Judaism were those books that made up the Hebrew Bible, and no work of commentary could possibly

claim equal, or near equal, status.

Such views clearly threatened the existence of the rabbinical class, and as a rep- resentative of the rabbinical tradition, Saadiah rose to its defense. The interpretation

of Scripture, he argued, rested not only on a profound knowledge of the language of

Scripture but also on "reliable tradition," as no generation of scholars could claim a

monopoly upon insight or knowledge. In addition, unlike the Karaites, Saadiah did

not encourage his contemporaries to believe that the Messiah would arrive momen-

tarily or to assume that the End of Days was at hand. His comparatively realistic view that the Messiah would arrive when the time was right-whenever that might

be-made the rest of his views on the Torah seem that much more reliable to his

readers.

372 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

The Encounter with Islam Saadiah's second great challenge came from outside Judaism altogether, in the form of a competing faith-namely, that of Islam

(Chapter 13). The founder oflslam, Muhammad (570?-632 c.E.), claimed to have re- ceived a new work of Scripture-the Qur'an-in the form of oral communications

from the Angel Gabriel, and which he saw as a more reliable revelation than that given to either the Christians or the Jews. Viewing himself as one in a long line of prophets

that included both Moses and Jesus, Muhammad clearly expected the Jews of Arabia to accept his claim to be the last (or "seal") of the prophets and to embrace his revela-

tion as the definitive message of God (or ''Allah" as the one Creator-God is referred to

in Arabic) to humanity.

When it became apparent that the Jews of Mecca would accept neither him nor his new torah, Muhammad turned his full attention to his pagan audience, whom he found more receptive to a new monotheistic faith. Muhammad's success in propagat-

ing his religious message was matched by his military success in defeating many of his

more powerful enemies (which included some of the prominent Jewish tribes of

Arabia), and after his death the faith of Islam spread rapidly throughout many of the

lands in which Jews had settled centuries before. Although Muhammad's attitude toward the Jews, as expressed in the Qur'an, remained understandably ambivalent,

from the eighth century on Jews were accorded a degree of tolerance within Muslim

societies that they rarely encountered in Christian lands.

Like many Jewish scholars of his generation, Saadiah had learned a great deal from

reading Muslim philosophical literature of the ninth and tenth centuries. Foremost

among Saadiah's concerns, therefore, was the need to present Judaism to an educated Jewish audience already familiar with the teachings of both Islam and Greek philoso-

phy, and to do so in a way that did not contradict Jewish Scriptures. The result of this investigation, which Saadiah published as The Book of Beliefs and

Opinions (933), is the earliest example of scholasticism in Jewish thought-that is, a systematic attempt to reconcile faith and reason by relating mainstream religious be-

liefs to contemporary philosophical arguments. Thus Saadiah sought to prove the unique character of God's revelation to Israel, as well as the rational character of many

(though not all) biblical commandments, and thereby strengthen Jewish belief in the

uniquely trustworthy nature ofJudaism's Scriptures.

Maimonides The tradition of philosophical inquiry produced at least one more in- tellectual giant during this period: Moses ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides (1135-1204). In Maimonides, Judaism found one of its supreme philosophers; much of Orthodox Jewish theology derives directly from his writings. Maimonides, the son

of a respected rabbinic scholar, was well prepared by his background and early educa-

tion for this role. When his family was forced to flee their native city of Cordoba,

Spain, to escape the tyrannical rule of a militant Muslim regime, they found refuge in Egypt under the more tolerant rule of the celebrated Muslim ruler Salah ad-Din

The History of Judaism 373

(c. 1138-1193). Maimonides was better known to his Muslim hosts as a physician than as a philosopher, though it is the latter role that concerns us here.

Maimonides's passion for logic and intellectual clarity is evident in all of his writ-

ings. In his Mishneh Torah, for example, he listed every single one of the 613 biblical commandments, revealing (even to the casual reader) that many of these mitzvot could

no longer be fulfilled in the absence of the Temple in Jerusalem. Similarly, in his Com- mentary to the Mishnah, Maimonides clearly describes what he believed to be the thir-

teen essential "articles" of Jewish belief, thereby creating a dogmatic framework for

any subsequent discussion of Judaism as a faith system.

Though not universally acceptable, even during and after Maimonides's lifetime,

this compact statement of belief still serves as a useful reference point in any discussion of what today is called "Torah-true" (or "Orthodox") Judaism.

Ironically, Maimonides's most celebrated work, The Guide for the Perplexed, evoked

considerable controversy when it finally became public, though Maimonides had not

intended it originally for widespread publication. In this philosophical treatise, Maimonides attempted to grapple with some of the more problematic philosophical

issues of his day: the existence and attributes of God, the nature of creation and proph-

ecy, the problem of evil, divine providence, and the purpose of human existence. Throughout the Guide, Maimonides makes it clear that he distrusts any comparison

between humanity and the eternal creator. At best, he argued, we can speak of God

mostly in negative terms. For example, instead of saying that God is a being who lives

forever, Maimonides advises that it is preferable to say that He has no temporal limits.

This particular approach to theology (and, inevitably, to biblical interpretation) em- phasizes God's "otherness" and tends to remove God from the material world and

beyond the limitations of the human mind.

Like many of his Jewish contemporaries, Maimonides looked forward with

some eagerness to the advent of the Messianic Age, though he was shrewd enough

not to assign a date to that hoped-for event. Interestingly, however, Maimonides's

view of both the Messiah and the era of his arrival is largely naturalistic, and it

contrasts sharply with the more supernaturalist traditions that both preceded and followed him:

The "days of the Messiah" refers to a time in which sovereignty will

revert to Israel and the Jewish people will revert to the land of Israel.

Their king will be a very great one, with his royal palace in Zion .... All

nations will make peace with him, and all countries will serve him out

of respect for his great righteousness and the wonders which w ill occur

through him .... However, except for the fact that sovereignty will revert

to Israel, nothing will be essentially different from what it is now.

-Helek Sanhedrin, Ch. 10

374 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

This demythologized version of messianic Judaism was Maimonides's principal

legacy to future generations of acculturated Jews. But one important segment of the Jewish community, those drawn to mystical thinking, rejected Maimonidean scholas-

ticism and its celebration of reason and sought to restore to Judaism some of its rich

mythological past.

The Kabbalah Collectively, the many diverse traditions that make up the world of Jewish mysticism are sometimes referred to as Kabbalah, but when historians use that term they are thinking primarily of a school of mystics whose beginnings can be traced

to twelfth-century France and thirteenth-century Spain. Common to all these writers was an acknowledgment that the hidden "essence" of YHWH-as Maimonides

taught-cannot be fully grasped, and certainly never directly perceived or represented. In a late thirteenth-century work many regard as the "bible" of Kabbalah-the

Zohar-this entire structure of divine qualities and emanations is laid out in the form of a biblical midrash, that is, an extended interpretation of select passages from the Book of Genesis. Central to this form of mystical thought is the idea that however imperfect

the human race may be, we are still capable of interacting with, understanding, and even

influencing God. This theology of immanence-or, more precisely, of divine-human interaction-is quite obviously at odds with Maimonides's view of a profoundly tran-

scendent Creator. Consequently, the kabbalists felt free to evoke the Creator in explicitly

anthropomorphic language (i.e., portraying God in very human terms).

MAIMONIDES'S 13 ARTICLES OF JEWISH BELIEF

1. God the Creator exists. 2. God is uniquely "one." 3. God is incorporeal (and therefore all scriptural images of a divine "body" are mere figures

of speech) . 4 . God is eternal. 5. God alone is worthy of worship and obedience. 6. The teachings of the biblical prophets are true. 7. Moses is the chief of all prophets. 8. The Torah comes directly from God (through Moses). 9. Both the Written and the Oral Torah represent the authentic word of God, and nothing can

be added or taken away from either. 10. God is omniscient. 11 . God rewards the good and punishes the wicked. 12. The Messiah will undoubtedly come (though no exact date can be known for his coming) . 13. The resurrection of the dead will occur in the World-to-Come.

The History of Judaism 375

By the sixteenth century, the kabbalistic system had matured to the point that a

powerful and highly imaginative cosmology emerged, mainly through the teachings

of one man: Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572). The Ari (or "holy lion"), as he was known to his disciples, left no writings at the end of his short life, but his followers dissemi-

nated his thought throughout much of the Jewish world, and of all the many variants ofKabbalah, the "Lurianic" system is at once the most influential and the most com-

plex. Luria taught that the individual believer could liberate the divine "spark" within

by careful observance of the divine commandments and acts of self-discipline and

meditation. In addition, in sharp contrast to mainstream Jewish belief, Luria envi-

sioned each soul undergoing a series of reincarnations, as the soul constantly strives to

return to its Source.

The potential danger-as well as the enormous appeal-of Lurianic Kabbalah became quite apparent a century after the Ari's death in the sensationalistic career of

a messianic pretender, Shabbetai Tzevi (1626-1676). A Turkish Jew of obviously un- stable temperament, Shabbetai became convinced early in life of his extraordinary

spiritual powers after studying Lurianic texts. At the encouragement of one of his most

fervent disciples (a self-styled prophet named Nathan of Gaza, whom he had met on a visit to Palestine), Shabbetai declared himself the "King Messiah." In 1666, he pre- sented himself before the Sultan of Turkey, asserting his messianic credentials and his

"royal" right to the historic land oflsrael. The Turkish response to this would-be savior

was, first, to imprison Shabbetai for a year, and then to offer him a minor position at

court following his conversion to Islam. Shabbetai's acceptance of this offer not only

exposed him as an apostate, but it also sent shockwaves throughout the Jewish world,

particularly among those who had firmly believed that Shabbetai was indeed the mes- sianic deliverer he claimed to be.

The Rise of Hasidism Shabbetai Tzevi was neither the last nor even the most im- portant religious figure to base his teachings on Lurianic thought, however. Within

two generations of Shabbetai 's death yet another mystical teacher arose, this time in Poland. The Baal Shem Tov (c. 1700-1760) also taught the necessity of releasing the sparks of holiness within, thereby hastening the approach of the Messiah. His given

name was Israel hen Eliezer, but his disciples commonly referred to him as the "Master

of the Good Name" (Hebrew, Baal Shem Tov) , a title that conveyed to contemporaries the belief that he possessed secret "names" of God that he could use in incantations.

Orphaned as an infant, the Baal Shem Tov was given a rudimentary education, and at no time during his career as a spiritual guide was he regarded as a great scholar.

Instead, his fame derived from his faith healings and exorcisms. In time, the Baal

Shem Tov gave up the life of an itinerant healer and began to attract a growing number

of disciples who were drawn by his reputation for wisdom and spirituality.

At the heart of the Baal Shem Tov's teachings was a profoundly immanental vision

of God's omnipresence. For the Baal Shem Tov and his followers-who were soon called Hasidim (Hebrew, "pious ones")-God could be found everywhere, and

376 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

Compare the Baal Shem Tov with the Buddha. How are their teachings alike, and how are they different?

A young Israeli Hasid with curled sideburns, commonly worn by men in his community.

everyone was at least potentially capable of spiritual communion with the Creator. To

worship God properly, the Baal Shem Tov taught, one need not be a master scholar;

the most ordinary of everyday acts, he insisted, if performed with an awareness of

God's nearness and in a spirit of joy and love, become acts of spiritual devotion and

serve to make everyday life sacred. No one was too humble or too depraved to turn (or

return) to God, who required only a burning desire to perform His will. At the communal level, the key to success within this system of mystical devotion

lay with its leadership, and the Baal Shem Tov urged his disciples to choose a spiritual

guide, or tsaddik (meaning "righteous one"), to provide a living example for themselves and the rest of the community of what it is like to live a life of intense religious com-

mitment and intimacy with God. After the Baal Shem Tov's death, the Hasidic move-

ment he helped to create spread rapidly throughout Russia and much of Eastern

Europe. In each major geographical center of Hasidic activity, tsaddikim appeared to carry on the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov. Each of these leaders formed a "court,"

or spiritual circle of followers. In time Hasidic dynasties appeared, as one generation

followed another and as the loyalty to the father was transferred to the son. Many of

these dynasties, formed in the nineteenth century, still exist today, with the result that

virtually all Hasidic communities are centered around the personality and religious leadership of one man-often referred to in Yiddish as the Rebbe-whose authority in all things is largely unchallenged.

Opposition to the Hasidic movement arose soon after the Baal Shem

Tov's death, and for the next two generations established rabbinic authori-

ties in Russia and Poland sought to stifle popular interest in Hasidic teach-

ings. Their principal fear was that Hasidism would lead to a revival of a messianic cult like that which formed around Shabbetai Tzevi. Yet despite

the determined opposition of the rabbinic establishment, Hasidism flour-

ished, and by the mid-nineteenth century official opposition to Hasidism

waned as Europe's rabbinic leadership realized that it faced a far more

formidable opponent in the Jewish reform movements that suddenly

emerged in response to Enlightenment values during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The Modern Era The modern era in Judaism can be studied on at least two levels-the

political and the philosophical-for until the Jews of western Europe had achieved a certain degree of political emancipation, they were unable to

fully acculturate within European society or benefit from the intellectual

revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For centuries,

Jewish life in the West was characterized by both physical and cultural containment, the most visible symbol of which was the Jewish Quarter of

many cities (or Ghetto, as it was known after the sixteenth century), where

Jews were forced to reside. By law, Jews were also restricted to certain

The History of Judaism 377

trades and professions, especially money lending, but by the late eighteenth century many of these restrictions began to be removed. As more prosperous and highly edu-

cated Jews were permitted to intermingle (and, increasingly, intermarry) with their

Christian contemporaries, Judaism itself began to change.

Moses Mendelssohn No better example of this pivotal transformation in Jewish life can be found than Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), the son of a Torah scribe

and the principal representative for his time of the Age of Enlightenment (referred to

in Hebrew as the Haskalah). Because Jews were not yet permitted to attend universi- ties, Mendelssohn was largely self-taught in modern philosophy and several European languages. Before long, his philosophical writings began to attract the attention of

non-Jews within his native Germany and beyond. His impact on the Jewish commu-

nity was just as profound, and through his translation of the Hebrew Bible into

modern German and his various other publications, Mendelssohn became one of the

most effective advocates for educational reform and the modernization of Jewish in- tellectual life.

What Mendelssohn is best remembered for today, however, is his eloquent defense

of religious freedom, coupled with a defense of the Jewish faith, in a volume entitled

Jerusalem (1783). In this polemical masterwork, Mendelssohn entered a plea on behalf of religious tolerance and in defense of the integrity of Judaism. He argued that all

higher religions share certain common beliefs (such as the existence of a benevolent Creator-God, or the immortality of the soul) and that because Judaism also held such

beliefs, it was as much an expression of the "common religion of humanity" as Chris-

tianity or Islam.

What was distinctive to Judaism, Mendelssohn proposed, was not so much its

belief system as its sacred legislation-its Torah, understood here strictly as divinely revealed law-and its emphasis on doing God's will rather than professing correct ideas about God or the afterlife. The essence of Judaism, Mendelssohn insisted, was

orthopraxy (correct conduct), and not orthodoxy (correct beliefs). This interpretation

of Judaism, it should be noted, was not acceptable to more conservative religious au-

thorities, but it did appeal to more secularized Jewish readers who were prepared, in

the next generation, to carry the logic of Mendelssohn's argument even further and to

attempt to transform the belief structure ofJudaism in more radical ways.

Reform Movements in Europe and the United States The European Enlightenment, and the revolutionary political changes it inspired, af-

fected Judaism in various ways, but its most direct influence can be seen in the early

stages of the Reform Movement in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Begin-

ning in Germany, where admirers of Moses Mendelssohn called for the political "emancipation" of European Jews and their gradual assimilation to Western society,

the idea of "reforming" Judaism drew support both from lay community leaders and

from a younger generation of rabbis who had been permitted to receive a university

378 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

education. From the outset, the Reform Movement sought to accomplish two goals:

first, the modernization of Jewish thought and ritual practice, and second, the accul-

turation of Jews to the secular culture of nineteenth-century Europe and America. As

in any "reformation," however, a split soon developed between those who were deter-

mined to achieve these objectives by radical means and those who were not.

At first, reformers seemed content with largely ceremonial innovations, insisting, for example, that rabbinic sermons be delivered in the vernacular language of the

nation in which they were living (rather than in Yiddish, the Germanic language of

European Jews) or that men and women be permitted to sit together in synagogue

during religious services (as opposed to separate seating, which had been the norm for

hundreds of years). By the 1840s, however, the demands of the more aggressive reform-

ers became increasingly anti-traditionalist and theologically innovative, as reformist rabbis increasingly embraced the idea of Judaism as an evolving religious culture. All

of these changes were opposed vigorously by more traditionalist rabbis, who, from this

time forward, came to be described as "Orthodox" religious authorities.

Reform Judaism This more radical type of reformist thinking flourished in the United States after the Civil War. By the late 1880s Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler (1843-1926) had drafted a set of principles and objectives-known today as "The Pittsburgh Platform of

1885"-that defined the "essence" ofJudaism for Kohler and many of his reformist con-

temporaries. The most important features of this "platform" can be found in its most

negative statements, namely, that the Reform Movement rejected the biblical idea of a

direct, finite, and exclusive revelation from God-the traditional understanding of the

concept of torah. The reformists opted instead for the concept of an evolving (and there- fore universal) revelation, an idea that was easily gleaned from the writings of Moses

Mendelssohn. This way, Kohler and his colleagues were able to renounce the dietary code

and all other forms of"Mosaic legislation" deemed unacceptable to the Reform rabbinate

(such as circumcision and rigorous Sabbath observance) on the grounds that they were

"not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization." And in language designed

specifically to suppress any sympathy for Jewish aspirations to return to the historic land oflsrael, the Pittsburgh Platform declared boldly that the Jews were no longer a nation

and therefore no longer desired to return to, or to restore, a nation-state in Palestine.

Conservative Judaism However acceptable these innovations may have seemed to those American Jews who identified with the Reform Movement, they were clearly

unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of European Jews who began to immi- grate to the United States in rapidly increasing numbers during the last two decades of

the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. As the Jewish

population of America increased exponentially, the religious diversity of that commu-

nity increased as well. By the middle of the twentieth century, the American Jewish

community found itself largely divided into three movements: Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative. Of these three, the Conservative Movement had emerged, by the

The History of Judaism 379

1950s, as the Reform Movement's principal rival, and its appeal can be explained,

historically, as a "counterreformation" both within and outside of the Reform Move-

ment itself.

Thus, for those Jews who were initially drawn to reformist ideals but who found

the more extreme changes advocated by the early Reform Movement distasteful, Con-

servative Judaism offered a more moderate departure from traditional (or what is now called "Orthodox") beliefs and practices. Like their Reform counterparts, Conserva-

tive rabbis acknowledged the evolutionary character of Judaism and embraced the

need for substantive change; unlike the leading reformists, however, they were not

willing to abandon either principles of faith or religious behaviors that had defined

Judaism for many centuries. The result was the formation of a "third way" of respond-

ing to the challenges facing Judaism in the modern era, in which a high level of adap- tation to secular culture was combined with a selective relaxation of halacha.

However, in its formative stages, the most obvious difference between Conserva-

tive Judaism and its Reform and Orthodox counterparts was the public support of

both its rabbis and laity for Zionism. Throughout its more than 100-year existence, the Conservative Movement has been a fervent advocate for both the formation of a

Jewish nation-state in what is now Israel and for the emigration of American Jews to this state.

Reconstructionist Judaism One of the most important offshoots of Conservative Judaism first emerged in America in the 1930s. Known today as Reconstructionism,

this new school of thought centered on the teachings of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan

(1881-1983). By the 1960s, however, the Reconstructionists had formally separated themselves from Conservative Judaism, first by writing their own prayer book and

later by establishing their own rabbinical seminary. Though few in number, Recon-

structionists have had a far-reaching effect on the thought and religious practices of

non-Orthodox Judaism in the United States.

Philosophically, Reconstructionism occupies a position somewhere between Con- servatism and Reform. Unlike their Reform counterparts, Reconstructionists held

firm to the concept of Jewish nationhood; in fact, for Mordecai Kaplan, the idea that

Jews constituted a separate and distinctive civilization was central to his belief system. What followed from that assumption was a desire to retain as many traditional

"folkways"-which was Kaplan's way of referring to such ritual practices as the dietary

code and circumcision-as modern Jews found meaningful. As a consequence, the Reconstructionist Movement tended to place greater emphasis upon the historical

continuity of religious customs than did Reform Judaism.

At the same time, Reconstructionism developed a much more naturalistic concep-

tion of God than either Conservativism or Reform were willing to support. For Kaplan

and his followers, God could no longer be thought of as a noun-that is, as a meta-

physical "entity," separate from humanity-but rather as the expression of whatever moral and spiritual potential human beings possess in their search for holiness and

380 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

righteousness. Kaplan's virtual abandonment of the traditional concept of divine tran-

scendence signaled a dramatic break with the Orthodox faith in which he was raised.

For many Jews, Reconstructionist theology seemed to be a contradiction in terms:

lacking a true Judaic concept of God, it could be nothing more than a disguised form

of secular humanism, and as such, a heretical rejection of torah. Kaplan's defenders,

however, insisted that, as an "evolving religious civilization," Judaism's understanding of God and of the covenant would have to change as well, and in the process absorb

contemporary scientific views of the cosmos and of the human mind.

THE VARIETIES OF MODERN JUDAISM

ORTHODOXY • "Torah True": belief in divine revelation at Sinai and in rabbinic interpretation of Torah. • Strict observance of halachah, allowing for limited adaptation to changing conditions of life

(Sabbath, family purity, and dietary laws) . • Literal belief in the afterlife, immortality of the soul, resurrection of the dead, messianic

redemption of Israel and the world. • Some ambivalence toward Israel; fervent opposition toward secular Zionism. • Gender separation and differentiation: separate seating for women in synagogue; opposi-

tion to rabbinic ordination of women. • Retention of Hebrew as language of prayer and strict adherence to traditional prayer routines.

CONSERVATISM • "Positive-Historical" Judaism: belief in divine inspiration of Scriptures and acceptance of

historical process in the formation of halachah. • Serious commitment to observance of halachah, combined with a significant degree of

adaptation to changing circumstances of modern life. • A historical-critical approach to Tanakh and Talmud, coupled with a generally nonliteral

belief in the afterlife, immortality of the soul, and resurrection of the dead. • Retention of Hebrew as the language of prayer and preservation of most traditional prayer

routines coupled with innovative practices (e.g., Bat Mitzvah). • Rejection of gender separation and differentiation; mixed seating in synagogue and ordina-

tion of women. • Enthusiastic support of Zionism and Israel.

REFORM • "Progressive Judaism" committed to an evolutionary view of Jewish belief and religious

practice. • Skeptical view of any literal belief in divine revelation, afterlife, resurrection of the dead;

figurative view of immortality of the soul and messianic redemption. (continued)

The History of Judaism 381

THE VARIETIES OF MODERN JUDAISM (continued)

• Liberal view of halachah, generally regarding Sabbath and dietary laws as optional observances.

• Initial opposition to Zionism and use of Hebrew prayers changes in the course of the twentieth

century to greater enthusiasm for both. • Rejection of all forms of gender separation and differentiation; first to ordain women as

rabbis, and eager adoption of the Bat Mitzvah.

RECONSTRUCTION ISM • "Humanistic Judaism" rooted in the belief that Torah is the expression of the religious cre-

ativity of the Jewish people. • A respectful but liberal view of halachah, coupled with a view of religious practices as "folk-

ways" and facets of Judaism as a civilization. • Generally agnostic view of any belief in a personal God, combined with a fervent belief in

the creative potential of human beings.

• Intense interest in Jewish "peoplehood" and enthusiastic support for cultural and political Zionism.

• Rejection of all gender separation and differentiation: ordains women as rabbis and first movement to support the Bat Mitzvah.

The Shoah and the State of Israel During the twentieth century two of the most extraordinary events in Jewish his-

tory occurred: one traumatic, the other transformative. Both events have had a pro-

found effect on the beliefs and practices of contemporary Judaism. The first event, referred to in Hebrew as the Shoah-or, more commonly, as the Holocaust-can

be seen as the single greatest tragedy of modern Jewish life: the most successful at-

tempt in history by anti-Semites to rid the world of both the religion Judaism and

the Jewish people.

The Shoah The word Shoah itself requires some explanation, if only because it has a dif-. ferent connotation than the more familiar word "Holocaust." In Hebrew the word shoah literally means "whirlwind," and as a metaphor it captures-as well as any image can-

the insane rage of anti-Semitic hatred that was loosed on Europe's Jews during World

War IL Many Jews prefer this term, unfamiliar as it may be to English-speaking audi-

ences, precisely because it avoids the connotation of a divinely commanded sacrifice, which is exactly what the biblical term "holocaust" (or "burnt offering") brings to mind.

For centuries Jews had been the targets of Christian and occasionally Muslim

hostility and persecution, but until Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany embarked on the

382 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

The entra nee gate at Auschwitz.

"Final Solution," no ruler or regime

ever entertained the idea of total exter-

mination. In Hitler's autobiography,

Mein Kampf (1925), he described the Jews as a disease organism within the

body of European society that he and

his followers proposed to destroy for- ever. The genocidal policies that his

government pursued represented a

logical outcome of this essentially

racist conception of the Jews and their

faith. To carry out this genocidal cam- paign, Hitler mobilized not only the

resources of Germany but also the sup-

port of willing collaborators through-

out Europe. There is little doubt that had German armies defeated the United States,

Britain, and the Soviet Union during World War II, the annihilation of the world's

Jewish population would have been one of Hider's proudest accomplishments. Even in defeat, however, the Nazis destroyed roughly one-third of the world's Jewish popula-

tion, and the legacy of torture and mass murder they left behind has deeply scarred the

Jewish consciousness.

Contemporary Jewish philosophers have responded in remarkably diverse ways

to the tragedy of the Shoah. For one theologian in particular, Ignaz Maybaum

(1897-1976), the slaughter of innocents can be seen as a kind of churban (Hebrew, "divinely willed sacrifice"), through which the Jews perform an act of vicarious atone-

ment for the sins of the world.7 For theologian Richard Rubenstein (b. 1924), on the other hand, such logic is morally insane. Rubenstein insists that the random killing

of six million Jews (not to mention the untold suffering and murder of many more

millions of non-Jews) challenges, at the most fundamental level, Judaism's belief in a just and benevolent Creator who values every single human life. In his book After Auschwitz, Rubenstein insisted that Judaism's historic God-concept is "dead" and that

no religious philosophy that is still committed to biblical ideas of divine justice and

retribution can withstand scrutiny in an age of genocide and mass destruction. 8 For

philosopher and rabbi Eliezer Berkovits (1908-1992),9 however, the mystery of God's presence in history is deepened by the Shoah, not refuted by it, and ours is not the first generation to reflect on God's "hiddenness" or on the terrible consequences of human

freedom. For human beings to be capable of choice, he argues, God must "restrain"

Himself and allow His human agents to exercise their moral will, even if the conse-

quences of divine restraint are catastrophic.

None of these theologians, however is willing to see the Shoah as an instance of

merited (and therefore inevitable) divine punishment. Their refusal to accept that now-archaic model of God's judgment and response to human sin marks a definitive

The History of Judaism 383

break with traditional Jewish thought. If much of the world's Jewish population can no longer declare-in the words of the traditional liturgy-"because of our sins were

we exiled from the land," then what model of covenant relations can now be invoked

to make both human suffering and world redemption meaningful?

For theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, the only defensible Jewish theology after

the Shoah is one that posits God's need for, and yearning after, humankind. The cov- enant relationship, as Heschel understands it, is a reciprocal one in which human

moral intelligence and divine "pathos" join in the act of worship and of love. God's

longing for us does not, Heschel insists, annul the reality of evil or the terrible freedom

with which human beings have been invested. It does, however, establish what Heschel

calls an "analogy of being," that is, a hint of divine likeness in every soul, and thereby

the capacity to mend a broken world. If all we knew of God, Heschel argues, was a theory of omnipotence or omniscience, then the Shoah might very well sweep away that merely conceptual reality. But the truth is, he continues, that we know God at a

much deeper level of moral consciousness, and that form of the divine presence abides

even in the midst of the most appalling evils.10

Statehood for Israel The second pivotal event of modern Jewish history is the es- tablishment of the State of Israel in 1948, what one philosopher has called the "the

Jewish return into history."11 The Zionist philosophy on which the State oflsrael rests

is really several philosophical/religious arguments in one. In its earliest form, "Zionism" is simply a feeling of attachment to an ancestral homeland in which a vast majority of

Jews, past and present, have never lived. Even though a comparatively small popula-

tion of Jews continued to live in Palestine for centuries after the Exodus, most Jews were content to sing "next year in Jerusalem" at the Passover Seder without ever really contemplating a return to the land of biblical Israel.

A decisive shift in such thinking occurred, however, in the course of the nineteenth

century. Two Orthodox Rabbis-Yehudah Hai Alkalai (1798-1878) and Zvi Hirsch

Kalischer (1795-1874)-argued passionately for a messianic view of Jewish history,

urging their contemporaries to emigrate to Palestine in the expectation that the re- demption of Israel was about to be accomplished, but only if the Jews took the first

practical step of occupying and restoring the land.12 Their writings were largely ig-

nored within their lifetimes, but the arguments of an assimilated Austrian Jew, writing

near the end of the century, attracted much greater attention.

For Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the rapid growth of anti-Semitism had made the

condition of Eastern European Jews so precarious that something had to be done- apart from continuing mass emigration to the United States-to deal with the poverty

and desperation of the Jewish masses. Herzl's solution was the establishment of an

internationally recognized Jewish state, either in Palestine or Argentina. He laid out

his ideas in an extended tract entitled Ihe Jewish State (1896)13 and later in a utopian novel, Ihe Old New Land (1902).14 Herzl, who died in 1904, never lived to see any of his ideas come to fruition. The Zionist movement he helped to found continued to

384 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

,, This painting of Herzl is one of many that appear on Israeli currency.

1 solicit support for his ideas, and in 1917 British Zionists found a sympathetic advocate in the foreign minister of Great Britain,

Lord Arthur Balfour (1848-1930).

Balfour's private letter-now known as the Balfour

Declaration-to the most prominent Jew in England, Lord

Walter Rothschild (1868-1937), is the earliest sign that any major power was willing, for whatever reasons, to validate

Zionist claims to a political stakehold in Palestine. In carefully

guarded diplomatic language, Balfour declared his govern-

ment's willingness to establish a "national home for the Jewish

people," provided that "nothing shall be done which may prej-

udice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish com- munities in Palestine."15 Within a decade of this proclamation,

however, both Great Britain and the rapidly growing Jewish

community in Palestine discovered just how intense Palestinian Arab opposition to

increased Jewish immigration really was. By the late 1930s, as Great Britain sought to

limit sharply the number of Jews who could legally enter Palestine, the stage was set

for a succession of wars between Arabs and Jews-wars that have continued to the

present day. As a secular ideology, Zionism (in all its variations) rests on a few basic assump-

tions. The first assumption holds that anti-Semitism may abate from time to time, but

it will never disappear, and as long as Jews are hated anywhere in the world, their lives

are in peril. The second assumption is that the only guarantee of physical survival in a

hostile world is national sovereignty-because only a nation-state can effectively defend its citizens. Third, the guest-host relationship Jews have lived under, whether in

Christian or in Muslim lands, has always been inherently unstable, and on occasion

threatening to Jewish survival. If Jews are to have any hope of a secure future, they will have to regain their collective autonomy, which can be accomplished only through

political means. And if one adds to all of this the specifically religious belief that the

rebirth of the State of Israel represents the beginning stage of messianic redemption of the world, one has a totality of ideas that have been employed to rationalize the trans-

formation of the world Jewish community back into a politico-religious entity. Viewed

from this perspective, Jewish history has come full circle in our time, as Jews search

for ways to reconnect their religious lives with their enduring sense of peoplehood.

The Future of Judaism in the Contemporary World During the last three decades of the twentieth century, and at the dawn of the new

millennium, Judaism faced a number of formidable challenges. The sheer loss of

human life following the Shoah meant more than just a sharp reduction in the Jewish world population. For some Jews, the possibility of collective annihilation carried with

it the secondary possibility of the "end" ofJudaism itself, or at the very least the dwin-

dling away of what was once a global community. For others, however, the threat

of cultural extinction inspired a reexamination of their most basic philosophical

The History of Judaism 385

assumptions and institutional behaviors. Two of the most far-reaching challenges

came from two largely unrelated movements: feminism and radical humanism.

The Challenge of Humanist Judaism Probably the most far-reaching critique of traditional Jewish concepts and religious practices at the end of the twentieth century came from a very different quarter: the rejection ofJudaism's central God concept by

secular Jews who found any form of theism philosophically untenable. For some, the

renunciation of Judaism's God was a logical response to the insane violence of the

Shoah and the absurd wastefulness and cruelty of a world that seemed perpetually at war. No truly just or beneficent God, they argued, could possibly tolerate such slaugh- ter. Therefore, the only reasonable and morally compelling response was to assume

that no such deity ever existed-except perhaps in the human imagination. 16

Of course, anyone who has studied the development of atheism in the modern era

has encountered arguments like these. What was new can be found in the insistence

of humanist advocates such as the American rabbi Sherwin Wine (1928-2007) that one can remain a Jew, culturally and sociologically, while at the same time rejecting

any belief in a supernatural Creator.17 Taking their cue from Mordecai Kaplan and

Reconstructionism, humanistic Jews insist that since Jews are a people first, and only

secondarily a religious community, their disbelief in a God should not exclude them

from the company of their fellow Jews or prevent them from embracing Jewish ethics

and folkways.

At present, the appeal of this approach to Jewish life and values appears to be small. Institutionally, very few communities throughout the world have identified

themselves with this form of radical humanism or have made the effort to revise their

religious calendars and liturgies accordingly. Still, no survey of contemporary Judaism

would be complete without some recognition of this radical alternative to mainstream

Jewish faith.

Women and Judaism Traditionally, the status of women in Judaism has been that of a respected but subor-

dinate member of the religious community, and for many centuries Jewish women

lived in a male-dominant culture. Though two of the books of the Hebrew Bible are

named for women (the Book of Ruth and the Book of Esther), and though Jewish identity is traced through the mother's line, nevertheless religious leadership in Juda-

ism has historically been a male preserve. The Orthodox Siddur instructs Jewish males to thank God that they were not born women, and rabbinic tradition released

women from all time-bound religious obligations (such as fixed prayer times), based

on the assumption that a woman's chief responsibility was the raising of children and

maintenance of the home. In fact, the only ritual obligations that women were ex- pected to fulfill were those of baking challah, lighting the Sabbath lights, and attend-

ing the mikveh. And though women were never prevented from attending synagogue,

their very presence necessitated a physical barrier to separate them from male worship-

pers, who, it was feared, would otherwise be distracted by their presence. Moreover,

386 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

the privilege of advanced religious study was reserved exclusively for men, who were

thought to be better equipped by nature for the mental rigors of scholarly debate.

The Western feminist movements of the 1970s totally rejected such views on the

grounds that they embodied a "patriarchal" view of woman's place in society, and as the

influence of feminist thought made its presence felt throughout the Jewish community-

particularly in the United States-the exclusion of women from positions of religious authority soon came to an end. The American Reform Movement took the lead by

conferring the title of Rabbi on Sally Priesand (b. 1946) in 1972, and shortly thereafter

both the Conservative and Reconstructionist Movements in the United States admitted

women to their rabbinic seminaries. However, even more transformative changes were

under way, affecting the very language and root concepts of traditional Judaism.

At the same time that women were being admitted to the rabbinate in greater num- bers, a new approach to both religious language and the interpretation of biblical litera-

ture was beginning to manifest itself within the non-Orthodox spectrum of the Jewish

community. Feminist scholars in particular focused on the gendered vocabulary that

surrounded the biblical idea of God, as well as echoes of a distinctly masculine image of the Deity in traditional prayers, where God is consistently referred to as "Father," "Lord,"

and "King." Reform liturgists began to experiment with gender-neutral words such as "Eternal One" and "Source of Life" as alternatives to the obviously patriarchal terminol-

ogy of the traditional Siddur. In addition, the elimination or revision of prayers that implied the spiritual superiority of the male or that excluded women from the prayer

community by omission became part of the same revisionist project. Not all of these

innovations have proven universally acceptable, but collectively they represent a serious

effort to bring the religious discourse ofJudaism into the contemporary world.18

JUDAISM AS A WAY OF LIFE As Judaism has historically placed great emphasis on the sanctification of time, any

consideration of Judaism as a "way of life" should begin with the ways in which Jews

mark the passage of time. Like many ancient peoples, Jews in antiquity employed a

modified lunar calendar, which allowed them to celebrate each month's appearance of a new moon while at the same time periodically adjusting the lunar year to the solar

year. They dated this calendar from what they presumed to be the moment of the

world's creation, with the result that the year 2014 in our secular calendar overlaps

with the Jewish year 5774. And within this sacred calendar, certain seasons were des-

ignated as "Sabbaths," or occasions for religious celebration, during which the Jewish

community reaffirms its covenant relationship with God.

The Major Festivals At the core of this system of seasonal religious observances are five major festivals, all

linked to each other and to the cycle of nature-Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot-plus a host of relatively minor festivals interspersed throughout the year. Each major festival is biblical in origin, and on each of these

Judaism as a Way of Life 387

occasions Jews are commanded to cease working and devote themselves to prayer. That said, each major chag (Hebrew, "sacred occasion") is as individual as the season it

celebrates and the ritual function it performs.

Rosh Hashanah Commonly referred to as the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah is traditionally celebrated for two days at the beginning of the month of Tishri (September- October), and it is regarded as both a solemn and a joyous occasion. Though there is

some evidence that, in biblical times, the agricultural year began in the early spring, by

the rabbinic era, the start of the religious year had already shifted to the early fall. This

shift placed a greater emphasis on the internal rhythms of the human heart and a need

for self-reflection, as opposed to a celebration of the seasonal harvests.

As a consequence, the year begins with a period of self-reflection, signaled by the blowing of a ram's horn (Hebrew, shofar) during the synagogue service. The sound of

this instrument, which can be heard 100 times during the service, is designed to awaken

the conscience of the worshipper to the need for repentance and reconciliation with

God. For that reason Rosh Hashanah is referred to in the liturgy as Yom Hazikaron, or

the Day of Remembrance. At the same time, the mood created during the two days of

Rosh Hashanah is a generally happy and expectant one, and it is customary to eat a dish of apples and honey as an expression of hope that the coming year will be one of

sweet fruitfulness and fulfillment. It is also customary on this occasion for Jews to greet each other, at the conclusion of religious services, with the words l'shanah tovah

tikatevu-"may you be inscribed for a good year"-alluding to the ancient belief that,

during the ten-day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yorn Kippur, God writes the names of those who will live for another year in a "Book of Life." The hope is that all

those who sincerely repent their sins will be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Yorn Kippur Also known as the Day of Atonement, Yorn Kippur is unquestionably the most solemn day in Judaism's sacred calendar and its most important fast day. The

purpose of both the dusk-to-dusk fast and the

penitential prayers that are recited on Yorn Kippur was made clear by the rabbis centuries

ago: "For transgressions against God, the Day of

Atonement atones; but for transgressions of one

human being against another, the Day of Atone-

ment does not atone until they have made peace with one another" (Tractate Yoma 8:9). For re-

pentance (Hebrew, teshuvah) to be effective,

therefore, some restorative action must accom-

pany the process of prayer and self-examination.

As a result, the liturgy for Yorn Kippur asks for-

giveness for a rather lengthy list of all the sins that people are likely to commit against one

Covered in a large ta/lit, th is Yemenite Jew blows the shofar on Rosh Hashanah.

388 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

VISUAL GUIDE Judaism

The Torah scroll is placed on a

table where the reader will use

a Yad (a pointer) to read each

word aloud.

The Palm Branch, the Willow, and

the Myrtle make up the Lulav; the

Lemon (or Etrog) and the Lulav are

held together during Sukkot

prayers.

The Passover plate is prepared for

the Seder, with an egg, a shank

bone, parsley, chives, and bitter

herbs.

The Star of David is a medieval

symbol of Jewish identity placed

in the center of the flag of Israel. *

another, as well as all the acts of defiance that

people are likely to display toward God. These confessional prayers, which are recited throughout

the day, are collective expressions of guilt and re-

morse ("Our father, our King, we have sinned

before You"). But although it is the norm in Juda-

ism to pray as a part of a community, each wor- shipper is nevertheless expected to internalize the

act of repentance and strive for reconciliation with

neighbors and with God.

On Yorn Kippur a number of restrictions, in

addition to fasting, are commonly imposed on those who observe this holy day. Thus, in Ortho-

dox communities it is customary for married cou-

ples to abstain from intimacy, for men to wear

white garments (symbolic of purification) to syna-

gogue, and to neither shave nor bathe (as if one

were in mourning). In addition, no work of any kind may be performed on Yorn Kippur, from the

evening in which the holy day begins until the fol-

lowing evening when it ends. However, all fasting

on Yorn Kippur ceases the moment one's health is

imperiled, and the norm is that any seriously ill person will first consult with a physician before un- dertaking a twenty-four-hour fast. Children under

13 and women who are actively nursing infants are

generally exempt from the rigors of this day.

Sukkot Five days after the conclusion of Yorn Kippur, Jews undertake a week-long fall harvest celebration known as Sukkot ("booths"). As with

any harvest festival, Sukkot displays symbols of

the season, the most important being the palm

frond (Hebrew, Lulav), the citron (Hebrew, etrog),

and leaves of the willow tree (Hebrew, aravah) and

the myrtle (Hebrew, hadassah). It is customary to adorn the sukkah-or temporary hut, from which

Sukkot derives its name-with each of these

plants while leaving the roof of this structure

partly open to the sky. During the seven days of this holiday Jews are encouraged

(weather permitting) to eat and sleep in the sukkah, so as to reenact, symbolically, the

biblical Exodus (i.e., the passage of ancient Israelites through the desert after escaping

Judaism as a Way of Life 389

VOICES: An Interview with Rabbi Brad Bloom

Rabbi Bloom, of Temple Beth Yam, Hilton Head, South Carolina, is a graduate of the Hebrew Union College (a Reform Rabbinic seminary). He holds a Master's degree in social work, and for almost thirty years he has served congregations in Illinois and California.

How do the High Holy Days evoke feelings of wonder and awe, for you and your congregation?

Rosh Hashanah and Yorn Kippur lie at the very core of Jewish religious con- sciousness. These "Days of Awe," as they are called, challenge us to assess our relationship to God and to each other. We are obliged to ask hard questions and recognize our human frailties, and hopefully discover whatever inner strength we possess to change for the better. The awe and wonder we experience during this period of repentance come from two sources: from our encounters with God and from our communal experience and collective memory, woven together to create a moment of special sanctity.

Of course, our prayers and special rituals are an essential part of that experi- ence. Listening to the Kol Nidre chant, for example, we are moved as much by Rabbi Brad Bloom the beauty of the traditional melody as by the thought of unfulfilled vows to God. And similar feelings arise on Rosh Hashanah when the shofar is sounded, echo- ing throughout the sanctuary. These are all sensory responses, but they evoke powerful emotions and even more powerful moments of introspection.

And how does a sense of God's presence enter into these rituals?

For some, God occupies the center stage in this drama; for others, he is thought of as working behind the scenes, eliciting deep feelings of empathy and belong- ing through our interaction as a congregation. And for still others, God is not present at all; instead, they experience the assembled presence of K'lal Yisrael- the worldwide community of Jews joined in solidarity. Taken together, all of these experiences represent the continuum of awe and wonder that are central to the High Holy Days.

from slavery in Egypt). Sukkot thus becomes one of three festivals (the other two

being Pesach and Shavuot) that recall the Exodus narrative.

It is traditional religious practice to attend synagogue during the first two days and

the last two days of the festival, offering thanksgiving prayers attuned to the fall season. To that end, each worshipper is required to carry a lulav and an etrog to morning ser- vices, and in the course of this ceremony both the lulav and the etrog are waved in six directions, signifying God's presence throughout the universe. In addition, the biblical

book of Ecclesiastes is read on the Sabbath of Sukkot, highlighting some of the major

themes of this festival, namely, the passing of the seasons and the providence of God. At the conclusion of Sukkot an eighth day of prayer and celebration, known as Shemini

390 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

A decorated sukkah, ready for a midday meal.

Atzeret (or "the Eighth Day of Assembly"), is added to the seven

days of Sukkot as a culminating moment in the process of ex-

pressing one's gratitude to God for the bounty of the world.

Traditionally, Jews living outside Israel divide up Shemini

Atzeret into two days, with the second day referred to as Sim- chat Torah (Hebrew, "Joy of the Torah"); on that day, the annual reading of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible comes to an

end, and the cycle of weekly readings begins again. In Israel, and in many Reform congregations, Shemini Atzeret and Sim-

chat Torah are telescoped into a single day of observance, char-

acterized by a festive atmosphere in which both children and

adults join in celebrating the "gift" of Torah while singing and dancing with their congregation's Torah scroll in their arms.

Pesach More commonly known as "Passover" in English- speaking countries, Pesach is the second of three pilgrimage

festivals, the first being Sukkot and the third being Shavuot. In

ancient times, as long as a Temple stood in Jerusalem, Jews made a pilgrimage to it to offer prayers and animal sacrifices to

God. With the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in

70 C.E., Jews were left with nothing but a memory of this rite,

and the practice of celebrating the Exodus from Egypt then

shifted exclusively to the synagogue and to the home. And it is in the home, then, that

Jews gather on the first two nights of this week-long festival to recount the Exodus story and to celebrate this event through a ceremonial meal known as a Seder-a practice that may well have begun in biblical times.

Like Sukkot, Pesach is celebrated for either seven or eight days during the month

of Nisan (March-April), depending, once again, on whether one lives in Israel or in

the Diaspora, or whether one follows the Orthodox custom of celebrating Pesach for eight days or the Reform custom of limiting observance to a week. In either case, the first two and the last two days are subject to the same restrictions that govern any

chag-no work and limited travel. In addition, however, Pesach imposes one more strictly dietary requirement: no foods containing yeast may be consumed during this

period (reflecting the fact that Jewish slaves, escaping from Egypt, had no time to

allow their bread to rise). In most observant Jewish households it is the custom, there- fore, to rid the home of all breads and foods that contain leavening agents and to

prepare for this occasion by either boiling one's dishes and silverware or using a sepa-

rate set of dinnerware and utensils that are reserved for use on Pesach alone. As is

discussed later in this chapter, the dietary rules and regulations collectively known as

kashrut are fundamentally important to Jewish practice. The number of foods sold in supermarkets bearing a "Kosher for Passover" label testifies to the seriousness with

which this practice is observed by many Jews today.

Judaism as a Way of Life 391

Observance of Pesach begins in the evening in the home, where the Seder is cele- brated by a gathering of family and friends, followed the next morning by a festival

service in the synagogue. The Seder consists of two rituals in one: a festive meal, featur- ing biblical and seasonal foods that reflect the Exodus story, and a liturgy, found in an

ancient text called the Haggadah (Hebrew, the "telling"). The Haggadah contains both the story of Israel's escape from Egypt and a collection of hymns and songs and rab- binic commentaries in praise of God, who made that deliverance possible. One of the

principal goals of this highly ritualized meal is to leave each participant in the Seder with a sense of engagement in the biblical story. Ideally, each person should identify

with the enslaved generation that witnessed not only the liberation from bondage but

also the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai.

Because the Pesach Seder is essentially a family event, children play a very promin- ent role in this rite by being given questions to ask, songs to sing, and stories to listen

to. Most temptingly of all, during the initial ceremony that precedes the meal, the

prayer leader takes a piece of matzah (a type of unleavened flatbread that, according to

biblical writers, the escaping Israelites baked in haste while fleeing Egypt) and breaks

it in half, hiding one half of this piece-known as the Afikoman-so that children can find it by the end of the meal and exchange it for a gift.

In addition to matzah, several other foods are either displayed or consumed during the Seder meal, including bitter herbs (a reminder of the bitterness of slavery); a mix- ture of wine, chopped nuts, and apples (symbolically representing the mortar used by

Israelite slaves to build cities and pyramids); a roasted lamb shank bone (recalling the

sacrifice of lambs by the Israelites before their departure from Egypt); and a roasted

egg, a green vegetable (usually parsley), and an additional herb or vegetable. These items all reflect the ancient agricultural context of this celebration-namely, the early

spring harvest and the lamb-shearing season that often accompanied that harvest.

Finally, participants consume four small symbolic cups of wine during the Seder meal, each serving as a reminder of the many blessings God bestowed upon ancient Israel

and continues to bestow upon the Jewish people. A fifth cup is set aside for the prophet

Elijah, whose symbolic presence at the Seder represents the hope that a messiah will some day appear and bring peace and justice into the world.

Shavuot Seven weeks separate Pesach from the last of the three pilgrimage festivals, Shavuot (Hebrew, "weeks"). (This holiday is often referred to by Christians as "Pente-

cost.") Between the second day of Passover and the first day of Shavuot, it was the practice in biblical Israel to bring a sheaf of new grain to the Temple, and an obvious

connection exists between this festival and the later spring harvest. However, during the

rabbinic era Shavuot became associated with the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, and

from that moment on Shavuot became a part of the ongoing liturgical reenactment of

the Exodus that we have traced through Sukkot and Pesach. Given this new historical

association, we can understand why the rabbis decided that the high point of the syna-

gogue liturgy for Shavuot would be the public reading of the Ten Commandments.

392 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

Traditionally, Shavuot is celebrated for two days (the sixth and seventh of the

month of Sivan [May-June]), though the festivities associated with Shavuot are consid-

erably less elaborate than those connected to Pesach or Sukkot. It is common practice

on Shavuot to decorate the synagogue with flowers and to serve meatless meals with

honey as a key ingredient-the idea being that the reading of the Torah should be

sweet upon the lips, though neither of these practices is obligatory. More common is the public reading of the Book of Ruth, which tells the story of a young Moabite widow

who is welcomed into Israelite society and who, centuries later, became the prototype

of the ideal convert to Judaism. Finally, there is a custom of staying up the entire first

night of the chag for the purpose of studying some portion of the Torah. This practice

was established for the first time by a community of mystics living in sixteenth-century

Safed (northern Israel) who believed that the celebration of the Torah on Shavuot

should be preceded by a process of mental and spiritual preparation.

The Minor Festivals In contrast to the major festivals we have just reviewed, a number of relatively "minor"

festivals serve to fill out the Jewish religious year. Yet despite their historically subor-

dinate status, they are no less beloved by Jews and are sometimes observed with equal

attention. The distinction between them is mainly ceremonial: the observance of

many of these festivals does not entail restrictions on labor, diet, or any other activities. In addition, these festivals were never really integrated into the agricultural cycle that is so clearly embedded within the calendar of major holidays, though some indirectly

reflect the season in which they appear.

Hanukkah Of all of Judaism's minor holidays, Hanukkah is probably the best known throughout the Western world, if only because of its proximity to Christmas.

It is also one of the most historically oriented, as it is linked directly to a historical event. Hanukkah commemorates the Maccabean rebellion that began in 167 B.C.E.

against the tyrannical rule of the Syrian monarch, Antiochus IV, who sought to sup-

press the practice of Judaism within Palestine and who "defiled" the Temple in Jerusalem by rededicating it to the Greek gods. For the next two years an armed insurrection, led

first by a rural priest named Mattathias and after his death by his eldest son, Judah the

Maccabee, wrested control of the Temple from Antiochus's army.

The key event that Hanukkah celebrates, however, is the recovery and cleansing of

the Jerusalem Temple and the miracle of the lights that Jewish tradition records. Ac- cording to this legendary account, once the Temple was in Jewish hands it became

necessary to rededicate the sanctuary-yet only one flask of the oil necessary to keep

lamps lit could be found. Miraculously, however, this one flask continued to burn for

eight days, thus attesting to the renewal of God's presence within the Temple. In com- memoration of that miracle, Jews light a candle each night for eight nights until a

ceremonial lamp (known in Hebrew as either a menorah or a hanukkiah) is completely lit. This candle-lighting ceremony is accompanied by the chanting of prayers, the

Judaism as a Way of Life 393

singing of songs, and, in more recent times, the giving of gifts. In addition,

a traditional game of chance is played with a four-sided top known as a

dreidel, on whose sides are inscribed four Hebrew letters, which stand for

the words meaning "a great miracle occurred there." In contemporary

Israel, however, dreidels bear a slightly altered message: "a great miracle

occurred here," referring to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

Purim Another history-oriented festival, and one that exhibits an even more secular character than Hanukkah, is Purim, which occurs on the

fourteenth day of the month Adar (February-March). Purim is a carnival-

like holiday whose origins can be found within the biblical Book of Esther.

Like Hanukkah, Purim celebrates a victory, this time over an antagonist named Haman, who appears in the Book of Esther as a would-be destroyer

of the Jewish people. However, unlike Hanukkah, the underlying festival

narrative appears to have little or no historical basis. Still, Purim tells an

interesting story of adaptation and survival against all odds, and it is a

story that has gripped the Jewish imagination for centuries.

For Orthodox Jews, Purim begins with a fast on the thirteenth of the month of Adar. Once the fast is over, however, the festive aspects of Purim begin. These include

a reading of the megillah (the book or scroll) of Esther. While this scroll is being read,

congregants interrupt the narration with shouting and foot stamping every time

Haman's name is read aloud. In addition, the rabbis, many centuries ago, sanctioned the practice of drinking to excess on Purim, thereby contributing to an atmosphere of

barely controlled anarchy. This near-riotous behavior is coupled with the practice of dressing children in costumes that suggest the principal characters in the Esther story,

so it is easy to see why this holiday is sometimes referred to as the Jewish Mardi Gras.

However, Purim also has its more sedate customs: the sending of gifts to friends,

or to the poor, and the eating of triangular-shaped fruit-filled cookies known as

hamantaschen, variously thought to represent Haman's ears, or hat, or pockets. Finally,

although there is no prohibition against working on Purim, many Orthodox commu- nities will devote the entire fourteenth of Adar to celebrating this festival.

Tu B'Shevat The fifteenth day of the month of Shevat (January-February) is identi- fied in rabbinic literature as the "New Year's Day of Trees," and it is often referred to

today as the Jewish version of Arbor Day. Typically, trees are planted on this day (es- pecially in modern Israel), and monies are set aside for the poor. In some communities Jews hold a special Seder on Tu B'Shevat consisting of recitations from the Bible and

the Talmud, combined with the eating of certain fruits and nuts (chiefly figs, dates,

carobs, almonds, and pomegranates) that are native to the land oflsrael.

Tisha B'Av The ninth day of the month of Av (Hebrew, Tisha B:Av) is, after Yorn Kippur, the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar because it commemorates the

On the final night of Hanukkah, all the candles are lit while children play with the dreidel, a game with toy coins.

394 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

destruction of both the First Temple by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E. and the Second

Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. Each of these events was a tragic turning point in

Jewish history, leading to the loss of national sovereignty and the subsequent exile of

the Jewish masses from their homeland. On Tisha B'Av (commonly celebrated in July

or August), Jews fast from sunset to sunset as they remember not only these tragedies

but other terrible losses that they have suffered during their long history. Like Yorn Kippur, Tisha B'Av is a day of collective contrition and virtual mourning, as Jews

gather in synagogues to read from the Book of Lamentations and sing hymns that

reflect on the double loss ofJerusalem and Jewish nationhood.

Yorn HaShoah Holocaust Memorial Day, or Yom HaShoah in Hebrew, is the most recent addition to the sacred calendar in Judaism. In 1951 the Israeli Parliament se- lected this date (the twenty-seventh day of Nisan [March-April]) as a remembrance day

for the millions ofJews who were victims of Nazi genocide during World War IL This date was chosen because it coincides with the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

of 1943, and today the overwhelming majority of Jewish communities throughout the

world observe this day of collective mourning and reflection. Yorn HaShoah, however,

is not a fast day, and unlike Tisha B'Av there are no prohibitions on work or other activi-

ties. Nevertheless, it has become customary in recent years for Jews to gather on the

evening of the twenty-seventh of Nisan and to recite memorial prayers for the roughly one-third of the Jewish world population who lost their lives during the war.

The Sabbath Though it is neither a major nor a minor festival, strictly speaking, the weekly Sabbath

(Hebrew, Shabbat) forms the core of the sacred calendar in Judaism. Like the major festivals, it is a day of prayer and rest, with its own liturgical tradition and pattern of

observance; but, unlike any other sacred occasion in Judaism, its observance is explic-

itly mandated in the Ten Commandments. The Torah, in fact, provides two different

rationales for Shabbat: in the Book of Exodus (20:8-11) it is identified as the day on which God rested from His creative labors; in the Book of Deuteronomy (5:12-15),

however, it is associated with the Exodus from Egypt and liberation from slavery. Each

of these explanations, of course, provides a distinctive interpretation of the meaning of

Shabbat; the former is supernatural, whereas the latter is historical. For both interpre-

tations, however, the commanding lesson of the Sabbath remains the same: God's

actions, whether at the beginning of human time or at a turning point in the history of Israel, serve as a model for human behavior. The Creator/Liberator has separated

sacred time from ordinary time, and so must we.

Shabbat begins at dusk on Friday and concludes at sundown on Saturday (according

to tradition, when three stars appear in the sky). This 24-hour period is ushered in by the lighting of two candles in the home, reminiscent of the first act of creation. Custom-

arily it is the woman of the house who lights these candles. Once the Sabbath formally

begins, observance shifts to the synagogue, where the Erev Shabbat (Sabbath evening)

Judaism as a Way of Life 395

service is conducted. The liturgy for Sabbath evening identifies

the Sabbath itself as a "bride," and the feelings aroused by the

"joy of the Sabbath" are similar to the emotions evoked by a

wedding. With the return of the family from prayer, the Sabbath

meal begins with a prayer of sanctification recited over wine and

a blessing said over two loaves of bread. Sabbath bread is called challah, and it is usually baked in a shape that suggests a woman's braided hair (yet another allusion to the Sabbath "bride").

Sabbath morning observance shifts, once again, to the syna-

gogue, where, in addition to the Shabbat liturgy, a weekly portion

of the Torah is read, accompanied by a portion from the pro-

phetic books. That service concluded, the remainder of the day is spent in quiet study or in rest until the evening, when the last two

worship services of the day are celebrated, and a separation cere-

mony, known as Havdalah, is celebrated with a cup of wine, a braided candle, and a spice box-all reminiscent of the sweetness

and calm of the Sabbath that has just departed. The rabbis of the

Talmud once observed that it was not just Israel that had kept the Sabbath but the Sabbath that had kept Israel; as the most direct link to the ancient past, Shabbat serves

as one ofJudaism's primary symbols of historical and spiritual continuity.

Life-Cycle Events Virtually all religious cultures attempt to locate the sacred within the context of every-

day life, and Judaism is no exception. At each stage in the cycle of living and dying,

Judaism offers a distinctive ceremony that marks the passage from birth to death. The

ultimate object of these rites of passage is the sanctification of human life and the

desire to deepen the covenant relationship between Israel and God.

Birth The ritual process of entering the Jewish community begins, for male babies, on the eighth

day of life with the rite of circumcision. Jews are

not the only people today who circumcise male

infants (nor were they in antiquity), but in Juda- ism circumcision is much more than a medical

procedure. It is, in fact, a very basic mitzvah, a divine commandment imparted to the biblical

patriarch Abraham and incumbent upon all of

his male descendants from that time forward.

Historically, circumcision has been one of

the distinctive physical marks of Jewish identity, and its importance for the overwhelming major-

ity of Jews can be gauged by the fact that the

A Jewish mother and daughter light the Sabbath candles.

A table set for Shabbat: Challah, candlesticks, and wine.

396 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

Compare the Bar or Bat Mitzvah in Judaism with the confirmation ceremony in various forms of Christianity. How are they alike, and how do they differ?

circumcision ritual takes precedence over the Sabbath or any other holy day in the

sacred calendar; indeed, the only thing that would delay the performance of this mitz- vah would be concern for the health of the child. During this ceremony, after the

mohel (a ritual circumciser, who is usually a medically trained professional) has re- moved a portion of the infant's foreskin, the newborn receives his Hebrew name, which traditionally consists of the child's own name and that of the father (for exam-

ple, Isaac son of Abraham). From this moment on, this is the name by which the child

will be known in the Jewish community, particularly on ritual occasions. In many

Conservative and Reform communities, it has become the custom to add the mother's

name to the father's, thereby assigning equal weight to the matrilineal source of the child's identity.

Baby girls enter the Jewish community under slightly different circumstances. There has never been any form of female circumcision in Judaism, nor any fixed

naming ritual for the infant female. However, one very popular custom today among

Jews worldwide is the practice of bringing the newborn to the synagogue on the first

(or, in some communities, the fourth) Sabbath after birth. On that occasion, either the

child's father or both parents are called up to the Torah and recite the customary bless-

ings. Then the baby girl is given a Hebrew name, and, like her male counterpart's, it is the name that she will use on all ritual occasions for the rest of her life. This ceremony

is sometimes referred to, in Hebrew, as a brit hayim, or "covenant of life."

Bar/Bat Mitz11ah and Confirmation As you learned from Seth's story at the be- ginning of this chapter, Jewish males traditionally enter the stage of religious maturity

at the age of thirteen, whether or not they have engaged in the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. There is no reference to such a ritual in the Hebrew Bible, nor do the rabbis of the

Talmud make mention of any specific rite of passage that marks a young man's as-

sumption of responsibility for fulfilling the mitzvot incumbent on an observant Jew.

Nevertheless, by the later Middle Ages, something like the Bar Mitzvah ceremony practiced today had already begun to evolve, consisting of some demonstration of

Hebrew literacy and an ability to read a weekly portion of the Torah. And of all the commonly practiced rituals of contemporary Judaism, the Bar Mitzvah is the one ritual that is likely to be familiar to non-Jews.

Regarded as the culminating point of years of study, the young man who becomes

a Bar Mitzvah is taught to see himself as a scholar-in-training whose entry into adult Jewish life is just the beginning of a lifelong program of study. Though the celebration

that follows is often joyous, there is a serious underlying purpose: the preparation of a young person to assume what the rabbis have called the "yoke of Torah." Thus, in add-

ition to reading a portion from both the Torah and the prophetic literature, a Bar Mitzvah is expected to deliver a d 'rash, or brief scholarly explanation of the portion he

has just read, thereby demonstrating a mature comprehension ofJewish Scriptures.

The practice of requiring young women (between the ages of twelve and thirteen) to furnish similar proof of both literacy and religious commitment is of much more

Judaism as a Way of Life 397

recent origin. The first Bat Mitzvah to be performed in the United States was con- ducted in 1922 for Judith Kaplan, daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of

the Reconstructionist Movement. Beginning as a somewhat radical gesture designed

to affirm gender equality in modern Judaism, the Bat Mitzvah soon evolved into an alternative form of the Bar Mitzvah ritual, and today the Bat Mitzvah ceremony is as common as the Bar Mitzvah in non-Orthodox communities.

Another innovative practice, known as a Confirmation, is almost as commonplace

today in non-Orthodox communities as the Bar and Bat Mitzvah, and it too involves a process of study and ritual performance by both young men and young women. The

Confirmation ceremony can be traced back to the early decades of the Reform Move-

ment in nineteenth-century Germany, where some Reform-minded rabbis attempted

to find an alternative rite of passage for adolescents rather than the traditional Bar Mitzvah, believing that the latter had become little more than a ceremonial occasion. Their solution was to borrow a practice from the Christian church and to require

sixteen-year-old males (and later females) to make a profession of faith during the

Shavuot service, thus connecting their religious coming of age with the traditional

celebration of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Curiously, however, this intended

departure from normative Jewish practice was finally reintegrated into the traditional life cycle after World War II, as many Reform and several Conservative congregations

added the Confirmation ceremony to the now-lengthened process ofJewish education.

Thus, instead of supplanting the Bar Mitzvah, the Confirmation ceremony simply

became a secondary stage of the passage to adulthood.

Marriage and Divorce In Judaism, marriage is a contractual relationship between a man and a woman, rooted in mutual love and respect, and presumed to be both

monogamous and enduring-a relationship on which divine blessings can be invoked.

However, like all contracts, the marriage contract can be dissolved.

Over time Jews have devised formal procedures for regulating and solemnizing the

processes of marriage and divorce. Many centuries ago, the marriage ceremony con-

sisted of two separate rites: the betrothal and the actual nuptials. According to this an- cient custom, the future bride and groom became engaged to one another through the

exchange of a ring. The couple then returned to the homes of their respective parents for

a year, at which time the bride and groom gathered, along with their families, under a

marriage canopy (known as the chuppah). A rabbi would recite seven blessings, praising God and sanctifying the union, and only at the conclusion of this ceremony would the marriage be consummated. Today, these two ceremonies have been combined and are

accompanied by other, largely symbolic rituals: first, having the bride and groom drink

from the same wine cup, and second, having the groom present the bride with her mar-

riage contract (Hebrew, ketuvah). Finally, at the conclusion of the ceremony, the groom

crushes a wine glass with his shoe-traditionally understood to symbolize the destruc-

tion of the two Temples-whereupon the attending guests shout Mazel Tov (Hebrew, "good luck").

398 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

The bride and groom will stand under this canopy during the wedding ceremony.

From a traditional point of view, the presentation of the ketuvah by the groom

is the core of the marriage rite in Judaism because it states publicly and clearly the

groom's intention to provide for his bride's comfort and well-being while he lives

and her financial security after he dies, or after they divorce. The ketuvah, in short, is a "prenuptial agreement," and its principal purpose is to provide for the future

bride so that, in the event of divorce or the groom's death, she will not be left des-

titute. Traditionally, the groom alone vows to set aside monies in escrow as "mar-

riage insurance," but many modern Jewish couples have opted for a very different

kind of ketuvah, vowing mutual commitment and support, symbolized by an ex-

change of rings. Jewish divorce proceedings are no less formal (albeit much sadder) than the mar-

riage ceremony. After marital counseling has been tried and failed, the couple comes

before a rabbinic court (Hebrew, bet din) that consists of three rabbis who hear the

case. The divorce document (Hebrew, get) is then drawn up, releasing both parties

from any future obligation to one another. At that moment, the husband (or his rep-

resentative) must hand the get to his soon-to-be ex-wife. He is then declared free of their union and eligible to marry again-that very day, if he chooses. The wife, how-

ever, must wait three months to marry again, on the presumption that she may be

pregnant and therefore carrying the child of her former spouse. Moreover, if her hus-

band refuses to grant her a divorce-or cannot do so because he is missing-traditional

Jewish law leaves her few options for dissolving the marriage. She may find herself

bound by religious law to a husband who has abandoned her or who may have died in some distant land without witnesses to his death. In rabbinic parlance, such a woman

Judaism as a Way of Life 399

is an agunah (Hebrew, "chained woman"), and Orthodox communities continue to

struggle with this legal dilemma today.

Death and Mourning It is the custom in Judaism to treat the deceased with as much dignity as the living, and every effort is made to ensure that the ceremonies as-

sociated with the burial of the dead and mourning are invested with sanctity and re-

spect. Whenever possible, a Jewish burial will take place within twenty-four hours of

death (unless the Sabbath or a festival intervenes, delaying burial for a day or two). The

body is prepared for burial by being bathed and wrapped in a shroud, then tradition- ally placed in a simple pine box, thus discouraging ostentation. It is customary during the burial service for mourners to express their sorrow by a symbolic tearing of their

clothes-often wearing a strip of torn black cloth, pinned to a garment-while recit-

ing prayers of praise for God and comfort for the soul of the deceased in the afterlife.

During this ceremony mourners are consoled by family and friends and gently dis-

couraged from showing excessive grief. Once burial occurs, those mourners who were closest to the deceased-parents,

siblings, children, or spouse-enter into a week-long period of intensive mourning

known as shivah (Hebrew, "seven"), interrupted only by the Sabbath. During this

period, mourners do not work, remain at home, and receive well-wishers who join with

the mourning family in "sitting shivah." Because mourners are not expected, during this week, to attend synagogue, it is customary for friends to form a prayer quorum

(Hebrew, minyan) in the home so that morning and evening prayers may be recited.

Once shivah is over, however, mourners are expected to return to the world and

everyday obligations, with the understanding that for the remainder of that month

mourners will abstain from entertainments of all kinds and remain in a somber state

of mind. Once this thirty-day period of diminished mourning is completed, restric- tions on the mourner's participation in celebratory events are lifted, though most

Orthodox Jews continue a modified mourning protocol until the first anniversary of a

parent's death has passed. The erecting of a tombstone does not normally occur until

eleven months have passed; thereafter, close relatives are expected to visit the grave at

least once a year-usually on the anniversary of the death of that family member-as

well as to recite prayers in memory of the dead during memorial services held during all the major festivals. Finally, it is customary to light candles in the home at the time

of the yearly anniversary of a loved one's death, and, whenever possible, to place small

stones on the gravestone as a sign of one's remembrance of the deceased.

Other Sacred Practices As a way of life-and not just a creed-Judaism seeks to shape every facet of one's behavior: from the food one eats (or doesn't eat) to the way husbands and wives relate

to one another. To someone outside these traditions, these religious practices might

seem intrusive, but to those living within those traditions they provide a sense of

meaning and order, endowing all of life's activities with an aura of holiness.

400 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

The Dietary Code Since antiquity, Jews have observed a restricted diet. Although the details of that diet have changed somewhat over the centuries, the underlying as-

sumptions behind these practices have not. In the Torah, the people of Israel are told, repeatedly, that God wishes them to be in a state of"holiness," and when that principle

is applied to diet, it becomes a multiform discipline of selective food consumption and

careful food preparation. The essentials of the Jewish dietary code-known in Hebrew as kashrut-are as

follows:

1. The only animals that may be eaten are those that have been properly slaughtered;

no animal that has been killed by another or that has died a natural death may be

consumed. 2. The only quadrupeds that may be eaten are those with split hooves who also chew

the cud (like cows or goats), and, once properly slaughtered, their blood must be

drained away.

3. No fish may be eaten that does not have both fins and scales.

4 . No insects may be consumed at all. 5. No meat dish may be eaten at the same time as a milk dish.

The practical consequences for anyone who observes this diet are obvious: no one

who is serious about kashrut will walk into a restaurant and order a cheeseburger, nor will that person dine at a stranger's home without first inquiring whether the food about to be served is really "kosher" (meaning in conformity to rabbinic standards of

food selection and preparation) and whether the plates and cooking utensils are also

completely free of contamination from forbidden foods. In fact, within all Orthodox and many Conservative Jewish homes it is customary to find not only kosher food-

stuffs on the table but also, on occasion, duplicate sets of ovens, refrigerators, and din-

nerware to make it easier to separate meat dishes from milk dishes. Kosher restaurants

carry this process one step further by ordering only meat prepared by kosher butchers and by obtaining rabbinical certification that all food preparation procedures have

been followed scrupulously. The phrase "kosher-style" food is therefore a deceptive

misnomer; foods and cooking processes are either kosher or nonkosher, but never both.

It is interesting to note, however, that all fruits and vegetables are kosher, and that certain foodstuffs-such as Jell-O or margarine-are "neutral" with respect to meat-

milk distinctions. Such "neutral" foods are known by the Yiddish term pareve, and they may be eaten at either a meat-based or a milk-based meal. Over the centuries,

attempts have been made to rationalize this system of food taboos and culinary prac-

tices by suggesting an underlying concern with food safety and dietary well-being, but

whatever side benefits may be derived from not consuming infected meats, such ben- efits are largely peripheral to the primary intent of the dietary code, namely, that of

separating the observant Jew from a nonobservant food-consuming culture, thereby

making the commonplace act of eating a religiously self-conscious event.

Judaism as a Way of Life 401

Family Purity All Orthodox, and some Conservative and Reform, women, in addi- tion to maintaining kosher homes, are also equally attentive to the practice of ritual

"purity," and as a consequence attend a mikveh (Hebrew, "pool") at the conclusion of

their menstrual periods. In fact, in a truly orthodox Jewish home, husband and wife

abstain from sexual intimacy not only during the entire period of menstruation but for seven days thereafter, and only then will the wife attend the mikveh. The purpose of

this rite of purification, however, is not to remove biological impurities from a wom-

an's body; that can be accomplished simply by bathing. Immersion in a mikveh is,

rather, a symbolic act of spiritual preparation-somewhat similar to the practice of

baptism in Christianity, which clearly derives from antecedent Jewish practices-and

although the mikveh is used primarily by women preparing to resume sexual relations with their husbands, it is also used for conversion ceremonies and by orthodox males

on the afternoon before Yorn Kippur.

The rabbinical laws governing this entire process are referred to as taharat hamish-

pachah (Hebrew, "purity of the family"), and the remote origin of these practices can

be found in the Hebrew Bible, where men are warned against having intimate rela-

tions with a menstruating woman. Nowhere, however, in either the Hebrew Bible or in rabbinic literature does Judaism suggest that women's bodies are "unclean" in a

hygienic or biological sense. As with the dietary code, so with the laws of family

purity: the ceremonial discipline of traditional Judaism requires a heightened degree

of self-awareness about the routines of everyday life. Among Reform and Reconstruc-

tionist Jews, however, such practices are rarely observed, and today rigorous applica-

tion of the purity laws is only a distinguishing mark of family life within the Orthodox Jewish home.

Prayer From its earliest beginnings, Judaism developed a distinctive culture of prayer. In the

Hebrew Bible one can find numerous examples of the principal types of prayer that

make up the traditional Judaic liturgy: prayers of praise, confession, petition, and

thanksgiving. In the Book of Psalms, for example, the legendary King David (to whom

much of that book is attributed) petitions God in the following prayer-like poem:

Hear my cry, 0 God, Heed my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to You; When my heart is faint, You lead me to a rock that is high above me. For you have been my refuge, A tower of strength against the enemy. 0 that I might dwell in Your tent forever, Take refuge under Your protecting wings.

-Psalms 61:2-5

402 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

Holding a prayer book and wearing a ta/lit, tefillin, and a kipah, a young man prepares to recite morning prayers.

In poems like this, biblical writers repeatedly addressed God in a language that is at

once intimate and awestruck, praising His providential care of those who trust in

Him, while requesting His continued protection against evil and misfortune. But no

matter what the character of any particular prayer, all prayers in Judaism are addressed

directly to God, and all assume His compassion and just concern.

With the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., the principal site ofJewish prayer shifted to the synagogue, where prayer alone, disconnected from animal sac-

rifices, became the norm. From that point on, the practice of offering prayer-now

no longer primarily the privilege of Temple priests-became more democratic. Each

community constructed its own house of worship, and before long a recognized lit-

urgy emerged that consisted, in part, of selections from the Hebrew Bible and

prayers for various occasions composed by rabbinic authors. By the Middle Ages these prayers were collected in a single volume, known in Hebrew as the Siddur, that

became the primary source of the synagogue liturgy for weekdays, the Sabbath, and

festivals.

The daily routine of prayer appears to have been established during the late biblical

period, where we find the exiled Daniel, living in Persia, praying three times a day

while turning toward Jerusalem (Daniel 6:11). The architectural arrangement of early synagogues echoed this practice by orienting the entire building in the direction of

Jerusalem, though in later centuries Jews were content with placing the Ark-a large,

upright cupboard designed to hold several scrolls of the Torah-on the eastern wall.

As the rabbinic protocol of prayer developed during the early Middle Ages, the rules

governing thrice-daily prayer became increasingly elaborate and formalized, with an

additional early afternoon service added on the Sabbath. The most common setting for prayer in Judaism is communal,

and although individual (and even spontaneous) prayer is always

valid, the full complement of prayers in any prayer service can

only be said once a quorum of worshippers has assembled, either

in the home or, more commonly, in a synagogue. That quorum is referred to in Hebrew as a minyan, and in Orthodox communities

it consists of at least ten males thirteen years of age or older; in

Conservative and Reform synagogues, a minyan consists simply

of ten adults of either gender.

During the morning service (Hebrew, shacharit), men tradi-

tionally wear a prayer shawl (Hebrew, tallit) and phylacteries or prayer-amulets (Hebrew, tefillin) throughout, and then remove them at the conclusion of prayers. On the Sabbath it is customary,

even in many Reform synagogues, to wear the tallit during prayer

services, with tefillin worn only during weekday prayers. In most

synagogues today, a head covering (known variously as a kipah or

a yarmulke) is worn during prayer, chiefly by males, and as a sign of respect. Prayer services are conducted in the late afternoon

(Hebrew, minchah) and early evening (Hebrew, maariv) as well, and, like the morning

service, they consist of certain fixed prayers that represent a succinct summation of the

Jewish faith.

One of the most powerful, and the most revered, of all the prayers that are recited

during the morning and evening services is the Shema, which consists of biblical

verses that first declare the unity of God and then declare Israel's commitment to His service:

Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one!

Blessed is God's glorious kingdom forever and ever!

And you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your

soul, and with all your might. Set these words, which I command you

this day, upon your heart. Teach them faithfully to your children; speak

of them in your home and on the way, when you lie down and when

you rise up. Bind them as a sign upon your hand, and let them be

symbols before your eyes; inscribe them on the doorposts of your

house and upon your gates. -Deuteronomy 6:4-9

This passage is one of the first prayers taught to children at the earliest age of religious instruction, and it is, traditionally, the last prayer one utters before death. It is one of

a repertoire of "statutory" prayers that are recited every day in the week, on major

festivals, and on the Sabbath.

In Orthodox and many Conservative congregations, it is customary to read aloud a portion from the Torah every week, on Monday and Thursday mornings, and espe-

cially on the Sabbath (morning and late afternoon). In addition, an extra passage from the prophetic books is read on both the Sabbath and the major festivals. On each oc-

casion the portion selected from the prophetic books either echoes the themes of the

Torah portion or reflects the themes of the festival itsel£ All these readings are nor-

mally recited or chanted in Hebrew, with translations in the local language freely

available to the congregation. Today, all Jewish communities employ quite a bit of Hebrew in both the recitation of prayers and in readings from the Torah, though the

ratio of Hebrew to the vernacular will vary considerably, with Orthodox synagogues

conducting services almost entirely in Hebrew and Conservative, Reform, and Recon-

structionist communities employing a variable mixture of Hebrew and the congrega-

tion's native language.

CONCLUSION Judaism has not merely survived over a period of three millennia (in itself a remarkable

achievement); it has also evolved, responding and adapting to changing circumstances

as it developed from a geographically and philosophically circumscribed religious cul- ture into a global faith. As the oldest of the Abrahamic religions, it carries within itself

Conclusion 403

404 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

the longest memory of formative events and personalities, and with it an abiding sense

of the divine purposefulness of human history. Judaism exists, therefore, at a point of

intersection between history and theology, as the life experiences of a people inter-

twine with their experience of the sacred.

At the summit of Jewish faith lies a singular Creator-God-at once familiar and

mysterious, judgmental and forgiving-whose very existence guarantees the order and meaning of the universe; at the heart of Jewish faith lies a covenanted relationship

between that God and those who are committed to serving and obeying His will. And

even those who doubt the very existence of that God, but who persist in identifying

themselves with Jewish history and values, continue to believe in a moral covenant

that makes all human communities possible.

SEEKING ANSWERS

What Is Ultimate Reality?

The one God of Jewish faith is understood to be not only the source of all created things but also the highest and most complete form of reality the human mind can imagine. Jewish mystics often refer to this transcendent reality as the Ein Sof, or Infinite One. Traditionalists believe that God revealed Himself to the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai and that Jewish Scrip- tures provide a reliable account of that revelation. The biblical view of Creation is, initially, positive: when God views the world He has brought into being He declares it "very good" (Genesis 1:31). However, later mystics, like Rabbi Luria, traced the evil in the world back to a mysterious cosmic error that subverted the design for the created world that God had originally intended. Nevertheless, the presence of divine "sparks" in each of us inspires us to believe that goodness and not evil will prevail.

How Should We Live in This World?

The divine commandments that make up the core of the Torah are designed to enable human beings to achieve true righteousness, that is, to bring the human moral will into conformity with God's will, and thereby ensure that justice and peace will prevail in the world. All ideas of right and wrong-such as the Ten Commandments-must, therefore, be referred back to God 's revelation of His will at Sinai and the Torah's laws that govern human conduct. Both biblical writers and their rabbinic commentators believed that human beings are created in the "image of God" and, at the same time, are torn between good and bad impulses. In the mystical tradition this conflict can be resolved through study, prayer, and meditation, all of which draw us closer to God.

(continued)

Review Questions 405

SEEKING ANSWERS (continued)

What Is Our Ultimate Purpose?

Judaism has never believed that human beings are hopelessly evil, nor does it support the view that humanity can never make moral progress. The High Holy Days are dedicated to the belief that both individuals and whole societies are capable of changing their behavior and that, through active repentance, they are even capable of drawing closer to each other and to God.

Jews have long believed that the soul is immortal and survives death. The fate of the soul in the "world to come" and God's judgment of that soul remain a subject of specula- tion and wonder, even today; some, however, regard these beliefs as obsolete and no longer a part of contemporary Jewish faith.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

For Review ,. What are mitzvot, and where can they be

found? 2. What does the word Torah literally mean,

and how many other meanings can be derived from it?

3. What are Maimonides's thirteen Principles of Faith?

4. Who was Mordecai Kaplan, and to which movement in modern Judaism is he connected?

5. What does the term Shoah mean, and how is it different from the word "Holocaust"?

For Further Reflection ,. What are the implications for Judaism of

the concepts of election and covenant? Do Jews see themselves as the only people with whom the Creator-God has communi- cated? Is it ever possible for a non-Jew to

enter into a covenant relationship with Israel's God?

2. How did Judaism recover from the loss of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 c.E.? Why do you think that some Jews living today are hoping to rebuild the Temple and resume the practice of animal sacrifice? Why are the majority of the world's Jews content with the synagogue and its prayer routines?

3. How does Maimonides's approach to both God and Torah differ from that of the mystics? Do the kabbalists really believe that it is possible for human beings to seek union with God or to find the presence of God within oneself?

4 . Among the varied responses to the Shoah that modern Jewish philosophers have pro- posed, which response seems the most compelling to you? If you were a Holocaust survivor, what would your view of life and of

406 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

faith be now? Would you still find it possible to believe in a just and loving God?

5. What does the word Zionism refer to, and what role did Theodor Herzl play in promot- ing Zionist ideas?

GLOSSARY

Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760) A charismatic faith healer, mystic, and teacher (whose given name was Israel hen Eliezer) who is generally regarded as the founder of the Hasidic movement.

Barf Bat Mitzvah A rite of passage for adolescents in Judaism, the Bar Mitzvah (for males age thirteen) and the Bat Mitzvah (for females ages twelve to thirteen) signal their coming of age and the beginning of adult religious responsibility.

Covenant A biblical concept that describes the rela- tionship between God and the Jews in contractual terms, often thought of as an eternal bond be- tween the Creator and the descendants of the an- cient Israelites.

Dead Sea Scrolls Religious literature hidden in caves near the shores of the Dead Sea (c. second- first centuries B.C.E.).

Diaspora A Greek word in origin, it refers to those Jewish communities that live outside of the his- torical land of Israel.

election The belief that the biblical God "chose" the people of Israel to be His "kingdom of priests" and a "holy nation." This biblical concept is logi- cally connected to the idea of the Covenant, and it entails the belief that the Jews' relationship with God obliges them to conform to His laws and ful- fill His purposes in the world.

eschatological Any belief in an "End-Time" of divine judgment and world destruction.

ethical monotheism A core concept of Judaism: it is the belief that the world was created and is gov- erned by only one transcendent Being, whose ethical attributes provide an ideal model for human behavior.

6. What are the Ten Commandments, and where can they be found?

7. What is the Talmud, and how many volumes (or tractates) does the Babylonian Talmud contain?

Exodus The escape (or departure) of Israelite slaves from Egypt as described in the Hebrew Bible (c. 1250 B.C.E.) .

halacha An authoritative formulation of traditional Jewish law.

Hasidism A popular movement within eighteenth- century Eastern European Judaism, Hasidism stressed the need for spiritual restoration and deepened individual piety. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Hasidic movement spawned a number of distinctive com- munities that have physically separated them- selves from the rest of the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds and who are often recognized by their attire and their devotion to a dynasty of heredi- tary spiritual leaders.

Holocaust The genocidal destruction of approxi- mately six million European Jews by the govern- ment of Nazi Germany during World War II. This mass slaughter is referred to in Hebrew as the Shoah.

Immanence The divine attribute of in-dwelling, or God being present to human consciousness.

Kabbalah One of the dominant forms ofJewish mys- ticism, kabbalistic texts begin to appear in Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Mys- tics belonging to this tradition focus on the emana- tive powers of God-referred to in Hebrew as Sephirot-and on their role within the Godhead, as well as within the human personality.

Luria, Isaac A sixteenth-century mystic who set- tled in Safed (Israel) and gathered around him a community of disciples. Lurianic mysticism seeks to explain the mystery surrounding both

(continued)

GLOSSARY (continued)

the creation of the world and its redemption from sin.

Maimonides A twelfth-century philosopher and rabbinic scholar whose codification of Jewish be- liefs and religious practices set the standard for both in subsequent centuries.

Messiah A possibly supernatural figure who will judge and transform the world.

mikveh A ritual bath in which married Jewish women immerse themselves each month, after the end of their menstrual cycle and before resuming sexual relation with their husbands.

mitzvot Literally translated, the Hebrew word mitz- vot means "commandments," and it refers to the 613 commandments that the biblical God im- parted to the Israelites in the Torah (i.e., the first five books of the Hebrew Bible).

Moses The legendary leader and prophet who leads the Israelite slaves out of Egypt, Moses serves as a mediator between the people oflsrael and God in the Torah and is later viewed as Israel's greatest prophet. It is to Moses that God imparts the Ten Commandments and the teachings that later became the Torah.

omnipotence The divine attribute of total and eter- nal power.

omniscience The divine attribute of total and eter- nal knowledge.

Pesach An early spring harvest festival that cele- brates the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, Pesach (better known as "Passover" in English) is celebrated for seven days in Israel and eight days

in the Diaspora. The first two nights are cele- brated within a family setting.

Rosh Hashanah The Jewish New Year, it is cele- brated for two days in the fall (on the first day of the month of Tishrai) and accompanied by the blowing of a ram's horn (a shofar, in H ebrew). It signals the beginning of the "ten days of repen- tance" that culminate with Yorn Kippur.

Seder A ritualized meal, observed on the first two nights of Pesach, that recalls the Exodus from Egypt.

Glossary 407

Shavuot A later spring harvest festival that is cele- brated for two days and is associated with the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Along with Pesach and Sukkot, it was one of the "pilgrimage" festivals in ancient times.

Siddur The prayer book that is used on weekdays and on the Sabbath.

Sukkot A fall harvest festival that is associated with the huts (in Hebrew, sukkot) in which the ancient Israelites sought shelter during the Exodus. It is celebrated for seven days in Israel (eight days in the Diaspora). During that time Jews take their meals and, if possible, sleep in huts that are partly open to the sky.

synagogue Jewish houses of worship. The focal point of every synagogue is the Ark, a large cabi- net where scrolls of the Torah are stored.

tallit A prayer shawl that is worn during morning prayers (traditionally by men). The fringes of this shawl represent, symbolically, the 613 mitzvot found in the Torah.

Talmud A multivolume work of commentary on the laws of the Torah and on the teachings of the entire Hebrew Bible, composed in two stages: the

Mishnah (edited in approximately 200 C.E.) and the Gemara (edited, in its Babylonian version, around 500 C.E.). Traditionally, Jews refer to the Talmud as the "Oral Torah" and regard it as an

extension of sacred scripture.

Tanakh An acronym standing for the entire Hebrew Bible: Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible); Neviim (or "Prophets," which includes works of both prophecy and history); and Khetu- vim (or "Writings," a m iscellaneous gathering of works in poetry and prose). Taken together, the twenty-four books that make up this collection constitute the core "scriptures" of Judaism.

tefillin Taken from the word for "prayer," the term tefillin refers to two small boxes to which leather straps are attached. Traditionally, Jewish males from the age of thirteen wear tefillin during

(continued)

408 Chapter 11 JUDAISM

GLOSSARY (continued)

weekday morning prayers. Inside each of these boxes is a miniature parchment containing biblical verses; one box is placed on the forehead and the other is placed on the left arm, signifying that the individual's mind and will are devoted to God.

Torah Literally, the word torah means "teaching," and in its most restrictive sense it refers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Less restrictively, it signifies the totality of God's revelations to the Jewish people, which includes not only the re- maining books of the Hebrew Bible but also the writings contained in the Talmud.

transcendence The divine attribute of being above and beyond anything human beings can know or imagine.

YHWH These four consonants constitute the most sacred of names associated with the biblical God.

The exact pronunciation of this name, according to ancient Jewish tradition, was known only to the High Priest, but after the destruction of the Second Temple the precise vocalization of these letters was lost-only to be recovered in the days of the Messiah.

Yorn Kippur Referred to as the "Day of Atone- ment," it is the most solemn of all of the fast days in the Jewish religious calendar.

Zionism A modern political philosophy that asserts a belief in Jewish national identity and in the ne- cessity of resuming national life within the his- toric land of Israel.

Zohar A kabbalistic midrash based on the biblical Book of Genesis (c. 1280 C.E.).

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Akenson, Donald Herman. Surpassing Wonder: The

Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. An ambi-

tious, and sometimes argumentative, history of

the evolution of biblical and rabbinic literature. Ariel, David. What Do Jews Believe? New York:

Schocken Books, 1995. An accessible and nu-

anced account of traditional and nontraditional Jewish beliefs.

Bauer, Yehuda. A History of the Holocaust. New York:

Franklin Watts, 2001. A well-researched and readable account of the Holocaust, written by

the "dean" of contemporary Shoah historians.

Eisenberg, Ronald. The JPS Guide to Jewish Tradi- tions. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Soci-

ety, 2004. A well-researched and comprehensive

guide to traditional and nontraditional Jewish

religious practices. Fredricksen, Paula. From Jesus to Christ. New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press, 1988. A close scholarly

reading of the gospels that traces the separation

of emergent Christianity from normative Judaism

of the first four centuries. Neusner, Jacob, and Alan J. Avery-Peck, eds. The

Blackwell Companion to Judaism. Oxford, UK:

Blackwell, 2003. A collection of diverse articles on the history of Judaism, written by some of

the leading scholars in Jewish studies.

Robinson, George. Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to the Beliefs, Customs and Rituals. New

York: Pocket Books, 2000. A well-written and

comprehensive description ofJewish beliefs and practices.

Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: A History. New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. The best account to date of the historical development of

the Jewish community in the United States.

Strassfeld, Michael. The Jewish Holidays. New York:

HarperCollins, 1985. A nicely illustrated pre- sentation of major and minor Jewish festivals

with detailed accounts of religious observances

from around the world.

ONLINE RESOURCES

My Jewish Learning myjewishlearning.com

A well-researched site for historical subjects and

religious practices.

The Jewish Virtual Library jewishvirtuallibrary.org

Online Resources 409

A good site for contemporary subjects such as

Israel and the Holocaust.

CHRISTIANITY

STEVE AND RENEE WALKER have had a lotto look forward to during the past two years. First there was the long-awaited arrival of little Simone, who brings gladness to her parents and her brother, Brent. Today there will be another exciting event as the Walkers present Simone for baptism into a spiritual family that Christians call the Church.

Whereas some Christians prefer to baptize adult believers who under- stand and accept the essential teachings of Christianity, others such as the Walkers believe that baptism is a special means by wh ich God's love begins to grow even within small children. Wanting Simone to be touched by God in this way, they have arranged for her baptism to take place at St. James's Episcopal Church, where they have found friendship and fel- lowship with others.

Now the church is filled with worshippers whispering quietly in rows of pews while waiting for the service to begin. When it does, the organist fills the building with resplendent strains of music that seem to shake its foundations , the congregation launches into a favorite hymn, and a pro- cession of clergy and their attendants makes its way to the front of the church. After welcoming everyone, the priest, Father Robert, pronounces a blessing upon them. Then all eyes turn toward the baptismal font, an elevated basin of water. Steve, Renee, and Brent are waiting there, with Renee holding Simone in her arms.

A priest baptizes a baby girl as her family looks on.

412 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

World Christian population.

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Father Robert now enters into a formal dialogue with Steve and Renee, asking if they will bring up Simone in the Christian faith , if they renounce evil in all its forms,

and if they put their trust in the grace and love of Jesus Christ. Answering for them- selves and on behalf of Simone, they respond affirmatively. Then , dipping a small silver cup into the water of the baptismal font, Father Robert pours a bit ofit three times on

Simone's forehead . As he does so, he says , "Simone, I baptize you in the name of

the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." Then, placing his hand on

Simone's forehead, he marks the sign of the cross and adds, "Simone, you are sealed

by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ's own forever. Amen."

Now that the baptismal ritual is complete, Simone's family return to their seats to

await the end of the service. Soon they will be on their way home to join friends and

relatives for a festive dinner and celebration of the new life that Simone will live, not

just with the Walker family but in communion with more than 2 billion Christians

Id "d ,,11,__ wor w1 e. ?,~,<'

T here are three great traditions within C hristianity. Historically, the Roman Catholic Church has been the dominant church in the West. In the East, most Christians have belonged to the Orthodox Church (also known as the Eastern Orthodox Church). Protestant Christianity, which consists of thousands of "denominations," grew out of the Roman Catholic t rad ition in the sixteenth century.

Although these churches have been shaped in different ways by complex historical and

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cultural forces, they are united by shared beliefs

that lie at the heart of Christianity. Christians acknowledge a personal and transcendent God,

the creator and sustainer of the universe. The

Christian doctrine of the Trinity describes God as one in essence, but consisting in three "persons":

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christians believe that communion with God, in this life and in eter-

nity, is the ultimate purpose of human existence.

But there is an obstacle to be overcome: sin. The

violation of God's will in thought or action, sin is common to all humanity. Worse, sin separates the

individual from God. What is needed is the for- giveness that God gives to all who believe that the

sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,

atoned for all sin. For Christians, the sacrifice of

Christ is the supreme expression of divine love.

Similarly, they see in his resurrection and ascension into heaven a sign that not even death can separate

from God those who respond to God's love. Al-

though they remain imperfect, Christians believe

that the destructive power of sin is no longer the

primary force in their lives, for they have been bap- tized into a new "life in Christ."

We begin our investigation of Christianity with a survey of its teachings. We then trace the

history of Christianity from the earliest days after

the death of Jesus to the present time. Finally, we

explore the practices by which Christians give out-

ward expression to their beliefs in their daily lives.

THE TEACHINGS OF CHRISTIANITY By the first century (as was discussed in Chapter 11), Palestinian Jews had endured centuries of oppres-

sion under foreign conquerors, always struggling to preserve their unique religion and culture. Their

situation became especially dangerous with the ar-

rival of the Romans (63 B.C.E .), whose brutality

fueled a bitter resentment that ultimately led to

a Jewish rebellion. Tragically, the revolt ended

with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, the center ofJewish religious life, in 70 C.E.

TIMELINE Christianity

The Teachings of Christianity 413

c. 30 c.E. Crucifixion of Jesus.

c. 46-60 Paul's missionary journeys.

70-100 Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John written.

313 Constantine decrees religious freedom for Christians.

325 Council of Nicea declares God the Son to be "of the same substance as God the Father."

354-430 Augustine of Hippo, fi rst great theologian of the West and author of the Confessions and City of God.

367 Contents of New Testament established.

529 Benedict of Nursia writes the Benedictine Rule.

949-1022 Simeon the New Theologian and the beginning of Hesychasm.

c. 1000 Conversion of Russia to Orthodox Christ ianity begins.

1054 The Great Schism divides the churches of East and West.

1095-1272 Western Crusaders repeatedly attempt to free the Holy Land from Muslim rule.

1184 Pope Lucius Ill inaugurates the Inquisition.

1198-1216 Height of papal power under Innocent Ill.

1265-1274 Thomas Aquinas writes the Summa Theologica.

1453 Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, falls to the Ottoman Turks.

1517 Reformation begins when Martin Luther posts his Ninety-Five Theses.

1534 King Henry VIII establishes Church of England.

1545-1563 Council ofTrent, at which the Roman Catholic Church responds to the Protestant movement.

1647 George Fox founds the Society of Friends (Quakers).

1703-1791 John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement.

1804-1814 Napoleon, Emperor of the French, acts to strip the Roman Catholic Church of its influence.

1834 The Spanish Inquisition, the last stage of the Inquisition, is formal ly abolished.

1869-1870 First Vat ican Council declares doctrine of papal infallibility.

1962-1965 Second Vatican Counci l.

1948 Founding of the World Council of Churches.

414 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

Mass baptism of Christians at Yardenit, the site on the Jordan River in Northern Israel where Christian tradition says Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.

The Jewish people responded to these pressures in different ways. Pharisees de- fended Jewish tradition through strict observance of the Torah. Sadducees cooperated

with the Romans in the hope of preserving social stability. Zealots advocated anti-

Roman violence. Essenes withdrew to the desert lands outside Jerusalem to wait for

divine deliverance.

Believing that God would soon bring an end to unrighteousness, many Jews looked

for the coming of a Messiah who would inaugurate a new era of justice and peace. Originally, messiah ("anointed one") was a title given to Israel's kings, who were anointed with oil as a sign of God's favor. Later, it came to mean the deliverer God

would send to save the Jewish people from oppression. Some looked for a supernatural

Messiah. Others watched for a descendant of David, ancient Israel's greatest king. Most

believed the Messiah would rule as king and judge the wicked and the righteous. The first Christians were Palestinian Jews who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was

the Messiah-in Greek, the Christos, or "Christ." They proclaimed him as a deliverer not from earthly oppression but from the power of sin. In Jesus, these long-oppressed people saw the beginning of a new era of righteousness and peace evident in his teach-

ings, miracles, death, and resurrection.

The Life of Jesus Our most important sources for the life and teachings of Jesus are the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Written between approximately 70 and 100 C.E., the

gospels are early Christian proclamations of the "good news" ("gospel," from Middle

English godspel, translates the Greek evangelion, "good news") about J esus's teachings, suffering, death, and resurrection. Because their interests are more theological than biographical, the gospels leave much unsaid about the life of Jesus. Still, their essential

agreement on many points does allow us to establish the general outlines of his career

and teachings.

The gospels report that Jesus was born in the Judean city of Bethlehem (most

scholars place his birth between 4 and 1 B.C.E.) and spent his youth in the Galilean

village of Nazareth. At about the age of thirty, he made his way south to the Judean

wilderness, where he was baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. A prophetic figure who warned of God's imminent judgment, John

called on sinners to repent and be baptized in water as a

sign of spiritual cleansing.

After his baptism, Jesus began a ministry that lasted no

more than three years. The gospels say that as he traveled throughout Galilee he performed healings and miracles that

testified to God's presence within him. The gospel accounts

also describe Jesus as a charismatic teacher who spoke with

authority on the scriptures and urged repentance and bap-

tism in anticipation of the coming kingdom of God, a new era of peace and holiness. He was accompanied by an inner

The Teachings of Christianity 415

group of disciples, sometimes called "the twelve," led by three Galilean fishermen (Peter,

James, and John), as well as by people from towns, villages, and the countryside. There were also Galilean women amongJesus's disciples who supported his ministry with their

own resources. Indeed, women figure prominently in the gospel accounts ofJesus's min-

istry. Rejecting the social norms of his time, he befriended women and spoke and ate

with them both in public and in private. When even the twelve abandoned Jesus in his final days, it was only the faithful women among his followers who remained with him.

As enthusiasm for his teachings and miracles grew, Jesus's popularity aroused resent-

ment and opposition among members of the religious establishment. Jesus himself appears

to have understood that dark days lay ahead. As he prepared to leave Galilee for Jerusalem, he warned his disciples that rejection, suffering, and death awaited him there.

Jesus arrived in the holy city just before Passover. The gospels describe a triumphal entry in which crowds greeted him as the Messiah. Entering the Temple, he caused a

great stir by driving out those who did business there, accusing them of making the

sacred place a "den of robbers." For several days Jesus taught in the Temple, but then

events took an ominous turn. After celebrating a "Last Supper" (perhaps a Passover

Seder meal) with his disciples, Jesus was brought before a council ofJewish leaders and

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Palestine during the ti me of Jesus.

416 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

then handed over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. Fearing that Jesus was a

threat to public order, Pilate ordered his execution. Jesus was crucified less than a week

after he had entered Jerusalem.

The gospels add theological reflections to this historical outline. Matthew and

Luke assert that Jesus's mother, Mary, was a virgin who conceived miraculously in

fulfillment of prophecy (Isaiah 7: 14). All four of the gospels say that the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit, descended upon Jesus at the time of his baptism. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, a voice from heaven then declared: "This is my Son, the

Beloved, with whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). In this way, the gospels link Jesus to King David, who is described in Psalms 2:1-7 as God's "anointed" and "son." The gospels also identify Jesus as the "servant" of God who would suffer for the sake of

humanity, as foretold by one oflsrael's prophets (Isaiah 42:1-4; 53:10-12). In making these connections, the gospels reveal their understanding of the kind of Messiah Jesus

was to be: a Son of God who, filled with the Spirit of God, would suffer for the sins of

others. Finally, the gospels report that women who had followed Jesus found his tomb

empty at dawn on the Sunday following his crucifixion. They and the other disciples

were overjoyed when Jesus appeared to them and they remembered what he had once

told them: "The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day rise again" (Luke 9:22). Convinced that he was indeed God's Messiah, they began to proclaim the good news

that God had acted through Jesus for the salvation of the world.

According to the Acts of the Apostles (found in the Christian scriptures), Jesus

remained with his disciples for forty days after his resurrection. Then, having sent

them out as apostles (Greek apostolos, "one who is sent out") to preach to Jews and Gentiles alike, he ascended into heaven. Several days later, as they celebrated the Jewish

holiday of Pentecost, Jesus's followers were suddenly "filled with the Holy Spirit," the same Spirit of God that had descended upon Jesus at his baptism (Acts 2:2-4). Em- powered by the Spirit to carry out the mission Jesus had given them, they found them-

selves able to speak in languages they had not known before, to prophesy, and to

perform miraculous healings. According to Acts, the number of believers grew rapidly, for "many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles" (Acts 2:43). Acts also reports that the first Christians spent "much time together in the temple" (Acts 2:46), reminding us that they were Jews who continued to live and worship as Jews. It did not

occur to them that their belief that Jesus was the Messiah had given them a new reli-

gious identity outside of Judaism.

The Teachings of Jesus The gospels describe Jesus as a great teacher who astounded the crowds who gathered

to hear him, "for he taught them as one having authority" (Matthew 7:29). Though he engaged in debate with learned Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus also took great interest

in ordinary people. He often taught them in parables, stories that employed vivid images from everyday life to illustrate spiritual truths.

The Teachings of Christianity 417

The central theme in Jesus's teaching was the kingdom of God (in Matthew, the

kingdom of heaven). For Jesus, the kingdom of God was not an ordinary realm but

the state of affairs that exists when human beings recognize God's sovereignty over

the world and respond in love and obedience to God's will. To put it another way, the

kingdom of God means the world as it ought to be, a world in which God's love and

righteous rule are fully realized. In the gospels, Jesus sometimes speaks of the king- dom as a future event to be heralded by dramatic signs such as a darkening sun and

stars falling from heaven. In the midst of these cataclysmic events, the present age would pass away and the kingdom would be revealed in all its glory. But Jesus also

spoke of the kingdom as already present within himself and his followers. Asked when

it would come, he replied, "The kingdom of God is among you" (Luke 17:21). Though it was still small, Jesus expected the kingdom to grow into something great and won- drous. In one of his parables, he compared it to a tiny mustard seed that "grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of

the air can make nests in its shade" (Mark 4:30). Whether speaking of the kingdom of God as present or future, Jesus emphasized its all-surpassing importance. Nothing can

compare to the kingdom, he said, and so it is worth any price: "The kingdom of heaven

is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field" (Matthew 13:44).

Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is open to all who repent. By repentance, he meant something more than a mere expression of regret for some wrong one has done.

The Greek metanoia ("a change of mind") found in the gospels suggests a turning away

from anything that might prevent one from doing God's will. Like other Jews, Jesus

found God's will expressed in the Torah and its commandments. In his famous Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), however, he gave the commandments his own interpretation, emphasizing that what God requires is obedience in thought as well as

in deed. Thus, true obedience to the commandment against murder goes beyond not

killing; it means never harboring anger toward anyone in one's heart. Similarly, the

commandment against adultery prohibits not only the act itself but any thought of it

(Matthew 5:21-28). For Jesus, it was this absolute obedience to the will of God that constituted the true righteousness of the kingdom of God.

Jesus also taught that true obedience to God's commandments was an expression

of love. When pressed by a Pharisee to identify the greatest of the commandments, he

cited two (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18), explaining that they embody the essence of scripture: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment.

And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two com-

mandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40). The nature of love lies at the heart of Jesus's teachings. Jesus taught that genu-

ine love knows no limits and is offered freely to everyone: "Love your enemies and

pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:44-45). Understood in this way, love leaves no room for the

418 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

condemnation of others: "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged" (Matthew 7: 1).

Instead, love requires forgiveness: "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly

Father will also forgive you" (Matthew 6: 14). These principles are richly illustrated in

Jesus's parables. The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), for example, dem-

onstrates that even enemies deserve love and compassion. In the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), a father greets a dissolute and disrespectful son who has returned home-not with any thought of reproach, but with love and forgiveness gladly given.

The gospels describe Jesus as embodying these principles of repentance, obedience, and love. They also depict Jesus as living in the expectation of his crucifixion. In Mark,

he tells his disciples that his death will be "a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). Jesus

spoke of God as Father, sometimes using the Aramaic abba ("papa") to suggest a rela- tionship of special intimacy, as well as obedience. He urged his followers to draw close to God as well. They were God's children, he told them. As such, they should approach

God in prayer with the words "Our Father" (Matthew 6:9) and with confidence that,

like a loving parent, he would provide for their needs (Luke 12:22-31).

As we discuss later in this section, these fundamental teachings ofJesus lie at the

heart of what Christians believe about sin, divine love, and salvation. But we first turn

our attention to Paul of Tarsus, the first great interpreter of the life and teachings of Jesus, to see how Christian beliefs began to take shape in the years immediately fol-

lowing Jesus's crucifixion.

Paul and the Mission to the Gentiles The most famous of the Jewish Christians who took the gospel and its teachings to Gentile lands was Paul of Tarsus. A Pharisee devoted to Judaism, Paul had been a per- secutor of Christians, but after a dramatic experience of the risen Christ (Acts 9:1-19),

he dedicated himself to preaching Christianity in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Greece,

and Macedonia. In his letters to young churches in Corinth, Thessalonica, Rome, and

other cities, we can see Paul breaking with traditional Jewish thought in emphasizing

God's love for Gentiles and disputing the necessity of observing the commandments in the Torah. Because Paul was the first to describe the role of Jesus in the salvation of

humanity from sin, some have described him as the second founder-and even the

true founder-of Christianity. It was due in part to his influence that Christianity was transformed in the middle of the first century from a Jewish sect into a largely Gentile

movement.

At the heart of Paul's teaching was his belief that in Jesus Christ God had acted to bring salvation from sin to the world. Paul saw sin as a condition affecting all human-

ity: ''All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Controlling

human beings and separating them from God, sin corrupts and ultimately destroys

human life (Romans 6:23). For Paul, the good news of the gospel was that God's

promise of salvation from sin, anticipated in the Jewish Scriptures, had been fulfilled

in Jesus's death on the cross. Though sinless and undeserving of death, Jesus had offered himself as a sacrifice in atonement for all sin. Although Paul's language of"sin,"

The Teachings of Christianity 419

"sacrifice," and "atonement" may sound strange today, it is really quite similar to what

we might mean when we say we have done some "wrong" to someone and that we must

do something to "make up for it." In Paul's time, Jews and Gentiles alike understood

that sacrifice was the means of "making up for" an offense against God, or the gods.

Paul was always emphatic in maintaining that salvation cannot be earned by "works," whether human efforts to obey the commandments in the Torah (Galatians

3:10) or good works in general. Instead, he taught that the salvation made possible by

Christ's sacrifice is a gift, the ultimate expression of God's love, or grace. Salvation is given to those who respond to God's grace in faith, the conviction that God has acted

through Jesus Christ to atone for human sin. Although Paul was very clear in teaching

that salvation depends on God's grace and the individual's turning to God in faith, he

did not dismiss the importance of works. In Romans 2:5-10, for example, he says that people will be held responsible for the good and evil they do. Paul's letters are not

always precise about the relationship between faith and works, but they leave no doubt

about the necessity and priority of faith. In his letter to the Galatians (2:16), Paul

wrote that individuals are brought into a right relationship with God "not by works of

the law but through faith in Jesus Christ."

For Paul, faith does more than bring salvation; it unites the believer with Christ in a "newness of life" (Romans 6:4) so real that Paul could say, "It is no longer I who live,

but it is Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). Like the apostles who had been filled

with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Paul believed that the Spirit lives in believers and

brings them into union with God. To the Christians at Rome he wrote: "You are in the

Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you" (Romans 8:9). As a divine presence within,

the Spirit encourages the growth of spiritual virtues, the greatest of which is love (1 Corinthians 12:27-14:1). Paul also believed that the Spirit makes all Christians one in the Church, which he often called the "body of Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).

Like other early Christians, Paul looked forward to a time when Christ would

return in glory to bring an end to evil, sin, and suffering (1 Corinthians 15:20-28).

But he also believed that the transformation of the world, signaled by the resurrection

of Christ, had already begun. Signs of change were especially evident in the lives of believers, who had been renewed, even recreated, through the action of God's grace:

"So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see,

everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

God, Creation, and Original Humanity Christian thought about God, the world, and humanity begins with the first verse in

the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).

Here, and in the story of creation that follows, the Bible makes a clear distinction be-

tween created things and their Creator. God is transcendent, existing outside space, time, and the other limiting factors that give the world its order and finitude. And yet

God is also immanent, or present in the world, sustaining and caring for all things

with a loving benevolence that touches even the least of creatures.

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Andrei Rublev's icon of the Holy Trinity (1411) is considered a masterpiece of Orthodox religious art. It depicts (from left to right) God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. On one level, the three figures are the "angels" through whom God appeared to Abraham in the Old Testament. On a higher level, they represent the Trinity in a way that uses color, light, and imagery to give the viewer a glimpse into its unfathomable mystery.

Much as a work of art tells us something about the artist, Christians believe that

creation tells us something about God. Paul made this point in his letter to the

Romans: "Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature,

invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has

made" (Romans 1:20). For Christians, the goodness, beauty, power, and design evi- dent in the world are all expressions of God's nature. But it is God's goodness, and the consequent goodness of the world itself, that are emphasized in the biblical story of

the world's beginnings. At the completion of each stage of creation, it says, "God saw

that it was good" (Genesis 1:10, 18, 21, 25, 31). Finally, Christianity teaches that the

entire order of existing things, and especially human beings, is the deliberate and pur-

poseful expression of a divine love that a grateful creation should return to God in

praise. "Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them" (Psalms 69:34).

Christians believe that, despite its original perfection, the world as we know it

today falls far short of God's intentions, plagued as it is by suffering, injustice, and

death. These evils cannot be attributed to God, however, for they are completely op-

posed to God's perfection. Instead, Christianity points to creation itself.-and, more

specifically, to humanity. The story of creation relates that "God created humankind in his image" (Genesis

1:27). For centuries, Christian thinkers have sought to understand all that is entailed by this assertion. Some have found the image of God in the human capacity for ra-

tional thought. Others have said it can be seen in the "dominion" God gave to human beings over all the earth (Genesis 1:26), which resembles God's rule over the entire

universe. All Christian thought, however, acknowledges that human beings have a unique ability to relate to God, and to love God, just as God

relates to and loves them.

This idea is found in the biblical narrative that describes

how God placed Adam and Eve, the first human beings, in

a garden-like paradise called Eden. Whether we understand Adam and Eve as literal human beings or as symbols of original

humanity-the Hebrew word adam means "humankind"-the point of the story remains the same. For as long as human

beings related to God in loving obedience, they lived in joyous

harmony with their Creator, but their eventual decision to dis-

obey God brought an end to that harmony and, consequently, to the harmony of creation as a whole (Genesis 2:4-3:24). It was through sin that evil in all its forms became a reality in the

world. Worst of all, sin separated humanity from God. In the

Christian view, the salvation of creation from sin's destructive

effects begins with the salvation of human beings. It is only through salvation from sin that they are restored to that origi- nal relationship with God in which they find their true place,

The Teachings of Christianity 421

purpose, and fulfillment. In the words of Augustine, the great fifth-century saint,

"You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in

you."1

God as Trinity Like Judaism, Christianity is a monotheistic religion. But Christianity differs from its parent religion in defining the one God in terms of three aspects of divinity. For

Christians, there is a single divine nature that expresses itself eternally in the "persons"

of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The doctrine of the Trinity was not put into precise language until 381 at the

Council of Constantinople, one of the meetings at which early Christian leaders as-

sembled to establish doctrine. Building on the work of the Council of Nicea (325), the bishops at Constantinople produced the Nicene Creed, a statement of the doctrine that many Christians continue to recite in public worship:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and from the Son]. He has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy catholic ["un iversal"] and apostol ic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

As you can see, the Creed is divided into three parts corresponding to the three "per-

sons" of the Trinity. It tells us about the relationships among the three persons as well as the functions of each.

How do Christian teachings about God compare with those of the related religions of Judaism and Islam and those of Hinduism and Buddhism?

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Adam and Eve Banished from Paradise. In this fresco, the Renaissance painter Tommaso Masaccio (1401-1428) captured both the shame of Adam and Eve and the fear they felt as they were expelled from the Garden of Eden and separated from God.

The opening statement is about God the Father, the omnipotent ("almighty")

Creator of all reality, spiritual as well as material, visible as well as invisible. There is

one God, upon whom all things depend for their existence.

The second part of the Creed focuses on God the Son, who is "one in Being with the Father"-that is, of the same divine substance or essence as the Father. For the

sake of humanity, the Son became fully human as well as fully divine. This is why Jesus, as God incarnate, can say in the Gospel of John: "I and the Father are one"

Qohn 10:30). As a revelation of divinity on earth, the Son enabled those who recog-

nized him as such to come to a greater understanding of God: "If you know me, you will know my Father also" Qohn 14:7). Beyond revealing the Father, the Son has

three other roles. First, recalling the Gospel of John (1:3), the Creed states that "through him all things were made." Second,

the suffering and death of the Son have made salvation possible.

Third, the Son, as the risen Christ, will one day return to judge

the world.

The final part of the Creed affirms that the Holy Spirit "pro-

ceeds" from the Father, implying the Spirit's sameness in sub-

stance or essence with the Father. The addition of the Latin filioque ("and from the Son") by the Western Church, never ac- cepted in the East, underscores the sameness of all three persons

of the Trinity. Just as the Father represents God's power in the

creation of the world, and just as the Son both reveals the Father

and redeems a sinful humanity, the Holy Spirit represents God's

continuing presence in the world. Since the beginning, when - God breathed the "breath of life" into Adam (Hebrew ruach

means both "breath" and "spirit"), the Spirit has given life to all

of creation. Christians believe that since the descent of the Holy

Spirit at Pentecost, it has animated, empowered, and guided the

Church. Finally, it is the Spirit within that helps believers as they reach out to God in prayer (Romans 8:26) and that nur-

tures virtues such as love, patience, kindness, gentleness, and

self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

Sin and Human Nature Christianity emphasizes the sinfulness of human nature. This may seem a harsh way of thinking about human beings. After

all, there are good reasons to believe in their essential goodness. Of course, Christians do acknowledge the human capacity to

do good things. But they are equally aware of the human capac-

ity for evil and the fact that people are often destructive in their

thought and behavior. Christianity teaches that sin is universal; everyone sins. It also insists that the tendency to sin is far more

The Teachings of Christianity 423

serious than an acquired habit one might overcome through greater self-control or

moral effort. The inability of human beings to rise above sin-to be as loving, humble,

generous, and righteous as they should be-suggests that something has gone wrong

within human nature. In the Christian view, because human beings cannot overcome sin on their own, they stand in need of salvation from its power over them-a power

that cuts them off from God, the source of all good things.

Grace and Salvation For Christianity, sin is the fundamental problem of human existence. But it is a prob-

lem solved by the good news of God's grace, the love God gives freely to human beings despite their sin. In the Christian view, it is only through reliance on divine grace that

salvation from sin becomes possible.

Christianity explains how salvation is made possible by using the language of sac-

rifice, a common Jewish practice in Jesus's time. In the sacrificial ritual, the sins of the people were ritually placed on animals sacrificed as innocent victims for the transgres-

sions of others. For Christians, Jesus's death on the cross was the fulfillment of this

sacrificial practice. It is with his crucifixion that the significance of the Christian

teaching that Jesus Christ was both human and divine becomes clear. Jesus's divinity

allowed him to do for human beings what they could not do for themselves. As the sinless "lamb of God" (John 1:29), he alone could make the perfect atonement for sin

that would allow sinners to be restored to their original relationship with God. As a

human being, he could suffer the consequences of sin on behalf of humanity. In doing

so, Christians say, Jesus fulfilled the words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, who

spoke of the "suffering servant" of God: "But he was wounded for our transgressions,

crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). Christians see in Christ's suffering for the

salvation of humanity the supreme proof of God's grace:

God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent

his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is

love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be

the atoning sacrifice for our sins. -1John 4:8

Grace makes salvation possible, but it requires a human response in the form of faith. For Christians, faith is more than intellectual acceptance of the fact that God

has made salvation possible through Jesus Christ. Faith in God involves a whole-

hearted opening of oneself to God so that God's love replaces sinfulness as the prevail-

ing power in one's life.

For Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians, as well as for some Protestants,

good works are an expression of faith, even a part of faith, as a faith that does not in- volve action is not faith at all. As the New Testament letter ofJames (3:23) puts it, "So

424 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

'

faith by itself, apart from works, is dead." Most Protestants, on the other hand, make a distinction between faith and good works. Because works, they believe, are not a part

of faith, works do not contribute to salvation. In support of this view, Protestants cite

New Testament passages such as Paul's letter to the Romans (3:28), "For we hold that

a person is justified by faith apart from works .... " For those who hold this view, good

works are something one does because one has faith. The differences here are finely

nuanced, but they have profound implications that are partly responsible for the sep- aration of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions.

Christians admit that they are no closer to perfection than anyone else, yet they

are confident that faith allows them to "walk in a newness of life" (Romans 6:4) on a

path that leads toward rather than away from God.

The Church Christians do not live the Christian life in isolation. Instead, their faith and baptism

unite them with all other believers. In its most basic sense, the Church is the sum of

all believers, but most Christians believe that the Church is far more than this. Fol-

lowing Paul, they understand the Church as the "body of Christ," a body whose di-

verse members are unified by the Holy Spirit: "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is

with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-Jews or Greeks,

slaves or free-and we were all made to drink of one Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:13).

VOICES: An Interview with Terrie M. and Father Art

Terrie M. is a member of a Roman Catholic church in Sacramento. Father Art is one of three priests who serve its nearly three thousand members.

How does the Roman Catholic Church stand in relation to other Christian churches?

Terrie: Some people mistakenly make a distinction between "Catholics" and "Christians," so I want to begin by saying that to be a Catholic is to be a Christian. We share with other Christians our belief in Jesus as Lord. Like other Christians, we believe that salvation comes through faith. We Catholics also be- lieve that God's love and compassion are boundless and given to all, and so we cannot say that the Roman Catholic Church is the only path to salvation.

Father Art: We share with other Christians our reverence for Sacred Scripture, the inspired Word of God, but we have equal reverence for Sacred Tradition, the handing on to each new generation of the wider reality of all that the Church is and believes-that is, its doctrine, life, and worship. The Church's teaching authority [Magisterium], guided by the Holy Spirit, is both the servant and the authentic interpreter of the Word of God revealed in Sacred Scripture and Sacred

The Teachings of Christianity 425

Tradition. This authority, exercised in the name of Jesus Christ, has been en- trusted to the bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome. Catholics grieve that not all Christians share this belief, but I know that all Christian churches rec- ognize some form of tradition and teaching authority, as well as the authority of Sacred Scripture. Our sacred task is to pray and to work for that unity of all Christians desired by Jesus.

What is the great problem of human existence?

Terrie: The great problem we face as human beings is sin, which separates us from God and ultimately results in death. We come into this world, not evil, but certainly with the ability to sin as part of our human condition. Much suffering is caused when we make a choice to live for ourselves. But we are also born with God's grace, an unmerited love that is given freely. Reconciliation is possible for all and there is nothing that cannot be forgiven. Through the love of God through Christ Jesus, even death has been conquered and the original goodness of hu- manity is restored.

Father Art: Sin not only separates us from God, it prevents us from being all that God intends us to be. We are justified before God thanks to the gratuitous gift of God's grace in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, given us by the Holy Spirit at baptism. By the gift of God's grace, we are enabled to live lives of faith expressed in love.

Does being a Roman Catholic give you a heightened awareness or a different way of looking at reality?

Terrie: My reality as a Catholic is grounded in Christ's teaching that we must love and live for each other. We do not go it alone. It is this knowledge and awareness that helps me see that the joys and challenges of life are navigated together. It is perhaps in the celebration of the Eucharist that I am most aware of my union with others, for this ritual is not so much about eating as it is about sharing- our stories, all that we are, and all that we have.

Father Art: Yes, Christ is made manifest to us in the liturgy and the sacra- ments, and especially in the Eucharist. His presence there heightens our sensi- tivity to his presence throughout the world, in everyday life, in our work, and in our relationships, so that every moment and every situation becomes an opportunity for praise and worship and for sharing our joy with others.

Scripture When the first Christians spoke of scripture, they meant the Jewish Scriptures. In

Greek, these texts were called ta biblia, or "the books"-hence, our English "Bible."

It was not long, however, before certain Christian writings assumed an importance equal to that of the Jewish Scriptures. By the end of the fourth century, there was

general agreement that twenty-seven of these texts had greater authority than all others. These came to be known collectively as the New Testament. Since then, the

Christian Bible has consisted of the Old Testament (the Jewish Scriptures) and the

New Testament. In Christian interpretation, the Old Testament, which tells of

Terrie M. and Father Art

426 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

God's covenant with the Jewish people, anticipates and is fulfilled by the New Tes- tament, which reveals that the Messiah has come and established a new and univer-

sal covenant between God and the Church. Roman Catholic and Orthodox versions

of the Bible also include several Deuterocanonical ("secondary canon") texts, which

they place in the Old Testament. Protestants call these texts the Apocrypha ("hidden texts") and sometimes place them between the Old and New Testaments in their

versions of the Bible.

The first four books in the New Testament are the gospels. Although tradition

attributes the gospels to specific individuals, some of them disciples of Jesus, none

identifies its author by name. Each gospel portrays Jesus in its own way. In the

Gospel of Mark, Jesus is a Messiah who resolutely submits to suffering on behalf of

humanity. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is a figure reminiscent of Moses who reveals the true meaning of the Torah. The Gospel of Luke focuses on Jesus's com-

passion for sinners, women, the poor, and the sick. Finally, the Gospel ofJohn em-

phasizes the divinity of Jesus. In describing him as God's "Word" (Greek logos, "word," but also "divine reason") "made flesh," John presents Jesus as a revelation of

God in human form.

The gospels are followed by the Acts of the Apostles, which describes the found- ing of the Church in Jerusalem and tells the story of Paul's missionary journeys. All

but one of the texts that follow Acts are letters, many of them written by Paul. These

texts describe the organization of the first Christian churches, tell us about early

Christian beliefs and practices, and offer insights into the complex relationship be-

tween early Christianity and Judaism. The New Testament concludes with Revela-

tion. Written at the end of the first century, when Christians were beginning to suffer persecution, Revelation is an apocalyptic text that employs vivid imagery in

describing the coming of the kingdom of God after a climactic battle between good

and evil.

Christians have always seen scripture as the revealed word of God. They turn to

the Bible for instruction in doctrine, ethics, and higher truths, confident that this collection of divinely inspired texts has an authority that sets it above all others. But

what, exactly, does "divinely inspired" mean? More important, does the Bible make

the claim of divine inspiration about itself?

As it turns out, one New Testament text speaks of scripture as "God-breathed"

(2 Timothy 3:16), which comes very close to "divinely inspired." Of course, the refer-

ence here is only to the Jewish Scriptures, or Old Testament, as the New Testament was not recognized as scripture until long after this text was written. Another New

Testament passage describes the prophets of the Old Testament as men who "spoke

from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21). Two Old Tes-

tament passages say that God himself wrote the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:12

and Deuteronomy 5:22). There are also several Old and New Testament texts that

describe Old Testament figures as taking dictation from God when writing small

The Teachings of Christianity 427

portions of scripture (e.g., Ezekiel 11:5, Matthew 22:43). Beyond this, the Bible says

little about divine inspiration.

Until the Reformation of the sixteenth century, divine inspiration was not an issue

of great importance. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions agreed that the

biblical texts were somehow inspired by God, who chose their authors and worked with

and through them, and that seems to have been enough. But the Protestant reformers advanced the doctrine that scripture is the only authority on which Christians can com-

pletely rely. This meant that that the authority of scripture had to be raised to a level at

which it was beyond question. In order to do so, Protestant thinkers formulated a variety

of theories to explain just how divine inspiration "works." Some claim that God inspired

the biblical writers even to the point of determining every word they chose to use. Others

say that God has ensured the truth of the message in the biblical texts but without influencing the means by which the biblical authors chose to communicate it.

Today, there is a broad range of opinion on divine inspiration and the Bible. Some

Christians credit the authors of the biblical texts for their spiritual insights and leave

little or no room for divine influence. Others downplay the human contribution to

scripture, some to the point of attributing every word and idea to God.

The issue of divine inspiration is closely tied to that of biblical accuracy. As you might imagine, the more one emphasizes God's involvement in creating the biblical

texts, the more necessary it becomes to insist on their inerrancy. After all, since God

cannot lie or contradict himself, a Bible whose ultimate author is God cannot possibly

contain even a single error. Of course, there do seem to be errors and contradictions in

the Bible. In such cases, Christians who support absolute inerrancy use biblical, histor- ical, and linguistic arguments to show that these are only apparent, not real. Those who endorse a limited inerrancy say that the Bible is inerrant in matters essential to faith and

doctrine but may contain insignificant errors relating to geography and history. For the

most part, conservative Protestants favor absolute inerrancy. Liberal Protestants,

Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Christians tend to support limited inerrancy.

Tradition Tradition has great authority in the lives of most people. We look to the accumulated

wisdom of the past in forms such as laws and constitutions, scientific discoveries, mas-

terpieces of art and literature, and folklore for guidance in organizing society and

understanding the world and our place in it. In a similar way, Christians have always

looked to their past for guidance in matters of belief and practice. For them, tradition is the "handing on" (Latin traditio) and continuing interpretation of the gospel mes-

sage through the centuries. The idea of tradition is found in the Bible. In one of his letters to the Christians of Corinth, Paul wrote: "I handed on to you as of first impor-

tance what I in turn had received" (1 Corinthians 15:3). Although different groups

define the content of tradition in different ways, in the broadest sense it includes

creeds, forms of worship, doctrines, the decisions of church councils, papal decrees,

428 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

the works of major theologians, and even the illustration of the gospel in art, music,

and literature.

All Christians place great value on tradition. For Roman Catholics and Orthodox,

its authority is on the same level as scripture. In fact, some point out that because the earliest Christians were "handing on" the faith even before the first New Testament

texts were written, scripture can be seen as a part of tradition. Protestants set tradition below scripture but still acknowledge its importance. Most Protestants believe that

tradition is helpful in understanding scripture and accept the ancient creeds, basic pat-

terns of worship, and a great many other "traditional" features of belief and practice.

"Last Things" We have seen that Jesus proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of God-God's loving

and righteous rule in the world. Jesus taught that the kingdom was already present in him and in his followers but that its full realization lay in the future. In doing so, he made a distinction between the now and the not yet that is evident throughout the

New Testament. The Letter to the Hebrews, for example, describes Christians as "those who have once

been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit,

and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come"

(Hebrews 6:4). Similarly, Paul's letters speak of world-transforming events that had al- ready occurred, such as the resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon

his followers, but they also look forward to events that would take place at the end of the

age. Greek-speaking Christians called these events ta eschata, "the last things." They in- clude eschatological events such as the Second Coming of Christ, the resurrection of the

dead, the Last Judgment, and the glorious consummation of the kingdom of God.

Most early Christians assumed that the end of their age was not far off. As time

passed, however, many came to believe that the consummation of the kingdom would

occur within a spiritual context rather than in an earthly kingdom. There is a biblical

basis for this view in the Gospel of John, whose "realized eschatology" holds that events such as judgment and resurrection into eternal life have already been realized in

the interior lives of believers. Both points of view are still very much alive today, and

so it is fair to say that Christians hold a very wide range of opinions with respect to the

time and nature of the fulfillment of God's purposes in the world.

The Afterlife Like the adherents of many other religions, Christians believe that human existence

extends beyond this life. In the afterlife, the consequences of the choices people make

now in relation to God and God's grace will be fully realized. Traditionally, Christians have illustrated these consequences with images of heaven and hell. Some also believe

in purgatory, an intermediate state between earthly life and heaven.

Christian beliefs about the afterlife have been influenced by the cultures in which

Christianity has developed, as well as by scripture. As a result, they are extremely varied

and complex.

The Teachings of Christianity 429

Heaven Perhaps it is best to begin with what most Christians believe about heaven. In essence, heaven is perfect and eternal union with God, the fulfillment of the true

purpose and deepest desire of human beings. Whether understood as an actual place

or a state of being, as physical or spiritual, as earthly or celestial, "heaven" always means

the ineffable bliss of everlasting existence in the loving presence of God. Although the New Testament texts make frequent reference to heaven, they do not

describe it in detail. Instead, the New Testament authors provide glimpses of heaven

as the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, life everlasting, the holy place, and the

great reward. In the gospels, Jesus speaks of heaven as "paradise" (Luke 23:43) and as a place he will prepare for his followers (John 14:2-3). Paul's letters describe heaven both as the present dwelling place of God and as the future home of believers. Accord- ing to Paul, Christians can be certain of heaven because their experience of the Holy

Spirit in this life gives them a taste of a future reality in which mortality will be "swal-

lowed up by life" (2 Corinthians 5:12).

For some Christians, heaven is not a place but a spiritual state of being. This view

evinces the influence of ancient Greek thought, which held that the true self is an im-

mortal soul that can exist apart from the body and beyond space and time. For other Christians, heaven is the abode of God in the starry firmament above the earth. With

roots in both the Old and New Testaments, this conception of heaven as a physical

place is associated with the belief that those in heaven will possess physical bodies

made perfect and immortal following the resurrection of the dead that will occur

when Christ returns to judge the world (1 Corinthians 15; Philippians 3:20). Finally, some Christians understand heaven as an earthly phenomenon. The basis for this view is the vision of"a new heaven and a new earth" in the New Testament book of Revela-

tion (21-22). According to Revelation, the day will come when a "heavenly Jerusalem" will become present on earth. Here, evils such as death and disease will no longer exist,

and God himself will live among his people.

Purgatory One of the most striking differences between Christian views of the after- life concerns purgatory. In Roman Catholic thought, purgatory is an intermediate place or state between earthly life and heaven in which the souls of the dead suffer

temporal punishment due for sin. Just as a friend might forgive you for some wrong

you have done but still expect you to suffer a bit in demonstrating your sorrow, Roman

Catholic doctrine holds that sinners must make reparation or satisfaction for sins al- ready forgiven by God. Traditionally imagined as a cleansing fire, purgatory offers the

opportunity to complete the work of reparation left undone in earthly life. The scrip-

tural basis for belief in purgatory is found in 2 Maccabees (12:39-45), a deutero- canonical text in which prayer is offered for the dead so that "they might be released

from their sin."

Although Orthodox Christianity does not accept the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, most Orthodox Christians believe that after death souls enter a "condition

of waiting" in which they can benefit from prayers said on their behalf. Protestant

430 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

Christians reject belief in purgatory because they find no basis for it in scripture (most

Protestant Bibles do not include 2 Maccabees).

Hell Hell is not so much God's punishment for sin as the self-imposed consequence of rejecting God's grace. Some Christians understand hell as an actual place, others

think of it as a state of being, and still others do not believe in hell at all. In describing why hell must exist, one Orthodox writer has said: "God will not force us to love Him,

for love is no longer love if it is not free; how then can God reconcile to Himself those

who refuse all reconciliation?"2

The word translated as "hell" in English versions of the New Testament is

Gehenna, the name of a valley bordering Jerusalem where many Jews in the time of

Jesus expected that the worst of sinners would one day suffer torment. Thus Gehenna works well as a way of illustrating the pain of separation from God. Al-

though hell clearly refers to a state of existence, there is little basis in the New

Testament for understanding it as an actual place. It was not until the early Middle

Ages that hell was transformed in the popular imagination into a subterranean pit

of fiery horrors.3 Although hell has long been understood as a necessary expression

of divine justice, many Christian thinkers have found this idea to be inconsistent with God's love. Some have taught that God will ultimately save all people from the

consequences of sin.

Christianity and Other Religions Existing alongside other religions, Christianity has always sought to define itself in

relation to them. This is particularly true of Judaism, within which it originated. The bitterness felt by Jewish Christians after their expulsion from synagogues in the first

century can be seen in New Testament passages critical ofJewish piety and religious groups (for example, in Matthew 23 and John 5-8). It must also have influenced the gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus, which place greater blame on Jewish au-

thorities than on the Romans, who actually carried out the execution.

Tragically, the presence of anti-Jewish feeling in scripture continued to influence

Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism long after the first century. Denounced as Christ-killers and enemies of humanity, seventh-century French and Spanish Jews

were subjected to forced baptism. In the late Middle Ages, Jews were expelled from England, Spain, France, and Portugal. Anti-Jewish feeling assumed its most virulent

form with the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, and other parts of Europe in the twen- tieth century. It was not until after the Holocaust, the genocidal murder of six million

Jews carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II, that church leaders began

working for an end to hostility toward Jews and Judaism. At its inaugural meeting in

1948, the World Council of Churches declared that anti-Semitism is incompatible

with the Christian faith and "a sin against God and man." Today, many Christian

groups are engaged in efforts to heal the wounds of the past and to encourage a Jewish-

Christian dialogue that will foster mutual appreciation and respect.

The History of Christianity 431

Historically, most Christians have believed that there is no salvation outside of the

Church, a view based on New Testament passages that speak ofJesus as the only way in which God has been fully revealed to humanity. But the cultural pluralism of to-

day's global society has raised interest in other ways of understanding spiritual real-

ities. In fact, some Christians find a scriptural basis for the possibility of salvation in other religions. They point to Paul's letter to the Romans, which says that those who follow the dictates of their consciences will be judged as righteous on the last day

(Romans 2:14-16). Similarly, the letter ofJames defines "pure" religion not in specifi- cally Christian terms but as caring for the needy and keeping oneself "unstained by the

world" Qames 1:27). Biblical passages like these have encouraged many Christians to value the spiritual insights of other religious traditions and to enter into cooperative

relationships with them. The spirit of this new attitude, expressed in formal statements by many Christian groups, is represented in the Declaration on Non-Christian Religions issued by the Roman Catholic bishops who assembled for the Second Vatican Council

(1962-1965):

Prudently and lovingly, through dialogue and collaboration with the

followers of other religions and in witness of the Christian faith and

life, we should acknowledge, preserve and promote the spiritual and

moral goods found among these men, as well as the values in their

society and culture.4

Changes in Christian thought remind us that the history of Christianity is a story

about the changing ways in which the Church has existed in the world. We turn to that story now in order to discover how the Church of the earliest Christian centuries

became the one, or ones, we know today.

THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY Christianity in the Roman World Historians agree that Christianity spread steadily throughout the Roman Empire. As

it did, Christians met with criticism and persecution that continued until Rome's

emperors became Christians themselves. Also, as the Christian movement grew during these early years, it became necessary to define basic doctrines and to adopt a form of

church government capable of uniting Christians and promoting uniformity of belief

and practice among them.

The Church and the Roman State The Roman world was often hostile to Chris- tians. Many suspected them of disloyalty to Rome because they refused to recognize

its gods or participate in public events that involved pagan rituals. Localized persecu-

tions began in the first century and expanded into empire-wide assaults in the third.

Despite the terrors of mass arrests and executions, however, persecution failed to check the growth of Christianity. A dramatic turning point came in 313, when the Emperor

432 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

The first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine the Great promoted the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire and founded a new capita l at Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 330.

Constantine (r. 306-337) defeated a rival after seeing a vision of a cross in the sky. Convinced that the God of the Christians had

given him the victory, Constantine decreed religious freedom

for Christians and began to promote Christianity by building

churches and extending privileges to church leaders.

When Constantine transferred the imperial capital from Rome to Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 330, he did so in the hope that it would be a truly Christian city free of pagan-

ism. Decades later, Theodosius I (r. 379-395) made Christian- ity the official state religion of the Roman Empire and began

the suppression of other religions and schools of philosophy.

Diversity in the Early Church During the first five centuries C.E., Christians formulated many important doctrines, thereby

establishing a standard of orthodoxy, or "correct belief." How-

ever, some early Christian groups challenged the emerging

mainstream Church on issues as basic as the nature of God, the

humanity of Christ, salvation, and ecclesiastical (Greek ekklesia, "church") authority.

Three such groups are especially important. The first is Gnostic Christianity, whose unique writings, discovered in 1945, are still making news in popular magazines and television documentaries, as well as in scholarly pub-

lications. Some Gnostic beliefs were strikingly different from those of most Christians. Gnostics believed that Christ's body had been a mere illusion; therefore, he could not

have atoned for sin by dying a physical death upon the cross. Salvation came instead

from secret knowledge (Greek grzosis) that Christ gave only to a select group of gnostics ("knowers"), who had passed it down to others. Because Gnostic Christians saw all

material reality as evil, they understood salvation as the liberation of souls from human

bodies rather than as liberation from sin. Gnostics claimed that the Christianity

preached publicly in churches was incomplete, as they alone understood the higher teachings of Christ.

A second group was founded by Marcion (c. 85-160 C.E.), a theologian who had been expelled from the church at Rome for teaching that there are two Gods: the God

of the Jewish Scriptures, whom Marcion described as the unjust creator of an evil

world, and the supremely good God revealed by Christ. According to Marcion, it was this good God who had sent Christ to rescue human souls. Seeking to cut Christianity

off from its Jewish roots, Marcion rejected the Jewish Scriptures and all Christian texts

that seemed dependent upon them.

A third form of Christianity, known as Montanism, began with Montanus, a charis-

matic prophet of the late second century who claimed to be the mouthpiece of the Holy

Spirit. Montanus prophesied that Christ would soon return to a "new Jerusalem" that

The History of Christianity 433

was about to appear in southern Asia Minor. The greatest difficulty posed by Montanus was his claim that he preached a new prophecy. This raised two critical questions. First,

would Christian teaching require ongoing revision in order to accommodate every new

group and its revelations? Second, did claims of prophetic inspiration give charismatic

figures like Montanus an authority greater than that of church leaders?

Defining Orthodoxy Resolving questions related to correct belief, scripture, and the authority of the Church was one of the great themes in the early history of the

Church. In order to establish its authority and define orthodox belief, the Church cre-

ated a canon of scripture, formulated creeds, and implemented a system of ecclesias-

tical government that put authority into the hands of bishops.

We have already seen that a canon of scripture consisting of the Old and New Testaments was in place by the end of the fourth century. Texts widely believed to

have been written by the apostles were included, as were writings from the apostolic

era that were widely used in public worship. Because the Old and New Testaments

were regarded as having a unique authority, they constituted a standard against which

the orthodoxy of any new teaching could be judged.

The creeds developed by the early Church were formal and concise statements of essential Christian beliefs. In fact, the word creed itself comes from the Latin credo, which means "I believe." Creeds such as the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed

served two functions. The first is that they proclaimed orthodox doctrine on the incar-

nation, suffering, and death of Christ, as well as his resurrection and ascension into

heaven. The second is that repeated recitation of the creeds by Christians throughout

the empire promoted uniformity of belief within the Church. Finally, the early Church established a form of government that concentrated

power in the hands of bishops, who had jurisdiction over large territories called dio-

ceses. According to the doctrine of apostolic succession, bishops were the successors

of the apostles, who had been commissioned by Christ himself to lead the Church.

Claiming to have received both their offices and correct belief through direct lines of transmission, they held an authority that Gnostics, Montanists, and Marcionite

Christians found difficult to challenge. Bishops were assisted by priests, who were re-

sponsible for individual churches, and every church was served by deacons (Greek

diakonos, "servant") who assisted priests.

Gradually, the bishops of Rome and Constantinople emerged as the leaders of the churches of the Western and Eastern halves of the empire. Known as "popes" (Latin

papa, "father"), the bishops of Rome were said to be the successors of the Apostle Peter, the "rock" (Greek petra) upon whom Christ had said he would build his Church (Matthew 16: 18-19). They claimed the same authority Christ had given to Peter. Other

bishops-including the great patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and

Jerusalem-acknowledged the bishops of Rome as "first among equals" but without

recognizing the right of popes to rule over them.

434 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

Early Christian Thought The success of the early Christian movement was due in part to the work of Christian writers who produced carefully reasoned statements of

Christian belie£ These texts gave Christianity intellectual respectability in a world ac-

customed to the high standards of Greek philosophy and tended to encourage a search

for commonalities linking Christian and pagan culture. For example, theologians such as Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) and Origen

(c. 185-254) taught that God had long been at work among the Greeks and Romans,

preparing them for the coming of Christ. Just as God had given the Torah to the Jews,

said Clement, he had given philosophy to the Greeks as a kind of "schoolmaster" in order to "bring the Greek mind .. . to Christ."5 Like many thinkers of his time,

Clement held that all truth comes from the divine "Word," or Logos. Thus, truths found in scripture and philosophy were compatible. However, since the Logos had

become incarnate in Jesus Christ (John 1:18), said Clement, it was only in Christ that

seekers of truth would find it fully revealed.

Controversies and Councils Beginning in the third century, Christian theolo- gians turned their attention to the concept of the Trinity and to the nature of Christ. Discussion of these issues led to ecumenical councils ("worldwide councils") of bishops

at which doctrines were defined.

From the beginning, most Christians believed that God the Father, the Creator of

the universe, had become present in the world in Jesus Christ, God the Son. They also

believed in the Holy Spirit as the continuing expression of God's loving presence and

power in the world. But how could the one God also be three? This question was taken up by early theologians such as Tertullian, who gave Latin theology its Trinitarian

vocabulary by speaking of God as tres personae, una substantia ("three persons, one substance"). Similarly, Greek-speaking theologians described God as a single divine

ousia ("substance" or "essence") made manifest in three hypostases ("subsistences").

This way of thinking about the Trinity sufficed until the early 300s, when Arius,

an Egyptian priest from Alexandria, began teaching that God the Son, or Logos, was of a different substance than God the Father. Going further, Arius claimed that

whereas the Father was eternal, the Son was created in time. Arius's views alarmed

other theologians, for they seemed to undermine the unity of the Trinity. If the Father and the Son were so different, they asked, how could God be truly one?

Arius's provocative teachings soon had Alexandria buzzing as people in shops and streets argued theology with an enthusiasm we reserve for debates about sports and

politics. Fearing that Arianism threatened the unity of the empire, as well as the

Church, the Emperor Constantine stepped in and convened an ecumenical council to

settle the matter. The Council of Nicea (325) condemned Arius's views, ordered the

burning of Arian texts, and formulated a creed affirming that God the Son is homoou- sios ("of the same substance" or "being") with God the Father. An expanded form of this creed, the Nicene Creed (see p. 421), produced by the Council of Constantinople

(381), describes God as a Trinity of three distinct yet unified divine "persons."

The History of Christianity 435

Even as the Trinitarian controversy was being settled, another debate began over

the person of Christ. Christians had long believed that Christ was both human and

divine, but they differed in explaining how humanity and divinity coexisted in him.

The orthodox position on this issue was determined at yet another ecumenical council

at Chalcedon (451): in Christ, two complete and perfect natures, human and divine, were united without separation or fusion in a single person.

Augustine The drama of the Trinitarian and Christological controversies was played out in the Greek-speaking Eastern half of the Roman world and involved many

leading theologians. The Latin West produced just one theological giant. This was

Augustine (354-430), a North African bishop who laid the intellectual foundations for much of Western Christianity and Western civilization.

Central to Augustine's theology are his views on sin and human nature. Elaborat-

ing on the theology of Paul, Augustine argued that sinfulness is a fundamental flaw in

human nature that clouds our moral vision and perverts the will by causing us to

desire evil rather than good. In the Confessions, his spiritual autobiography, he illus- trated this point by recalling the pleasure he and some teenage friends once found in

stealing and throwing away pears from a neighbor's tree. According to Augustine, the tendency to sin is so deeply ingrained that we are spiritually helpless and therefore

completely dependent upon God for salvation. But how did human nature become so corrupt? Augustine's answer came in his

famous doctrine of Original Sin. All of humanity, it says, participated in the first sin: the sin of Adam and Eve, the first human beings, described in Genesis (3:1-24). At that time, Adam and Eve were humanity, with all future generations present in them. Thus, when they made themselves sinners by choosing to disobey God, this original

sin transformed human nature in a way that was bound to affect their descendants.

Every human being, said Augustine, is born with the "stain" of original sin in the form

of a sinful nature.

Augustine's awareness that some people are saved from sin led him to formulate a

theory of predestination. Because all human beings are sinful and therefore incapable of responding on their own to God in faith, he reasoned, God must give some people

a grace that inspires faith. Divine grace is irresistible, he said, for a love that could be

resisted would be incompatible with God's perfection. Thus those whom God touches

with his grace are destined to be saved. Augustine conceded that it is impossible to

know why God extends a saving grace to some people and not to others, but he insisted that God is neither arbitrary nor unjust. Some are allowed a destiny better than they

deserve, but no one receives a destiny worse than he deserves.

As you might imagine, Augustine was never entirely comfortable with his conclu-

sions about original sin and predestination, but his reading of scripture and observa-

tion of human behavior made them inescapable. Having seen jealousy in a baby whose brother had taken his place at their mother's breast, he felt he had no choice but to conclude that sin must be something we are born with and not simply a habit everyone

436 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

Completed c. 1250, the height and soaring towers of the Gothic cathedral at Chartres in France express the medieval yearn ing for God. For centuries, pilgrims and secular tourists have come to experience its exquisite, light-fil led interior and to see its famous relic, the tunic of the Virgin Mary.

happens to pick up. Similarly, though predestination seemed to be the work of an unfair God, Augustine knew that scripture taught that only some would be saved and

that God's justice is not always within reach of human understanding.

Augustine's masterpiece was his City of God, in which he formulated a Christian

philosophy of history. Writing amidst the panic following the sack of Rome by a

Germanic tribe in 410, he rejected the pagan claim that Rome's traditional gods al- lowed the city to fall because they were angry with the Romans for converting to

Christianity. Augustine argued that the fall of Rome was part of God's plan for the

salvation of the world. God had ordained two "cities": the earthly city, blemished by

sin, and the City of God, a spiritual community grounded in love of God. Like all

other manifestations of the earthly city, said Augustine, Rome must pass away so that

history can move toward the full realization of the City of God on earth. This view of history as progress toward the fulfillment of God's plan for salvation soon became

standard in the Christian West.

The Church in the Middle Ages In the fifth century, Germanic tribes overran the Western half of the Roman Empire.

From the resulting chaos a new medieval civilization emerged that combined Christian- ity with Roman and Germanic culture. The Eastern half of the Roman Empire survived

for another thousand years. Known as the Byzantine Empire, it was Greek in its language

and outlook. As the gulf between West and East widened, distinctively Western and

Eastern traditions within the catholic ("universal") Church began to take shape.

The Church in the West The most powerful of the Germanic tribes were the Franks, who controlled most of Western Europe by the ninth century. The Franks

supported the Roman Church and granted rich lands to bishops and monasteries.

In return, the Church sanctioned the rule of the Frankish kings, supplied clergy

to serve in their government, and sent missionar-

ies to convert pagan peoples in their kingdom. The Church's involvement in secular affairs

continued after the decline of the Franks and often

led to conflict between secular and spiritual rulers,

and especially the popes. Early medieval popes

claimed that their spiritual responsibilities gave

them an authority greater than that of secular rulers, but it was not until the eleventh century

that the papacy rose to the level they had imag- ined. The most powerful of popes was Innocent III

(r. 1198-1216). Intent on unifying the Christian

world under the papal banner, Innocent intervened

constantly in secular matters, deposing kings and emperors whenever they displeased him.

The History of Christianity 437

A very ugly aspect of medieval Christianity in the West was the Inquisition, the Church's inquiry into allegations of heresy that began in the twelfth century. Working

in partnership with secular rulers, who feared that religious diversity would undermine

their authority, the inquisitors sought to eradicate false teachings they believed would

endanger the salvation of those who accepted them. The Inquisition also targeted Jews

and Muslims. Despite its use of torture and the execution of heretics by burning, the Inquisition could not stamp out heresy. Nevertheless, it persisted in various forms until

its final and cruelest phase, the Spanish Inquisition, was abolished in 1834.

The Church in the East In the East, the patriarchs of Constantinople governed the Church jointly with the Byzantine emperors. The Byzantine ideal was a symphonia ("harmony") of emperor and patriarch based on their shared vision of a holy empire on earth that reflected the glory of the celestial society of heaven. Clashes did occur, but

only one threatened the symbiosis of emperor and patriarch. This was the controversy

over iconoclasm, or "icon smashing." Icons, painted images of Christ and the saints, had long been revered by Byzantine Christians. But some saw this as idolatry. When the

Emperor Leo III began removing icons from churches and other public places (726), riots

erupted throughout the empire. Leo and his successors responded by deposing unco- operative patriarchs and executing monks, the leading defenders of icons. A formal end

to iconoclasm came in 787, when the Second Council of Nicea determined that icons are

worthy of veneration but not worship, which must be reserved for God alone.

By the twelfth century, Byzantine missionaries had brought the Slavic peoples of

Russia and the Balkans into the Eastern Church. But the position of the Church

became increasingly difficult in later years as the Byzantine Empire gradually col- lapsed under pressure from the expanding Islamic world. The empire fell in 1453 with

the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks. For the next four centuries,

most Eastern Christians outside Russia lived in the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic state

in which they were tolerated but denied full religious freedom.

The Great Schism The Great Schism, the split between Western and Eastern Chris- tianity, came after centuries of gradual separation during which the two traditions

developed their distinctive forms. Some of their differences were minor:

baptism, for example, was performed by a sprinkling of water in the West

but by full immersion in the East, and the West urged priests to be celibate

whereas the East preferred them to be married. Far more divisive were the attempts of popes to control Eastern bishops and Byzantine lands. In the

end, it was the West's addition of the Latin filioque ("and from the Son") to the Nicene Creed that brought a final break. The East rejected this move for

theological reasons and because the West had acted without sanction by an

ecumenical council. In 1054, angry words over the filioque combined with tensions over other issues to force a division of the Church into separate Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions that remain divided even today.

The Interior of the

Cathedral of Hagia

Soph ia. Ded icated

to the "holy wisdom"

embodied by Christ,

th is sixth-century

church is the supreme

achievement of

Byzantine architecture.

After the capture of

Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, the city

was renamed Istanbul

and the church first

became a mosque,

then a museum.

438 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

In this fresco by Giovanni Sodoma (1477-1549),

Benedictine monks of the Monte Oliveto monastery in Italy eat their meal together- just as they worked and worshipped together in accordance with the Rule of St. Benedict. Note that one of the monks reads to the others from the Bible or some other holy book as they eat.

The Crusades Despite their differences, Eastern and Western Christians did share a common concern over the westward advance oflslamic armies. In 1095, Pope Urban

II proclaimed a military crusade intended to push the Muslims back and liberate

Jerusalem. Crying "Deus vult!" ("God wills it!"), armies of knights, peasants, and

townspeople set out on the First Crusade. In 1099, they celebrated their capture of Jerusalem with a frenzied slaughter of Muslims and Jews. But the crusaders were unable to defend the lands they had conquered, and subsequent crusades to regain them were

often military or moral disasters. Participants in the infamous Fourth Crusade (1204) never made it to the Holy Land, deciding instead to plunder Constantinople. The cru-

sades ended at the close of the thirteenth century, having failed to deliver the Holy

Land permanently into Christian hands.

Monasticism and Mysticism One of the most visible features of medieval Chris- tianity was monasticism, a movement that began in the third century when Christians

seeking a deeper experience of God withdrew into the deserts of Egypt and Syria. Most

early Christian monks and nuns lived solitary lives and practiced a severe asceticism.

According to legend, Macarius of Alexandria (d. 395) remained standing for periods as

long as forty days, subsisting on a weekly meal of cabbage. The nun Alexandra walled herself up in a tomb for ten years, never seeing another human face.

In the medieval period, monks and nuns were brought together in monasteries

governed by "rules" that regularized monastic life and discouraged extreme forms of

self-denial. Both the Eastern Rule of Basil the Great (330-379) and the Western Rule of Benedict of Nursia (480-547) required monks and nuns to take vows of chastity and poverty and to spend their days in communal worship, prayer, and labor. Although the monastic

aim of pursuing holiness through the imitation of Christ meant

that monks and nuns spent much time in prayer and contempla-

tion, monasteries also served nearby communities, providing

them with spiritual guidance, education, shelter for travelers,

and care for the poor and sick. The monastic movement also encouraged mysticism, the

direct and intuitive experience of God beyond the limits of

mere intellect. Eastern mystics emphasized the absolute "other-

ness" of God, whom they regarded as so utterly unlike anything else we experience that even concepts as basic as "being" and

"nonbeing" are useless in describing divinity. Though remote in

his incomprehensibility, they said, God is also near, touching

human beings with a love that restores the sinful nature to its

original state of perfection in "the image of God" (Genesis

1:26-27). "Love, the divine gift," wrote Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662), "perfects human nature until it makes it appear in unity and identity with the divine nature."6 Building on these

The History of Christianity 439

ideas, Eastern monks such as Simeon the New Theologian

(949-1022) and Gregory Palamas (c. 1296-1359) practiced

Hesychasm, the cultivation of an inner quietude (hesychia)

that brings an experience of God as divine light.

Western mystics also emphasized the power of divine

love. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) compared Christ to a bridegroom whose love for the soul fills her with a bliss

that transcends all earthly feeling. Bonaventure (1217-1274)

described how divine love lifts the mind above rational

thought, allowing it to unite with God in ecstasy. Many

of the great Western mystics were women. Catherine of Siena

(1347-1380) described a dialogue between God and a human soul seeking union with the divine in her famous Dialogue on Divine Providence. In her Revelations of Divine Love, the English recluse Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) spoke of God's love as the

only means to abiding joy. "Until I am substantially united to him," she wrote, "I can

never have love or rest or true happiness."7

Theology In the West, early medieval theology was centered in monasteries, where learned monks and nuns engaged in debates on issues such as predestination, free will,

and the sacraments. In seeking to understand how Christ can be truly present in the

eucharist, for example, medieval theologians formulated a doctrine of transubstanti-

ation. According to this doctrine, the bread and wine consecrated by a priest during the eucharist become the actual body and blood of Christ in substance, though their

secondary qualities, such as taste, color, and texture, remain unchanged. The growth of major universities in the twelfth century created a new setting for

theological inquiry. Here, theologians applied the science of logic as developed by

Aristotle to grasp the full meaning of truths revealed in the scripture. Known as scho-

lasticism, this effort became the chiefintellectual enterprise of the West in the Middle Ages. The greatest of the scholastic theologians was Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274), a

professor at the University of Paris. In his Summa Theologica, Thomas argued that al- though some truths can be known through reason alone, others can be grasped only

through faith. Ultimately, said Thomas, there is a perfect harmony between reason

and faith, as both come from God.

The most distinctive feature of Eastern theology was its view that all essential

Christian truths had been defined once and for all by seven ecumenical councils that completed their work in the eighth century. After the Second Council of Nicea (787),

Orthodox theologians devoted themselves to the analysis and elaboration of the faith

as articulated by the seven ecumenical councils.

The Reformation In the sixteenth century, a religious revolution known as the Reformation rocked Western Christianity. The Reformation's first phase is known as the Protestant Reformation

On April 29, the feast

day of St. Catherine of

Siena, four citizens of

Siena, Italy, dress in

medieval costumes and carry a casket hold ing

the saint's relics in

a procession.

440 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

Portrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1529). It was Luther who set the Protestant Reformation in motion by posting his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Al l Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

because of the protests of reformers against Roman Catholic doctrines and practices. Its

second phase was the Catholic Reformation, which included direct responses to Protes-

tantism, as well as reforms undertaken independently of it. Ultimately, the Reformation

left Europe religiously divided, destroying forever the ancient and medieval ideal of a

united Christendom.

Background to the Reformation Throughout the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church engaged in constant self-examination and reform. Despite this, voices calling

for change grew louder and more numerous. Some complained of corruption among

the clergy. Christians north of the Alps resented taxes imposed by the Church, espe-

cially since most revenues were spent in Rome. Many were angered by the luxuries

enjoyed by popes. Those who wished to emulate the simple piety of the apostles were discouraged by the example set by church leaders more interested in wealth and power.

Calls for reform were also encouraged by the revival of humanism, a deep faith in

human beings that inspired the Renaissance, a cultural movement that was flourishing

at the time of the Reformation. Humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)

argued that Christians had no need to rely on the Church. Instead, they were capable

of taking charge of their spiritual lives based on their own reading and interpretation of the Bible. By the dawn of the sixteenth century, the desire for religious reform

was intense and widespread. The situation was volatile. In 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther (1483-1546) provided a spark.

The Protestant Reformation Luther had not found peace in monastic life. Despite his efforts to be an ideal monk, he was

plagued by a sense of unworthiness and fear of God's judgment

that followed him from his monastery to the University of

Wittenberg, where he became a professor of theology. It was in Wittenberg that Luther, reading about "the righteousness of God" in Paul's letter to the Romans (1:17), came to believe that

God's righteousness did not consist in his desire to condemn

the unrighteous but in his eagerness to forgive them. God does

not set before sinners the impossible task of earning their salva-

tion, Luther concluded. Instead, he asks only that it be accepted,

as an expression of divine grace, by faith. For Luther, it was faith alone, and not good works or sacraments, that "justified"

sinners before God.

As Luther considered the implications of "justification by

faith," he identified practices of the Church that he found objec-

tionable. Among them was the distribution of indulgences. For

centuries, popes had claimed the authority to apply the surplus merits of the saints to penitent sinners, thereby releasing them

The History of Christianity 441

from punishment otherwise due for unconfessed sin in purgatory. By Luther's time,

the outright sale of indulgences (certificates of remission of punishment in purgatory)

had become an important means of raising funds to finance the papal office.

In 1517 Luther called for public debate on indulgences and other issues by nailing his Ninety-Five Theses, a statement of his theological positions, to the door of the church

in Wittenberg. Supporters quickly rallied behind him, and soon Germany teetered on the edge of religious and social chaos. When ecclesiastical and secular leaders ordered

Luther to recant his views, he refused, setting the Protestant movement in motion.

Luther now began building a Protestant theology based on three principles. First,

salvation is made possible by divine "grace alone." Second, it is "by faith alone" that

sinners must respond to grace. Third, "scripture alone," and not papal pronounce-

ments or church councils, is the only authority on which Christians can completely rely. In order to make the scriptures available to the people, Luther translated the Bible

into German. Because he found no mandate in the Bible for an ecclesiastical hierarchy,

he rejected the authority of bishops and popes, as well as the traditional distinction

between clergy and laity. According to Luther's doctrine of the "priesthood of all

believers," Christians represent themselves before God and have no need of a special

class of priests. Luther's intention had been only to reform the Roman Catholic Church, not to

create a new Christian movement, but his teachings cut too close to the heart of Ca-

tholicism to make reconciliation possible. Moreover, the rulers of many German ter-

ritories saw in Luther a champion who might end the unwelcome influence of the pope

and his ally, the Holy Roman Emperor, in their lands. They encouraged a break with

Rome. Fighting between Catholics and Protestants broke out. By the time it ended in 1555, Lutheranism had triumphed in northern Germany and Scandinavia.

Luther was soon joined by other reformers who expanded the geographical scope

of the Reformation. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin (1509-1564) articulated Protestant doctrines with a power and clarity that put his life in danger in

Catholic France. Welcomed by the Swiss city of Geneva, Calvin accepted the essential

features of Luther's thought but gave Protestant theology his own stamp by emphasiz- ing God's sovereignty over the universe and teaching that every honest occupation is

a "calling" given by God. Calvinism quickly took root in Switzerland in the Swiss

Reformed churches, in the Dutch Netherlands as the Dutch Reformed Church, and

in England and Scotland as Presbyterianism.

In Zurich, the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) denounced all beliefs and practices not described in the Bible. Because the Bible makes no mention of

images of Christ and the saints, candles, and incense, he removed these from Zurich's

churches. A space without symbolic and decorative distractions, he reasoned, would be

more likely to bring worshippers into direct communion with God. In teaching that

the bread and wine used in the eucharist were mere symbols, Zwingli went far beyond

Luther and Calvin, who joined him in rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation but retained the belief that Christ was in the sacrament.

442 Chapter 12 CHRISTIANITY

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Alongside the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Zwinglian move-

ments emerged smaller, more radical groups that make up what

some scholars call the Radical Reformation. Anabaptists ("rebap-

tizers") insisted that Christians baptized as infants must be "born

again" and baptized again as mature believers. Refusing to recog-

nize the authority of civil governments and their laws, Anabap- tists refused to take oaths and were committed to nonviolence.

Other radical groups placed such great importance on the inner

presence of the Holy Spirit that they saw little value in the Bible

or traditional worship. Still others rejected doctrines as basic as

the Trinity and the divinity of Christ.

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The Reformation was brought to England by King Henry VIII, depicted here in a famous portrait by the sixteenth-century painter Hans Holbein the Younger.

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In England, the Reformation began when the pope refused the request of King Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) for an annulment

of his marriage. Taking matters into his own hands, Henry pre-

vailed upon Parliament to pass an Act of Supremacy (1534) that

made the king of England, not the pope, the head of the Church

in England. This break marked the beginning of the Church

of England and of an Anglican tradition that was later exported to England's colonies. In America, the Anglican Church, as it is sometimes called, came to be known as the

Episcopal Church.

Although Henry had wanted to effect only political change, the Church of

England soon felt the impact of Protestant thought on the Continent. In the end, a

kind of compromise was reached that left the Church of England very "Catholic" in

its theology and patterns of worship but clearly influenced by elements of Calvinist and Lutheran theology. Although this arrangement satisfied most Anglicans, there

were important groups of dissenters. Calvinist Puritans wanted to "purify" the Church

of England of every vestige of Catholicism. Presbyterians, also inspired by Calvinism,

wanted to replace the episcopal hierarchy with assemblies of presbyters ("elders").

Quakers rejected all formal worship and all forms of church governance.

The Catholic Reformation The primary response of the Roman Catholic Church to Protestantism was the Council of Trent (1545-1563), which reaffirmed Catholic

teachings but took great care to clarify them. Against Protestant belief in the authority

of scripture alone, the council held that tradition is equally authoritative. Against the

Protestant reduction of the sacraments to baptism and the eucharist, it reaffirmed the seven sacraments. In response to the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith, the council insisted that faith must be expressed by good works and cited the New Testament

in support of this view (e.g., Romans 2:6; 2 Corinthians 5: 10). The council also upheld

transubstantiation, confession, priestly celibacy, monasticism, purgatory, and the in-

tercession of saints in heaven on behalf of the living. Although it gave no ground to

Protestantism on doctrinal issues, the Council of Trent did take decisive action to end corruption in the Church, to improve the quality of education received by priests, and