Judaism

• 1. A Covenant And A People

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  Judaism begins with a single, solitary God, portrayed unlike any other deity of the ancient Near East. This God has no peer and no associate. His principal relationships are not with other gods, but with the world and with the people he is said to have created. Religious Jews understand their faith as the means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which they believe was established between God and the Jewish people. That covenant is the thread that runs through everything that follows.

  The word itself carries a hidden history. The term Judaism descends from the Latin Iudaismus, by way of the Ancient Greek Ioudaismos, and its ultimate root is the biblical name Yehudah, Judah, the son of Jacob. When Ioudaismos first appeared in the Koine Greek book of 2 Maccabees in the 2nd century BCE, it did not yet mean a religion. Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen argues it meant something closer to Judaeanness, the aggregate of all those characteristics that makes Judaeans Judaean.

  Here is the puzzle this documentary will follow. How does a faith founded on one God hold together when it has no single authority to define belief, no fixed creed binding on every Jew, and a tradition more than 3,000 years old that predates Western culture itself? The answers lie in its texts, its arguments, its calendar, and the long question of who counts as a Jew. In 2025, the world Jewish population was estimated at 14.8 million, with observance ranging from strict to non-existent.

• 2. The Library Of Revelation

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  Torah is a word with at least seventy faces. The tradition explicitly positions it as encompassing at least seventy, and potentially infinite, facets and interpretations. The Hebrew word can mean teaching, law, or instruction, and it stretches to cover any Jewish text that expands on the original Five Books of Moses. At the center sit three divisions: the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim, which together form the Hebrew Bible. In Modern Hebrew it is often called the Tanakh, an acronym of those divisions, or the Miqra.

  The Nevi'im gather historical narratives and prophetic writings about the Israelites' settlements in Canaan. The Ketuvim collect a more varied set, including the book of Psalms, the book of Proverbs, and the book of Esther, with poetic and philosophical writings that depart from the literalist style elsewhere. These books together are called the Written Torah. They stand opposite a second body of teaching that Judaism treats as equally revealed.

  Rabbinic tradition holds that the Oral Torah was first an unwritten tradition, the law given to Moses at Sinai. As persecution grew and the details risked being forgotten, Judah ha-Nasi compiled them into the Mishnah, redacted around 200 CE. The Mishnah consists of 63 tractates that codify halakha. According to Abraham ben David, Judah haNasi compiled it after the destruction of Jerusalem, in anno mundi 3949, corresponding to 189 CE.

  Gemara, the rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah, grew over the next three centuries in two centers of scholarship: Palestine and Babylonia. Two bodies of analysis produced two compilations, the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. The older, the Jerusalem Talmud, was compiled sometime during the 4th century in Palestine. From these texts flows halakha, the rabbinic way of life, built on a combined reading of Torah and oral tradition.

• 3. Conquest, Exile, And Prayer

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  Around 720 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel, carrying many captives from the capital Samaria to Media and the Khabur River valley. According to the Hebrew Bible, a united kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon had once stood, with Jerusalem as its capital. After Solomon, it split into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah.

  Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Judah in 586 to 587 BCE. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple and forced the Israelites into captivity, in what is regarded as the first Jewish diaspora. Seventy years later, after the Persian Achaemenid Empire brought down Babylon, many returned home in an event known as the return to Zion. The Second Temple was built, religious practice resumed, and the Great Assembly led by Ezra became the highest religious authority, sealing the canon of the Hebrew Bible.

  During the First Jewish-Roman War, from 66 to 73 CE, the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. Later, the emperor Hadrian built a pagan idol on the Temple Mount and prohibited circumcision, provoking the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132 to 136 CE. Afterward, the Romans banned Torah study and Jewish holidays and removed virtually all Jews from Judea. In 200 CE, Jews were granted Roman citizenship and Judaism was recognized as a religio licita, a legitimate religion.

  With the Temple gone, worship transformed. Prayer took the place of sacrifice, and worship moved into the Jewish communities of the diaspora. The authority of rabbis, acting as teachers and leaders of individual communities, was established. In the fourth century, the ruling class of the Himyarite Kingdom in pre-Islamic South Arabia converted to Judaism, a situation that lasted until an Aksumite invasion, instigated by the massacre of Najran, brought Christian domination in the early sixth century.

• 4. The Argument As Worship

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  A single verse has several meanings, but no two verses hold the same meaning. The Talmud preserves this principle in tractate Sanhedrin 34a, citing the school of R. Ishmael: just as a hammer striking rock produces many sparks, so a single verse yields several meanings. For the sages, study of Torah was not merely a means to learn God's revelation. It was an end in itself, a sacred act of central importance.

  David Stern identifies two axioms beneath all rabbinic interpretation. The first is the belief in the omni-significance of Scripture, the meaningfulness of every word, letter, and even scribal flourish. The second is the claim of the essential unity of Scripture as the expression of a single divine will. From these two principles springs a great variety of readings, all of them, by tradition, revealed to Moses at Sinai in oral form.

  Hillel called attention to seven hermeneutical principles for interpreting laws. R. Ishmael expanded the list to thirteen, and Eliezer b. Jose ha-Gelili listed thirty-two, largely for the narrative elements of Torah. Malbim later collected all the scattered rules in Ayyelet ha-Shachar, the introduction to his commentary on the Sifra. R. Ishmael's thirteen principles are perhaps the best known, and they form one of Judaism's earliest contributions to logic and jurisprudence.

  The Talmud, in tractate Shabbat 127a, lists the things whose dividends a person enjoys in this world while the principal remains for the world to come: honoring parents, loving deeds of kindness, and making peace between people. Then it adds that the study of the Torah is equal to them all. Today, R. Ishmael's thirteen principles are read by observant Jews daily, printed into the prayer book.

• 5. Who Counts As A Jew

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  In 2008, Israel's highest religious court invalidated the conversion of 40,000 Jews, mostly from Russian immigrant families, even though an Orthodox rabbi had approved them. The episode exposed a question Judaism has never fully settled. According to Rabbinic Judaism, a Jew is anyone born of a Jewish mother or converted in accordance with halakha. Reconstructionist Judaism and much of Progressive Judaism accept a child as Jewish if one parent is Jewish and the child is raised with a Jewish identity.

  Daniel Boyarin argues that the distinction between religion and ethnicity is foreign to Judaism itself. He traces that split to a dualism of spirit and flesh with origins in Platonic philosophy. In his view, Judaism does not fit neatly into Western categories of religion, ethnicity, or culture. He writes that Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension.

  Rabbinical Judaism holds that a Jew, by birth or conversion, is a Jew forever. A Jew who claims to be an atheist or converts to another religion is still considered Jewish. Karaite Judaism takes a different path, holding that Jewish identity passes by patrilineal descent, on the grounds that all descent in the Torah followed the male line. Conversion has traditionally been discouraged since the time of the Talmud, and converts are called ben Abraham or bat Abraham, son or daughter of Abraham.

  In the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion requested opinions on mihu Yehudi, who is a Jew, from religious authorities and intellectuals worldwide to settle citizenship questions. The matter is still not settled and occasionally resurfaces in Israeli politics. Historical definitions trace back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE.

• 6. Movements And Margins

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  Maimonides, in the 12th century, developed his 13 principles of faith, the most widely accepted formulation of Judaism's tenets. According to Maimonides, any Jew who rejects even one would be an apostate and a heretic. Yet Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo criticized the list in his own time, and his principles were largely ignored for centuries. Only after poetic restatements such as Ani Ma'amin and Yigdal entered the liturgy did they win near-universal acceptance. Within Reform Judaism, only the first five principles are endorsed.

  Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and Halakha are explicitly divine in origin, eternal, and unalterable, and that they should be strictly followed. It often divides into Haredi Judaism, less accommodating to modernity, and Modern Orthodox Judaism. Subsets of Haredi include Hasidic Judaism, rooted in the Kabbalah and distinguished by reliance on a Rebbe, and their traditionalist opponents the Misnagdim. Conservative Judaism teaches that halakha is not static but has always developed, and rejects the Orthodox position that the Torah was dictated by God to Moses.

  Reform Judaism, called Liberal or Progressive in many countries, defines the faith in universalist terms and rejects most ritual law while observing moral law. Among its pioneers in the 1820s was the Sephardic congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina. Mordecai Kaplan, originator of Reconstructionist Judaism, abandoned the idea of religion in favor of identifying Judaism as a civilization. Humanistic Judaism is a small non-theistic movement that treats Jewish culture and history as the sources of identity.

  Beyond the rabbinic mainstream lie older and stranger branches. The Karaites accept only the Hebrew Bible and its simple meaning, the Peshat, rejecting non-biblical writings as authoritative. The Samaritans, a very small community around Mount Gerizim and in Holon, regard themselves as descendants of the Iron Age kingdom of Israel. Haymanot, the Judaism of Ethiopian Jews, uses sacred scriptures called the Orit written in Ge'ez, not Hebrew, and observes holidays such as Sigd that others do not. The Subbotniks, Jews of Russian origin, counted among their descendants Alexander Zaid and the mother of Ariel Sharon.

• 7. The Sanctity Of Ordinary Days

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  At sundown on Friday, the woman of the house welcomes Shabbat by lighting two or more candles and reciting a blessing. The weekly day of rest runs until nightfall on Saturday and commemorates God's day of rest after six days of creation. During Shabbat, Jews are forbidden from activity falling under 39 categories of melakhah, translated as work. These include lighting a fire, writing, and carrying in the public domain. The prohibition on fire has been extended in the modern era to driving a car.

  Max Kadushin, a Conservative rabbi and scholar, characterized normative Judaism as normal mysticism. He meant that it involves everyday personal experiences of God through modes common to all Jews. One's daily sustenance, even the day itself, is felt as a manifestation of God's loving-kindness, calling for the Berakhot, the short blessings. A blessing is said even at evil tidings. Holiness, in this view, is the imitation of God, concerned with daily conduct, with being gracious and merciful.

  The calendar gathers history into ritual. Passover begins on the evening of the 14th of Nisan and commemorates the Exodus from Egypt, the only holiday centered on a home service, the Seder. Shavuot celebrates the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai, marked by all-night study and dairy foods such as cheesecake. Sukkot recalls forty years of wandering through temporary booths called sukkot. The High Holidays turn on judgment and forgiveness, from Rosh Hashanah through the fast of Yom Kippur, the holiest day, which ends with the long blast of the shofar at Ne'ilah.

  Clothing marks the practice as much as the calendar. The kippah is a brimless skullcap worn while praying or studying. Tzitzit are knotted fringes on the four corners of the tallit, the prayer shawl. Tefillin, known in English as phylacteries from a Greek word meaning safeguard, are two leather boxes of biblical verses bound to the forehead and arm. Jewish males are buried in a tallit, part of the tachrichim, the burial garments. The white kittel worn at the Passover Seder by some heads of household is the same garment a groom may wear under the wedding canopy.