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The Book of Jewish Belief
The sum total of what students should know about Jewish faith and values--presented here by one of the great theologians of our time.
1 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1984
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42 people want to read
About the author
Louis Jacobs
60 books14 followersLouis Jacobs was the founder of Masorti Judaism (also known as Conservative Judaism) in the United Kingdom, and a leading writer and theologian. He was also the focus of what has become known as "The Jacobs Affair" that took place in the British Jewish community in the early 1960s.
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December 28, 2025
AN EXCELLENT AND COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF JEWISH BELIEFS
Louis Jacobs (1920-2006) was a Conservative Rabbi (of the New London Synagogue) in the United Kingdom; he was also a founder of the ‘Masorti’ community in the UK. (His willingness to accept some documentary criticism of the Jewish Bible made him controversial in some circles.)
He begins this 1984 book, “the two distinctive ideas in Judaism are the special role of the Jewish people and the Torah as the will of God… The best way of defining Judaism is to say that it is a religion that centers around three tremendous ideas---God, Torah, and Israel. Within these three we can find the total set of teachings that is Judaism.” (Pg. 1)
He continues, “There are religions that have no belief in God… but Judaism is not one of them. From its beginnings Judaism has had as its central theme the belief that there is a Supreme Being, the Creator of all things, who loves His creatures and with whom His creatures can communicate in prayer and worship. It is true that in modern times here and there, Jews are to be found who say they subscribe to a secular Judaism, that is, a Judaism without God. They mean presumably by this a Jewish way of life based on Jewish ethics and on Jewish practices, but with no religious dimension. All we can say is that if by Judaism we mean the way of life as it has hitherto been understood, it cannot by definition be ‘secular.’ All the great classics of Judaism are unintelligible without the strongest belief in God, even though there have been differing views about what God is.” (Pg. 1)
He explains, “Jews fall into two major groupings ,the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim… the Ashkenazim are the German Jews (including… French, English, East European, American and other ‘Western’ Jews), the Sephardim are the Spanish Jews (including Portuguese, Italian, Turkish, Greek, Moroccan, Arabian and other ‘Eastern’ Jews)… In the State of Israel today there are two Chief Rabbis---one for the Ashkenazim, the other for the Sephardim.” (Pg. 8)
He notes, “The attitude of Judaism has been described as ‘ethical monotheism.’ Monotheism is the belief in the One God… For monotheism to be Jewish, the word ‘ethical’ has to be added. Judaism would not see much significance in the belief in God as the Supreme Being unless it made demands on us to lead a good life… Judaism … insists that there can be no religion without ethics and no ethics without religion; or, better, that unless ethics and religion are wedded together, neither constitutes the Jewish way, which is ethical monotheism.” (Pg. 18)
He states, “Torah and Mitzvoh---this the usual combination of Jewish observance. ‘Torah’ referring to the teaching as a whole and to its study; ‘mitzvoh’ (‘command’) to the particular observances. The crucial idea behind the idea of mitzvot is that the conduct of a Jew is governed by commands of God… In general, these commands are found in the Pentateuch, the Torah.” (Pg, 29)
He continues, “The talmudic rabbis divide the mitzvot into two categories, positive mitzvot and negative mitzvot. The positive mitzvot … are the commands to DO something such as to give charity… The negative mitzvot (‘do not do’) are the commands to refrain from doing something, such as not to steal… Another division of mitzvot includes those for which the reason is obvious (such as to be honest, not to kill…) and those for which the reason is far from evident (like the dietary laws, animal sacrifices…)… the mitzvot whose reasons are clear are called … ‘judgments,’ while those whose reasons are not clear are called … ‘statutes.’” (Pg. 29-31)
He outlines, “the significance Judaism attaches to study … is provided in the terms used for the Jewish classics, all of them … with roots meaning ‘to teach.’ … Torah… is the first example, to which we can add: Mishnah; Talmud; Gemara (in Aramaic) and Midrash… The Mishnah is the work in Hebrew… that contains a digest of all Jewish laws and practices [as of 200 CE]; the Palestinian Talmud or Gemara is the summary of all the discussions on the Mishnah by later teachers and edited in Palestine (the language is Western Aramaic); the Babylonian Talmud or Gemara is the similar work edited in Babylon (the language is Eastern Aramaic).” (Pg. 56)
He continues, “The editing of the Mishnah in the year 200 is the great dividing line---the teachers that lived before that time and whose teachings are recorded in the Mishnah, are known as the ‘Tannaim’ (‘teachers’ or ‘scholars’)… The post-midrashic teachers both in Palestine and Babylon, who commented on the Mishnah… are known as the Amoraim (‘Interpreters’).” (Pg. 56-57)
He explains, “The teachings of the Tannaim are to be found in the Mishnah and in the tannaitic Misrash… There were two methods of presenting the teachings of the Tannaim: (1) the Midrashic, in which rules of behavior are drawn out of the biblical text… (2) the Mishnaic, in which the rules are formulated without reference to the text of Scripture…. Rabbi Judah the Prince arranged the tannaitic and pretannaitic materials into a concise, clearly arranged work covering the whole range of Jewish life… This great compilation is called the Mishnah…The Mishnah is arranged in six great sections, called ‘Orders’: … ‘Seeds,’ dealing with agricultural laws… ‘Appointed Times,’ dealing with the Sabbath and festivals... 'Women’ dealing with marriage laws… ‘Damages,’ dealing with … buying and selling, courts, and criminal law… ‘Sacred Things’ dealing with the sacrificial system… ‘Purities’ dealing with ritual impurity in Temple times.” (Pg. 59-60)
He reports on ‘The Legend of the Khazar’: “It is an historical fact that there once was a Khazar Empire and that the King of the Khazars, in the 8th century, together with his people, really did embrace Judaism. The Khazar people were of Turkish stock. Powerful warriors, they extended their empire from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga. There is no record of the Khazar king engaging in discussions with a philosopher, a Christian, and a rabbi, before he decided to embrace Judaism… The real reason for the conversion is obscure. Eventually some of the converted Khazars did marry into the Jewish people, so that contemporary Jews may have some Khazar blood in their veins.” (Pg. 81)
He reports, “While mystical ideas go back to ancient times, it was in the 12th century that there arose a system of mystical speculation… This is the Kabbalah… The notion here is that only a few particularly pious and wise people are worthy of receiving this secret knowledge… eventually a huge kabbalistic literature was produced…” (Pg. 86-87) “The ‘Zohar’ [‘Illumination’] has been called ‘the Bible of the Kabbalists.’… The verses of Scripture are interpreted in the Zohar as referring to the mysteries about the ‘upper world’… the Zohar saw the light of day just a little before the year 1300 in Spain… the philosophers tended to interpret the Torah allegorically; they accepted the patriarchs as real, historical people, but representing certain philosophical ideas. The Zohar, too, believes that the Torah has a deeper or secret meaning, but that this has to do with the nature of God.” (Pg. 86-88)
He goes on, “The man who created a kabbalistic system out of the teachings of the Zohar and of the earlier kabbalists was Rabbi Moses Cordovero (1522-1570)… At the age of 27, Cordovero compiled his gigantic work … in which he describes in the fullest detail the doctrines of the Kabbalah.” (Pg. 89) He explains, “The central theme in every version of the Kabbalah is that of emanation [which] means that God allows something of Himself to be sent out, to flow, from himself, and eventually through this mysterious process the finite world is produced.” (Pg. 91)
He summarizes, “It might be asked, how is all this kabbalistic speculation relevant to us today?… the most helpful approach is to see the Kabbalah as a richly symbolic way of expressing profound ideas about the relationship between God and man… Some of the greatest teachers of Judaism were indifferent to the Kabbalah and some were hostile to it… The Kabbalah was opposed by some teachers because it seemed to border on ‘dualism,’ the belief in two gods, one good and the other evil… It is probably correct to say that the majority of Orthodox Jews today do believe in the Kabbalah as revealed truth. Yet this does not mean that they will necessarily study the Kabbalah… In our day… there is a renewed in the Kabbalah … much of it being what we might term ‘pop’ Kabbalah, on a par with popularizations of yoga, transcendental meditation, Zen, and astrology.” (Pg. 93-95)
He recounts, “The Reform movement, which arose … at the beginning of the 19th century, was … concerned with the problem of the Jew facing the challenge of Western society… The opponents of Reform came to be called Orthodox. Originally this was a term of reproach by the Reformers… but the name was eventually adopted with a kind of pride by those against whom the taunt was directed.” (Pg. 144-145)
He states, “One of the most important rules about marriage, as Judaism sees it, if not to marry out of the faith… How can there be a proper Jewish home, close to the synagogue and its ideals, with a real Jewish atmosphere, if husband or wife is not Jewish?… that is why, painful though it may be, Judaism does ask its young people to marry a member of their own faith.” (Pg. 212)
He points out, “The legend that the Lost Ten Tribes, driven in exile in 722 B.C.E. are in the lost kingdom waiting for the coming of the Messiah, when they will be reunited with the rest of Jewry, has persisted for centuries.” (Pg. 225)
He explains, “In modern times there have been … two very different interpretations of the messianic idea… A number of Zionists… came to hold that Zionism was a kind of secular version of Messianism and that the return of the Jewish people to Palestine was itself the fulfillment of the messianic hope. This is one of the reasons why many Orthodox rabbis were opposed to Zionism… most Reform Jews believe in the dawning of a messianic age rather than in the coming of a human messiah.” (Pg. 224-226) He notes that “Judaism firmly rejected Jesus because he did not fulfill Jewish expectations of the Messiah… ‘since the world is still as bad as ever it was.’” (Pg. 224-227)
In the last chapter, he asks, “If Judaism believes in life after death why is there almost no reference to it in the Bible?… In any case, the belief in a Hereafter did become prominent in postbiblical Judaism and has remained so every since, though not all Jews believe in the resurrection of the dead.” (Pg. 231)
This is a VERY informative and ‘balanced’ book, that will be of great interest to anyone studying Judaism.
Louis Jacobs (1920-2006) was a Conservative Rabbi (of the New London Synagogue) in the United Kingdom; he was also a founder of the ‘Masorti’ community in the UK. (His willingness to accept some documentary criticism of the Jewish Bible made him controversial in some circles.)
He begins this 1984 book, “the two distinctive ideas in Judaism are the special role of the Jewish people and the Torah as the will of God… The best way of defining Judaism is to say that it is a religion that centers around three tremendous ideas---God, Torah, and Israel. Within these three we can find the total set of teachings that is Judaism.” (Pg. 1)
He continues, “There are religions that have no belief in God… but Judaism is not one of them. From its beginnings Judaism has had as its central theme the belief that there is a Supreme Being, the Creator of all things, who loves His creatures and with whom His creatures can communicate in prayer and worship. It is true that in modern times here and there, Jews are to be found who say they subscribe to a secular Judaism, that is, a Judaism without God. They mean presumably by this a Jewish way of life based on Jewish ethics and on Jewish practices, but with no religious dimension. All we can say is that if by Judaism we mean the way of life as it has hitherto been understood, it cannot by definition be ‘secular.’ All the great classics of Judaism are unintelligible without the strongest belief in God, even though there have been differing views about what God is.” (Pg. 1)
He explains, “Jews fall into two major groupings ,the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim… the Ashkenazim are the German Jews (including… French, English, East European, American and other ‘Western’ Jews), the Sephardim are the Spanish Jews (including Portuguese, Italian, Turkish, Greek, Moroccan, Arabian and other ‘Eastern’ Jews)… In the State of Israel today there are two Chief Rabbis---one for the Ashkenazim, the other for the Sephardim.” (Pg. 8)
He notes, “The attitude of Judaism has been described as ‘ethical monotheism.’ Monotheism is the belief in the One God… For monotheism to be Jewish, the word ‘ethical’ has to be added. Judaism would not see much significance in the belief in God as the Supreme Being unless it made demands on us to lead a good life… Judaism … insists that there can be no religion without ethics and no ethics without religion; or, better, that unless ethics and religion are wedded together, neither constitutes the Jewish way, which is ethical monotheism.” (Pg. 18)
He states, “Torah and Mitzvoh---this the usual combination of Jewish observance. ‘Torah’ referring to the teaching as a whole and to its study; ‘mitzvoh’ (‘command’) to the particular observances. The crucial idea behind the idea of mitzvot is that the conduct of a Jew is governed by commands of God… In general, these commands are found in the Pentateuch, the Torah.” (Pg, 29)
He continues, “The talmudic rabbis divide the mitzvot into two categories, positive mitzvot and negative mitzvot. The positive mitzvot … are the commands to DO something such as to give charity… The negative mitzvot (‘do not do’) are the commands to refrain from doing something, such as not to steal… Another division of mitzvot includes those for which the reason is obvious (such as to be honest, not to kill…) and those for which the reason is far from evident (like the dietary laws, animal sacrifices…)… the mitzvot whose reasons are clear are called … ‘judgments,’ while those whose reasons are not clear are called … ‘statutes.’” (Pg. 29-31)
He outlines, “the significance Judaism attaches to study … is provided in the terms used for the Jewish classics, all of them … with roots meaning ‘to teach.’ … Torah… is the first example, to which we can add: Mishnah; Talmud; Gemara (in Aramaic) and Midrash… The Mishnah is the work in Hebrew… that contains a digest of all Jewish laws and practices [as of 200 CE]; the Palestinian Talmud or Gemara is the summary of all the discussions on the Mishnah by later teachers and edited in Palestine (the language is Western Aramaic); the Babylonian Talmud or Gemara is the similar work edited in Babylon (the language is Eastern Aramaic).” (Pg. 56)
He continues, “The editing of the Mishnah in the year 200 is the great dividing line---the teachers that lived before that time and whose teachings are recorded in the Mishnah, are known as the ‘Tannaim’ (‘teachers’ or ‘scholars’)… The post-midrashic teachers both in Palestine and Babylon, who commented on the Mishnah… are known as the Amoraim (‘Interpreters’).” (Pg. 56-57)
He explains, “The teachings of the Tannaim are to be found in the Mishnah and in the tannaitic Misrash… There were two methods of presenting the teachings of the Tannaim: (1) the Midrashic, in which rules of behavior are drawn out of the biblical text… (2) the Mishnaic, in which the rules are formulated without reference to the text of Scripture…. Rabbi Judah the Prince arranged the tannaitic and pretannaitic materials into a concise, clearly arranged work covering the whole range of Jewish life… This great compilation is called the Mishnah…The Mishnah is arranged in six great sections, called ‘Orders’: … ‘Seeds,’ dealing with agricultural laws… ‘Appointed Times,’ dealing with the Sabbath and festivals... 'Women’ dealing with marriage laws… ‘Damages,’ dealing with … buying and selling, courts, and criminal law… ‘Sacred Things’ dealing with the sacrificial system… ‘Purities’ dealing with ritual impurity in Temple times.” (Pg. 59-60)
He reports on ‘The Legend of the Khazar’: “It is an historical fact that there once was a Khazar Empire and that the King of the Khazars, in the 8th century, together with his people, really did embrace Judaism. The Khazar people were of Turkish stock. Powerful warriors, they extended their empire from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga. There is no record of the Khazar king engaging in discussions with a philosopher, a Christian, and a rabbi, before he decided to embrace Judaism… The real reason for the conversion is obscure. Eventually some of the converted Khazars did marry into the Jewish people, so that contemporary Jews may have some Khazar blood in their veins.” (Pg. 81)
He reports, “While mystical ideas go back to ancient times, it was in the 12th century that there arose a system of mystical speculation… This is the Kabbalah… The notion here is that only a few particularly pious and wise people are worthy of receiving this secret knowledge… eventually a huge kabbalistic literature was produced…” (Pg. 86-87) “The ‘Zohar’ [‘Illumination’] has been called ‘the Bible of the Kabbalists.’… The verses of Scripture are interpreted in the Zohar as referring to the mysteries about the ‘upper world’… the Zohar saw the light of day just a little before the year 1300 in Spain… the philosophers tended to interpret the Torah allegorically; they accepted the patriarchs as real, historical people, but representing certain philosophical ideas. The Zohar, too, believes that the Torah has a deeper or secret meaning, but that this has to do with the nature of God.” (Pg. 86-88)
He goes on, “The man who created a kabbalistic system out of the teachings of the Zohar and of the earlier kabbalists was Rabbi Moses Cordovero (1522-1570)… At the age of 27, Cordovero compiled his gigantic work … in which he describes in the fullest detail the doctrines of the Kabbalah.” (Pg. 89) He explains, “The central theme in every version of the Kabbalah is that of emanation [which] means that God allows something of Himself to be sent out, to flow, from himself, and eventually through this mysterious process the finite world is produced.” (Pg. 91)
He summarizes, “It might be asked, how is all this kabbalistic speculation relevant to us today?… the most helpful approach is to see the Kabbalah as a richly symbolic way of expressing profound ideas about the relationship between God and man… Some of the greatest teachers of Judaism were indifferent to the Kabbalah and some were hostile to it… The Kabbalah was opposed by some teachers because it seemed to border on ‘dualism,’ the belief in two gods, one good and the other evil… It is probably correct to say that the majority of Orthodox Jews today do believe in the Kabbalah as revealed truth. Yet this does not mean that they will necessarily study the Kabbalah… In our day… there is a renewed in the Kabbalah … much of it being what we might term ‘pop’ Kabbalah, on a par with popularizations of yoga, transcendental meditation, Zen, and astrology.” (Pg. 93-95)
He recounts, “The Reform movement, which arose … at the beginning of the 19th century, was … concerned with the problem of the Jew facing the challenge of Western society… The opponents of Reform came to be called Orthodox. Originally this was a term of reproach by the Reformers… but the name was eventually adopted with a kind of pride by those against whom the taunt was directed.” (Pg. 144-145)
He states, “One of the most important rules about marriage, as Judaism sees it, if not to marry out of the faith… How can there be a proper Jewish home, close to the synagogue and its ideals, with a real Jewish atmosphere, if husband or wife is not Jewish?… that is why, painful though it may be, Judaism does ask its young people to marry a member of their own faith.” (Pg. 212)
He points out, “The legend that the Lost Ten Tribes, driven in exile in 722 B.C.E. are in the lost kingdom waiting for the coming of the Messiah, when they will be reunited with the rest of Jewry, has persisted for centuries.” (Pg. 225)
He explains, “In modern times there have been … two very different interpretations of the messianic idea… A number of Zionists… came to hold that Zionism was a kind of secular version of Messianism and that the return of the Jewish people to Palestine was itself the fulfillment of the messianic hope. This is one of the reasons why many Orthodox rabbis were opposed to Zionism… most Reform Jews believe in the dawning of a messianic age rather than in the coming of a human messiah.” (Pg. 224-226) He notes that “Judaism firmly rejected Jesus because he did not fulfill Jewish expectations of the Messiah… ‘since the world is still as bad as ever it was.’” (Pg. 224-227)
In the last chapter, he asks, “If Judaism believes in life after death why is there almost no reference to it in the Bible?… In any case, the belief in a Hereafter did become prominent in postbiblical Judaism and has remained so every since, though not all Jews believe in the resurrection of the dead.” (Pg. 231)
This is a VERY informative and ‘balanced’ book, that will be of great interest to anyone studying Judaism.
February 24, 2023
I am a Christian who admires Jews, respects Judaism, and loves Israel. Nevertheless, I have a few criticisms of Louis Jacobs’ book “The Book of Jewish Belief.”
Is it really true that most Jews revere the Torah unconditionally? “The Book of Jewish Belief” suggests that they do. The Torah consists of the first five books of the Jewish Bible, and the Christian Old Testament. These are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Torah was the first part of the Jewish Bible that was canonized. It tells the story of how the Israelite nation and religion were formed, and of how God liberated the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.
The Torah commands kindness for animals and aliens. It requires all Israelite slaves to be freed every fifty years. There is a lot of good stuff in the Torah.
Nevertheless, Numbers 15:22-36 commands capital punishment for anyone who works on the Sabbath, i.e., Saturday. In Numbers 15:22-36 a man is found gathering sticks on Saturday. The people ask Moses what they should do to the man. Moses asks God. God commands that he be stoned to death. He is. The God I believe in and worship would not issue a command like that.
Now a day of rest is a good idea. It was particularly a benefit for the Israelite peasants, who were subsistence farmers. Subsistence farmers exerted themselves as much as athletes in training. Athletes know that they must rest at least one day of the week, so that their bodies can rest, and rebuild.
But capital punishment strikes this Judeophile as excessive. Besides, no country could operate if no one worked on the Sabbath. Do you think Israeli Jews would be safe if only Palestinian policemen protected them on Saturday from criminals and terrorists? I don’t.
Then Deuteronomy 23:3 says, “No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord, none of their descendents, even in the tenth generation shall ever be admitted into the congregation of the Lord.”
Hold that thought for a moment.
The Book of Ruth claims that Ruth, who was a Moabite woman, was a great grandmother of David, who was the greatest Israelite king. Deuteronomy 23:3 would have us believe that King David was not an authentic Israelite.
That is only one of the famous contradictions in the Bible, and a reason that the Bible should be read with reverence, but critically. I believe that the Bible was inspired by God, but not dictated by Him. The Jewish Bible, AKA, the Christian Old Testament, and the Apocrypha were written by Jews. All or most of the New Testament was written by people we would recognize today as Messianic Jews.
The Apocrypha consists of the books in a Greek translation of the Jewish Bible that were not canonized by Judaism. It explains nearly everything Jews believe about the afterlife. It should have been mentioned in Chapter 27, “The Hereafter.”
Anyone who has known and liked as many Jews as I have knows that they love to disagree with each other. I see the Bible – the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament – as a Jewish anthology of religious writing. Contradictions in the Bible intrigue me; they do not disturb my faith.
I think Jews should supplement their study of the Torah with the study of the rest of the Jewish Bible, the Apocrypha, and parts of the Talmud. The Talmud is vastly larger than the Jewish Bible, and consists of commentary on the Jewish Bible, Jewish wisdom, and debates between Jewish thinkers. Because I am a Christian, I would like to recommend the New Testament too. The New Testament portrays Jesus and his followers as Jews in a Jewish setting. Christianity began as a Jewish sect. The first Bishop of Jerusalem was Saint James, who was a brother of Jesus. He obeyed Torah and worshiped at the Temple of Jerusalem every day until he was martyred.
Chapter 18, “The State of Israel,” takes justifiable pride that “the conduct of the soldiers in the wars with the Arab armies has been exemplary, with no looting and no rape, and with the sincere desire to avoid so far as humanly possible the loss of civilian life.”
There is no apology to the Palestinians. The Charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel. Palestine is the only nation I know of that demands unconditional surrender from the country that has defeated it time and time again.
This is what the Koran says about the Jewish occupation of Eretz Yisrael:
“Surah V:20 And (remember) when Moses said unto his people: O my people! Remember Allah’s favoour unto you, how he placed among you Prophets, and He made you kings, and gave you that (which) He gave not to any (other) creatures. O my people! Go into the holy land which Allah hath ordained for you. Turn not in flight, for surely ye turn back as losers.
“Surah XVII:104 And we said unto the Children of Israel after him: Dwell in the land, but when the promise of the Hereafter cometh to pass, we shall bring you as a crowd gathered out of various nations.”
I wish Chapter 15, “The Dietary Laws,” was more extensive. I do not keep a kosher kitchen, but I like to buy food that is kosher certified. Eating kosher food is a way a non Jew can experience Judaism.
There is no mention of the various organizations that certify foods as Kosher. Each organization has a symbol it puts on food it has certified. The largest kosher certifying organization is the Orthodox Union that is located in New York City. Its symbol is a U with a circle around it. When you look for that symbol you will find it on many different food items. It is even on most dish and clothes detergents. Judaism is a very hygienic religion. Much of what the Torah condemns as unclean consists of actions and foods that spread contagious diseases.
“The Book of Jewish Belief” should have contained a list of the most prominent certifying organizations, and their symbols.
My criticisms of “The Book of Jewish Belief” are minor. This book confirms and reinforces the high opinion I have always had of Jews, their religion, and their home in Israel.
Is it really true that most Jews revere the Torah unconditionally? “The Book of Jewish Belief” suggests that they do. The Torah consists of the first five books of the Jewish Bible, and the Christian Old Testament. These are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Torah was the first part of the Jewish Bible that was canonized. It tells the story of how the Israelite nation and religion were formed, and of how God liberated the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.
The Torah commands kindness for animals and aliens. It requires all Israelite slaves to be freed every fifty years. There is a lot of good stuff in the Torah.
Nevertheless, Numbers 15:22-36 commands capital punishment for anyone who works on the Sabbath, i.e., Saturday. In Numbers 15:22-36 a man is found gathering sticks on Saturday. The people ask Moses what they should do to the man. Moses asks God. God commands that he be stoned to death. He is. The God I believe in and worship would not issue a command like that.
Now a day of rest is a good idea. It was particularly a benefit for the Israelite peasants, who were subsistence farmers. Subsistence farmers exerted themselves as much as athletes in training. Athletes know that they must rest at least one day of the week, so that their bodies can rest, and rebuild.
But capital punishment strikes this Judeophile as excessive. Besides, no country could operate if no one worked on the Sabbath. Do you think Israeli Jews would be safe if only Palestinian policemen protected them on Saturday from criminals and terrorists? I don’t.
Then Deuteronomy 23:3 says, “No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord, none of their descendents, even in the tenth generation shall ever be admitted into the congregation of the Lord.”
Hold that thought for a moment.
The Book of Ruth claims that Ruth, who was a Moabite woman, was a great grandmother of David, who was the greatest Israelite king. Deuteronomy 23:3 would have us believe that King David was not an authentic Israelite.
That is only one of the famous contradictions in the Bible, and a reason that the Bible should be read with reverence, but critically. I believe that the Bible was inspired by God, but not dictated by Him. The Jewish Bible, AKA, the Christian Old Testament, and the Apocrypha were written by Jews. All or most of the New Testament was written by people we would recognize today as Messianic Jews.
The Apocrypha consists of the books in a Greek translation of the Jewish Bible that were not canonized by Judaism. It explains nearly everything Jews believe about the afterlife. It should have been mentioned in Chapter 27, “The Hereafter.”
Anyone who has known and liked as many Jews as I have knows that they love to disagree with each other. I see the Bible – the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament – as a Jewish anthology of religious writing. Contradictions in the Bible intrigue me; they do not disturb my faith.
I think Jews should supplement their study of the Torah with the study of the rest of the Jewish Bible, the Apocrypha, and parts of the Talmud. The Talmud is vastly larger than the Jewish Bible, and consists of commentary on the Jewish Bible, Jewish wisdom, and debates between Jewish thinkers. Because I am a Christian, I would like to recommend the New Testament too. The New Testament portrays Jesus and his followers as Jews in a Jewish setting. Christianity began as a Jewish sect. The first Bishop of Jerusalem was Saint James, who was a brother of Jesus. He obeyed Torah and worshiped at the Temple of Jerusalem every day until he was martyred.
Chapter 18, “The State of Israel,” takes justifiable pride that “the conduct of the soldiers in the wars with the Arab armies has been exemplary, with no looting and no rape, and with the sincere desire to avoid so far as humanly possible the loss of civilian life.”
There is no apology to the Palestinians. The Charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel. Palestine is the only nation I know of that demands unconditional surrender from the country that has defeated it time and time again.
This is what the Koran says about the Jewish occupation of Eretz Yisrael:
“Surah V:20 And (remember) when Moses said unto his people: O my people! Remember Allah’s favoour unto you, how he placed among you Prophets, and He made you kings, and gave you that (which) He gave not to any (other) creatures. O my people! Go into the holy land which Allah hath ordained for you. Turn not in flight, for surely ye turn back as losers.
“Surah XVII:104 And we said unto the Children of Israel after him: Dwell in the land, but when the promise of the Hereafter cometh to pass, we shall bring you as a crowd gathered out of various nations.”
I wish Chapter 15, “The Dietary Laws,” was more extensive. I do not keep a kosher kitchen, but I like to buy food that is kosher certified. Eating kosher food is a way a non Jew can experience Judaism.
There is no mention of the various organizations that certify foods as Kosher. Each organization has a symbol it puts on food it has certified. The largest kosher certifying organization is the Orthodox Union that is located in New York City. Its symbol is a U with a circle around it. When you look for that symbol you will find it on many different food items. It is even on most dish and clothes detergents. Judaism is a very hygienic religion. Much of what the Torah condemns as unclean consists of actions and foods that spread contagious diseases.
“The Book of Jewish Belief” should have contained a list of the most prominent certifying organizations, and their symbols.
My criticisms of “The Book of Jewish Belief” are minor. This book confirms and reinforces the high opinion I have always had of Jews, their religion, and their home in Israel.
August 1, 2013
Interesting and refreshingly written. Provided new insights and a comprehensive overview of Judaism.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews