# data[].attributes.body
Diaspora in this case means Jews living outside of Israel.

# data[].attributes.body
Mount Sinai was where god gave Moses the 10 Commandments

# data[].attributes.body
Exodus went on a journey to the promise lands.

# data[].attributes.body
The "Ten Commandments" is known to Jews as the Ten Declarations

# data[].attributes.body
Jerusalem is the holiest land in Israel.

# data[].attributes.body
David made the Star of Davis which is the universal sign of Judaism.

# data[].attributes.body
Solomon was a king of Israel.

# data[].attributes.body
Moses was known as the greatest prophet.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Moses (Moshe in Hebrew) is arguably the greatest figure in Judaism other than God.

He helps bring the Israelites out of slavery and leads them for the next four decades, until his death just before they enter the Land of Israel. In addition to being a major character in the Torah - spanning the beginning of the Book of Exodus to the end of the Book of Deuteronomy - Moses is traditionally regarded as its author, or transcriber at least. Hence the Torah's alternate name: the Five Books of Moses.

Born in Egypt at a time when the Pharaoh has ordered all newborn Israelite boys to be murdered, Moses is hidden by his mother and then, when that becomes infeasible, sent in a basket down the Nile River. Pharaoh's daughter finds him and raises him, and he lives happily as an Egyptian until he kills an overseer who he sees abusing an Israelite. He then flees to Midian, where he marries Zipporah and lives as a shepherd until God appears before him in the form of a burning bush, ordering him to return to Egypt to secure the freedom of the Israelites.

Reluctantly, Moses follows God's command and, teaming up with his brother Aaron, repeatedly approaches the Pharaoh and asks him to free the Israelites. Pharaoh refuses, even as God rains down increasingly horrific plagues, until the 10th plague, the killing of the first born. From then on, Moses (accompanied by Aaron and their sister Miriam) remains the leader of the Israelites until his death, guiding them across the Sea of Reeds, through the desert, bringing down the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai, staving off challenges to his authority and telling the Israelites what God expects of them. Moses dies before the Israelites enter the Land of Israel, and his hand-appointed successor, Joshua, becomes the new leader.

Moses, referred to in the Talmud as Moshe Rabbenu, "Moses our Teacher," is the subject of much discussion in Jewish texts, from the Midrash to the Talmud and beyond.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, there are more legends about Moses than about any other biblical figure. A cycle of legends has been woven around nearly every trait of his character and every event of his life; and groups of different and often contradictory stories have been connected with his career.

A sampling of My Jewish Learning articles and Torah commentaries about Moses are listed below. For more, visit the summaries and commentaries on the Torah portion pages for each portion from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

About Moses in General

Did Moses Write the Torah?
Why Doesn't Moses Appear in the Passover Haggadah?
Moses As Abandoned Hero
From Commentaries on Specific Torah Portions

Stop Making Excuses and Step Up to the Plate
Becoming a Leader
How Aaron Helped Moses How Moses Overcame Self-Doubt Moses vs. Pharaoh Moses' First Leadership Tests What Moses Learned from His Father-In-Law What Happened to Moses on Mount Sinai Why Is Moses Kept Out of the Tabernacle? When Moses Sins Why Moses Is an Imperfect Hero The Search for Moses' Successor
Devarim
Is Moses Telling Fake News?
Nitzavim Vayeilech
Moses' Fate Moses' Approach to Death
Ha'azinu
Moses' Last Words
Vezot Haberakhah
Moses' Final Blessing The Death of Moses

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Moses: In the Bible and Beyond | My Jewish Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Moses (Moshe in Hebrew) is arguably the greatest figure in Judaism other than God. He helps bring the Israelites out of slavery and leads them for the next four decades, until his death just before they enter the Land of Israel.

# data[].attributes.body
Monotheism means to believe in only one god.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Like many other philosophical terms, monotheism is a product of the 18th-century Enlightenment. It's not that the belief in "one God" did not exist before then; it most certainly did. But that belief had never been named.

Today it is accepted that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the world's principal monotheistic religions. Most people probably also accept that the tenets of monotheism are drawn from the Bible. But as with so many ideas about the Bible, this is wrong, especially in the sense in which monotheism is generally understood today.

In recent years, the concept has been subjected to some rigorous study and examination. Just as many other ideas were originally expressed very simply, monotheism appears to have become a much more complex idea over time.

Today those who study it define the concept in a variety of ways: hard or soft, exclusive or inclusive, or shades in between. Not surprisingly, the three major representatives of monotheism do not make identical claims. Islam practices "exclusive monotheism." To the Islamic world, only Allah is God. No other god exists. For followers of Judaism, it is "inclusive monotheism." Other gods can exist, but they amount to nothing and the God of Israel is the only god to be worshiped. Christianity straddles the fence. Most Christians would be hard put to explain how their religion is monotheistic and recognizes three beings in the one God.

Furthermore, the ideas generally expressed as monotheism find their origin not at Mount Sinai, as most Jews and Christians would contend, but in the reasoning of Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. For them the tenets of monotheism were encapsulated in the supreme first cause.

What, then, of the claims of Judaism and Christianity to be monotheistic religions? Jewish scholars have long realized that there was a difference between the ideas of a deity in the Tanakh (the Jewish Scriptures) and the subsequent reasoning of the rabbis. Various people have tried to categorize the Jewish approaches to monotheism and the reasons for their changes. In the same vein as inclusive monotheism, some have proposed "hierarchical monotheism," with the God of Israel being the ultimate God. The gods of other nations could exist, but the only one that Israel was to worship was their God. He reigned supreme over the other gods.

This allowed other divine beings to exist. In fact, the idea of a grand vizier or supreme ruler under God has long been considered a part of the Scriptures. An appreciation of that helps explain why the mainly Jewish early New Testament church of the first century could so easily accept Jesus not only as a messiah but as a divine being. To them, there was no contradiction of terms or philosophical reasoning.

But first- and second-century Judaism, in adjusting to the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E., had more than the followers of Jesus Christ to deal with. Shortly after the loss of the temple, and then the denial of access to Jerusalem after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 C.E., Judaism had to contend with the rise of Gnostic religions and Zoroastrianism from the East. To deny the claims of these groups, the rabbis opted to change their understanding of monotheism. They replaced hierarchical monotheism with the Greek philosophical concept of "ontological monotheism." Plato's idea of a supreme first cause was the embodiment of ontological monotheism. As the study of "being," ontology introduced the current notion of one God as a single being into the religion of the Jews.

For Christianity, the whole debate over Christology and the nature of God that consumed and divided the church through the second through fourth centuries was an attempt to harmonize Scripture with Greek monotheistic ideas based on ontology. Like other such attempts at harmonization, it resulted in much bloodshed, misunderstanding and confusion.

In a future article, we will explore more fully the understanding of the New Testament writers on this subject.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Like many other philosophical terms, monotheism is a product of the 18th-century Enlightenment. It's not that the belief in "one God" did not exist before then; it most certainly did. But that belief had never been named. Today it is accepted that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the world's principal monotheistic religions.

# data[].attributes.body
Judaism is a religion about a set of ideas about the world and the way we should live our lives that is called "Judaism."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wednesday 8th March we had a PSHCE day on Judaism in which we learnt about the history of Judaism, how Jews live and we also were given the opportunity to speak to a member of the Jewish community and ask any questions about her religion.

This day broadened our outlook as we could learn about how 0.05% of Great Britain's population live!

Different year groups worked together throughout period 3-6, taking part in making timelines of Judaism, listening to Mrs Sheila (a Jewish speaker who visited school), a 'go and find out' session and last but not least a film was shown featuring Anne Frank - a Jewish girl who suffered the horrors of World War 2.

Some comments on the day were:

'It was a very informative and made me more aware of other religious groups and the battles they face' - Daisy Trevvett Year 12,

'It was very enlightening to find out about Judaism' - Scott Simpson, Year 13,

'I learnt that actually some celebrities were Jews" - Roxy Simpson, Year 9,

'I have had an email from the visitor saying the students were delightful to talk to and well behaved, and the teachers think the students took the day seriously and appreciated the fact they were here to learn about Judaism' - Mrs Revell, English teacher.

Overall the day was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone!!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wednesday 8th March we had a PSHCE day on Judaism in which we learnt about the history of Judaism, how Jews live and we also were given the opportunity to speak to a member of the Jewish community and ask any questions about her religion.

# data[].attributes.body
Torah has different meanings depending on the context. Though it usually means the first five books of Moses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is Torah?
As we continue our tour of Jewish theology we turn our attention to Torah. The word Torah can be translated a few ways, but "instruction", as in,"teaching" seems most fitting.

Torah has several meanings - it can refer to (1) the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures (pentateuch), (2) the entire Jewish bible, also called the Tanakh (Old Testament), or (3) all Jewish sacred writing, the Tanakh and it's several hundred year commentary, the Talmud, or in the broadest sense, (4) the entirety of Jewish instruction, written and unwritten (oral) throughout Jewish history.

For the sake of this post, let's use Torah in the sense of Tanakh, but also with some reference to its broadest sense.
Jewish Reading - Christian Reading
Jews and Christians don't read the Bible in the same way. ( Shocking, I know.) Just as it would be arrogant and improper to speak for all Jews, the same applies to attempts to speak for all Christians. Yet some generalizations do contain useful information and aspects of the truth.

The predominant Jewish understanding of the nature of the scriptures usually leaves most Christians dissatisfied and often concerned. Most Christians have high regard for scripture, as do most Jews. But Christians, granted, not all, tend to invest a greater degree of supernatural significance in scripture than do most Jews.

This does not mean that Jews treat the scriptures without reverence or fail to consider their pivotal spiritual and religious significance. But it does mean that the texts don't always serve the same purposes. They certainly aren't interpreted in the same way.
A Sense of Progressive Revelation
Most Jews have a minimal view of revelation. Our understanding of the relationship between our sacred texts and the divine is that of inspiration. Jews consider the scriptures to be the product of human effort inspired by our ancestors wrestling with how they understood God, the world, and the purpose of life.

While the Jewish community closed the canon of sacred writings that today forms the Tanakh around 200 BCE, this does not mean that Jews think revelation and inspiration - the wrestling with God and meaning - is over.

Torah is not merely a collection of writings; it is the ongoing process of engagement - and the writings are the parameters of the Jewish conversation. To be a Jew is to be a part of this conversation and to find yourself in the narratives it offers.

Jews no longer add to the written canon. But each generation of Jews who engage Torah offer their own insights, interpretations, experiences, and meanings.

Torah contains revolutionary ideas and timeless truths - the equality of all humanity, the equality of men and women, and the inherent dignity of all human life created in the image of God. It dictates love of strangers and calls for the care of the poor and the outcast. Its vision remains vital for any people who wish to be considered humane.

But doesn't Torah also promote violence, killing, the subjugation of women, killing gay people, and even genocide?

Jews believe it's their responsibility to find ways of engaging iron-aged myths with what some might call postmodern thinking. What is required is critical naïveté - the ability to recognize myth for what it is, move beyond the literal concerns, and then, with updated knowledge, engage the myth allowing the text to newly inform, engage, and transform us.

It's up to Jews today to determine how Torah is read and applied, what narratives become foundational, and what values to embrace. The process of Torah is progressive, not static. We are not bound by our ancestor's views, but we must at least first wrestle with them to be faithful to the conversation and their experiences.

Seeking wisdom is a continuous process, confined to no one group and to no one age. We are to apply the texts to our current realities - with both the text and our current understanding of reality in dialog, neither trumping the other.

The texts are living and meant to speak to every generation. To do so, each generation must engage the texts in an ongoing conversation. Every Jew has a voice in this conversation and a role in Torah's ongoing reinterpretation.
Why Write Torah?
Torah was written to create a culture and a people. It was written to give a sacred narrative to a new, and ongoing community. It was written to convey a sacred history and story in which those who came after could connect with those who went before. It was written to convey wisdom to the generations to come.

The Jews were a collection of wandering tribes who came together to form a community centered in a sacred story and set of values and practices. Religion binds people together - and Judaism emerged as these tribes of unrelated peoples came together to form something better.

Torah was written over a nearly 2,000 year period. As modern scripture scholarship demonstrates, it had multiple authors and most sections have been edited and added to, multiple times, by later, often disagreeing, generations. Some stories are told twice, with slight differences.

The Bible contains a mixture of writing styles and genres. It combines history remembered with history metaphorized, expressing sacred myths that are primarily sweeping spiritual statements, providing context for answers (but not necessarily the answers themselves) to life's basic questions. Contrary to the assertions of some Orthodox Jews, Moses did not write Torah.

Jewish identity is significantly rooted in Torah. Torah contains our mythic narrative and a common history that unites us. The scriptures offer us a set of shared ancestors, formative events (Abraham leaving Ur, the exodus, exile and return) as well as our particular holidays and ways of marking time. There would be no Shabbat, no Passover, and no Rosh Hashanah, without Torah.

Torah offers insights into humane, Jewish values that have been embraced by most of the Western world and beyond. The dignity of each person, the inherent goodness of creation, the primacy of love and justice, the value of compassion, the importance of mercy, the directives to care for the needy and draw in the marginalized are all ongoing themes of Torah.

Love your neighbor as yourself, welcome the stranger, pursue justice, practice kindness - would the human family not have realized these values without Torah? This moral vision is accessible by reason, so Torah may not be strictly necessary, but the writings offer powerful stories that stay with a person, become a permanent part of our spiritual imagination, and inform us as a people.

Torah is the mythical foundation, the sacred history, and the collective wisdom of the Jewish worldview.
How to Read Torah
From the liberal Jewish perspective (the perspective of over 75% of today's Jews and Jewish scholars) - Torah is not inerrant, infallible, or even divinely authored - it is a collection of inspired writings that recorded our ancestor's understandings of the divine and their wrestling with the meaning of life.

The texts were not meant to serve primarily as historical or scientific documents (at least according to how we today, understand those disciplines), and their moral application must be subtly, culturally applied. Since Torah consists of many viewpoints, and sometimes contradictory ones, our reading is always selective.

Literal readings render the core myths irrelevant and distract from the narrative.

A large part of the way of reading Torah is what Jews call midrash. Midrash is an interpretive act, seeking the answers to religious questions (both practical and theological) by plumbing the meaning of the words of the Torah. Midrash responds to contemporary problems and crafts new stories, making connections between new Jewish realities and the unchanging biblical text.

Midrash can involve new ways of applying old texts or giving old texts new meanings. It can also involve a re-telling of the original story, adding layers of depth and meaning not easily seen in the original. Midrash flows from a sense of progressive revelation.

Written by rabbis both steeped in Bible and absorbed by the Jewish questions of their time, works of midrash aggadah often occupy the meeting ground between reverence and love for the wording of the fixed text of the Torah, and theological creativity. Midrashic writings thus often yield religious insights that have made Torah directly applicable to later Jewish realities, especially the concerns of its authors. Some of what midrash aggadah yields is insight into the burning, sometimes time-bound questions of those who wrote it. Still, the interpretations produced often have more universal and timeless application to our, or any, generation.
The Bigger Picture
Historical context matters. The scriptures of the Roman world were the and the Aeneid - mythic narratives that portrayed the salvation of the world found in Roman conquest and the path of peace residing in submission to Rome.

Understanding this ancient worldview and its scriptures helps us understand the remarkable, radical nature of the narrative that replaced them - the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian writings.

The new narrative(s) accepted by the West told of salvation through love and mercy and peace through nonviolence. It portrayed the new order of divine love as superior to the Empire of Military Will to Power.

The Torah contains many ideas and moral notions that are rightly rejected - genocide, patriarchy, sexism, divinely-sanctioned violence, holy war, misogyny, outdated views on sexuality and marriage, and remnants of an ancient worldview that lacked the benefit of today's scientific, psychological, and historical knowledge.

Despite this necessary filtering, the Biblical writings contain a core of insights that still ring true and animate contemporary Western culture and spiritual practice.
The Hebrew Scriptures and Christian Usage
If there's any truth to the notion of Jewish "chosenness", it's the call within Torah for Jews to be a light unto the nations. Jews have historically interpreted this call as involving our bringing the concepts of monotheism and a certain moral genius to the Western world, and beyond. We Jews don't always live up to our ideals, but we still must offer them.

The early Christian community, largely emerging from the broader Jewish community, took the Hebrew scriptures as their own, and adapted them, largely through midrash, to their own purposes. And most Jews feel this is a very good thing - it helps us fulfill our unique call and role in history. ( We don't mind you using them, really.)

Christians have midrashically read the Hebrew scriptures, finding ways to see Jesus in the texts, retelling old stories with new meaning, and adopting the texts to explain the nature of their covenant with God - or their being enfolded into the broader Jewish covenant - depending on your theological viewpoint.

In my opinion, many Christians would benefit from adapting some of the Jewish approach to the scriptures. Far too many Christians are stuck in forms of literalism and proof-texting that rob the texts of their vitality and power. The texts are for us - we are not for the texts - to paraphrase a particular Jewish reformer.

Allow me to recommend a superb book on how to make sense of Torah and the Jewish scriptures. How to Read the Jewish Bible by Marc Brettler is one of the best works out there.

Let me also suggest much of the work of Rabbi Rami Shapiro. These articles of his give you a flavor of his excellent work - Our Story, and A Tribe of Story Tellers. Also, Turning Torah is another sample of his approach - an approach well worth adopting.

Questions? Reactions? Disagreements? Bring them on ... happy to engage.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Our Book(s) - Torah - Wisdom and Instruction - Jewish Theology, Pt II

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is Torah? As we continue our tour of Jewish theology we turn our attention to Torah. The word Torah can be translated a few ways, but "instruction", as in,"teaching" seems most fitting. Torah has several meanings - it can refer to (1) the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures (pentateuch), (2) the entire ...