Judaism in Five Minutes
Edited by
Sarah Imhoff [+–]
Indiana University
View Website
Sarah Imhoff is Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. She is author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017) and The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke University Press, 2022). She is the founding co-editor of the journal American Religion.
Judaism in Five Minutes provides an accessible and lively introduction to common questions about Jews and Judaism, with a focus on Jewish communities, textual traditions, practices, rituals, laws, holidays, and life-cycle events. As with other volumes in the Religion in 5 Minutes series, this volume is suitable for beginning students and general readers through a series of general questions, succinctly answered by experts in the field. Some of the questions addressed in this volume include the following: What is the Torah? What is the Talmud? What is Jewish law? What is a rabbi? Was Jesus
Jewish? What does kosher mean? Do Jews believe in a messiah? What is Zionism? What is antisemitism? What role did race play in the Holocaust?
Because each chapter can be read in about five minutes, the books offer ideal supplementary resources in classrooms or an engaging read for those curious about the world around them.
Series: Religion in 5 Minutes
Table of Contents
Preface
Indiana University
Sarah Imhoff is Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. She is author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017) and The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke University Press, 2022). She is the founding co-editor of the journal American Religion.
Chapter 1
Towson University
Brian Hillman is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Towson University in Towson, MD. His research focuses on modern Jewish thought, Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah), and religion and popular culture. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Jewish Identities, Jewish Studies Quarterly, Religious Studies Review, and the Jewish Book Council. He also serves as the managing editor for the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy.
Jewish people have historically accorded preeminent authority to texts and considered their study to be among the most religious significant actions. The foundational text of the Jewish tradition, the Hebrew Bible, is commonly granted divine authority. Later texts, e.g. the Mishnah and Talmud, are presented as mining, interpreting, and developing the divine revelation found in the Bible. These texts inaugurate a tradition of authoritative post biblical texts, and texts considered part of this tradition are generally held sacred. The ways in which Jewish people engage with these texts as written or printed material objects reinforce their sacredness.
Chapter 2
What is Torah? [+–]
Indiana University, Bloomington
Laura Carlson Hasler is an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington (USA) where she holds the Alvin H. Rosenfeld Chair in Hebrew Bible. She is the author of Archival Historiography in Jewish Antiquity (Oxford 2020), which was awarded the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2021.
This article traces some of the diverse meanings of “torah” in a Jewish antiquity. Drawing upon examples from Deuteronomy, Ezra, and the Samaritan Pentateuch, it maps the varying contents and connotations of this term. It also explores Torah’s association with Moses and the development of Written and Oral Torah in rabbinic discourse.
Chapter 3
What is Talmud? [+–]
St Mary’s University, Texas
Sara Ronis is associate professor of Theology at St. Mary’s University, Texas. She holds a Ph.D. in ancient Judaism specializing in the Talmud from Yale University and a B.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. Her research interests include rabbinic subjectivity and definitions of personhood, constructions of gender and authority in rabbinic literature, and rabbinic imaginings of and encounters with the other in late antiquity. She is the author of Demons in the Details: Demonic Discourse and Rabbinic Culture in Late Antique Babylonia (University of California Press 2022).
The Talmud is a body of discussions of the text of the Mishnah together with other traditional teachings, biblical interpretations, and legal discussions produced by the rabbis of Sasanian Babylonia. Compiled over hundreds of years, the Talmud reads as an extensive intergenerational discussion and debate over every aspect of late antique Jewish life. Though in the medieval period, the Talmud was the subject of antisemitic discourse. It remains the foundational rabbinic text for Jewish law and practice today. New translations and new media are spurring a wider engagement with the Talmud across a broader swath of the Jewish world.
Chapter 4
What is Midrash? [+–]
Indiana University
Sarah Imhoff is Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. She is author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017) and The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke University Press, 2022). She is the founding co-editor of the journal American Religion.
Midrash is creative textual interpretation that draws on biblical texts. The word midrash can refer to two things: at its broadest, it denotes the genre of inquiries, speculations, imaginative exegesis, allegorical readings, line-by-line commentaries, and even new stories related to the Bible; its more specific meaning denotes the set of texts of this genre that gather and record rabbinic interpretations of the Bible from about 200 to 1000 CE.
Are Jews White? [+–]
Indiana University, Bloomington (PhD candidate)
Sabina Ali (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.
The question “Are Jews White?” assumes homogeneity among all Jews and conflates Jewishness with European descent. While the majority of Jews in the US are of European descent and are considered White, at least fifteen percent of US Jews identify as Jews of color, including Jews of African descent. Race, however, is constructed differently across time and location. While Jews in Europe were persecuted based on racial ideas, European-descended Jews in the Americas were legally considered White and participated in settler-colonial projects. In contrast, racial dynamics in Israel differ, as the state not only systemically oppresses Palestinians, but has also discriminated against its Mizrahi Jewish population.
Chapter 5
What is Kabbalah? [+–]
Towson University
Brian Hillman is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Towson University in Towson, MD. His research focuses on modern Jewish thought, Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah), and religion and popular culture. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Jewish Identities, Jewish Studies Quarterly, Religious Studies Review, and the Jewish Book Council. He also serves as the managing editor for the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy.
This chapter provides an overview of the major ideas, texts, and figures in the history of Kabbalah. Kabbalah is often characterized as a Jewish form of mysticism. It emerged in a mature form around the thirteenth century in Western Europe with the creation of the Zohar, a sprawling work of Kabbalistic narrative. The Zohar uses the central system of Kabbalistic symbols called the sefirot. The Sefirot are presented as representing the inner workings of divinity or the divine attributes. Subsequently, Kabbalah developed in North Africa, Eastern Europe, Israel, and the United States.
Chapter 6
What is Jewish law? [+–]
Tufts University
Yonatan Y. Brafman is Assistant Professor of Modern Judaism in the Department of Religion, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Literary and Cultural Studies, as well as a member of the Program in Judaic Studies at Tufts University. He is also an affiliated scholar at the Brodie Center for Jewish and Israeli Law at Yale Law School.
This chapter explores the dynamic and evolving nature of Jewish law (halakhah). It discusses the Written and Oral Torah and the interpretation of law through commentaries, codes, and responsa. Despite the expansive scope of halakhah, it historically developed while Jewish people lacked political sovereignty and when Jewish communities possessed varying degrees of autonomy, thus creating differing opportunities to live by Jewish law. This chapter addresses the emergence of the nation-state in modernity that fundamentally changed the status of Jewish law.
Chapter 7
What is a rabbi? [+–]
Indiana University
Sarah Imhoff is Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. She is author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017) and The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke University Press, 2022). She is the founding co-editor of the journal American Religion.
This chapter traces the role of rabbis from antiquity to the present. Beginning with late antiquity, when a rabbi was a male religious scholar who read and interpreted the Bible and Jewish legal texts and traditions. In the medieval period, rabbis functioned as interpreters of text and also of Jewish law. It was only in the modern period the role of rabbi became a job located primarily at synagogues with the expectation of similar duties to Christian clergy, such as pastoral care. It concludes with a discussions of Jewish communities’ ordination of women as rabbis.
Chapter 8
What is Hanukkah? [+–]
Lehigh University
Jodi Eichler-Levine is the Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization and a professor in the department of Religion, Culture, and Society at Lehigh University, where she works at the intersection of Jewish studies and North American religions. She is the author of Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community and Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature.
This chapter summarizes the history and significance of Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday that was first celebrated as a minor one in late antiquity and has become a bonanza in contemporary America.
Chapter 9
Michigan State University
Laura Yares is an Assistant Professor in the department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. She is a scholar of Jewish history, religion, and culture in North America, with particular research interests in education, gender, and material culture. She is the author of Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth Century America (North American Religions Series, NYU Press, 2023). Her newest book, a contemporary ethnographic study of learning in the context of Jewish cultural artistic sites, will be published by NYU Press in 2025.
Passover is described in the Torah as a festival of remembrance, a holiday marked by the commandment to eat a sacrificed lamb with unleavened bread. This chapter explores the various ways that these biblical injunctions have been enacted and reimagined by Jews historically, as well as in contemporary North America.
Chapter 10
University of Rochester
Nora Rubel is the Jane and Alan Batkin Professor in Jewish Studies and Chair of the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester. She is the author of Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination (CUP 2009), co-editor of Religion, Food and Eating in North America (CUP 2014), and Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family (Rutgers University Press 2024), and is currently completing a monograph entitled Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book.
Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, prohibits certain foods including, but not limited to, pork, shellfish, and certain birds. These laws stem from biblical texts and are observed for various reasons, including religious obligation and cultural identity. Kashrut involves specific slaughter methods, food preparation practices, and even separate utensils for meat and dairy. Additionally, some Jews adhere to stricter levels of kashrut, depending on the religious authority figures they follow.
Chapter 11
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jordan D. Rosenblum is the Belzer Professor of Classical Judaism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of four books, most recently Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews<.i> and the Pig and Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature. He has also co-edited four books, including Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food and Animals and the Law in Antiquity.
While the Hebrew Bible prohibits eating pig, it also prohibits several other animals, such as the camel. In the Second Temple period, the pig begins to step out into center stage. Moving through history from antiquity to the present day, both Jews and non-Jews invest the pig with more meaning, especially in regard to Jewish and non-Jewish identity. Throughout history we discover that the pig has a complicated history and some Jews choose to eat—or not eat—the pig for various reasons, all of which inform, and are informed by, their notions of Jewish identity.
Chapter 12
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jordan D. Rosenblum is the Belzer Professor of Classical Judaism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of four books, most recently Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews<.i> and the Pig and Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature. He has also co-edited four books, including Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food and Animals and the Law in Antiquity.
While wine is essential for Jewish rituals (for example, the Sabbath both opens and closes with wine-based rituals), there is a long tradition of understanding that wine can both lead to rejoicing and regret (if one overindulges). This brief look at the history of Jewish drinking argues that, starting with the biblical Noah, there is ample evidence for Jewish communities allowing drinking. So, did many Jews throughout history drink alcohol? The answer seems to be yes, but the full story is a little more complicated.
Chapter 13
Gratz College
Alison L. Joseph is Director of Digital Scholarship and Associate Professor of Bible at Gratz College. She is the author of numerous publications, most notably Portrait of the Kings: The Davidic Prototype in Deuteronomistic Poetics, which received the 2016 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She received her PhD in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MA in Jewish Studies from Emory University. She also holds undergraduate degrees from Barnard College and the Jewish Theological Seminary.
The Jewish practice of male circumcision begins in the Hebrew Bible with a command to the patriarch Abraham and continues today in contemporary Jewish practice around the world.
Chapter 14
University of Pittsburgh
Rachel Kranson is Associate Professor and Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
This chapter discusses the historical and contemporary ritual practice of Bar, Bat, and B’Mitzvah coming-of-age ceremonies, which mark a Jewish child’s entrance into religious maturity. It attends to gender and congregational differences in how this ritual is celebrated.
Chapter 15
Bar Ilan University and Shalom Hartman Institute
Ronit Irshai is Associate Professor in the gender studies program at Bar Ilan University and a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
The field of Jewish studies, and especially scholarship about Jewish law (halakhah), traditionally ignored gender. The emergence of gender studies has transformed this, challenging essentialist views of gender and encouraging critical, genealogical examination of how halakhic ideas about gender have evolved.
Chapter 16
University of Virginia
Sam Shuman is assistant professor of Religious Studies and core faculty member in the Jewish Studies program at the University of Virginia. Shuman is an anthropologist whose research situates Hasidic Judaism within a global context. They are currently writing a book about Reb Shayele (1851–1925), a Hasidic miracle-worker from Hungary, who has witnessed a populist revival in the past decade. Their research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and Fulbright. Shuman’s work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in the Jewish Quarterly Review, Current Anthropology, and Religions, and as chapters in Critical Jewish Studies Now and How Transparency Works.
This chapter explains the historical and sociological characteristics of Hasidic Jews and their relationship to other “Ultra-Orthodox” Jews. It briefly explores Hasidism’s emergence as a pietistic movement in eighteenth-century Eastern Europe and the ways that scholars have traditionally written this history. The chapter then addresses contemporary trends—how Jews are both entering and exiting Hasidic life. These shifts are forcing us to reexamine our basic assumptions about who Hasidic Jews are and how their communities operate.
Chapter 17
Allegheny College
Adrienne Krone is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Jewish Life at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
This chapter is about the Sabbath, or Shabbat, a Jewish holiday of rest and refraining from work. It describes how this holiday emerged and the diverse ways that Jews all over the world observe the Sabbath.
Chapter 18
Indiana University (PhD candidate)
Chaim McNamee (he/him, they/them) is a PhD candidate in rhetoric in the Department of English at Indiana University, Bloomington.
This chapter examines the role of Leviticus 19:28 in serving as the grounds for a long-standing taboo on tattooing in Jewish cultures. It highlights some myths around tattooing, the role of the Holocaust in perceptions of tattoos, and alternate and contemporary interpretations of tattooing, especially among young Jews.
Chapter 19
University of Waterloo
James A. Diamond holds an endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo. His principal areas of research include biblical exegesis, medieval and modern Jewish thought and philosophy, Maimonides, and rabbinics. He has published widely on all areas of Jewish thought in many leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals, such as Harvard Theological Review and Journal of Religion. His books include, among others, Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (Cambridge University Press) and Jewish Theology Unbound (Oxford University Press).
There are a host of different names for God in the Hebrew Bible including Elohim, El, Adonai, Shaddai, Zevaot, and, notably, Yahweh (YHWH), the four-letter name singled out as the Tetragrammaton, or the unpronounceable “articulated name.” Though all are translated into English as “God” or “Lord,” they come to signify very different notions of God in the rabbinic, mystical, and philosophical traditions that developed in post-biblical Judaism. Divine names thus have become conceptually foundational for Jewish thought and theology.
Chapter 20
What are the differences among Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Orthodox Judaism? b [+–]
College of Charleston
Joshua Shanes is Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Arnold Center for Israel Studies at the College of Charleston. He has published widely on modern Jewish history, religion, politics, and antisemitism in both academic and popular outlets such as The Washington Post, Slate, and Haaretz. He is currently completing a history of Jewish Orthodoxy from its German origins until today for the “Key Words in Jewish Studies” series with Rutgers University Press.
This essay discusses the Ashkenazi Jewish religious denominations called Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox in their historical and contemporary contexts. Modern Jewish denominations emerged in Europe and America at the start of the nineteenth century under the transformative impact of political emancipation, rapid acculturation, socio-economic modernization, and the Enlightenment. Each movement negotiated the relationship between Jewishness and modernity in its own way. Each claimed that they followed the best or most authentic traditions of Judaism, even as each in fact reflected a self-conscious set of choices from Jewish texts and traditions and particular interpretations of the past.
Chapter 21
Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
Max Daniel is the Public Historian and Jewish Heritage Collection Coordinator at Special Collections in the Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston.
This chapter describes the Jewish groupings of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi, which can be loosely defined as cultural, ethnic, or geographic categories, and can also correspond to particular religious traditions, customs, liturgy, and language. Unlike Ashkenazi or Sephardi, Mizrahi is a recent category that developed out of modern Zionism and intra-Jewish differences in what became the State of Israel.
Chapter 22
Tel Aviv University
Meira Polliack is Professor of Bible and the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Chair in Jewish Culture in Muslim Lands and Cairo Genizah Studies at Tel Aviv University. She is co-editor with Michael G. Wechsler of the Book Series Karaite Texts and Studies (Brill). She researches literary approaches to the Hebrew Bible, its reception and exegesis; medieval Jewish interpretation in the Islamic world; Karaite and Judeo-Arabic literature.
This chapter describes the Karaite movement, a scripturalist community originating in medieval Judaism that rejected the authority of Jewish oral law as canonized in the major works of rabbinic literature. The Karaites’ intellectual tradition and thought on the Hebrew Bible, which has often been marginalized from most discussions of “mainstream” Judaism, formed an inseparable part of medieval Jewish history and intellectual tradition, fostering and carrying further its innovative spirit, especially in the realm of biblical interpretation.
Chapter 23
Hebrew Union College and University of Southern California
Sarah Bunin Benor is Vice Provost and Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department.
From Jerusalem to Johannesburg, from Baghdad to Bialystok, Jews have spoken dozens of languages. When Jews migrated for economic reasons or due to persecution or expulsion, they encountered and adopted new languages and made them their own. The two most widely known diaspora Jewish languages, Yiddish and Ladino, have been exceptionally maintained for centuries away from their original regions. While most longstanding Jewish languages have become endangered in recent decades, the ancient trend of Jewish language shifting continues.
Chapter 24
University of Cincinnati
Jennifer Caplan is Associate Professor and The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati Chair in Judaic Studies at University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials (Wayne State University Press 2023) and is currently working on a monograph on Jewish characters in the DC and Marvel universes.
“Secular” and “religious” are, by definition, both related and in opposition to each other as “secular” is generally used to mean “not religious.” How, then, can we speak of Jews (presumably practitioners of Judaism, a religion) as secular? Jewishness, however, has always been complicated and defies simple categorization as religious tradition. Many people—and the number seems to be growing—see themselves as both Jewish and atheist, agnostic, or simply secular. This chapter explores the reasons why this phenomenon is not the oxymoron it may appear to be and is instead an outgrowth of the multifaceted nature of Jewishness.
Chapter 25
University of Colorado, Boulder
Elias Sacks is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies and Faculty Director for Public Scholarship in the Office of Faculty Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He studies Jewish thought, philosophy of religion, Jewish-Christian relations, religious ethics, and religion and politics. He is the author of Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017), as well as articles on a wide range of medieval and modern thinkers.
How we answer “Do Jews believe in God?” depends on how we understand the question. We might ask about what Jews actually do—about whether individuals who identify as Jewish affirm the existence of something they call “God.” We might ask about what Jews should do—about whether Jewish sources present belief in God as something that Jews should affirm, or as an idea that is unnecessary, absurd, or even offensive. And we might explore the meaning of “God” itself—the diverse and sometimes surprising ways in which Jews often invoke this term to express core ideas and values.
Chapter 26
Tel Aviv University
Michal Kravel-Tovi is an associate professor of socio-cultural anthropology at Tel Aviv University.
Jewish gatekeepers, in their numerous positionings and capacities, and again in the remarkably diverse contexts in which they operate, have customarily returned the question to the convert in the making: Can you convert to Judaism? This chapter examines the evolving nature of Jewish conversion, discussing conversion practices from the Second Temple Period to contemporary Jewish life. It highlights the role of conversion ceremonies, debates about the nature of “acceptance of the commandments,” and more contemporary issues of intermarriage and the necessities of formal conversion.
Chapter 27
University of Colorado, Boulder
Samira K. Mehta is the Director of Jewish Studies and an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States; The Racism of People Who Love You: Essays on Mixed Race Belonging; and is currently completing a book called God Bless the Pill: Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion.
While there is evidence that interfaith marriage has existed since biblical times, the Jewish solution to “marrying out” has long been conversion of the non-Jewish spouse. As Jews acquired more rights, both through post-Enlightenment emancipation and through colonization of the Americas, more Jews began to marry non-Jews, a move which was part of an assimilation into the dominant culture. When, in the late twentieth century, interfaith marriage rates began to climb at unprecedented rates, the Jewish community began serious outreach to interfaith couples, though that outreach often reflected communal concerns more than the needs of the couples.
Chapter 28
Tel Aviv University
Ishay Rosen-Zvi teaches rabbinic literature and is the Chair of the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel-Aviv University.
This chapter describes the evolution of the Jew/non-Jew distinction in the Hebrew Bible, in texts in the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods, in rabbinic literature, in medieval Judaism, and in contemporary Jewish life, particularly in the United States and Israel.
Chapter 29
University of Maryland
Matthew J. Suriano is an Associate Professor in the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland. He teaches classes on the Hebrew Bible, the archaeology of ancient Israel, and religions of ancient Western Asia.
There is a wide variety of beliefs about death in Judaism today. The earliest sources lack any systematic treatment of the afterlife. There was the vague concept of Sheol that is often portrayed as a tomb-like netherworld, but there is no afterlife dichotomy of heaven or hell. What we find in the Hebrew Bible is a postmortem ideal of being reunited with dead kin. This is apparent in biblical idioms for death such as “gathered to their peoples” and “lay down with their fathers,” as well as in the expressed desire to be buried in a family tomb.
Chapter 30
Florida State University
Martin Kavka is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at Florida State University. Now in the twilight of his career, he is most proud of his editing work, including (with Aline Kalbian) a decade as coeditor of the Journal of Religious Ethics, and (with Anne Dailey and Lital Levy) the volume Unsettling Jewish Knowledge: Text, Contingency, Desire (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023).
This brief chapter answers the questions of what Jews think about the Messiah by describing the dominant Jewish idea of the Messiah at the time of Jesus, as well as a diversity of attitudes to messianism that Jews in the modern period have held.
Chapter 31
St Mary’s University, Texas
Sara Ronis is associate professor of Theology at St. Mary’s University, Texas. She holds a Ph.D. in ancient Judaism specializing in the Talmud from Yale University and a B.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. Her research interests include rabbinic subjectivity and definitions of personhood, constructions of gender and authority in rabbinic literature, and rabbinic imaginings of and encounters with the other in late antiquity. She is the author of Demons in the Details: Demonic Discourse and Rabbinic Culture in Late Antique Babylonia (University of California Press 2022).
Though Judaism is a monotheistic religion, in many times and places, Jewish thinkers have also described a robust world of intermediary beings who are more powerful than humans but not gods themselves—angels, demons, and more. This chapter traces the history of this belief from the Hebrew Bible through the Second Temple Period, rabbinic literature, medieval thought, Enlightenment responses, and finally, the modern world. The chapter demonstrates that the answers to the question “Do Jews believe in angels and demons?” are as diverse as Jews themselves.
Chapter 32
Who are crypto-Jews? [+–]
University of Washington (PhD candidate)
Sasha M. Ward is a Ph.D. candidate in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on Sephardi Jewish life in the Eastern Mediterranean, with an emphasis on the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republican periods. Her dissertation explores the political weaponization of antisemitic conspiratorial rhetoric by the Turkish government throughout the twentieth century. Specifically, Sasha is interested in the quotidian history of the real descendants of those crypto-Jews who followed the so-called “mystical messiah” Shabbatai Sevi (17th century) into Islam (known broadly as Dönme), and their imagined political, social, and economic influence.
Crypto-Judaism refers to the secret practice of Judaism while outwardly adopting another religion, typically Christianity or Islam, due to persecution. It emerged during the medieval Iberian Peninsula under Byzantine rule and continued through the Spanish Inquisition. Many Jews, known as conversos, outwardly converted to Catholicism but maintained Jewish traditions privately. Over time, crypto-Jewish communities also developed in Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and beyond. These groups, including the Salonican Dönme, shaped both Jewish and non-Jewish societies through their religious, social, and economic activities, often maintaining strong internal cohesion despite external pressures.
Chapter 33
Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia
Adam Gregerman, Ph.D., is Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and Associate Director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA. He is the author of Building on the Ruins of the Temple: Apologetics and Polemics in Early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism (Mohr Siebeck, 2016) and numerous book chapters and articles in journals such as Theology Today, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Modern Theology, Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, and Interpretation.
This chapter discusses the origins and growth of a first-century Jewish movement focused on a preacher and miracle worker named Jesus and the increasingly bold claims made about his religious status after his death. As his followers began to argue for his messianic and later supernatural and even divine nature, the Jews who heard this message seem not to have been persuaded that the messianic age had dawned or that a man executed by Rome had any special role in salvation. Furthermore, as Gentiles increasingly joined this movement, the Jewish membership in the movement shrank and believers increasingly dropped observance of Jewish law, minimizing the appeal it may have had for Jews.
Chapter 34
Was Jesus Jewish? [+–]
University of Virginia
Meira Z. Kensky is Senior Assistant Dean and Director of Undergraduate Advising for the University of Virginia College of Arts & Sciences. Previously she was Joseph E. McCabe Professor of Religion and Director of Advising at Coe College. Kensky is the author of Trying Man, Trying God: The Divine Courtroom in Early Jewish and Christian Literature (Mohr Siebeck, 2010) and is working on a book for Eerdmans on the Apocalypses of Peter and Paul and Early Christian tours of Hell.
All of our extant sources portray Jesus as a Jewish teacher. While Paul does not relay much information about the life of Jesus, the Gospel of Mark portrays Jesus as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet. Matthew emphasizes Jesus’s connection to Hebrew Bible prophecies of the expected Davidic Messiah, and Luke highlights Jesus’s familial background in Judaism as part of his demonstration of God’s fulfillment of his promises to Israel and extending them to all nations.
Chapter 35
Did Jews kill Jesus? [+–]
Ferrum College
Eric Vanden Eykel is associate professor of religious studies at Ferrum College in Virginia. His research focuses on Christian apocryphal literature, with a special emphasis on texts and traditions about the infancies and childhoods of Jesus and Mary. He is the author of “But Their Faces Were All Looking Up”: Author and Reader in the Protevangelium of James (T&T Clark, 2016), coeditor of Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts (Lexington, 2022), and author of The Magi: Who They Were, How They’ve Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate (Fortress, 2022).
This article examines the question of who bears responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus, addressing the tension between Roman authority and New Testament accounts that implicate Jewish leaders. By analyzing the historical context of Roman crucifixion, the role of Pontius Pilate, and the political dynamics of first-century Judea, it establishes that the Romans were ultimately responsible for Jesus’s death. Additionally, the discussion explores how certain Gospel passages may reflect later Christian attempts to distance themselves from Judaism, contributing to longstanding misunderstandings about Jewish involvement and fueling anti-Judaism throughout history.
Chapter 36
Was Paul Jewish? [+–]
University of Colorado, Boulder
Elias Sacks is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies and Faculty Director for Public Scholarship in the Office of Faculty Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He studies Jewish thought, philosophy of religion, Jewish-Christian relations, religious ethics, and religion and politics. He is the author of Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017), as well as articles on a wide range of medieval and modern thinkers.
One of Jesus’s most influential first-century followers, Paul was born to a Jewish family and composed a series of letters that have become a central part of the New Testament. Different sources and thinkers have answered “Was Paul Jewish?” in different ways, depending on how they understood the question. Over the centuries, he has been portrayed as someone who abandoned Judaism and helped found Christianity by disseminating anti-Jewish teachings, as a figure who secretly worked on behalf of the Jewish people, and as a faithful Jew whose views are consistent with Jewish teachings and who himself claimed to practice Judaism.
Chapter 37
Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, Baltimore
Benjamin E. Sax serves as the Head of Scholarship and the Jewish Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore.
There is no one book called the Bible. Jews and Christians have different Bibles, which consist of different books, orders, and most importantly, were composed in different languages and at different times. Each community may translate and interpret biblical passages differently and disagree about the theology in biblical stories.
Chapter 38
University of Connecticut
Jessica Cooperman is the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut. Her book, Making Judaism Safe for America: World War I and the Origins of Religious Pluralism (NYU Press, 2018), received an honorable mention for the Saul Viener Prize in American Jewish History. Her current project explores Passover celebrations as sites for defining Jewish identity and relationships between Jews and Christians. Her next project will examine projects for promoting interfaith relations after World War II. Cooperman is co-editor of the journal American Jewish History.
In part as a response to the horrors of Holocaust, the twentieth century witnessed a radical transformation in relations between Jews and Christians. After centuries of hostility, Jews and Christians today often see themselves as spiritual and political partners.
Chapter 39
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Yaakov Ariel is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
This chapter traces the development of Messianic Judaism, a movement of Jews who had embraced Protestant Christianity and wished to maintain some Jewish customs and rites. Originating at the turn of the twentieth century and gaining more prominence in the 1970s, Messianic Jews promote some Jewish cultural attributes and rituals at the same time that they embrace the theology and morality associated with evangelical Christianity. While struggling to be accepted as both genuinely Jewish and Christian, Messianic Jews built their own subculture, complete with national organizations, youth movements, conferences, retreats, prayer books, hymnals, publications and periodicals, including theological, apologetic, and evangelistic treatises.
Chapter 40
Stonehill College
Shari L. Lowin is Professor of Religious Studies and Theology at Stonehill College, where she teaches courses on Islam and Judaism. Her research focuses on intertextual conversations between the Qur’an and the Jewish textual tradition.
According to the Jewish tradition, the Qur’an is not considered divinely revealed. By contrast, the Qur’an and Islamic tradition recognizes the Bible as God’s word and as binding upon the Children of Israel. However, the Bible does not form part of the Islamic scriptural canon. Nonetheless, it retains significance to Muslims as the precursor to the perfected revelation that is the Qur’an. Accounts of shared prophets can be found in both the Bible and the Qur’an, though rarely are these verbatim retellings. So too Islam and Judaism retain similar attitudes toward and understandings of the role Scripture plays in each tradition.
Chapter 41
University of Oklahoma
Liran Yadgar (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is the Hebrew language lecturer and coordinator at the University of Oklahoma. His area of expertise is the history of Jews in the premodern Middle East. Prior to the University of Oklahoma, he served as a postdoctoral scholar at Yale University, UCLA, and Oklahoma State University, and taught Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Muhlenberg College.
Judeo-Islamic civilization is a concept that describes the relationships between Judaism and Islam with respect to religious texts, language, literature, law, ritual, sacred spaces, theology, philosophy, mysticism, arts, and sciences, from the days of the Prophet Muhammad to today. More particularly, however, it refers to the Jewish-Islamic encounter between the seventh to the thirteenth centuries. Prominent examples include references to Jews, the Hebrew Bible, and Jewish religious law in the Qur’an and other early Islamic materials (usually termed as the “the Jewish influence on Islam”) on the one hand, and the development of Jewish philosophy, theology, and Hebrew poetry under the “influence” of Islam on the other hand.
Chapter 42
University of Toronto
Alan Verskin is the Samuel J. Zacks Chair of Jewish History at the University of Toronto. His most recent book is Diary of a Black Jewish Messiah: The Sixteenth-Century Journey of David Reubeni through Africa, the Middle East, and Europe (Stanford University Press, 2023).
Moses Maimonides (d. 1204) was the most widely recognized Jewish leader of all time. Born in Cordoba, he spent most of his life in Egypt, where he wrote legal, philosophical, and medical works. Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed offers a methodology for reconciling religion with medieval science and philosophy. His Mishneh Torah is a complete code of Jewish law that is still consulted. Today, Maimonides’ disciples hail from every Jewish denomination. This is the product of Maimonides’s writing strategy, which fosters an intimacy with his readers, but which leaves room for them to independently develop his thought.
Chapter 43
Williams College
Jeffrey I. Israel is Associate Professor of Religion at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Antisemitism is a term used to identify hostility toward Jews, Judaism, or Jewishness, or their subordination. This chapter examines the origin of the term, from the context of late-nineteenth-century European philological and racial theories and their Nazi legacy to its current uses and intellectual provocations.
ISBN-13 (Hardback)
9781800506978
Price (Hardback)
£70.00 / $90.00
ISBN-13 (Paperback)
9781800506985
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£22.95 / $29.95
ISBN (eBook)
9781800506992
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£22.95 / $29.95
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Publication
30/08/2025
Pages
260
Size
216 x 140mm
Readership
students and general readers
