What is Judaism?

Question 60011.

Christians often assume that modern Judaism is simply the religion of the Old Testament carried forward, and that a Jewish neighbour today believes roughly what Moses believed with a longer beard. It is a natural assumption and it is not accurate.

The faith practised in synagogues today took its present shape after the destruction of the temple in AD 70, and it differs from the religion of Leviticus in ways that matter enormously once you start talking about sacrifice, atonement and Messiah.

Where modern Judaism came from

Jerusalem fell to Titus in AD 70 and the temple was destroyed. With it went the priesthood, the altar and the sacrificial system that the Torah had made the centre of Israel’s worship. A religion built around a temple suddenly had no temple.

What emerged, largely through the rabbinic academy at Yavneh, was a faith centred on Torah study, prayer and the synagogue rather than on sacrifice. The Mishnah was compiled around AD 200 and the Talmud over the following centuries, and these became the interpretive framework through which modern Judaism reads the Hebrew Scriptures.

So the honest description is that modern Judaism is rabbinic Judaism, a development within the biblical faith rather than an unbroken continuation of it. Jewish scholars will say this themselves, and there is nothing offensive in observing it.

What it teaches about God

At the centre stands the Shema, hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one, Deuteronomy 6:4. The Hebrew word for one is echad, which can carry the sense of a composite unity, as when a man and his wife become one flesh.

God is understood as one, personal, the Creator, holy and merciful, who chose Israel and gave the Torah at Sinai. Idolatry is rejected absolutely, and so, in modern Judaism, is any suggestion that God could become a man.

That last point is the sticking place. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is heard by most Jewish people as a compromise of the Shema, and answering that objection requires patience and a willingness to work through the Hebrew Scriptures rather than to quote John.

Torah, law and life

The Torah, from the Hebrew torah, is better rendered instruction than law. Rabbinic tradition counts 613 commandments, and observance covers diet, Sabbath, dress and the calendar, though how much is kept varies enormously.

Modern Judaism is not a single body. Orthodox Judaism holds the written and oral Torah as binding revelation. Conservative Judaism allows development. Reform Judaism treats the commandments as ethical guidance rather than obligation, and there are secular Jews who keep the culture without the belief.

Underlying all of it is a strong emphasis on this life, on justice and on community rather than on individual salvation. The question a rabbi hears most is not how do I get to heaven but how should we live.

The problem of atonement without a temple

Leviticus is unambiguous. It is the blood that makes atonement by the life, Leviticus 17:11, and the Day of Atonement was the annual centre of Israel’s year, with a sacrifice and a scapegoat and a high priest entering the holy place.

None of that has been possible for nearly two thousand years. Modern Judaism therefore teaches that repentance, prayer and acts of loving kindness now accomplish what sacrifice once did, a position developed by the rabbis in the aftermath of the destruction.

I would put the question gently rather than triumphantly. If God required blood for atonement in the Torah, on what authority was the requirement set aside, and who has the standing to substitute something else for it?

The Messiah

Judaism retains a messianic expectation, though the emphasis varies. The Messiah is generally understood as a human descendant of David who will gather the exiles, rebuild the temple and bring an age of peace, rather than as a divine person who dies for sin.

The suffering servant of Isaiah 53 is usually read corporately, as Israel suffering among the nations. That reading is not ancient in the way it is sometimes presented, and some early rabbinic sources applied the passage to the Messiah.

This is where I would spend my time in conversation. Read Isaiah 52 and 53 slowly with a Jewish friend without commentary and let the text raise its own questions. He was wounded for our transgressions is a difficult sentence to read corporately.

Where Christians have failed

Before saying anything else, some repentance is in order. The record of the church towards Jewish people includes forced conversions, expulsions, ghettos, blood libels and the pogroms, and the theological groundwork for much of it was laid by Christians who taught that the church had replaced Israel.

Luther’s late writings on the Jews are appalling and were used to justify horrors he did not live to see. Any Christian speaking to a Jewish person about faith is speaking across that history whether he mentions it or not.

So I approach modern Judaism with a real sense of debt. Paul says salvation came to the Gentiles through Israel, and that we are the wild branch grafted in, and he tells us not to be arrogant towards the natural branches.

Israel and the church remain distinct

I hold, on dispensational grounds, that God has not finished with Israel as a nation. The covenants made with Abraham and David were unconditional and will be fulfilled literally to the physical descendants of Jacob.

Paul asks whether God has rejected His people and answers by no means, describing a partial hardening until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, after which all Israel will be saved, Romans 11:26. That is a future national turning, not a description of the present.

This shapes how I view modern Judaism. The Jewish people are not simply another mission field among many, and they are not a people God has set aside. They remain, as Paul puts it, beloved for the sake of their forefathers.

Why there is no second route

Some Christians, out of sensitivity to that history, have adopted a dual covenant theology in which Jewish people are saved through the Mosaic covenant and Gentiles through Jesus. It is well meant and it will not stand.

Paul, a Jew writing about his own people, says his heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved, Romans 10:1. He would hardly pray that way if a separate arrangement were already in place. Peter told the council in Jerusalem there is no other name.

So while I hold a distinct future for national Israel, I hold one way of salvation for every individual. Modern Judaism and Christianity are not two valid options, and saying so kindly is more respectful than pretending otherwise.

Messianic Jewish believers

It is worth remembering that the first church was entirely Jewish, and that Jewish believers in Jesus have existed in every century since. Today there are Messianic congregations across Israel, Britain and North America.

Their existence quietly answers the objection that a Jew who accepts Jesus stops being Jewish. Paul never stopped identifying as an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, and the apostles kept the festivals for years after Pentecost.

That matters pastorally, because the cost of faith for a Jewish person is often family rupture rather than intellectual difficulty. Anyone who takes that step deserves a church willing to become a second family.

How to have the conversation

Use the Hebrew Scriptures, since they are common ground and since they are where the argument belongs. Genesis 22, Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, Daniel 9 and Zechariah 12 are worth knowing well.

Ask questions rather than making speeches. What does your tradition do with the sacrificial system now, and who is the servant in Isaiah 53, are honest enquiries rather than traps, and they open doors that assertions close.

And be patient with the long shadow of history. A Jewish friend who hears the gospel from someone who has clearly grieved over what was done in the name of Jesus is hearing something different from what his grandparents heard.

A note on the festivals

The calendar is worth knowing, because it is where a Jewish neighbour’s faith becomes visible. Passover in the spring, Pentecost fifty days later, then the autumn cluster of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement and Tabernacles.

Every one of these was given in Leviticus 23 and every one of them is loaded with meaning for a Christian reader. Paul says Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed, the Spirit was given at Pentecost, and the autumn festivals point forward to things not yet fulfilled.

So when a Jewish colleague mentions Yom Kippur, you are not hearing about a foreign custom. You are hearing about a day God appointed, still observed with fasting and prayer, and now observed without the sacrifice that stood at its centre.

So, now what?

Read Romans 9 to 11 as one argument. It is Paul’s fullest treatment of his own people and it will keep you from both arrogance and indifference.

Then learn something accurate about modern Judaism rather than relying on assumptions drawn from the Old Testament. If you have a Jewish colleague, ask what the festivals mean to him and listen properly.

And pray for the peace of Jerusalem, as the psalm instructs, and for the day Paul saw coming. What would it look like for you to be a friend to a Jewish neighbour rather than a project manager?

I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

Romans 11:1, ESV