Judaism · Glossary

Glossary of Judaism's history

The ideas, texts, schools, places, figures and pieces of evidence that recur across the series, each defined in a few sentences. The definitions summarise what the chapters argue; the dates and the evidence behind them are cited in the chapter each entry links to. Hebrew and Aramaic terms are given in a simple transliteration, with common spellings alongside.

A

Abraham Isaac Kook also Rav Kook Person: Rabbi (1865–1935) who arrived in Jaffa in 1904 and became the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine. He taught that the return to the land was the beginning of redemption, the theology of religious Zionism. More in Zionism, the Holocaust and the State of Israel →
Al-Andalus also convivencia, Golden Age of Spain Place: Muslim Spain, conquered from 711, where Jewish courtiers such as Ḥasdai ibn Shaprūṭ and Samuel ha-Nagid served Muslim rulers and Hebrew poetry flourished. Whether it was a golden age of tolerance is debated. More in Under Islam →
Āl-Yāhūdu tablets also Al-Yahudu, Judah-town Evidence: About two hundred cuneiform tablets, dated 572–477 BCE, from villages of deported Judeans in central Babylonia, the best documented called Āl-Yāhūdu, "town of Judah". They show the exiles as farmers with Yahwistic names. More in Exile and the Birth of Monotheism →
Angels also Gabriel, Michael, Watchers Idea: Named, ranked heavenly beings are a Second Temple development of the divine council. Daniel is the first biblical book to name them, Gabriel and Michael; Raphael appears in Tobit and Uriel in 1 Enoch, whose Book of the Watchers blames evil on two hundred fallen angels. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →
Antisemitism Idea: The word entered politics in 1879, when the journalist Wilhelm Marr published The Victory of Judaism over Germandom and founded a League of Antisemites in Berlin. It named a hostility based on "race", which no conversion or assimilation could escape. More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →
Arad shrine Place: A sanctuary of Yahweh inside a Judahite royal fortress in the Negev, excavated by Yohanan Aharoni in 1962–67, with an altar, a raised niche, standing stones and two incense altars: a temple of Yahweh outside Jerusalem. More in Yahweh Among the Gods →
Asherah also Athirat God or figure: The consort of El at Ugarit and mother of the gods; in the Bible both a goddess and a wooden pole or stylised tree set beside an altar. The Bible's condemnations show she was worshipped with Yahweh, and inscriptions of c. 800 BCE at Kuntillet ʿAjrud bless "by Yahweh of Samaria and by his asherah". More in Yahweh Among the Gods → Did God have a wife?
Ashkenazi also Ashkenaz Movement: From Ashkenaz, a biblical name medieval Jews gave to Germany: the Jews of northern Europe and their descendants, with their own scholars, customs and liturgy, who later moved east into Poland–Lithuania. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →

B

Baal also Hadad God or figure: "Lord", the title of Hadad, the storm god of Syria and Canaan. In the Bible he is Yahweh's great rival, from Elijah on Mount Carmel to Jehu's massacre of his worshippers, yet Yahweh is also described in Baal's terms, riding the clouds and defeating the sea. More in Yahweh Among the Gods →
Baal Shem Tov also Besht, Israel ben Eliezer Person: Israel ben Eliezer (died 1760), the Besht, a healer and mystic of Podolia around whom the circle that became Hasidism formed. Tax registers of Międzybóż place him there from 1740; most of his biography is legend. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →
Babylonian exile also exile, captivity Idea: The deportations of Judeans to Babylonia after the Babylonian captures of Jerusalem in 597 and 586 BCE, with a third in 582. In exile, without the Temple, the Sabbath and circumcision became identity markers and explicit monotheism appeared. More in Exile and the Birth of Monotheism →
Bar mitzvah also bat mitzvah Idea: A boy became legally adult at thirteen in Talmudic law, but a public ceremony marking it is attested only from the late Middle Ages in Ashkenaz. The first public bat mitzvah in America was held by Mordecai Kaplan for his daughter Judith in 1922. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Beta Israel also Ethiopian Jews, Falasha Movement: The Jews of Ethiopia, whose religion was based on the Bible in Geʿez, with priests and monks and without the Talmud. Their origins are debated; most came to Israel in the airlifts of 1984–85 and 1991. More in Judaism Today →
Blood libel also ritual murder Idea: The accusation that Jews murdered Christians, especially children, and used their blood in ritual. It begins with Thomas of Monmouth's account of William of Norwich (c. 1150), the first recorded ritual-murder charge, and is one of several new accusations against Jews in twelfth-century Latin Europe. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →

C

Cairo Geniza also geniza, genizah Place: The storeroom of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo, where for about nine centuries Jews deposited worn-out writings rather than destroy them. Some 193,000 fragments are at Cambridge, and they document everyday Jewish life in the medieval Islamic world. More in Under Islam →
Centralisation of worship Idea: Deuteronomy 12's demand that sacrifice be offered only "at the place that Yahweh your God will choose". No other book of the Torah makes it, and it is exactly what Josiah enforced in 622 BCE, one reason scholars identify his book of the law with Deuteronomy. More in The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement →
Chabad also Lubavitch, Chabad-Lubavitch Movement: The Hasidic movement founded by Shneur Zalman of Liadi, led from 1951 by Menachem Mendel Schneerson from Brooklyn, who turned it into a worldwide outreach movement of emissaries. Many followers came to believe he was the Messiah. More in Judaism Today →
Circumcision Idea: Widely practised in the Levant and Egypt and so not distinctive at home, it marked Judeans off from their neighbours in Babylonia, where it was not practised. The Priestly writer makes it the sign of the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17). More in Exile and the Birth of Monotheism →
Conservative Judaism also Masorti, Positive-Historical Movement: The middle movement, rooted in Zacharias Frankel's Breslau seminary and historical scholarship, which treats Jewish law as binding but historically developing. In America it took shape around the Jewish Theological Seminary under Solomon Schechter; outside the US it is called Masorti. More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →
Conversos also New Christians, Marranos Movement: Jews who converted to Christianity in Spain, above all after the riots of 1391, and their descendants. Whether many were secret Jews, as the Inquisition charged, is debated by historians. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Covenant Idea: The binding agreement between Israel and Yahweh. Deuteronomy frames it in the form of an Assyrian loyalty oath, demanding exclusive loyalty as Esarhaddon's succession treaty of 672 BCE demanded it for his heir; in the exile the Sabbath and circumcision became its signs. More in The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement →
Cyrus Person: The Persian king who took Babylon in October 539 BCE. He presented himself as Marduk's restorer, while Second Isaiah called him Yahweh's anointed; Ezra credits him with a decree allowing the Temple to be rebuilt. More in Exile and the Birth of Monotheism →
Cyrus Cylinder Evidence: A clay cylinder in which Cyrus, after taking Babylon in 539 BCE, presents himself as chosen by Marduk and records returning gods and peoples to their homes. It does not mention the Judeans; whether it reflects a general policy is debated. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah →

D

Dead Sea Scrolls also Qumran scrolls Text: Some 900 manuscripts recovered between 1947 and 1956 from eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran, dated c. 250 BCE to 68 CE. About a quarter are copies of biblical books, every book except Esther; the rest include rules, hymns and commentaries of a sectarian community. More in How We Know → What is the oldest copy of the Bible?
Deuteronomistic History Text: Martin Noth's name (1943) for Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, read as one history judging Israel by a single test: whether it worshipped Yahweh alone at his chosen place. Frank Moore Cross argued for a first edition under Josiah and a second after 586. More in The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement →
Deuteronomy Text: The fifth book of the Torah. Since Wilhelm de Wette (1805) most scholars have identified an early form of it with the "book of the law" found in the Temple under Josiah in 622 BCE, chiefly because of its demand to centralise sacrifice. More in The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement →
Devequt also devekut Idea: "Cleaving" to God, the goal of prayer in the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov as his disciples recorded it. With the conviction that no place is empty of God, it let early Hasidism find holiness in ordinary acts, not only in study and ritual. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →
Dhimmī also dhimmi, People of the Book, Pact of Umar Idea: Under Islamic law, a protected non-Muslim subject: Jews and Christians as "People of the Book" could practise their religion and run their own courts in exchange for a poll tax and accepting restrictions, set out in later texts such as the Pact of Umar. More in Under Islam →
Diaspora also dispersion Idea: Jewish life outside the Land of Israel. Under the Ptolemies a large community grew in Alexandria, and by the first century CE there were Jewish communities from Babylonia to Rome, probably outnumbering those in Judea. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →
Divine council also sons of God, assembly of El Idea: The assembly of the gods under the high god, known from Ugarit and still visible in the Bible. In Psalm 82 God stands in the council of El, and the older reading of Deuteronomy 32:8–9, preserved at Qumran and in the Septuagint, has the Most High dividing the nations among the "sons of God". In the Second Temple period the council became an army of named angels. More in Yahweh Among the Gods →
Documentary Hypothesis also JEDP, source criticism Idea: Julius Wellhausen's classic theory (1878) that the Torah was woven from four documents, J, E, D and P. Its exact form is now contested, but most scholars agree the Torah is composite, that D is linked to the seventh century and P to the exile or after. More in How We Know → Who wrote the Torah?
Dönme Movement: "Converts": two to three hundred Sabbatean families of Salonica who followed Sabbatai Zevi into Islam in 1683 and kept their own rites behind an outwardly Muslim life until the twentieth century. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →

E

El also Elyon, El Shaddai God or figure: The high god of the Canaanite world, whose name is built into Israel's own (Yiśrāʾēl). The tablets of Ugarit describe him as the aged father of the gods presiding over their assembly, with Athirat (Asherah) as his consort; in Israel his titles and roles passed to Yahweh. More in Yahweh Among the Gods →
Elephantine Place: An island at Egypt's southern border where a Judean garrison of the fifth century BCE had a temple of YHW, funded other gods alongside him, and received instructions for the festival of unleavened bread in 419 BCE: a Judaism with no sign of the Torah. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah →
Elohim Idea: A Hebrew word for God, plural in form. The alternation between the names Elohim and YHWH in Genesis was one of the first clues that the Torah combines older sources: the Elohist source of the Documentary Hypothesis is named for using Elohim until Exodus 3. More in How We Know →
Emancipation Idea: The grant of equal civil rights to Jews, first by France in 1790–91. It was conditional from the start: Clermont-Tonnerre's formula of 1789 offered Jews everything as individuals and nothing as a nation, and Dohm's case for it in 1781 promised their "improvement". More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →
Essenes Movement: A disciplined Jewish movement described by Philo, Josephus and Pliny: communal property, probation for members, ritual baths and strict purity, more than four thousand strong. Pliny places a celibate community by the Dead Sea, and most scholars link them with Qumran and the Scrolls. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →
Ezra Person: A priest and "scribe skilled in the law of Moses" who, in the biblical account, came from Babylon to teach the law, read the Torah aloud to the people and demanded the dismissal of foreign wives. His date and historicity are debated. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah →

F

Frankists Movement: Followers of Jacob Frank (born 1726), the last wave of Sabbateanism, in Podolia. Condemned by a rabbinical court, they turned to the Catholic bishop as "anti-Talmudists", and in 1759 many were baptised. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →

G

Geonim also gaon Movement: The heads of the Babylonian academies of Sura and Pumbedita, conventionally from 589 to 1038. Through answers to questions from distant communities they made the Babylonian Talmud the recognised law of Jews from Spain to Yemen. More in Under Islam →
Ghetto Place: A compulsory Jewish quarter, named after the one created in Venice in 1516. Printing in the same century spread a shared library of Talmud, commentaries and codes from Amsterdam to Kraków. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Guide of the Perplexed Text: Maimonides' philosophical work (c. 1185–1190), in Arabic, for readers torn between the Torah and Aristotle. It reads the Bible's bodily descriptions of God as metaphors, holds that God can be described only by what he is not, and gives reasons for the commandments. More in Under Islam →

H

Halakhah also Jewish law, halacha Idea: Jewish law, as developed by the rabbis from the Torah. The modern movements differ mainly over how binding it is and how it may change: Orthodoxy holds it divinely given and binding, changing only by traditional legal reasoning. More in Judaism Today →
Hanukkah also Chanukah, Maccabean revolt Idea: The eight-day festival commemorating Judah Maccabee's rededication of the Temple on 25 Kislev 164 BCE after Antiochus IV's ban. The miracle of the oil first appears in the Babylonian Talmud, centuries later. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects → When did Hanukkah start, and is the oil miracle historical?
Haredi also ultra-Orthodox, Haredim Movement: Ultra-Orthodox Jews, divided into Hasidic groups loyal to dynastic rebbes and "Lithuanian" groups centred on yeshivot. In Israel they were about one in seven of the population by the mid-2020s and the fastest-growing group. More in Judaism Today →
Hasidism also Hasidim, Chassidism Movement: The movement that grew from the circle of the Baal Shem Tov in eighteenth-century Podolia. It was built into an organised movement with its own leaders and prayer houses by the next generation, above all the students of Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →
Haskalah also Jewish Enlightenment, maskilim Movement: The Jewish Enlightenment, associated with Moses Mendelssohn's Berlin and with writers who promoted Hebrew, secular learning and German among Jews. How far Mendelssohn was its father is debated. More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →
Hasmoneans also Maccabees Movement: The family of the Maccabees, who after the revolt became high priests and, from about 104 BCE, kings. Under John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannaeus the Hasmonean state conquered Samaria, Galilee and Idumea, and Hyrcanus destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →
Hebrew Bible also Tanakh, canon, Old Testament Text: The Jewish scriptures in three parts, Torah, Prophets and Writings (Tanakh). Ben Sira's grandson already knew a three-part collection soon after 132 BCE, but when the list was fixed is later and vaguer than most people assume. More in How We Know →

I

Isaac Luria also the Ari Person: The Ari (1534–1572), who taught kabbalah in Safed for about two years. His teachings, recorded by Ḥayyim Vital, retell creation as a cosmic drama of withdrawal, shattering and repair (tikkun). More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →

J

Jesus movement Movement: The followers of Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean Jew crucified around 30 CE, who were at first one more Jewish group, distinguished by their belief that he was the Messiah and had risen from the dead. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →
Jew also Yehudi, Judean Idea: From Hebrew Yehudi, originally a person of the kingdom of Judah. In the Persian period, with Judah a province and Judahites living in Babylonia, Egypt and Persia, it became the name of a people defined by descent wherever they lived. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah →
Joseph Karo also Caro Person: A rabbi of Safed (1488–1575), born around the time of the Spanish expulsion, who wrote the Shulḥan ʿArukh, printed in 1565, the standard code of Jewish law. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Josiah Person: King of Judah from 640 BCE. In 622, according to 2 Kings 22–23, a book of the law was found in the Temple and he centralised worship in Jerusalem and destroyed rival cults; how far the reform reached is debated. More in The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement →

K

Kabbalah also Cabbala, Jewish mysticism Idea: "Received tradition", the system of Jewish mysticism that emerges in Provence and Catalonia in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Its central doctrine is the ten sefirot, through which the hidden God becomes manifest; commandments performed with the right intention affect the state of the world. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Karaites also Qaraites, Anan ben David Movement: Jews who hold the Hebrew Bible to be the only authority and reject the Oral Torah of the rabbis. They traced their origin to Anan ben David in eighth-century Baghdad; historians think several anti-rabbinic groups merged into the movement in the ninth century. More in Under Islam →
Kehillah also kahal, herem Idea: The self-governing Jewish community before emancipation, which collected taxes, ran courts by Jewish law, supported its poor and schools, and could enforce conformity with fines and the ban of excommunication (ḥerem). More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →
Ketef Hinnom amulets Evidence: Two tiny silver amulets found in a Jerusalem burial cave in 1979, c. 600 BCE, carrying a version of the priestly blessing of Numbers 6: the oldest text paralleling a biblical verse. More in How We Know →
Kuntillet ʿAjrud also Kuntillet Ajrud Evidence: A site in Sinai of c. 800 BCE, excavated in 1975–76, whose storage jars bless "by Yahweh of Samaria and by his asherah" and "by Yahweh of Teman and by his asherah". More in Yahweh Among the Gods →

L

Law of Return also aliyah, oleh Text: Israel's law of 1950 giving every Jew the right to immigrate as an oleh. Its 1970 amendment defines a Jew as one born of a Jewish mother or converted who is not a member of another religion, and extends the right to children, grandchildren and their spouses. More in Judaism Today →

M

Maimonides also Rambam Person: Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), born in Córdoba, physician and head of Egyptian Jewry, author of the Commentary on the Mishnah with its Thirteen Principles, the Mishneh Torah and the Guide of the Perplexed. More in Under Islam →
Masoretes Movement: "Transmitters": scholars in Tiberias who between the seventh and tenth centuries devised vowel points and cantillation marks to fix the reading of the Hebrew Bible. Their Ben Asher family produced the Aleppo Codex. More in Under Islam →
Masoretic text also Aleppo Codex, Leningrad Codex Text: The standard Hebrew Bible, the work of the Masoretes of Tiberias, who between about the seventh and tenth centuries added vowels, accents and notes to a consonantal text fixed centuries earlier. Its best witnesses are the Aleppo Codex (c. 930) and the Leningrad Codex (1008). More in How We Know →
Matrilineal descent also who is a Jew Idea: The rule that Jewish status passes through the mother. In the Bible descent runs through the father; the rule appears first in the Mishnah, and Shaye Cohen argues it was a rabbinic innovation. American Reform Judaism accepted descent through either parent in 1983. More in Without a Temple: The Rabbis → Why is Jewish identity passed through the mother?
Merneptah Stele Evidence: A granite stele of Pharaoh Merneptah, c. 1208 BCE, with the earliest mention of Israel anywhere: "Israel is laid waste, his seed is not". The sign attached to the name marks a people, not a land. More in Out of Canaan →
Mesha Stele Evidence: King Mesha of Moab's basalt inscription of c. 840 BCE, found at Dhiban in 1868. It names Omri, king of Israel, and records taking "the vessels of YHWH" from Nebo to Chemosh: the earliest certain mention of Yahweh. More in How We Know →
Messiah also mashiach, anointed Idea: Hebrew māšîaḥ, "anointed": in the Hebrew Bible a title of the reigning king, the high priest and once of Cyrus. An expected end-time Messiah of David's line appears clearly in the first century BCE, in the Psalms of Solomon and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which expect two. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →
Mishnah also Judah ha-Nasi Text: The law code produced around 200 CE in Galilee by the circle of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch: Hebrew, in six orders and sixty-three tractates. Much of it describes Temple sacrifice and purity rules that no longer existed. More in Without a Temple: The Rabbis → What is the Talmud, and when was it written?
Mishneh Torah Text: Maimonides' code of all Jewish law in fourteen books (c. 1170–1180), in Hebrew, giving rulings without the Talmud's arguments or dissents. He meant it to make the Talmud unnecessary for practical purposes, which provoked opposition. More in Under Islam →
Mitnagdim also mitnaggedim, Lithuanian Movement: "Opponents" of Hasidism, led from 1772 by the communal leaders of Vilna with the support of the Vilna Gaon. They objected to the Hasidim's late, ecstatic prayer, their separate prayer rooms and their own ritual slaughterers. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →
Mizrahi also Mizrahim, Shas Movement: Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, most of whom came to Israel in the 1950s. The Shas party, founded in 1984 with Ovadia Yosef as its spiritual leader, made religion the vehicle of Mizrahi pride. More in Judaism Today →
Monolatry also Yahweh alone Idea: Worship of one god while accepting that other gods exist. Hosea and Deuteronomy demand it: Israel must worship Yahweh alone. In its seventh-century setting the Shema probably meant that Israel's god was Yahweh alone, not that no other god existed. More in The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement → When did Judaism become monotheistic?
Monotheism Idea: The belief that no other god exists. Historians distinguish it from polytheism with a chief god and from monolatry, the worship of one god among many. Its first clear statements in the Bible come in the exile, in Second Isaiah's "I am Yahweh, and there is no other" and Deuteronomy 4. More in Exile and the Birth of Monotheism → When did Judaism become monotheistic?
Moses de León Person: A Castilian kabbalist (c. 1240–1305) who circulated parts of the Zohar in the 1280s and 1290s. Gershom Scholem concluded that he wrote it; traditional readers regard it as the teaching of Shimon bar Yoḥai. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Moses Mendelssohn Person: A Berlin philosopher (1729–1786), famous across Europe as "the German Socrates". He translated the Torah into German in Hebrew letters and in Jerusalem (1783) argued that Judaism is revealed law, not compulsory doctrine, while remaining fully observant. More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →
Mount Gerizim also Gerizim Place: The Samaritans' holy mountain above Shechem, where a temple of Yahweh stood by the mid-fifth century BCE until John Hyrcanus destroyed it around 112–110 BCE. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah →

N

Nakba also 1948 Idea: Arabic for "catastrophe", the Palestinian name for the events of 1948, when about 700,000 Arabs left or were driven from their homes and hundreds of villages were depopulated. The same war is remembered by Israelis as the War of Independence; the chapter states both narratives. More in Zionism, the Holocaust and the State of Israel →

O

Oral Torah also Torah she-be-al-peh Idea: The rabbinic belief that God gave Moses two Torahs at Sinai, the written one and an oral one that explains it, handed down in a chain of teachers set out at the start of tractate Avot. Historians read the chain as a claim of authority for rules developed over centuries; it continues the Pharisees' "traditions of the fathers". More in Without a Temple: The Rabbis →
Orthodox Judaism also Orthodoxy, Modern Orthodoxy, neo-Orthodoxy Movement: Jews who regard their Judaism as the tradition itself, continuous with Sinai. As an organised movement with a name and institutions it took shape in answer to Reform, along two lines: the Hatam Sofer's resistance and Samson Raphael Hirsch's Torah with worldly culture. More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →

P

Pale of Settlement also the Pale Place: The western provinces of the Russian Empire to which its Jews, most of them acquired with Poland in 1772–95, were confined. Pogroms after 1881 and the May Laws of 1882 drove a great migration west. More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →
Passover also Pesach Idea: The spring festival of unleavened bread. A letter of 419 BCE to the Judean garrison at Elephantine gives instructions for keeping it, though the word Passover itself is not preserved in the damaged text. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah →
Pharisees Movement: One of the three Jewish "philosophies" Josephus describes. They taught observances handed down from the fathers that were not written in the laws of Moses, believed in reward and punishment after death, and were influential with the people; the rabbis regarded them as predecessors. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →
Pittsburgh Platform Text: The 1885 declaration of American Reform rabbis that treated only the moral law as binding, rejected laws of diet and dress as foreign to modern life, and declared that Jews were "no longer a nation, but a religious community". More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →
Pork avoidance also kashrut, dietary laws Idea: The absence of pig bones from Iron Age highland villages, against their presence in Philistine sites, has been read as an early ethnic marker of Israel. Whether it reflects identity, diet or environment is debated, and it is one strand of the later dietary laws. More in Out of Canaan →
Prayer instead of sacrifice Idea: The rabbis' answer to the loss of the Temple in 70 CE: prayer and good deeds atone. In Avot de-Rabbi Natan, Yohanan ben Zakkai consoles a disciple at the ruins: "We have another atonement as effective as this", acts of loving-kindness. More in Without a Temple: The Rabbis →

Q

Queen of Heaven God or figure: A goddess to whom, according to Jeremiah 44, the women and men of Judah baked cakes and burned incense. Refugees in Egypt told Jeremiah that all had gone well while they worshipped her and badly since they stopped: evidence that the Yahweh-alone programme was not yet the religion of most Judahites. More in The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement →
Qumran also Khirbet Qumran Place: A ruin on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea near the eleven caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Most scholars link the settlement and the sectarian scrolls with the Essenes; the identification is debated. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →

R

Rabbis also sages, rabbinic Judaism Movement: The sages whose teaching shaped Judaism after 70 CE, in the Mishnah, the Talmuds and midrash. Their own founding legend puts their beginning at Yavneh with Yohanan ben Zakkai; historians see their authority growing slowly over centuries. More in Without a Temple: The Rabbis →
Rashi Person: Rabbi Shlomo Yitzḥaki (1040–1105) of Troyes, whose running commentaries on almost the whole Hebrew Bible and most of the Babylonian Talmud explain the plain sense briefly and in order. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Reconstructionist Judaism also Reconstructionism Movement: The movement founded on Mordecai Kaplan's idea of Judaism as the "evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people" rather than revealed law. Kaplan held the first public bat mitzvah in America for his daughter in 1922. More in Judaism Today →
Reform Judaism also Liberal Judaism, Progressive Judaism Movement: The movement that began with worship: Seesen (1810), Berlin and the Hamburg Temple (1817–19), with German prayers and an organ, and went on to change doctrine, treating ritual as adaptable and the moral law as binding. More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →
Regina Jonas Person: The first woman ordained a rabbi, privately in Offenbach in 1935, after the Berlin Hochschule refused to ordain her. She was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944. More in Judaism Today →
Religious Zionism also Mizrachi, national religious Movement: The current that joined Zionism and gave it a religious meaning, organised in Mizrachi from 1902. Its distinctive theology came from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who taught that the return to the land was the beginning of redemption and that secular pioneers were doing holy work without knowing it. More in Zionism, the Holocaust and the State of Israel →
Resurrection also Sheol Idea: For most of the Hebrew Bible the dead go down to Sheol, with no judgment and no return. The first unambiguous promise of individual resurrection is in Daniel 12, written during Antiochus IV's persecution c. 167–164 BCE; later the Pharisees affirmed it and the Sadducees denied it. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects → Where did the idea of resurrection come from?

S

Saadia Gaon Person: Saadia ben Joseph (882 or 892–942), born in Egypt and appointed gaon of Sura in 928, the first foreigner to hold the post. He translated the Torah into Arabic, wrote the first systematic Jewish theology and fought the Karaites. More in Under Islam →
Sabbatai Zevi also Shabbetai Tzvi Person: A rabbi of Smyrna (1626–1676) proclaimed Messiah in 1665, who drew followers across the Jewish world and then, in September 1666, converted to Islam before the sultan's court. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →
Sabbateans Movement: Believers in Sabbatai Zevi, the messiah of 1665–66. After his conversion to Islam their belief survived as a secret current inside rabbinic Judaism for a century, and accusations of Sabbateanism became a weapon in rabbinic politics. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →
Sabbath also Shabbat Idea: The weekly day of rest. It is older than the exile, mentioned by Amos and Hosea, but in exilic and later texts it becomes a sign of the covenant itself, rooted by the Priestly writer in God's rest on the seventh day of creation. More in Exile and the Birth of Monotheism →
Sadducees Movement: The school associated with the priestly aristocracy, which accepted only the written law and denied fate, the survival of the soul and resurrection. All descriptions come from their opponents, and they disappear after the Temple fell. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →
Safed also Tzfat Place: A small Galilean town that in the sixteenth century, under Ottoman rule and with many exiles from Spain and Portugal, became the centre of Jewish learning: the home of Joseph Karo's code and Isaac Luria's kabbalah. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Samaritan Pentateuch Text: The Samaritans' own Hebrew text of the five books, in an old script. It differs from the Masoretic text in about six thousand places, mostly minor, including deliberate changes favouring Mount Gerizim. More in How We Know →
Samaritans also Shamerim Movement: Worshippers of Yahweh at Mount Gerizim who accept only the Torah. The Judean account in 2 Kings 17 makes them foreign settlers; their own tradition says they descend from the northern tribes and that the split came with Eli's shrine at Shiloh. Fewer than a thousand remain today. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah → Are Samaritans Jews?
Satan also the satan, the accuser God or figure: From Hebrew śāṭān, "adversary" or "accuser". In Job and Zechariah "the accuser" is a member of God's council acting with his permission; in Chronicles, probably of the fourth century BCE, Satan becomes a proper name, and an act an earlier writer had attributed to God is moved to him. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects → Where did Satan come from?
Second Isaiah also Deutero-Isaiah Text: Isaiah 40–55, attributed by critical scholars to an anonymous prophet of the exile active c. 550–539 BCE, who names Cyrus as Yahweh's anointed. It contains the first explicit monotheism in the Bible; Jewish tradition reads the book of Isaiah as one prophetic book. More in Exile and the Birth of Monotheism →
Second Temple also Herod's Temple, Temple Mount, Western Wall Place: The Temple in Jerusalem rebuilt after the exile and, according to Ezra 6:15, finished about 515 BCE. Herod rebuilt it on a vast new platform from c. 20/19 BCE, and the Romans destroyed it in 70 CE. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah →
Sefirot also Ein Sof, sephirot Idea: In kabbalah, the ten emanations or aspects of God through which the hidden, infinite God, ʾEin Sôf ("without end"), becomes manifest and governs the world. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Sephardi also Sepharad, Sephardic Movement: From Sepharad, a biblical place-name applied to Spain: the Jews of the Iberian peninsula, shaped by three centuries under Muslim rule, and after the expulsion of 1492 their descendants around the Mediterranean. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Septuagint also LXX Text: The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, begun with the Torah in Alexandria in the third century BCE. The Letter of Aristeas' legend of seventy-two elders gave it its name; in places it translates a Hebrew text different from the Masoretic one. More in How We Know →
Shema Text: Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel", later the central declaration of Jewish prayer. It can be read "Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one" or "Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone"; later tradition read it as a statement of the unity and uniqueness of God. More in The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement →
Shulḥan ʿArukh also Shulchan Aruch, Mappah, Isserles Text: "The set table", Joseph Karo's code of Jewish law, printed in Venice in 1565. Moses Isserles's glosses added Ashkenazi practice, and together they became the standard code of later Judaism. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Status quo Idea: The arrangement promised in Ben-Gurion's letter to Agudath Israel of 19 June 1947: the Sabbath as the official day of rest, kosher state kitchens, marriage and divorce left to religious courts, and autonomy for religious schools. It set the religious shape of the State of Israel. More in Zionism, the Holocaust and the State of Israel →
Synagogue also proseuche, prayer house Place: The Jewish house of assembly and prayer. Its earliest secure evidence is from Ptolemaic Egypt in the third century BCE, as "prayer houses"; it existed in Judea before 70 CE and afterwards became the centre of Jewish life. More in Hellenism, the Maccabees and the Second Temple Sects →

T

Talmud also Bavli, Yerushalmi, gemara, Babylonian Talmud, Jerusalem Talmud Text: The Mishnah with the rabbis' discussion of it (gemara), in two works: the Jerusalem Talmud, completed in Galilee c. 400, and the much larger Babylonian Talmud, whose anonymous editing ran to c. 500–700. The Babylonian became the Talmud of later Judaism. More in Without a Temple: The Rabbis → What is the Talmud, and when was it written?
Tanya also Likkutei Amarim Text: Shneur Zalman of Liadi's Likkutei Amarim (1796–97), known by its first word: the founding text of Chabad and the most systematic work of early Hasidic thought. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →
Tel Dan Stele also House of David Evidence: Fragments of an Aramaic victory stele found in 1993–94, probably of Hazael of Damascus, claiming to have killed a king of Israel and a king of "the House of David": the only certain mention of David outside the Bible. More in Yahweh Among the Gods → Were King David and Solomon real?
Tetragrammaton also YHWH, Adonai, HaShem, Jehovah, divine name Idea: The four consonants of God's personal name, YHWH. By the late Second Temple period it was spoken only in the Temple; in reading Jews said Adonai, "my Lord", and its original vowels were never written down, so "Yahweh" is a scholarly reconstruction. "Jehovah" comes from reading the vowels of Adonai with the consonants of YHWH. More in How We Know →
Theodor Herzl Person: A Viennese journalist who in Der Judenstaat (1896) argued that the Jewish question was national, and in 1897 convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel. His envisioned state was not religious. More in Zionism, the Holocaust and the State of Israel →
Thirteen Principles also Ani Maamin, Yigdal Idea: Maimonides' list, in his Commentary on the Mishnah (c. 1168), of beliefs every Jew must hold, from God's existence and unity to the coming of the Messiah and resurrection. It was the first rabbinic attempt at a binding Jewish creed, and it provoked dispute. More in Under Islam →
Three Oaths Text: A non-legal Talmudic reading (Ketubot 110b–111a) of a refrain in the Song of Songs: Israel is not to go up to the land "as a wall" or rebel against the nations, and the nations are not to oppress Israel too much. Most Orthodox rabbis of the first Zionist generation held that Zionism broke these oaths by forcing the end of exile. More in Zionism, the Holocaust and the State of Israel →
Tikkun also tiqqun, tzimtzum, shattering of the vessels Idea: "Repair". In Isaac Luria's kabbalah, God withdraws to make room for the world, the vessels of divine light shatter and sparks are trapped in matter; Jews performing the commandments with mystical intention raise the sparks, and when the repair is complete the Messiah will come. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Torah also Pentateuch, Five Books of Moses Text: "Teaching", the five books from Genesis to Deuteronomy. Every critical model of its composition ends in the Persian period, when Deuteronomic law, Priestly writing and older narratives were combined into the five books; tradition holds it was given to Moses. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah → Who wrote the Torah?
Tosafists also Tosafot Movement: From tosafot, "additions": Rashi's grandsons Rashbam and Rabbenu Tam and their students over the next two centuries in France and Germany. They compared passages across the whole Talmud, found contradictions and resolved them with fine distinctions. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →
Tsaddik also rebbe, zaddik Idea: "Righteous one", also rebbe: the leader at the centre of a Hasidic court. Elimelekh of Lizhensk's Noʿam Elimelekh (1788) presents him as a channel between heaven and earth, raising his followers' prayers and drawing down children, life and livelihood in return for their devotion and gifts. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →

V

Vilna Gaon also Elijah of Vilna, the Gra Person: Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the Gaon ("genius") of Vilna, with whose support the communal leaders of Vilna excommunicated the Hasidim in 1772. More in False Messiahs, Hasidism and Their Opponents →

W

Wissenschaft des Judentums also science of Judaism Movement: The "science of Judaism", begun by Leopold Zunz's essay of 1818 and a Berlin society of 1819: the study of Jewish texts with the historical and philological methods used for Greek and Latin ones. It produced the first critical Jewish histories and fed the movement that became Conservative Judaism. More in Emancipation and the Modern Movements →

Y

Yahweh also YHWH, Yahu, YHW God or figure: The god of Israel and Judah, written YHWH. Several poems most scholars count among the oldest in the Bible have him march out of the south, from Seir, Edom, Teman and Mount Paran, which is why many historians think his worship came into Israel from the southern desert. More in Yahweh Among the Gods → Where did Yahweh come from?
Yahweh-alone movement also Yahweh-alone party, prophetic minority Movement: Morton Smith's name (1971) for a minority of prophets, priests and laymen who insisted on the exclusive worship of Yahweh against a majority who worshipped him alongside other gods. Bernhard Lang developed it as the "prophetic minority" whose writings became the Bible. More in The Prophets and the Yahweh-Alone Movement →
Yavneh also Jamnia Place: A town near the coast where, in the rabbis' founding legend, Yohanan ben Zakkai reconstituted Judaism after 70 CE. The "council of Jamnia" that supposedly closed the canon there is a nineteenth-century scholarly construction. More in Without a Temple: The Rabbis →
Yehud also Yehud Medinata Place: The small Persian province around Jerusalem, in the satrapy "Beyond the River", known from seal impressions stamped yhd, coins and the Elephantine papyri. It stretched from around Bethel to just south of Bethlehem. More in Persian Yehud and the Making of the Torah →
Yohanan ben Zakkai Person: The sage who, in the rabbis' founding legend, escaped the siege of Jerusalem in a coffin and asked Vespasian for "Yavneh and its sages". He is also remembered for teaching that loving-kindness atones as sacrifice did. More in Without a Temple: The Rabbis →

Z

Zionism Movement: The movement to establish a Jewish national home in the Land of Israel. Political Zionism took shape with Herzl's Der Judenstaat (1896) and the Basel Congress of 1897, which sought "a home in Palestine for the Jewish people, secured under public law"; Herzl's vision was not religious. More in Zionism, the Holocaust and the State of Israel →
Zohar Text: "Radiance", the classic text of kabbalah: a commentary on the Torah in artificial Aramaic, presented as the teaching of the second-century sage Shimon bar Yoḥai. Gershom Scholem attributed it to Moses de León, who circulated it in Castile in the 1280s and 1290s; traditional circles treat it as ancient and sacred. More in Ashkenaz, Sepharad and the Kabbalah →