Chapter 1

What Jews Generally Believe

IN THIS CHAPTER

Exploring the difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews

Discovering the many names of God

Looking at the Torah and the Talmud

Exploring the worlds of the Kabbalah

Pondering Jewish ethics

In this chapter, you find out why you can never be sure someone is Jewish (or not) just by how they look. Plus, you get the skinny on all the details about being Jewish, like is it a race or a tribe? Is it a religion or a practice? Do you have to believe in God? And what's all this about meditation and the kabbalah? That stuff isn't Jewish, is it?

Recognizing Who's a Jew and Why

Judaism isn't a race or even a particular culture or ethnic group. A little more than 15 million Jews are spread around the world, including about 6 million in the United States and about 5 million in Israel - so Judaism obviously isn't "a nation."

So what does it mean to be Jewish? Here are the basics:

• Being Jewish (being "a Jew") means you're a Member of the Tribe (an M-O-T). The tribe started with a couple named Abraham and Sarah more than 4,000 years ago, it grew over time, and it's still here today. (For more on Jewish history, see Chapter 3.)
• Judaism is a set of beliefs, practices, and ethics based on the Torah (see Book 2). You can practice Judaism and not be Jewish, and you can be a Jew and not practice Judaism.

Jews far and wide

The Jewish people have always tended to fan out across the known world. Evidence indicates that even centuries before Jesus, Jewish communities inhabited the North African and East African coasts, Europe, and Asia. Jews were among the first people to come to the Americas from Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. Some evidence suggests that at least one Jew was aboard the ship with Columbus.

Everywhere the Jews went, their population grew through intermarriage and conversion, and - most importantly - they kept their basic religion while adopting the culture and norms of the local area. That's why up to 20 percent of Jews descended from European ancestors have blue eyes, and why some Jews are Black, Hispanic, or Asian. It's also why a Jew from New York looks and acts different than a Jew from Bombay.

Similarly, Jewish food, music, and humor from Iraq and Yemen are much more Arabic in nature than the Spanish flavor of Jews from Brazil and Argentina, which is different than the borscht soup and klezmer music of Jews from Europe. They even all speak Hebrew with different dialects! Jews just don't fit any consistent set of stereotypes or expectations.

And yet, all Jews are inextricably linked together simply by being Jewish. Perhaps it's a common practice and belief in Judaism. Perhaps it's a common sense of history or a shared sense of being an outsider from the broader culture. Or perhaps it's a deep, innate feeling of connection to the tribe.

Who decides if you're Jewish?

Two years after the new government of Israel came to power in 1948, it passed the Law of Return, which states that anyone born of a Jewish mother or anyone who has converted to Judaism can move to Israel and claim citizenship. This immediately reignited a controversy that began much earlier and continues to this day: Who gets to say whether or not someone is really Jewish?

Whether someone practiced Judaism wasn't an issue for citizenship, because Israel was founded for the most part by secular Jews. But what about people born Jewish who had been raised as Christians or Muslims or who practiced another religion? Some say you have to not only identify yourself as Jewish, but also not practice any other religion. Others say that religion has nothing to do with it and point out that the Nazis killed thousands of people who were Jewish by birth but practiced some other religion. Each year, Israeli courts consider cases arguing over whether someone is or is not Jewish.

And what about people who convert? Technically, someone who converts to Judaism is no different from someone who was born Jewish. However, not everyone sees it that way. Various denominations of Judaism, including the Orthodox Jews, refuse to acknowledge the conversion of anyone converted by a Reform or Conservative rabbi.

Many people say, "I'm half Jewish" (if one parent is Jewish) or "I'm a quarter-Jewish" (if one grandparent is Jewish). Traditional Jews argue that either you're Jewish or you're not. To them, if your mother's mother was Jewish, then your mother is Jewish, and if your mother is Jewish, then you're Jewish. Among Reform and Reconstructionist Jews, if only your father is Jewish and you were raised Jewish, then you're considered Jewish, too.

After all, it's a small world

Jews have long spread out to the corners of the world, so significant Jewish communities (more than 100,000 people) live in France, Australia, Argentina, and South Africa. In fact, more Jewish people live outside of Israel than within today - it has been this way for more than 2,500 years. And no matter where they live, most Jews today identify with one of two groups:

• Ashkenazi: The descendants of Jews who, until around 1900, lived anywhere from northwest Europe (like France and Germany) to eastern Europe (including Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania) are usually called Ashkenazi (Ashkenazim is plural). The majority of Jews in the world are Ashkenazi.
• Sephardi: The descendants of Jews who lived in Spain up until the 15th century are called Sephardi (Sephardim is plural). After the expulsion (see Chapter 3), these Jews traveled to North Africa, Italy, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), and back to the Middle East. Of course, many Jews started out in those areas (never having traveled as far as Spain to begin with), but they're generally called Sephardi anyway. You also hear Jews from the Middle East called Mizrachi ("from the East"; remember that Hebrew has no "ch" sound, so this is the guttural "kh" sound).

Over the past 500 years, the Sephardim primarily interacted with Muslims, especially African and Arab Muslims. Today, much of their culture (music, language, liturgical melodies, food, festival customs, and so on) is based on those cultures. The Ashkenazim, on the other hand, mostly interacted with European Christian cultures, resulting in a very different ethnic feeling.

Although Israel was founded primarily by Ashkenazi Jews, more than half of Israelis have always been Sephardim. However, the very different cultures have caused a number of difficulties. Many Ashkenazi Jews mistrust Sephardi Jews and think they've "ruined" Israel, and vice versa. Fortunately, as time goes by, things seem to be getting better.

Major branches of the tree

Although Judaism is a set of beliefs and practices, it encompasses a lot of different sets of beliefs and practices. In some ways, you can see Judaism as a tree with many branches; there's a common trunk and root system, but each sect or denomination is off on its own branch, and in many cases, each synagogue is on its own little twig.

Most Jews see the biggest branches of the tree as Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Non-Religious - plus, they might add a few others, like Ultra-Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Renewal, and Humanistic. On the other hand, some traditional Orthodox Jews see it differently: To them, Orthodoxy is the whole tree, and what everyone else is doing is something else - maybe a whole other tree, but certainly not practicing Judaism.

The basic difference between the groups is that while the Orthodox believe that the Torah (both written and oral; see Book 2) was literally given by God to Moses, word for word, more liberal Jews tend to believe that the Torah and halakhah (Jewish law) may have been Divinely inspired, but were expressed by humans influenced by their own time and place.

Orthodox Jews

When you hear the term "Orthodox Jew," you probably think of a man in a long black coat, with long locks of hair over his sideburns, a big beard, and a black hat. But in reality, there are dozens of different styles within Jewish Orthodoxy, each of them with a different culture, educational philosophy, leadership model, and set of policies. True, many of them do, in fact, wear black hats and coats, but many others - typically called Modern Orthodox Jews - almost always wear modern dress, and you might not be able to even tell them apart from non-Jews.

However, all Orthodox Jews technically accept the Torah as the word of God. So although you can see a massive cultural difference between the Orthodox Jew who wears a shtreimel (the black fur hat worn by some Ultra-Orthodox) and the Orthodox Jew who wears jeans and a T-shirt, most people would find it extremely difficult to discern a difference between their religious beliefs and observance.

A "who's who" of all the different Orthodox groups and their doctrines would fill a small book by itself. However, they all basically fall into one of two types:

• Hasidism was a movement founded in the 18th century by the...