Introduction to Judaism

Jewish Life and Religious Practices

There is a wide variety of acceptance and observance of the following practices by denominations and individual Jews.

Jewish Calendars and Holidays

Jewish life is guided by its annual and life cycle calendars. The annual calendar is a lunar calendar with approximately 354 days in one year on a 12-month cycle, with an extra month (Adar II) added occasionally to compensate for the difference between the lunar and solar calendars.

Artifact

Mishneh Torah (Artifact)

A page from the Mishneh Torah, one of many texts reprinted in Shanghai during the war. Yeshiva students spent part of each day listening to teachers lecture on the Talmud, the collection of ancient Rabbinic writings and commentaries composed of the Mishnah and the Gemara that form the basis of religious authority in Judaism. During the rest of the day, students paired up to review selections from the lecture. [From the USHMM special exhibition Flight and Rescue.]

Credits:

• Moshe Zupnik
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum - Collections

The Sabbath has been a cornerstone of Israelite religious practice from earliest times and is frequently mentioned in the Torah. The other holidays mentioned in the Torah include the Jewish New Year (Rosh ha-Shanah), the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and the three festivals on which pilgrimages were made to the Temple in Jerusalem: Passover or Pesach (marking the Exodus from Egypt), Shavuot (marking the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai), and Sukkot (the feast of tabernacles, a harvest holiday). The minor holidays of Hanukkah, Purim, and Tisha B’Av were added later to commemorate events in post-biblical Jewish history. Yom ha-Shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and Yom ha-Atzma’ut (Israel Independence Day) are 20th century additions to the Jewish holiday calendar.

The Observance of the Sabbath

Photo

Sephardic synagogue in Berlin (Photo)

An interior view of the Sephardic synagogue on Luetzowstrasse. Berlin, Germany, before November 1938.

Credits:

• Bildarchiv Abraham Pisarek

The weekly observance of the Sabbath, commencing on Friday evening at sundown and concluding 25 hours later, is a cornerstone of Jewish religious practice. The Sabbath is a time for slowing down, spending time with friends and family and at synagogue, and disconnecting from the daily demands on our time.

Ritual Torah Readings

The Torah is read ritually in synagogue three times a week, on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, following a yearly cycle through the entirety (or a third, depending on community) of the Five Books of Moses. Additionally, on holidays, special sections are read in synagogue that tie to the themes or origin story of the holiday being observed.

Jewish Prayer Practices

Jewish prayer services are conducted in the Hebrew language in the more traditional denominations of Judaism, and include varied levels of English (or the native language of the community’s Jews) in denominations such as Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal. A rabbi can lead services but is not required. On weekdays, daily prayers are recited three times—morning, afternoon, and evening—with a fourth prayer service added on the Sabbath and holidays. While many prayers can be recited individually, certain prayers and activities, such as the reading of the Torah and the mourner’s prayer (the kaddish), require a minyan or quorum of ten Jewish adults. As with the distinctions regarding English in the prayer service, some traditional denominations only count male adults in a minyan, while others count all adults.

Dietary Laws in Judaism

Other central aspects of Jewish ritual observance include the dietary laws (laws of kashrut), which forbid consumption of certain foods (like pork or shellfish), prohibit the mixing of milk and meat, and prescribe special rules for the slaughter of meat and poultry. Denominations and individual Jews may or may not follow these dietary laws strictly.

Jewish Lifecycle Events

Major life-cycle events in Jewish tradition include the brit milah (ritual circumcision on the eighth day of a Jewish boy’s life), Bnai Mitzvah (a ceremony marking the passage from childhood to adulthood, at 12 years for a girl and 13 for a boy), marriage, and death.

The Role of the Synagogue in Judaism

Following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the synagogue (derived from a Greek word meaning “assembly”), or Jewish prayer and study house, became the central place of Jewish religious prayer and worship. The role of the priesthood, so central to the Temple service, diminished, and the rabbi (literally, “my master”), or scholar versed in Jewish law, rose to a position of prominence in the community.

After the Holocaust

Before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, Europe had a vibrant and Jewish culture.

Map

European Jewish population distribution, ca. 1933 (Map)

Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years. The American Jewish Yearbook placed the total Jewish population of Europe at about 9.5 million in 1933. This number represented more than 60 percent of the world's Jewish population, which was estimated at 15.3 million. Most European Jews resided in eastern Europe, with about 5 1/2 million Jews living in Poland and the Soviet Union. Before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, Europe had a dynamic and highly developed Jewish culture. In little more than a decade, most of Europe would be conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany and most European Jews—two out of every three—would be dead.

Credits:

• US Holocaust Memorial Museum

By 1945, after the Holocaust, most European Jews—two out of every three—had been killed. In the postwar years, most Holocaust survivors decided to leave Europe. Hundreds of thousands established new lives in Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, South America, and South Africa.

As of 2023, there were over 15.5 million Jews around the world. The majority of world Jewry lives in Israel or the United States.