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Introduction to Judaism

Part I

Professor Shai Cherry

T HE T EACHING C OMPANY ®

Shai Cherry, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought, Vanderbilt University

Shai Cherry (b. 1966) straddles the worlds of higher education and community education. Although it took Dr.

Cherry seven years to acquire a B.A. ( magna cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa ) in philosophy, politics, and

economics from Claremont McKenna College, he managed to attend the Wharton School of Finance, two

universities in England, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During

that period, he taught junior high school and high school students at various southern California Reform temples

and Conservative synagogues, as well as volunteered in Israel for 10 months on Project Otzma.

As Dr. Cherry pursued his doctorate in Jewish thought from Brandeis University (2001), he served as family

educator at a Reform temple in the Boston area. He also taught Rabbinics and Modern Jewish Thought for Hebrew

College. Having begun his formal Jewish education at an unorthodox yeshiva (seminary) in Jerusalem, the Pardes

Institute, he returned on completion of his Ph.D. for another year of Talmud study at the Conservative Yeshiva.

Since 2001, Professor Cherry has taught at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, as the Mellon Assistant

Professor of Jewish Thought. At the same time, he has served as an instructor in the Florence Melton Adult Mini-

School.

Dr. Cherry’s research focuses on biblical interpretation and the nexus between science and Judaism. “Three

Twentieth-Century Jewish Responses to Evolutionary Theory” appeared in the 2003 volume of Aleph: Historical

Studies in Science and Judaism . Slated to appear in 2005 is his essay “Crisis Management via Biblical

Interpretation: Fundamentalism, Modern Orthodoxy and Genesis” in Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of

Evolution . The following year will see the publication of Dr. Cherry’s first book on Jewish interpretations of Torah.

The professor has received numerous awards for his work in community education and continues to teach across the

United States and in Israel.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Judaism

Part I

Professor Biography ............................................................................................i

Course Scope .......................................................................................................1

Lecture One Torah, Old Testament, and Hebrew Bible .................3

Lecture Two From Israelite to Jew .................................................5

Lecture Three Repentance.................................................................8

Lecture Four Study........................................................................10

Lecture Five Prayer.......................................................................12

Lecture Six Deeds of Loving Kindness ......................................15

Lecture Seven Messianism ..............................................................17

Lecture Eight The Coming World ..................................................19

Lecture Nine Sabbath ....................................................................22

Lecture Ten Law and Spirit .........................................................24

Lecture Eleven Fall Holidays............................................................26

Lecture Twelve Spring Holidays .......................................................28

Maps …………………………………………………………………………….31

Timeline .............................................................................................................34

Glossary .............................................................................................................37

Biographical Notes ............................................................................................41

Bibliography ......................................................................................................45

Introduction to Judaism

Scope:

Judaism is not a book (the Hebrew Bible) or even a set of books (the Hebrew Bible plus the Talmud plus other

legal, mystical, and philosophical writings), but a living religious tradition. Even to call Judaism a “religion” is not

quite accurate. The Land of Israel and the People of Israel have been essential, intertwined components of Judaism

for 3,000 years. Most religions, like Christianity, do not have quite the same relationship to a particular place or

national group. Judaism has variously been called a culture, an ethnicity, and a civilization, all terms that struggle to

include more than “just” religion. This course, Introduction to Judaism , presents the unfolding of the religious

aspects of the Jewish civilization from the Hebrew Bible to today, while keeping an eye on the historical

background against which those changes within Judaism have occurred.

The Hebrew Bible is Judaism’s foundation text. Knowing the Hebrew Bible, however, will tell you surprisingly

little about Judaism, especially in its contemporary expressions. We begin our course with a discussion of the Bible

and its relationship to Judaism. We’ll also discuss modern assumptions about the human authorship of the Bible and

compare them to traditional assumptions that the Bible is, somehow, the word of God.

We then begin to describe the varieties of early Judaisms. Although Jewish history is not one long tale of travails,

there have been several catastrophes that powerfully shaped the Jewish consciousness. Among them was the

destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem by the Babylonians and Romans, respectively. In the wake

of the destruction of the Second Temple, some of the groups competing for power in the Jewish world lost their

power bases, while others gained from the changing circumstances. Eventually, it was Rabbinic Judaism that

achieved hegemony among the vying ideologies and interest groups.

After discussing what we know about this power struggle to assume leadership in the Jewish world, we will look

closely at some of the core values and practices of the Rabbis. Most of their agenda, such as the emphasis on deeds

of loving kindness, has roots in the Bible. But the ways in which the Rabbis promoted other practices, such as study,

repentance, and prayer, are quite innovative. In our discussion of the afterlife, for example, we will see how a

relatively late and marginal idea in the Hebrew Bible became critical in the late Second Temple period.

With the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E ., however, celebrating God’s presence in time, rather than

space (as in the Jerusalem Temple), became central in Rabbinic Judaism. The next section of the course, therefore,

focuses on the Jewish calendar, beginning with the Sabbath. After looking at the Rabbinic development of this

biblical institution, we’ll pause to focus on the broader question of the relationship between the letter of the law and

its spirit. We will then continue with our journey through the Jewish year, always conscious of how the holidays,

often relating to harvests in the Land of Israel, were given new dimensions and reinterpreted for a people who no

longer lived in the Land.

At this point, we’ll introduce the Jewish philosophers and mystics of the Middle Ages. What explains the

emergence of these new expressions of Judaism? How do they differ in their understandings of the relationship

between God and the world? As we make this bridge between ancient and modern Judaism, we’ll focus on the issue

of evil. Beginning with biblical understandings of evil and suffering, we will then move to Rabbinic responses. The

Jewish philosophers and mystics of the Middle Ages resort to dramatically different styles of language to address

their equally different explanations for the persistence of evil. Finally, we’ll see how some modern Jewish thinkers

have responded to the greatest of all Jewish catastrophes, the Holocaust. How do contemporary theodicies

(explanations for evil in a world created by a good and powerful God) relate to the historical ones?

Our next five sessions will be devoted to modern expressions of Judaism. The varied faces of Judaism that we see

today are all outgrowths of the historical changes of the Jewish emancipation and enlightenment of the 18 th and 19 th

centuries. Surprisingly, we’ll see that Ultra-Orthodox Judaism is just as much a product of modernity as is Reform

Judaism. We’ll then explain the ideologies and the reasons for the emergence of the major movements in the

“middle”: Modern Orthodoxy, Conservative Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism. We’ll also discuss the modern

phenomenon of atheism/secularism among Jews. (Being a Jewish atheist is not a contradiction in terms, while being

a Christian atheist is.) Some secular Jews (and a few religious ones, too) chose to express their Jewish commitments

through a return to the historic Land of Israel. Thus, modernity has brought with it the possibility of identifying, for

the first time in nearly 2,000 years, with any, all, or none of the following: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel,

and the Torah of Israel.

Our final three sessions will consider sensitive issues of contemporary interest and trace their developments from

the Torah to today’s different Jewish denominations. The emphasis in these lectures will be on the process of how

Jewish thought and practice develops. What is the role and status of women according to Jewish law? How does

Judaism understand Christianity? Is it an expression of idolatry or another path to the one God? Finally, are the

Jews the Chosen People? And, if so, for what have they been chosen and by whom? Throughout these lectures, we

will highlight the wide range of Jewish expressions, so that an equally legitimate name for this course might be:

Introduction to Judaisms .

Shai Cherry - Intro to Judaism Guidebook.pdf

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