Why Study Judaism

Why study Judaism?

Judaism is one of the oldest Western religious traditions and it is the parent religion of Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Islam. In religious terms, Jews are those believers who understand their faith as an ongoing dialogue with God, both in the past and the present and into the future, and as those who have accepted God’s invitation for covenant. A covenant is an agreement, a contract, between two parties. And like any other contract (the one you sign when you take out a mortgage on a home, for example) both parties to the contract are giving something up in exchange for something else. When you buy a car, you give up money in exchange for the car. When you sign a contract to build a fence for someone, they give up money in exchange for the fence, while you give up your time, labor and supplies in exchange for the money.

The Torah (that is, the first 5 books of the Bible) tells of several contracts between God and humans. The covenant with Noah, for instance was pretty much one-sided. Yahweh (the Jews name for God, which in Christianity is often translated Jehovah) saved Noah’s family and promised not to destroy the world again. Abraham’s covenant with Yahweh, however, was not one-sided. In exchange for only worshipping Yahweh (not worshiping other gods), Yahweh agreed to bless Abraham with “a nation from his seed.” That is, if Abraham would agree to worship only Yahweh and not any of the other gods being worshiped by other people, Yahweh promised that Abraham would have so many children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc., that they would be enough people for an entire nation. And, of course, more literally, what that turned out to mean was that the nation of Israel (not in the sense of the modern state of Israel) came from Abraham’s descendents. As, indeed, the book of Genesis claims—it is from Abraham’s grandson Jacob (who is also known as by the name of Israel) that the Jewish Nation comes.

But the really important covenant...