A country and the ethnoreligious group descended from the Israelites and Hebrews of ancient Israel and Judah, the Jews are also known as the Jewish people. Judaism is the ethnic religion of the Jewish people, and its practice ranges from strict to none, and as such, Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are all closely intertwined.
ü Jewish Beliefs
Jews hold that there is only one God and that He has made a covenant, or unique arrangement, with them. Their God speaks to believers through prophets and both rewards and punishes wicked behavior.
With a few exceptions, the majority of Jews consider that their Messiah will eventually arrive.
Rabbis are the spiritual leaders of Jews, who worship in synagogues, which are places of worship. Judaism's emblem is the six-pointed Star of David.
Approximately 14 million Jews live on the globe today. They primarily reside in Israel and the United States. A person is often regarded as Jewish if his or her mother is Jewish.
ü Torah
The Tanakh, sometimes known as the "Hebrew Bible," is the name of the Jewish holy book. The identical books that make up the Christian Old Testament are included, however, they are arranged in a slightly different sequence.
Jewish law is laid down in the Torah, which comprises the first five books of the Tanakh. It's also known as the Pentateuch at times.
ü Founder of Judaism
The Torah contains explanations of Jewish religious history. The narrative claims that the founder of Judaism, a Hebrew man by the name of Abraham, was the one to whom God first revealed himself.
Jews hold that Abraham and his offspring were selected individuals who would find a great country and that God formed a particular covenant with them.
Isaac, a son of Abraham, and Jacob, a grandson of Abraham, also played significant roles in early Jewish history. Jacob adopted the name Israel, and his descendants as well as later generations came to be referred to as Israelites.
After being held as slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years, the Israelites were led out by the prophet Moses more than a thousand years after Abraham.
According to the Bible, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God at Mount Sinai.
ü Jewish Temples
King David governed the Jewish people in the year 1000 B.C. The first holy Temple was erected by his son Solomon in Jerusalem, and it served as the Jewish people's primary site of prayer.
Around 931 B.C., the Jewish people were divided into two groups: Israel in the north and Judah in the south after the collapse of the monarchy.
The first Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians somewhere around 587 B.C., and many Jews were exiled as a result.
Around 516 B.C., a second Temple was constructed, but it was ultimately destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.
Jewish people no longer had a central location to congregate, therefore they transferred their attention to local synagogues as their major site of prayer, making the collapse of the second Temple noteworthy.
ü Jewish sacred books
While many other significant manuscripts were written in succeeding centuries, the Tanakh (which contains the Torah) is still regarded as the sacred scripture of Judaism. These provided explanations for how the Tanakh should be understood and recorded previously unwritten oral regulations.
The Mishnah, literature that outlines and explains the Jewish code of law that was previously orally transmitted, was produced by experts around the year 200 A.D.
