Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Text Size

What Is Judaism, is Judaiam a Religion?

What Is Judaism

What is Judaism? What does it mean to be a Jew? Most people, both Jewish and gentile, would instinctively say that Judaism is a religion. And yet, there are militant atheists who insist that they are Jews! Is Judaism a race? If you were to say so, most Jews would think you were an antisemite! So what is Judaism?

Is Judaism a Religion

Clearly, there is a religion called Judaism, a set of ideas about the world and the way we should live our lives that is called "Judaism." It is studied in Religious Studies courses and taught to Jewish children in Hebrew schools. See What do Jews Believe? for details. There is a lot of flexibility about certain aspects of those beliefs, and a lot of disagreement about specifics, but that flexibility is built into the organized system of belief that is Judaism.

However, many people who call themselves Jews do not believe in that religion at all! More than half of all Jews in Israel today call themselves "secular," and don't believe in God or any of the religious beliefs of Judaism. Half of all Jews in the United States don't belong to any synagogue. They may practice some of the rituals of Judaism and celebrate some of the holidays, but they don't think of these actions as religious activities.

The most traditional Jews and the most liberal Jews and everyone in between would agree that these secular people are still Jews, regardless of their disbelief. See Who is a Jew? Clearly, then, there is more to being Jewish than just a religion.

Ancient Jewish Literatures

Most files are gathered from the internet and published here to give my readers the opportunity to combine these texts with my book about Ancient History published on this website.

This is only a small part of all the publications that are availably in the Public domain.

Translate

Keep this website alive, a Donation will be highly appreciated

Please consider a donation supporting our efforts.

Visitors

United States 68.9%United States
Canada 9.1%Canada
Russian Federation 6.6%Russian Federation
Germany 3%Germany
United Kingdom 2.4%United Kingdom
Australia 1.5%Australia
Netherlands 0.9%Netherlands
France 0.7%France
Romania 0.6%Romania
Sweden 0.4%Sweden

Today: 5
Yesterday: 16
This Week: 43
Last Week: 219
This Month: 473
Last Month: 793
Total: 465525

Please report broken links to the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This is copyrighted information presented under the Fair Use Doctrine of the United States Copyright Act (section 107 of title 17) which states: 'the fair use of a copyrighted work...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.' In practice the courts have decided that anything which does not financially harm the copyright holder is fair use

 This is a Non-Commercial Web page, © 1998-2011 L.C.Geerts The Netherlands all rights reserved.

It is strictly forbidden to publish or copy anything of my book without permission of the author, permission is granted for the recourses, for personal use only.

Privacy Statement