While Jewish tradition maintains that human life is of infinite value and that its preservation and extension overrides virtually every other religious imperative, relieving pain and allowing for the soul’s peaceful departure are also values well-established in Jewish tradition. Of course there is a moral distinction between hastening death and removing obstacles to its natural progression, but in practice the difference isn’t always easy to discern.

Below is a general overview of a number of issues that commonly arise at life’s end — and how Jewish authorities have weighed in on them. Jewish thinkers often emphasize that specific cases vary substantially and must be considered individually. And while weight is always given to a patient’s wishes, those who are concerned about complying with Jewish law are always urged to consult with trusted advisers.

Artificial Nutrition/Hydration

For patients unable to eat or drink, doctors can provide food and water intravenously or through a feeding tube. This is a common situation faced by those with advanced-stage dementia. Most Orthodox authorities generally consider nutrition, hydration and oxygen — even if artificially provided by a feeding tube or ventilator — to constitute essential human needs that should never be discontinued as long as they are effective. This position is was also reflected in the 1990 paper on end-of-life care authored by Conservative Rabbi Avram Reisner. However, the Conservative movement’s religious law authorities also endorsed a paper by Rabbi Elliot Dorff, who advanced several possible justifications for removing artificial nutrition and hydration for the terminally ill, among them the contention that a medically administered treatment that conveys food and water to the patient by tube is more properly regarded as medicine than as simple food and water.

Hospice

Hospice is a form of medical care for people suffering from terminal illnesses with a life expectancy of six months or less. Patients are typically referred to hospice care when further medical treatment is not expected to reverse the course of their disease and they elect instead to focus on therapies geared toward reducing pain and sustaining the highest quality of life for as long as possible. Jewish hospice programs are typically equipped to provide hospice services while abiding by Jewish traditions. Because hospice focuses on a patient’s quality of life rather than aggressive medical treatment, some Orthodox rabbis do not believe hospice conforms with Jewish tradition. However, not all Jewish authorities agree. Many contemporary Jewish authorities argue that Jewish tradition allows a focus on comfort and pain reduction and the eschewing of aggressive medical interventions in certain circumstances.

Do Not Resuscitate Orders

Known as DNRs, these are legally binding directives signed by doctors ordering medical professionals to withhold CPR or advanced life support in the event a patient’s heart stops functioning. DNRs are typically requested by patients who are elderly or are suffering from an advanced terminal illness that makes it unlikely they would survive CPR without a severely diminished condition. Some Jewish authorities consider these orders extremely problematic, as a patient needing CPR is in acute distress and could be saved, even for a brief period, with proper treatment. But given the often low success rate of resuscitation and the high likelihood of adverse effects for the elderly or those weakened by terminal illness, some authorities permit DNRs under certain conditions. Reisner, in his 1990 paper on treatment for the terminally ill, writes that it is proper to respect a patient’s DNR request in cases where it is not possible to restore “a full measure of life.”

Advance Directives

These are documents specifying a person’s wishes concerning medical care in the event they are unable to make such decisions for themselves and/or appointing a health care proxy to make decisions on their behalf. The laws concerning advance directives vary considerably from state to state. A number of state-specific forms are available here. In addition, both Conservative and Orthodox Jewish versions of advanced directives are available, some of which explicitly state a person’s desire to have Jewish law and custom respected in their health care choices. There is typically also space to name a specific rabbi to be consulted when making such choices.

Experimental Therapies

While most Jewish authorities would require a patient to submit to a therapy if it is known to be effective at curing their condition, this is not the case with respect to experimental treatments whose success rate and potentially adverse side effects are not known. These can include treatments whose effectiveness has yet to be demonstrated in clinical trials, or new drugs whose safety and effectiveness have not yet been established. Jewish authorities from across the denominational spectrum support the right of a patient to refuse treatment that is risky or of unproven value. Equally, a patient who desires to undertake an experimental therapy in the hope of being cured is permitted to do so even if there are risks involved. According to some authorities, this is even the case with a hazardous treatment that may itself result in death. Dorff writes that it is permissible to undertake a hazardous therapy if it presents a “reasonable chance” of cure, even if it simultaneously poses a risk of hastening death if it fails.

Refusing Treatment

Jewish tradition generally requires that every effort be made to sustain and extend life, but that position is not absolute. In cases where diseases are incurable, and medical interventions would be risky, painful, of uncertain efficacy or serve merely to prolong a life of unbearable physical or psychic pain, there is support in Jewish tradition for an individual’s right to reject such treatment. This was the reasoning behind the Reform Rabbinate 2008 ruling that a lung cancer patient did not have to submit to chemotherapy that could extend her life by three months, but only at a cost of significant pain and suffering. Within the liberal denominations, there is broad respect for individual autonomy in making decisions concerning health care, including the right to refuse care if the patient feels it would not be effective or would be too painful. Among Orthodox authorities, there is also support for refusing treatment in situations where it would not cure the patient but would only prolong individual suffering.

Praying to Die

Taking active steps to hasten death are prohibited in Jewish law, but praying for death is another matter. The 14th-century Catalonian Talmud scholar Rabbenu Nissim, commenting on the talmudic story in which the maidservant of Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi prays for his death, observes: “There are times when one should pray for the sick to die, such as when the sick one is suffering greatly from his malady and his condition is terminal.” (Nedarim 40a:2) The Jewish bioethicist J. David Bleich has formulated it this way: “Although man must persist in his efforts to prolong life, he may, nevertheless, express human needs and concerns through the medium of prayer. There is no contradiction whatsoever between acting upon an existing obligation and pleading to be relieved of further responsibility.”

Withdrawing life support

Many Jewish legal experts believe it is permissible to withhold advanced life-support measures from terminally ill patients. However, once such measures have been provided, withdrawing them to let natural death occur becomes more problematic. While there are grounds in Jewish law for withholding advanced life-support measures from terminally ill patients, once such measures have been provided, withdrawing them to let natural death occur becomes more problematic. As a general rule, withdrawing life support is not permitted in traditional readings of Jewish law. However, there are many contemporary Jewish authorities who consider a person to be dead if activity in their brain stem stops. If such a patient were kept “alive” only by means of medical machinery, these authorities would permit those machines to be disconnected. For those seeking to adhere to more traditional interpretations of Jewish law, there have been some interpretations used by rabbinical medical experts, that have been applied to withdraw treatment in cases where a patient is entirely dependent on machines for breathing and blood circulation and has little hope for recovery. However, it must be considered on a case by case basis, informed by accurate information between the physician, rabbi and family.

Organ Donation

Jewish authorities from across the spectrum of religious observance, from Reform to ultra-Orthodox, support the lifesaving potential of organ donation, with some authorities going so far as to suggest that Jewish tradition mandates organ donation. Traditional requirements — such as burying the dead quickly, avoiding defilement or benefit from a dead body — that would seem to preclude organ donation are superseded by its lifesaving potential. The Halachic Organ Donor Society (an organization for Jews who want to strictly comply with Jewish law) offers an organ donor card that specifically states that any transplant procedures be conducted in consultation with the deceased’s rabbi. The Conservative movement has a similar card.

Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide

Most Jewish authorities adamantly reject euthanasia or assisted suicide of any kind. Taking active steps to hasten one’s death is considered tantamount to suicide, while assisting another to do so may be considered murder. A number of Reform rabbis have challenged this view, questioning the validity of the commonly drawn distinction between active measures to hasten death and merely withholding treatment or removing impediments to death. Peter Knobel, a prominent Reform rabbi and past president of the movement’s rabbinical association, has argued that in certain cases, active euthanasia may even be a praiseworthy act, however this remains a decidedly minority view. Over the years, the Reform rabbinate has repeatedly reiterated its opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Truth-Telling

While honesty is a well-established imperative in Jewish tradition, there is ample precedent for the idea that full disclosure of a terminal diagnosis ought to be withheld from a patient since it may sap their will to live. Various biblical sources are cited in support of this idea, including the prophet Elisha’s response to the query of Ben Haddad, in which the prophet told the king he would recover from his illness though he knew the opposite was true. The Shulchan Aruch rules that, while a person near death is instructed to confess their sins, they must also be reassured that many have confessed their sins and not died. (Yoreh Deah: 338) Bleich has gone so far as to suggest that a doctor not only refrain from conveying information that might cause a patient to despair and thereby hasten their death, but he must continue to “feign medical aid even though there is no medical purpose in his ministrations.”

End-of-life decisions can be challenging, particularly for those who wish to ensure that the decisions comply with traditional Jewish law. And, while there are areas of consensus, there are also differences in how Jewish leaders interpret relevant Jewish teachings and texts. While the article provides an overview, we encourage families concerned with abiding by Jewish practices and beliefs when facing these difficult decisions to consult with trusted spiritual leaders for advice.

Resources

Articles

“Jewish Ritual, Reality and Response at the End of Life: A Guide to Caring for Jewish Patients and Their Families” by Rabbi Mark A. Popovsky

“End of Life: Jewish Perspectives” By Rabbi Elliot Dorff

“Advanced Illness and Orthodox Jewish Law: Approaches to Communication and Medical Decision Making”

Reform movement discussion guide on end-of-life issues

Halachic Guidelines to Assist Patients and their Families in Making “End-of-Life” Medical Decisions

“Does Judaism Allow Organ Donation?”

Advance Directives / Living Wills

Rabbinical Council of America (Modern Orthodox) Health Care Proxy Form

Agudath Israel of America (Haredi Orthodox) Halachic Living Will

Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative movement) medical directive

Jewish living wills for specific states

Halachic Organ Donor Card (HODS)

Conservative movement organ donor card

Organizations

National Institute for Jewish Hospice

Chayim Aruchim: The Center for Culturally Sensitive Health Advocacy and Counseling

Kavod v’Nichum

Chevra Kadisha Registry

National Independent Jewish Funeral Directors

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But what do Jews believe about Jesus?

• For some Jews, the name alone is nearly synonymous with pogroms and Crusades, charges of deicide and centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.
• Other Jews, recently, have come to regard him as a Jewish teacher. This does not mean, however, that they believe, as Christians do, that he was raised from the dead or was the messiah.

While many people now regard Jesus as the founder of Christianity, it is important to note that he did not intend to establish a new religion, at least according to the earliest sources, and he never used the term “Christian.” He was born and lived as a Jew, and his earliest followers were Jews as well. Christianity emerged as a separate religion only in the centuries after Jesus’ death.

Who Was Jesus?

Virtually all of what is known about the historical Jesus comes from the four New Testament Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — which scholars believe were written several decades after Jesus’ death.

While there is no archaeological or other physical evidence for his existence, most scholars agree that Jesus did exist and that he was born sometime in the decade before the Common Era and crucified sometime between 26-36 CE (the years when the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, ruled Judea).

He lived at a time when the Roman Empire ruled what is now Israel and sectarianism was rife, with major tensions among Jews not only over how much to cooperate with the Romans but also how to interpret Torah. It was also, for some, a restive time when displeasure with Roman policies, as well as with the Temple high priests, bred hopes for a messianic redeemer who would throw off the foreign occupiers and restore Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.

Was Jesus the Messiah?

The question “was Jesus the messiah?” requires a prior question: “What is the definition of messiah?” The Prophets (Nevi’im), who wrote hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, envisioned a messianic age as as a period of universal peace, in which war and hunger are eradicated, and humanity accepts God’s sovereignty. By the first century, the view developed that the messianic age would witness a general resurrection of the dead, the in-gathering of all the Jews, including the 10 lost tribes, to the land of Israel, a final judgment and universal peace.

Some Jews expected the messiah to be a descendant of King David (based on an interpretation of God’s promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 of an eternal kingdom). The Dead Sea Scrolls speak of two messiahs: one a military leader and the other a priest. Still other Jews expected the prophet Elijah, or the angel Michael, or Enoch, or any number of other figures to usher in the messianic age.
Stories in the Gospels about Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead, and proclaiming the imminence of the kingdom of heaven suggest that his followers regarded him as appointed by God to bring about the messianic age.

More than 1,000 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, the medieval sage Maimonides (also known as Rambam) laid out in his Mishneh Torah specific things Jews believe the messiah must accomplish in order to confirm his identity — among them restoring the kingdom of David to its former glory, achieving victory in battle against Israel’s enemies, rebuilding the temple (which the Romans destroyed in 70 CE) and ingathering the exiles to the land of Israel. “And if he’s not successful with this, or if he is killed, it’s known that he is not the one that was promised by the Torah,” Maimonides wrote.

What About Jews for Jesus?

Jews for Jesus is one branch of a wider movement called Messianic Jews. Members of this movement are not accepted as Jewish by the broader Jewish community, even though some adherents may have been born Jewish and their ritual life includes Jewish practices. While an individual Jew could accept Jesus as the messiah and technically remain Jewish — rejection of any core Jewish belief or practice does not negate one’s Jewishness — the beliefs of messianic Jews are theologically incompatible with Judaism.

Did the Jews Kill Jesus?

No. Jesus was executed by the Romans. Crucifixion was a Roman form of execution, not a Jewish one.

For most of Christian history, Jews were held responsible for the death of Jesus. This is because the New Testament tends to place the blame specifically on the Temple leadership and more generally on Jewish people. According to the Gospels, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate was reluctant to execute Jesus but was egged on by bloodthirsty Jews — a scene famously captured in Mel Gibson’s controversial 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ.” According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Pilate washes his hands and declares himself innocent of Jesus’ death, “all the people” (i.e., all the Jews in Jerusalem) respond, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25).

This “blood cry” and other verses were used to justify centuries of Christian prejudice against Jews. In 1965, the Vatican promulgated a document called “Nostra Aetate” (Latin for “In Our Time”) which stated that Jews in general should not be held responsible for the death of Jesus. This text paved the way for a historic rapprochement between Jews and Catholics. Several Protestant denominations across the globe subsequently adopted similar statements.

Why Was Jesus Killed?

Some have suggested that Jesus was a political rebel who sought the restoration of Jewish sovereignty and was executed by the Romans for sedition — an argument put forth in two recent works: Reza Aslan’s Zealot and Shmuley Boteach’s Kosher Jesus. However, this thesis is not widely accepted by New Testament scholars. Had Rome regarded Jesus as the leader of a band of revolutionaries, it would have rounded up his followers as well. Nor is there any evidence in the New Testament to suggest that Jesus and his followers were zealots interested in an armed rebellion against Rome. More likely is the hypothesis that Romans viewed Jesus as a threat to the peace and killed him because he was gaining adherents who saw him as a messianic figure.

Did Jesus Reject Judaism?

Some have interpreted certain verses in the Gospels as rejections of Jewish belief and practice. In the Gospel of Mark, for example, Jesus is said to have declared forbidden foods “clean” — a verse commonly understood as a rejection of kosher dietary laws — but this is Mark’s extrapolation and not necessarily Jesus’ intention. Jesus and his earliest Jewish followers continued to follow Jewish law.

The New Testament also include numerous verses testifying to Jesus as equal to God and as divine — a belief hard to reconcile with Judaism’s insistence on God’s oneness. However, some Jews at the time found the idea that the divine could take on human form compatible with their tradition. Others might have regarded Jesus as an angel, such as the “Angel of the Lord” who appears in Genesis 16, Genesis 22, Exodus 3 (in the burning bush) and elsewhere.

Are There Jewish Texts that Reference Jesus?

Yes. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus mentions Jesus, although the major reference in his Antiquities of the Jews appears to have been edited and augmented by Christian scribes. There are a few references in the Talmud to “Yeshu,” which many authorities understand as referring to Jesus.

The Talmud tractate Sanhedrin originally recorded that Yeshu the Nazarene was hung on the eve of Passover for the crime of leading Jews astray. This reference was excised from later versions of the Talmud, most likely because of its use by Christians as a pretext for persecution.

In the medieval period, a work called Toledot Yeshu presented an alternative history of Jesus that rejects cardinal Christian beliefs. The work, which is not part of the canon of rabbinic literature, is not widely known.

Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah, describes Jesus as the failed messiah foreseen by the prophet Daniel. Rather than redeeming Israel, Maimonides writes, Jesus caused Jews to be killed and exiled, changed the Torah and led the world to worship a false God.

Special thanks to Amy-Jill Levine, University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences, for her assistance with this article.

To read this article, “What Do Jews Believe About Jesus?” in Spanish (leer en Español), click here.

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• The practice derives from Leviticus 19:27 in the Torah, which states: “You shall not round off the corners on your head, or destroy the corners of your beard.” According to the 12th-century scholar Maimonides, this prohibition was a way to differentiate Jews from idolatrous priests, who shaved their beards.
• The prohibition on shaving has traditionally been understood as barring the complete removal of the hair with a razor. And because for centuries it was generally too difficult to achieve a close shave without a razor, observant Jewish men tended to be bearded.

According to the historian, Rabbi Berel Wein, beard norms began to change among some Orthodox men in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, when chemical depilatories became available, enabling hair removal without a razor.

More recently, the advent of electric shavers makes it possible to achieve a close shave without a razor actually touching the skin. As a result, many men today do shave their beards while continuing to follow Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law. However it remains customary in most ultra-Orthodox circles to retain one’s beard as a sign of piety.

Some Jewish men, particularly Hasidic ones, refrain even from trimming their beards. Although there is no prohibition on trimming one’s beard with scissors, those who avoid it seek to avoid even approaching violating the Torah prohibition on shaving. This practice is influenced by Kabbalistic (Jewish mystical) traditions, which regard the beard as holy. Rabbi Isaac Luria, the kabbalist known by his acronym, the Ari, was said to have been careful not even to touch his beard lest some hairs fall loose.

For Hasidic and some other Orthodox men, the practice of not shaving at all extends to the sidelocks, known in Hebrew as payot (often spelled and pronounced payos, or payes) — literally “corners.” As with beards, practices on payot vary within Orthodoxy. Among Hasidic Jews, payot are often very prominent and sometimes curled, but they are also often tucked discreetly behind the ear. Many observant Jewish men consider it sufficient merely to avoid complete removal of the sideburns.

The rabbis of the Talmud considered beards attractive — referring to them as hadrat panim, the splendor of one’s face. According to a passage in the tractate Bava Metzia, the Talmudic sage Rabbi Yochanan was considered a beautiful man, yet he was not included on a list of rabbis whose beauty reflects that of the biblical patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). The reason, the Talmud offers, is that Rabbi Yochanan did not have a beard.

Some Jewish men who usually do shave nonetheless allow their facial hair to grow during periods of mourning. This is traditionally done for 30 days following the death of a close relative. It is also traditionally observed during two annual periods of communal mourning — the Omer period between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot, when Jews mourn the deaths of the students of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Akiva; and the three weeks between the fast days of the 17th of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av) when Jews mourn the destruction of the ancient temples in Jerusalem.

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In the wake of the Temple’s destruction, Judaism transformed from a religion of sacrifice to a religion of prayer and Torah study. Indeed, the rabbis of the Talmud, who lived centuries after the destruction, declared explicitly that without a Temple, Torah study and prayer took the place of sacrifice in Jewish worship. Nearly 2,000 years later, they remain utterly central to Judaism.

So some may be surprised to learn that the Talmud (Taanit 30a) prohibits Torah study on Tisha B’Av:

The Sages taught: All mitzvahs practiced by a mourner are likewise practiced on Tisha B’Av: It is prohibited to engage in eating, and in drinking, and in smearing oil on one’s body, and in wearing shoes, and in conjugal relations. It is prohibited to read from the Torah, from the Prophets, and from the Writings, or to study from the Mishnah, from the Gemara, and from midrash, and from collections of halakhah, and from collections of aggadah.

Alongside fasting and engaging in acts of self-indulgence and comfort (moisturization and footwear were counted in this category in the ancient world), Jews refrained from studying sacred literature. But why?

The answer is that Torah study brings pleasure. As Psalms 19:9 has it:

The laws of God are just, gladdening the heart,

the commandments of God are lucid, making the eyes light up.

But wait! The Book of Lamentations, one of the five megillot, is read in synagogue on Tisha B’Av. Doesn’t this violate the prohibition against Torah study?

According to the Talmud (same page, Taanit 30a) a few books are an exception to the “no Torah study” rule. Lamentations, a series of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem, which is obviously fitting for the occasion, is on the list. Also included in the exception: Job, a book about the suffering of the righteous, and certain passages of Jeremiah that lament the destruction of the first Temple and upbraid Israel for their faithlessness.

Over the centuries, Jews have often understood this passage in the Talmud to mean not that Torah study is forbidden on Tisha B’Av, but that it must be restricted to passages that are mournful. Indeed, in addition to reading Lamentations, Jewish recite regular daily prayers including passages from the Torah — for instance, the Shema (even though this passage is not mournful). In synagogue, they also read Torah (the reading for Tisha B’Av is Deuteronomy 4:25–40, which describes the destruction of the Land of Israel) and haftarah (Jeremiah 8:13–9:23).

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Let’s start with the second part of the Jewish canon, the Prophets (Nevi’im). The early prophets — the Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings — claim to tell the history of Israel from the time of the conquest of the land after the Exodus through the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. Nothing in the style of these books suggests that they are divine in origin. Though in places they certainly talk about God (in the third person), they present many different perspectives on this era and share all the pitfalls of humanly written histories

Some of the later prophets — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve minor prophets — explicitly claim to reflect divine revelation. The second verse of the Book of Jeremiah states that “the word of the LORD came to him [Jeremiah] in the days of [King] Josiah …” In case this is not definitive enough, the first real prophecy in the book opens: “The word of the LORD came to me.” (Jeremiah 1:4) Several other prophetic books contain similar claims, though not all. Isaiah simply begins: “The prophecies of Isaiah son of Amoz, who prophesied concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the reigns of…” (Isaiah 1:1). The book makes no explicit assertion of divine origin, though this was surely assumed by his audience.

Most of the books of the Writings (Ketuvim), the third section of the Tanach, completely lack the suggestion that they are from God. Psalms is a book of prayers to God, not from God (though some early Jews considered it divinely inspired). In most of the Book of Job, God is spoken of in the third person. Proverbs is mostly human wisdom. The five Megillot (scrolls) also lack any suggestion of divine authorship. Song of Songs, for example, is explicitly attributed to Solomon, with no hint of divine inspiration.  Only some sections of Daniel contain prophecies attributed to God—though unlike earlier prophecy, these are mediated by an angel.

In sum, much less than half of the Prophets and the Writings contain any internal suggestion that it originated from God. Much of later Jewish tradition assumes that these books may have a divine hand behind them —whatever that might mean. But this idea developed only in the post-biblical period.

Even the Torah itself – the first five books of the Bible—nowhere suggests that it is all divinely authored. Only in Exodus, the Bible’s second book, does the ubiquitous formula “The Lord spoke to Moses saying” begin. Absolutely nothing in Genesis suggests that it was originally understood as given from God. The first words of the Bible are, “When God began to create heaven and earth” — not “God said to Moses, ‘When I began to create heaven and earth.’” The final book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, presents itself as Moses’s speech, not God’s.

And yet, the traditional Jewish position is that it is all divine in origin. This position is taken for granted in rabbinic literature, but is already suggested by some late biblical books that call it “the Lord’s Torah,” “the Torah of Moses,” or even “the Lord’s Torah given by Moses” (2 Chronicles 34:14).

The classical formulation of the divine origin of the Torah comes from Maimonides: “The eighth fundamental principle is that the Torah came from God. We are to believe that the whole Torah was given us through Moses our Teacher entirely from God … through Moses who acted like a secretary taking dictation….”  (For a longer version of my claims here, see the second chapter of “The Bible and the Believer: How to Read the Bible Critically and Religiously.”) This assertion has some roots in earlier rabbinic literature and, as noted above, in the very latest books of the Bible. But its status as dogma is debated, and is connected to the fraught issue of whether Judaism is just a religion of deeds or also has central creeds like Christianity.

Even so, Maimonides’s position concerns the Torah only—not the entire Bible, and as noted above, goes beyond the explicit claims of the Torah concerning its authorship.

Modern biblical scholarship even casts doubt on the divine authorship of the sections of the Torah which explicitly claim to have come from God, including those that follow the formula “The Lord spoke to Moses.” The Torah contains too many contradictions to all be seen as divine. Do servants get released after six years, as stated Exodus, or at the Jubilee year (once every fifty years), as noted in Leviticus? Which divine speech is the correct one?

Biblical scholars have shown that the Torah contains too many contradictions and infelicities to be divine, and it instead came into being over a very long period of time, reflecting the understanding of various ancient Israelites, living in different places at different times, of what God wanted of them. (For more on this, see TheTorah.com.) But a text that reflects people’s understanding of God is quite different from a text dictated by God to Moses and preserved without error for three millennia — the view of Maimonides and a position upheld by many Jews within the Orthodox community.

Should this matter? Does scripture need to be perfect in order to retain its scriptural status?

For many Jews, the Bible does not get its power, or even its authority, from being a divine document. When reciting the blessing recited after reading from the Torah, we laud it as Torat emet— a Torah of truth. That need not mean that it is entirely true, but only that it contains profound truths. Sometimes these truths are close to the surface. Other times they are brought out through interpretation — even radical interpretation that fundamentally changes the original meaning of the text.

Truths can be found in many places, but as Jews it is our obligation to search out and to follow the truths we find in the Torah—to make the Torah, indeed the whole Tanach, into our central orienting text. The Jewish community has created the books of the Bible and placed them — most especially the Torah — as the central compass of Jewish life.

Being Jewish means adopting this Bible-centric position — buying into the Torah and using sections of it (along with other wise texts from other traditions) as a guide for our lives and to create continuity with our ancestors — even if we are not following the Bible as God’s revealed truth.

Marc Zvi Brettler is a professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University.

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There are many reasons Jews fast, including atonement, communal mourning, supplication or even to express gratitude. Jews don’t fast on Shabbat or joyous holidays, so as not to interfere with the celebration (except when Shabbat coincides with Yom Kippur). 

In ancient times, public and private fasts were common and practiced throughout the course of the year, often proclaimed with short notice. For that reason, there was a widely circulated calendar, called Megillat Ta’anit (Scroll of Fasts), that listed all the days on which it was not permitted to fast. There’s also evidence that some individuals made regular fasting their own private spiritual practice. For example, during the three years that the Second Temple was besieged by the Romans, Rabbi Tzadok fasted continually in an effort to save the city. The Shulchan Aruch discusses examples of people who fasted every day and became so accustomed to it they found it difficult to eat. These are extreme examples, but what’s clear is that Judaism has built the structure for an abundant cycle of both fasting and feasting.

Here are ten possible reasons Jews might be fasting:

1. It’s a major fast day

There are two major fast days on the Jewish calendar. The best known is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On that day Jews abstain from all food and drink, as well as wearing leather, bathing, intimacy and other luxuries so that they can focus on the sanctity of the day. Fasting on this day is for atonement.

The other major Jewish fast day is Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of both Temples in ancient times as well as other catastrophes that have befallen the Jewish people, from the Crusades to the Holocaust. This day, too, is marked by a full fast that extends from sundown to sundown; in this case it is a mourning ritual.

2. It’s a minor fast day

In addition to Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av, there are four minor fast days on the Jewish calendar. These are observed only during daylight hours, which means they begin at sunrise and are completed at sundown the same day. Three of these fasts are connected to the destruction of the Temples: 

1. Tzom Gedalia, observed on the 3rd of Tishrei (the day after Rosh Hashanah), this fast commemorates the murder of the Jewish governor of Judah, an act that was considered a tipping point leading to the destruction of the First Temple. 
2. Asarah B’Tevet, the Tenth of Tevet, marks the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem — also a precursor to the destruction of the First Temple. 
3. Shiva Asar B’Tammuz, the 17th of Tammuz, commemorates the day on which the Romans breached the walls of the Second Temple. 

The fourth minor fast is Taanit Esther, the Fast of Esther. On the day before Purim, many Jews fast just as Esther fasted before she went to see King Ahasuerus and request that the decree of death against the Jews be lifted. (Note: If Purim falls on a Sunday, the fast is not held on Shabbat or even Erev Shabbat, but moved back to the Thursday before Purim.)

3. It’s their wedding day

There is a tradition of fasting on the day of one’s wedding from sunrise until the ceremony is complete, so that the couple eat for the first time that day when they are together in yichud (a brief period of seclusion after the marriage ceremony is complete). This is not a requirement (halakhah), but a custom (minhag), and it is more common in Ashkenazi communities than Sephardi communities.

There are several explanations for this practice. One is that the wedding day atones for the sins of the two partners and therefore it is, for them, like a personal Yom Kippur. Another is that the fast prevents the newlyweds — who may be tempted by all the booze at the pre-wedding banquets — from arriving at the huppah intoxicated. Marriage is a serious obligation and should be undertaken in a fully sober state.

4. It’s their conversion day

Converting to Judaism is often a lengthy and intense process that culminates with immersion in a mikveh (ritual bath). Some choose to fast on the day of their immersion until they emerge from the mikveh. 

In a rabbinic responsa, the 20th-century halakhic authority Rabbi Moshe Feinstein explained that a convert fasts on the day of immersion to atone for sins committed prior to conversion and compares the custom to a groom fasting on his wedding day.  

5. It’s Erev Passover

This fast applies specifically to firstborns (traditionally first sons) and commemorates the tenth plague on Egypt which took the lives of all firstborn Egyptians, while firstborn Israelites whose homes were marked with lamb’s blood were spared. This fast is observed from sunrise on the 14th of Nisan until the Passover seder that evening.

6. It’s Sigd

Sigd is an Ethiopian Jewish holiday observed 50 days after Yom Kippur on the 29th of Heshvan. Traditionally, Sigd is marked by fasting from sunrise until mid-afternoon. 

According to Beta Israel tradition, the individual’s sins are forgiven by God on Yom Kippur, while communal introspection and repentance occurs during the 50 days following Yom Kippur. Sigd is believed to be the day that God would forgive all communal sins, as well as the date on which God first revealed himself to Moses. 

Most of the Ethiopian Jewish community is concentrated in Israel, where a national Sigd celebration is held in Jerusalem annually. 

7. It’s an emergency

An entire tractate of the Talmud, Ta’anit, explores the rules around fasting in response to a communal emergency such as a drought, plague or a marauding army. Sometimes, these fasts are observed only by certain leaders in the community, and sometimes by all adults. Usually they are daylight fasts held on Monday and Thursday and can last just a few days or go on for weeks, depending on the emergency. Fasting in the face of disaster is less common in modern times, but some Jews in Israel did declare a fast in response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

8. It’s “Little” Yom Kippur

The custom of fasting on the day before each Rosh Chodesh (first of the Hebrew month) seems to have originated with the kabbalists of Safed. It was never a fast observed by the entire community, but the reserve of particularly pious members. Dubbed Yom Kippur Katan, or “Little Yom Kippur,” as the name implies this is a day of fasting for atonement, allowing the participant to enter the new month with a clean slate. The inspiration for Yom Kippur Katan comes from the biblical prescription to bring a sin offering on the first of every month (Numbers 28:15).

Yom Kippur Katan is not observed for four months of the year. The days before Rosh Chodesh Tishrei and Rosh Chodesh Heshvan are not considered Yom Kippur Katan because of their proximity to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The days before Rosh Chodesh Tevet and Rosh Chodesh Nisan are also not fast days because the first falls during Hanukkah and the second is similarly part of the Passover season. If the last day of a month falls on a Shabbat, Yom Kippur Katan is moved back to Thursday.

9. They had a bad dream

Jewish tradition takes dreams seriously. Joseph’s dreams came true, after all, as did the dreams he interpreted for the pharaoh and his servants. And in the Talmud, Rav Hisda teaches: “A dream not interpreted is like a letter unread.” (Berakhot 55a) So a bad dream is not just unpleasant; it can be a dangerous omen. To reverse possible future misfortune that one learns of in a dream, there is a tradition of fasting the day after one has had such a dream to affect atonement. In fact, according to the Shulchan Aruch, one may fast on the day following a bad dream even if that happens to be Shabbat — a day fasting is normally prohibited. But if you do, then you should also fast the next day as well (Sunday) to atone for fasting on Shabbat! (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim, 288:4)

10. Someone dropped a Torah scroll

There is a common belief that Jews who witness a Torah scroll being dropped must fast for 40 days (daylight only). The sources for this practice are murky, but some contemporary congregations have responded to a dropped Torah in this way.

The post When Do Jews Fast? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Unlike the Indian tea chai, which is pronounced with the “ch” sound of “chocolate,” the Hebrew chai is pronounced with the same “kh” sound as in challah. Both words  rhyme with “high,” however.

Chai also refers to the number 18. That’s because each Hebrew letter has a numerical equivalent, and the sum of chet (numerical value of 8) and yud (numerical value of 10) is 18. As a result of its connection to the word for life, the number 18 is considered a special number in Jewish tradition. For this reason, Jews frequently make gifts or charitable contributions in multiples of $18.

In Hebrew, chai is often referred to in the plural form, chaim (חים), hence the boy’s name Chaim and the toast l’chaim (לחים), which, as anyone who has seen Fiddler on the Roof knows, means “to life.”

Chai pendants and other chai jewelry can be purchased at Judaica stores, many jewelry stores and online.

The post What Is the Meaning of Chai? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Acronyms — in Hebrew, Aramaic and transliteration — appear frequently in Jewish correspondence, books, spoken conversation and even on gravestones. Famous rabbis are frequently referred to by their acronyms. Even books themselves, like the Hebrew Bible are often identified in this abbreviated manner.

Modern Hebrew has its own ever-growing roster of acronyms, such as its FBI equivalent, Shabak (שׁבּ״כּ), also known as the Shin Bet. (Stands for for Sherut Habitakhon Haklali, or General Security Service.)

Below are some of the most common acronyms and abbreviations organized alphabetically (in English transliteration) by category. If no English initials appear, that means English initials aren’t used for this term. Did we miss an important one? Leave it in the comments below or email us at community@myjewishlearning.org.

General Acronyms and Abbreviations
On Gravestones
Rabbis and Sages
Modern Hebrew

General Acronyms and Abbreviations

A”H
ע״ה

Stands for: alav hashalom

(עליו השלום), aleha hashalom (עליה השׁלום) or aleihem hashalom (עליהם השלום)
Pronounced: ah-LAHV hah-shah-LOHM, ah-lay-HAH hah-shah-LOHM
What it means: Hebrew for “peace be upon him.” Alternately “upon her” or “upon them.”
When it’s used: Following the name of someone who is dead.

BD”E
בּד״א

Stands for:Baruch dayan emet

(ברוך דיין  אמת)
Pronounced:bah-ROOKH dah-YAHN eh-METT
What it means: Hebrew for “blessed is the true judge.”
When it’s used: Commonly said to a mourner upon learning of their loss.

B’’H
בּ״ה

Stands for:B’ezrat hashem

(בּעזרת השׁם)
Pronounced: b’ez-RAHT hah-SHEM.
What it means: Hebrew for “with God’s help.”
Note: This acronym also stands for Baruch HaShem (בּרוך השׁם) or Blessed is God.

BS’’D
בּס׳׳ד

Stands for:B’siyata dishmaya

(בסיעתא דשמיא)
Pronounced: bah-SAHD.
What it means: Aramaic for “with the help of Heaven.”
When it’s used: Some traditional Jews put these letters on the upper corner of every piece of written material.

IY”H
אי״ה

Stands for:Im yirtzeh hashem

(אם ירצה השׁם)
Pronounced: eem yeer-TZEH hah-SHEM
What it means: Hebrew for “if it will be God’s will” or “if it is God’s will.”

N”Y
נ״י

Stands for: Nehro

 (נרו) or nehrah (נרה) yair (יאיר)
Pronounced: noon yood (the two Hebrew letters), or neh-ee-ROH yah-EER (for a man), neh-ee-RAH yah-EER (for a woman)
What it means: Hebrew for “his/her candle should burn bright.”
When it’s used: When writing a letter to someone who is alive. As in, “Dear David N”Y, How are you?….”

Shlita

שׁליט״א

Stands for:Sh’yichyeh l’orekh yamim tovim amen

. ( שׁיחיה לאורך יומים טובים אמן
Pronounced: SHLEE-tuh
What it means: May he (or she) live for many good days, Amen.
When it’s used: Often said after the name of a prominent living rabbi.

Shotz
שׁ״צ

Stands for:Shaliach tzibur

(שׁליח ציבּור)
Pronounced: SHAHTZ or shah-LEE-ahkh tzee-BOHR
What it means: Hebrew for the person leading a prayer service (literally “public emissary”).

Tanach
תנ״ך

Stands for:Torah (תורה), Nevi’im (נביאים), Ketuvim

 (כּתובים) — known in English as Torah (also Five Books of Moses), Prophets and Writings
Pronounced: tah-NAKH
What it means: The Hebrew Bible, which Christians refer to as the Old Testament.

Z’’L
ז״ל

Stands for

: Zichrono (זכרונו) [for a man] or zichrona (זכרונה) [for a woman] l’bracha (לבּרכה)
Pronounced: zahl, or zee-chroh-NOH luh-brah-KHAH or zee-chroh-NAH luh-brah-KHAH
What it means: Hebrew literally for “memories for blessing,” usually translated to “may his or her memory be a blessing.”
When it’s used: Usually appears in parentheses after the name of a person who is deceased.

On Gravestones and in Cemeteries

N”E
נ״ע

Stands for:Nucha

(נוחה) [for a woman] or nucho (נוחו) [for a man] eden (עדן).
Pronounced: noon ayin (the names of these two Hebrew letters) or noo-KHAH EH-den (for women) or noo-KHOH EH-den (for men)
What it means: Hebrew for “Let his/her rest be paradise (Eden).”

P”N
פּ״נ

Stands for:Po nikhbar

(פּה נקבּר)
Pronounced: pay noon (the two Hebrew letters) or POH neek-BAHR
What it means: Hebrew for “here lies” or “here is buried.” A variation on this is pay tet (פּ״ט), which stands for  po tamun, “here is hidden.”

TNZBH

תנצבּ״ה

Stands for:Tehi nishmato tzrura btzror hachayim

(תהי נשׁמתו צרורה בּצרור החיים)
Pronounced: tuh-HEE neesh-mah-TOE tzroo-RAH beh-TZROHR ha-khaye-EEM
What it means: Hebrew for “May his/her soul be bound up in the bond of life.”

Rabbis and Sages

Besht

בּשׁ״ט

Stands for:Ba’al Shem Tov

 (בּעל שׁם טוב)
Pronounced: Besht
What it means: Hebrew for “the owner/master of a good name,” this was the title given to Israel ben Eliezer (1698‑1760), the founder of Hasidic Judaism.

Rambam
רמבּ״ם

Stands for:

Rabbi Moshe (Moses) Ben Maimon, also commonly known as Maimonides, the prolific and influential 12th-century scholar originally from Spain.
Pronounced: RAHM-bahm

Ramban
רמבּ״ן

Stands for:

Rabbi Moshe (Moses) Ben Nahman, also commonly known as Nahmanides, a 13th-century Spanish scholar.

Pronounced: RAHM-bahn

Rashi
רשׁ״י

Stands for:Rabbi Shlomo (Solomon) Yitzchaki

, the 11th-century French scholar best known for his comprehensive Bible commentaries.
Pronounced: RAH-shee

Modern Hebrew

Motzash
מוצ”ש

Stands for:

motz-AY sha-BAHT (מוצאי שׁבּת)

Pronounced: moh-TZASH

What it means: Saturday night, after Shabbat officially ends.

Ramat Kal

רמטכ”ל‎

Stands for:

ROHSH ha-mah-TEH ha-klah-LEE (ראשׁ המטה הכללי)
Pronounced: RAH-mat KAHL
What it means: Chief of staff, or commander-in-chief of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Sofash

סופ״שׁ

Stands for:

sohf shah-VOO-ah (סוף שׁבוע)
Pronounced: soh-FAHSH
What it means: Weekend

Tzahal

צה״ל

Stands for:Tzava hahagana l’Israel

(צבא ההגנה לישראל)
Pronounced: TZAH-hall
What it means: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

The post A Guide to Jewish Acronyms and Abbreviations appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Find My Jewish Learning’s index of Torah portions here.

The first mention of a scheduled Torah-reading cycle appears in the Bible, in Deuteronomy, where Moses instructs the tribe of Levi and the elders of Israel to gather all the people for a public reading from portions of the Torah once every seven years. The need to read the Torah publicly intensified after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE; Jews were dispersed into other parts of the Middle East, into North Africa, and into Europe; and their earlier religious and cultural world became decentralized. While most Jews in the Diaspora now follow one Torah-reading cycle, some communities are on a triennial cycle.

Because a reference in the Mishnah (the first effort to permanently record Jewish custom and law, compiled in the 3rd century C.E.) supported Deuteronomy’s prescription, we understand that Jews were continuing to read the Torah publicly; and we also know that there were Torah readings for festivals, special Shabbatot (plural of Shabbat) and fast days.

But it was not until the Talmudic era, about the 6th century C.E., that the Jews in the Land of Israel began to read the entire Torah in public and do so until all the Five Books of Moses were completed. At that time, the cycle took three years in a pattern called the Palestinian triennial, beginning the first year with the first book, Genesis, and finishing, at the end of the third year, with the fifth book, Deuteronomy.

The Jews of Babylon, however, followed a different custom, established by the beginning of the 7th century CE, and completed the entire cycle each year, which they did by dividing the Torah into 54 weekly portions. (Because the number of portions exceeds the number of weeks in a given year, more than one portion is read during certain weeks.) In Hebrew, the word for portion is parsha (plural, parshiyot).

In the 19th century, a reintroduction of the Palestinian triennial cycle was attempted at the West End Congregation in London, but was unsuccessful. In the middle of the 20th century, various congregations in the United States (primarily Conservative ones) were seeking ways to modernize the service and also to spend more time on Shabbat on Torah study. They too attempted to revive the Palestinian cycles with the argument that reading only a section of the weekly Torah portion would make Torah study more concentrated and thus enhanced.

The reintroduction failed for two reasons. First, in the pattern of the Palestinian triennial cycle, the weekly reading would have differed from what the rest of the Jewish world was reading. Second, Simchat Torah (the holiday in which Jews celebrate the conclusion of one Torah-reading cycle and the beginning of the next) celebrations would occur only one out of every three years, instead of annually.

Finally, in 1988, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement passed a legal responsum that put into practice a new American triennial cycle. This new triennial cycle, rather than dividing the entire Torah into thirds, as was done in the Palestinian cycle, divides each of the individual 54 portions into thirds. Therefore, a congregation can be reading within the same portion as those who follow the annual cycle, but will only read one-third of each portion per year. In addition, this pattern enables the congregation to read from Genesis through Deuteronomy each year, providing for an annual celebration of Simchat Torah.

There is an obvious drawback to this system: Only one-third of each conventional Torah portion is actually read per year; and the readings, because incomplete, do not flow smoothly into the portion of the following week. Nonetheless, the vast majority of American Conservative and Reform congregations prefer this new cycle. All Jews in Israel, however, and Orthodox Jews in America continue to follow the annual cycle with the full portion read each week.

Reprinted with permission from Celebrating the Jewish Year (Jewish Publication Society).

The post Why Jews Read Torah on a Yearly Cycle appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The Bible records many Israelites with piercings, including perhaps most famously the matriarch Rebecca, who was given a nose ring to celebrate her engagement with Isaac. Historically, in Jewish communities, ear and nose piercings have not been uncommon. For example, in the contemporary Western world, many Jewish women have ear piercings. And nostril piercings have historically been popular in the Jewish communities of Kurdistan and India.

Some contemporary authorities have raised concerns that body piercing can be considered a damaging body modification (prohibited by Jewish law) and others worry that certain kinds of piercings can run afoul of Jewish values of modesty (tzniut) and respect for the body as created in the divine image (b’tzelem elohim). However, most rabbinic authorities give some weight to contemporary mores, in particular the fact that body piercing is understood today not as a sign of bodily denigration, but as an act of adornment.

Is piercing discussed in the Bible?

Yes. In the Book of Exodus, the Torah prescribes that if a Hebrew slave declares that he loves his master and does not want to be set free, the master should pierce the slave’s ear with an awl. The association of ear piercing with slavery is sometimes taken as an indication that the Torah does not look favorably upon the practice. However, other references make clear that body piercing for aesthetic reasons was practiced in biblical times. In the Book of Genesis, Abraham’s servant Eliezer gives a gift of a nose ring to Rebecca, whom he hopes will become Isaac’s wife (Genesis 24:22). When the Israelites beseech Aaron to create the golden calf, Aaron responds by instructing them to take “the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me” — an indication that ear piercing was a practice among Israelite men as well as women (Exodus 32:2). In Ezekiel 16:12, both nostril and ear piercings are mentioned. Ornamental ear piercing is also mentioned as a common practice in the Talmud.

Is body piercing permitted by Jewish law?

The main halachic (Jewish law) issue raised by body piercing is the prohibition on wounding, which is derived from the prohibition in Deuteronomy 25:3 that when meting out a punishment of lashes, the guilty party may not be given more than 40 lashes. (On this verse, Maimonides comments that if the Torah was careful not to allow additional lashes for a sinner, how much more so for a righteous person.) Some rabbinic authorities have raised objections to cosmetic surgery on the grounds that it constitutes a violation of this principle, a position that could theoretically be extended to body piercing. (A secondary problem, which could also theoretically be applied to body piercing, is a philosophical objection to cosmetic surgery because it implies dissatisfaction with the way God created the human body.) Other rabbinic authorities, notably Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a leading American halachic authority of the 20th century, saw no problem with cosmetic surgery, since the intent is not to wound but to beautify. On the whole, the prohibition on damaging the body is not broadly understood to bar the piercing of ears for aesthetic purposes.

Is there a difference between piercing ears and piercing other parts of the body?

Traditional Jewish law offers no obvious basis for differentiating between various kinds of body piercing. In a 1997 responsum on the question of body piercing, Conservative Rabbi Alan Lucas asserts that it is “hard to argue …that there is a substantive difference between the nonpermanent piercing of the ear for fashion purposes and the non-permanent piercing of the eyebrow, navel or even nipple.” Lucas goes on to note that health risks are associated with piercing certain sensitive body parts and that only “medically qualified” individuals should perform piercings.

Are there types of piercing that Judaism frowns upon?

Though there is no explicit blanket prohibition on body piercing, rabbis from all three of the major Jewish denominations have raised a number of concerns about the practice.

One of them is that excessive piercing is inconsistent with Jewish values. “The way we treat our bodies, including the manner in which we ‘adorn’ them, is a statement of our attitude toward our relationship with God and our duties under the covenant,” a Reform responsum from the late 1990s on the matter reads. “Let us consider, therefore, what sort of statement we make about ourselves and our bodies when we inject pigment into our skin, when we pierce our flesh with needles, wire, studs and spikes. Let us ask ourselves whether this is truly the way that we Jews, commanded to pursue and to practice holiness, should aspire to ‘beautify’ and ‘adorn’ ourselves.”

The Lucas paper raises a similar point: “Body piercing is not prohibited, although legitimate concerns regarding tzniut [modesty] and other traditional Jewish values should be taken into consideration and guide one’s choices.”

Orthodox authorities raise a number of additional issues with body piercing, though none are universally understood to unambiguously prohibit the practice. These include the prohibition loosely defined as “following the ways of the gentiles,” a principle derived from a number of verses in Leviticus understood broadly to forbid imitating the ways of non-Jewish peoples. For this reason, some Orthodox authorities urge those considering a piercing to reflect on their motivations for doing so. There are also concerns specifically about men getting piercings based on the biblical prohibition (in Deuteronomy 22:5) against men wearing women’s attire. In societies where it’s common for both men and women to be pierced, this would presumably not be a serious concern.

Does body piercing preclude burial in a Jewish cemetery?

No. It is a common misconception that body modification — tattoos in particular — disqualifies one from a traditional Jewish burial. This is not the case. Though some individual Jewish burial societies may decline to bury individuals for any number of reasons, there is nothing in Jewish law that calls for denying a Jewish burial to someone with a tattoo or a piercing.

The post Can A Jew Get Body Piercings? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The Torah is part of the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible, known in Christianity as the Old Testament. Tanach is an acronym for Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings).

The weekly Torah portion is always featured on My Jewish Learning’s homepage and on our Weekly Torah Portion page, which also lists the full index of portions. In addition, most printed and digital Jewish calendars include the week’s Torah portion. To create your own customized Jewish calendar, click here.

Learn about the history of the Torah-reading cycle and the different variations on the cycle here.

On each of My Jewish Learning’s 54 Torah portions pages, you’ll find the biblical citation of the portion, so you can look it up in the Bible or on Sefaria, which has both Hebrew and English translations of the text. For each portion, My Jewish Learning has featured commentary, along with an extensive collection of other articles about the portion. At the top of each commentary you’ll find the biblical citation; click on it to go directly to the text on Sefaria. To find more Torah portion commentaries, read our Guide to Weekly Torah Commentaries Online.

To find the Hebrew equivalent for a specific date on the secular calendar — such as your birth date or the date of an upcoming bar/bat mitzvah — use the tool below. Enter the date here to find the Torah portion associated with it.

Below are the names of the Torah’s five books (each portion is a section within a book) and a brief summary of each (click on them for longer summaries):

Genesis (“Origins”)/Bereishit (“In the Beginning”) tells the story of creation, Noah and the flood, and the selection of Abraham and Sarah and their family as the bearers of God’s covenant.  Stories of sibling conflict and the long narratives of Jacob and his favorite son Joseph conclude with the family dwelling in Egypt.

Exodus (“The Road Out”)/Shemot (“Names”) tells of how the family of Jacob grew and then was enslaved in Egypt.  The baby Moses, born of Israelites but adopted by Pharaoh, becomes God’s prophet who, after bringing 10 plagues down upon Egypt, leads the Israelites through the Red Sea to freedom and to the revelation at Mount Sinai. The story of the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, which follows soon after the revelation at Mount Sinai, is almost obscured by lengthy materials on the building of a sanctuary (tabernacle) in the wilderness.

Leviticus (“Laws of the Levites”)/Vayikra (“And God Called”) deals mostly with laws of Israelite sacrificial worship. Related rules include the basis for Jewish dietary laws (kashrut) and issues of purity and impurity.  The holiness code, which describes a sanctified communal life, is a highlight of the book.

Numbers (“The Census”)/Bamidbar (“In the Wilderness”) begins with a census of the Israelites and the tribe of Levi. A group of Israelites spy out the land of Canaan; their discouraging report sends them back into the desert for an additional 38 years, during which the Israelites continue to behave badly, rebelling against the authority of Moses and his brother Aaron, and having illicit relations with Moabite women.

Deuteronomy (“Second Law”)/Devarim (“Words”) is Moses’ final message to the people of Israel before they cross over the Jordan River into Israel. Moses reminds the people of how God has redeemed the people from Egypt and of the details of the covenant between Israel and God.  In stark language, Moses describes the rewards for observance of the laws of the covenant and the punishment for disobedience. Finally, Moses passes along his authority to Joshua who will lead the people into the land.

The post What Is the Torah Portion? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The objects below are listed in alphabetical order. All can be purchased from most Judaica stores and online. (Prefabricated sukkahs and sukkah-building kits are available for purchase, although many people prefer to build their own.) Most of the objects listed — with the exception of the yad, shofar and Torah scroll, which are generally reserved for synagogue use —are commonly found in Jewish homes.

Want to take a deeper diver into the world of Jewish ritual objects? Sign up for our email series.

Challah Cover

An opaque cloth, often made from embroidered velvet although any fabric can be used, that is used to cover the challah bread at the outset of the Sabbath meal. It is customary to keep the loaves covered until after the kiddush blessing is recited over wine. Find a challah cover here.

Dreidel

A four-sided spinning top marked with the Hebrew letters Nun, Gimmel, Hey and Shin (Peh in Israel), an acronym for the phrase “A great miracle happened there” (“here” in the Israeli version). Dreidel is a game played during the festival of Hanukkah. Buy dreidels here.

Etrog

A lemon-like fruit known as a citron, the etrog is one of the four species — along with lulav (palm frond), hadas (myrtle) and aravah (willow) — used on the fall festival of Sukkot. Traditionally, the four species are taken together and waved each day of the seven-day festival. A fresh etrog must be purchased each year. Buy an etrog here.

Havdalah Candle

A braided candle with multiple wicks, these candles are used in the ceremony of Havdalah (literally, separation), which marks the transition between the end of the Sabbath and the beginning of a new week. Buy Havdalah candles here.

Kiddush Cup

A wine goblet, often made of silver, used for making Kiddush, a blessing over wine (or grape juice) recited at the beginning of most Jewish holiday meals. Buy a Kiddush cup here.

Kippah

Also called a yarmulke, a kippah is a skullcap worn during Jewish ritual activities, though some observantJews wear one all the time. Traditionally, it was worn only by men, but some women choose to wear one as well. Shop for a kippah here.

Lulav

The frond of a date palm tree, the lulav is the largest of the four species used on the holiday of Sukkot. A fresh lulav must be purchased each year. When the myrtle and willow are combined with the lulav for Sukkot, the three together are referred to as a lulav. Buy a lulav and etrog set here.

Matzah Cover

An opaque cloth used to cover the matzah (unleavened bread) on the Passover seder table. Buy a matzah cover here.

Menorah

Also called a hannukiyah, the Hanukkah menorah is a nine-stemmed candelabra (eight flames plus one “helper candle,” known as a shamash) used on that holiday. Distinct from the seven-candled menorah used in the ancient temple in Jerusalem, the hannukiyah symbolizes the miracle of the holiday, when an amount of oil suitable for one day of light burned for eight days. Buy a Hanukkah menorah here.

Mezuzah

A small box containing verses from the Torah written on parchment that is affixed to the right doorpost of Jewish homes. It often displays the Hebrew letter, Shin, the first letter of one of God’s names. The practice of affixing a mezuzah derives from Deuteronomy (6:9): “And you shall inscribe them on the doorposts (mezuzot) of our house and on your gates.” Buy a mezuzah here.

Seder Plate

The centerpiece of the Passover seder table. The seder plate traditionally holds five or six items, each of which symbolizes a part (or multiple parts) of the Passover story. Buy a seder plate here.

Shabbat Candles and Candleholders

Two or three candles that are lit just prior to sunset on Friday to usher in the Sabbath. Any candles can be used, but traditionally they are white and should be large enough to burn for the duration of the Shabbat meal. Many families have special candleholders reserved for their Shabbat candles. Buy Shabbat candles here. Buy Shabbat candlesticks here.

Shofar

A ram’s horn blown in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and at the conclusion of services on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. In the context of High Holiday services, the shofar serves as a call to repentance. Buy a shofar here.

Siddur (Prayer Book)

A siddur is a Jewish prayer book containing liturgy recited in synagogue services. While they are generally available for anyone to use at synagogue services, many people like to have their own. There are countless editions of the siddur corresponding to different periods in history, the variety of Jewish liturgical traditions and, in modern times, a proliferation of styles and ideologies. Find out how to buy or download a siddur here.

Spice Box

A spice box, often made of silver, is used to hold sweet aromatic plants, besamim in Hebrew, that are sniffed as part of the Havdalah service ending Shabbat. In Ashkenazi homes, cloves are a common choice. Sephardic communities use sprigs of various aromatic plants. Buy a Havdalah set here.

Sukkah

A sukkah is a temporary dwelling with a thatched roof used during the fall festival of Sukkot. Traditionally used for holiday meals, some Jews have the custom to live as much of their lives as possible in a sukkah during the holiday, even sleeping there. Buy a sukkah kit here.

Tallit

A prayer shawl made from wool, cotton or synthetic fibers traditionally worn during morning prayers. In Orthodox communities, a tallit (or tallis, in the Yiddish pronunciation) is traditionally worn by men, though women in non-Orthodox congregations — and sometimes in Orthodox partnership minyans — wear them as well as a matter of personal choice. As with siddurim, tallitot (the plural of tallit) are usually provided and available for use at synagogue services, but many people like to have their own. Buy a tallit here.

Tefillin

Tefillin (phylacteries in English) are two wooden boxes, filled with scriptural verses written on parchment and bound in leather straps, which are affixed to the head and left arm (right arm for the left-handed) during morning prayers, except on Shabbat and festivals. They are worn in fulfillment of the Torah directive to “bind them as a sign upon [their] hands and making them totafot [an enigmatic term] between [their] eyes.” Buy tefillin here.

Torah Scroll

A Torah scroll (Sefer Torah in Hebrew) refers to the Five Books of Moses (alternatively the Pentateuch, or Chumash in Hebrew) written on parchment that is read aloud in synagogues on Shabbat and holidays. In the Ashkenazi tradition, the scroll is affixed to two wooden rollers, covered in embroidered velvet and sometimes topped with silver ornaments known as rimonim (Hebrew for pomegranates). In the Sephardic tradition, the entire scroll is sheathed in a hard case.

Tzedakah Box

A tzedakah box, or pushke in Yiddish, is a receptacle for collecting money for charity. Buy a tzedakah box here.

Tzitzit

Tzitzit are the tassels affixed to the four corners of a tallit. They are also sometimes affixed to a four-cornered undergarment that is also called tzitzit (sometimes called tallit katan, or “small tallit.”). The practice of wearing tzitzit, traditionally by men, is biblical in origin. Buy tzitzit here.

Yad

A pointer, commonly made of metal or wood, that is used by the synagogue Torah reader to keep place in the scroll. Buy a yad here.

Yahrzeit (or Yizkor) Candle

A yahrzeit is the Hebrew anniversary of a person’s death, and a yahrzeit candle is a long-burning candle that is traditionally burned for 24 hours in that person’s memory. It is also known as a Yizkor candle; Yizkor is the memorial prayer service recited on several holidays. Buy yahrzeit candles here.

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The post Jewish Ritual Objects: A Guide appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

While some liberal Jews have taken a fresh look at the topic, across the range of Jewish thought and practice, tattoos are still overwhelmingly perceived as inconsistent with the teachings of Jewish tradition.

Do tattoos violate Jewish law?

Most rabbis say yes. Their objection traces to Leviticus 19.28, which states: “You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the LORD.” The Hebrew phrase k’tovet ka’aka (כתבת קעקע), here rendered as incision, is also sometimes translated as “tattoo.” According to the biblical commentator Rashi, the phrase refers to a kind of permanent, un-erasable writing engraved on the skin.

There is some debate about the source of this prohibition, but many commentators see it as rooted in a desire to distinguish Jews from idolators, some of whose practices involved the marking of skin as a sign of devotion to pagan deities. As a result, some have suggested that the Torah’s prohibition on tattoos is not absolute, but applies only to those markings associated with idol worship. However, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform authorities all agree that Leviticus and subsequent Jewish tradition reject the practice of tattooing outright.

READ: Body Piercing in Jewish Law

Within the Reform movement, there are some signs of a more lenient approach. While officially the movement’s rabbinic leaders have rejected tattooing as “an act of hubris and manipulation that most surely runs counter to the letter and spirit of our tradition,” the rabbis admit that their verdict is “subjective and laced with ambiguity.” In 2014, Reform Judaism magazine ran a cover story on tattoos, in which several Jews described their motivations for getting Jewish-themed body art. Rabbi Marshal Klaven, a tattooed Reform rabbi in Texas who wrote his rabbinical thesis on tattoos, argues that tattoos that affirm one’s Jewishness and connection to Jewish tradition would not seem to be prohibited.

Can I be buried in a Jewish cemetery if I have a tattoo?

This is so common a misperception that it has seeped into the wider culture, referenced  by Larry David in an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and prompting even the New York Times to consider the question. It is totally false. Though some individual Jewish burial societies may decline to bury tattooed Jews, the practice does not appear to be a common one and there is nothing in Jewish law that calls for denying a Jewish burial to an individual with a tattoo. Even the remains of Amy Winehouse, the heavily tattooed British Jewish singer who was cremated (another violation of Jewish law) after her death in 2011, were interred in a Jewish cemetery in London.

What about other Jewish rituals? Is having a tattoo grounds for exclusion?

No. Rabbi Alan Lucas, the author of the 1997 Conservative movement opinion on tattooing, asserts that those who violate the prohibition on tattooing should still be permitted to participate fully in synagogue life. As a rule, transgressing a particular commandment does not result in one’s exclusion from synagogue life. While some traditional communities might find it unseemly for a member with a visible tattoo to lead services or read from the Torah, there is nothing in Jewish law that requires someone be excluded. “It’s not different than a person who’s in violation of any prohibition in the Torah,” Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice president of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, tells MJL.

What about medical tattoos?

Medical tattoos are used to indicate the bearer’s medical condition or to identify a location on the body for a medical procedure. For cancer patients, tattoos are sometimes used to indicate the proper alignment of radiation equipment. When a life is at stake, nearly all Jewish laws can be violated, a concept called pikuach nefesh. In cases where there are alternatives, such as using markers, the permissibility of these types of medical tattoos is a matter of some dispute. However, if a tattoo is required for a life-saving procedure, it is permitted.

Tattoos are also sometimes used following reconstructive surgery. After a mastectomy, for instance, doctors occasionally use tattoos to enhance the natural appearance of breast reconstruction. The Reform movement specifically exempted these kinds of procedures from their ruling opposing tattoos. Among Orthodox authorities, the legal ramifications of such procedures remain a source of debate, though there is support for the idea that radical disfigurement that impedes normal social interaction constitutes a kind of intense psychic pain that might justify suspending the prohibition on tattoos.

Didn’t the ancient Hebrews engage in tattooing?

There are a number of biblical references to marking the body as a sign of connection to God. Nili Fox, a professor of Bible at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College, has highlighted several biblical passages that mention body marking as signs of God’s covenant with the Jewish people, though she acknowledges these may be merely “literary devices.” Nevertheless, among defenders of tattooing, these references are taken as evidence that Jewish tradition is less hostile to tattoos than the verse in Leviticus alone would suggest.

Should I have my tattoo removed?

There does not appear to be a requirement that one who has a tattoo should have it removed, though some have suggested that removal could be seen as a symbolic act of rectifying the original transgression. However, certain methods of tattoo removal, including plastic surgery or the injection of dyes that have the effect of covering up a tattoo, may themselves be violations of Jewish law.

The post The Tattoo Taboo in Judaism appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The majority of American Jews, who overwhelmingly live in urban rather than rural communities (where gun ownership tends to be more widespread) support the Democratic party, whose platform calls for stricter gun control, and major Jewish organizations have repeatedly thrown their support behind gun control measures.  A 2013 list of prominent anti-gun activists compiled by the National Rifle Association included several of the largest Jewish groups.

Jewish gun groups, meanwhile, are few and far between, with limited influence. The most visible is Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, based in Bellevue, Washington, which reported less than $100,000 in revenues in 2015 and lists only three board members on its IRS filing. Still, some Jews have long argued that the community’s broad opposition to firearms is naive and dangerous given the history of Jewish oppression and the persistence of anti-Semitism, sometimes violently expressed.

Is Jewish tradition in favor of gun control?

The debate over gun control policy, like most contemporary policy issues, has sources in the Jewish tradition to support both sides.

On the pro-gun side is the famous Talmudic dictum: If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first. This statement from the Talmudic sage Rava is derived from a Mishnah passage that permits a homeowner to kill an intruder in self-defense if the trespasser arrives in the night.  Some Jewish gun proponents have argued that since the Torah commands self-preservation, acquiring the means for that preservation is also a religious requirement, with some going so far as to suggest that gun control laws prevent Jews from exercising their religious obligations.

Others have made the more pragmatic argument that in an era of heightened terrorist concerns, prudence dictates that Jews acquire firearms for self-defense — especially given that Jewish institutions are routinely targeted by Islamic and white supremacist terrorist groups. (Many institutions are, as a result, protected by security guards and other defensive measures.) Rabbi Dovid Bendory, sometimes known as the “gun rabbi,” has asserted that, given the history of Jewish oppression and the ongoing threats to Jewish institutions, Jews should be the first people in line to acquire defensive weaponry.

“How do Jews expect to put teeth behind the words “Never Again!” if not with the ability to apply and project personal force when righteous — and necessary — for survival?” Bendory wrote in an article on the JPFO website.

Jewish critics of the prevailing anti-gun sentiment within the Jewish community, have also noted the critical role guns and other weapons played for Jewish partisans — Jews who actively resisted the Nazis — during World War II, and later for Israelis fighting to establish and defend their state.

On the gun control side are a number of frequently cited rabbinic principles. Judaism mandates that one avoid unnecessary danger, and some studies show that gun ownership is risky.  The Talmud in Avoda Zara prohibits selling weapons to idolaters, prompting one rabbinic authority to extend the ban even to Jewish bandits — a statement readily invoked to justify restricting gun sales to criminals and the mentally ill. Rabbinic groups from all three major Jewish denominations — Orthodox, Conservative and Reform — have all cited Jewish legal precedent in resolutions supporting gun control.

Finally, there’s the famous saying of Isaiah, who prophesied a time when nations would beat their swords into plough shares — a vision often said to reflect Judaism’s belief that the ideal society is one devoid of deadly weaponry. This dim view of weapons is cited in a Mishnah that records a disagreement over whether it is permitted to carry weapons on Shabbat. Rabbi Eliezer maintains that they are merely “ornaments,” but his colleagues, citing Isaiah, disagree, saying weapons are “indignities.”

The Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, in its 2014 resolution in favor of restricting “American citizens’ easy and unregulated access to weapons,” cited Isaiah in support of its call for avoiding “recreational activities that desensitize participants to killing, weaponry, and violence.”

Didn’t gun control cause the Holocaust?

Some have suggested that if Jews had possessed guns in Nazi Germany, the Holocaust might not have occurred. Germany’s move to forbid Jewish gun ownership prior to launching the Final Solution is typically cited as a key support for this belief. Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson briefly made this notion a matter of public debate after including it in his 2015 book A More Perfect Union and in subsequent interviews. The Anti-Defamation League responded that it was ludicrous to suggest armed Jews could have stopped the Holocaust. (Carson called the ADL statement “foolishness.”)

But the argument has also surfaced in publicity materials from Jewish gun activists, including the 2010 documentary No Guns for Jews, which implied that gun control measures in Europe in the 1930s enabled the Nazi genocide. “When the right to self defense is denied, God’s law is violated,” the film intones. “Would history have been rewritten if the SS confronted thousands of armed Jews during the riots of Kristallnacht?”

Does Jewish law allow hunting?

Most authorities say it is not permissible to hunt for sport. Two sources are generally cited in this regard. The first is Rabbi Isaac Lampronri, who wrote in his work Pahad Yitzhak that it is forbidden to hunt animals because it’s wasteful. The 18th-century rabbinic authority Ezekiel Landau added that recreational hunting is forbidden on the grounds of animal cruelty and because of the risks to the hunter. Neither of the two biblical figures known to be hunters — Esau and Nimrod — are held up as role models. All the biblical patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), as well as Joseph, Moses and King David were herders — nurturers of animals, not their pursuers.

Hunting for food is, in principle, not objectionable. However land animals must be ritually slaughtered by hand to render them kosher, which would make hunting them for food with a firearm impermissible.

Some American Jews do, nonetheless, hunt for sport. However, the American Jewish population is clustered in urban and suburban areas, where hunting is less pervasive than in rural areas.

Isn’t everyone in Israel armed?

Guns are highly visible in Israel. Soldiers toting large automatic weapons are ubiquitous in Israeli cities, and many sites and institutions are protected by armed security guards. In addition, some civilians carry sidearms, particularly in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Supporters of looser gun laws in the United States have pointed to Israel as an example of a society made safer by the widespread availability of guns. Following the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in 2012, National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre claimed that Israel had ended school shootings by placing armed guards at every school. Israel said that claim was false and that there is “no comparison” between massacres by the mentally ill and those by ideologically driven terrorists. While most Israelis serve in the army, where they are trained to operate firearms, private gun ownership rates (not including military-issued weapons) are far lower in Israel than they are in the United States.

In fact, Israel has extensive restrictions on guns. Unlike the United States, Israel has no right to bear arms, and only certain groups of citizens are eligible to get a gun license — among them residents of West Bank settlements. Background checks, weapons training and demonstration of a bona fide reason for needing a gun are prerequisites for obtaining one. Maintaining a license requires completing regular courses in shooting and undergoing regular psychological evaluations. As many as 80 percent of Israel’s license requests are turned down annually.

The post Jews and Guns appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Satan appears in the Bible, was discussed by the rabbis of the Talmud and is explored in detail in Jewish mysticism, or Kabbalah. In Hebrew, the term Satan is usually translated as “opponent” or “adversary,” and he is often understood to represent the sinful impulse (in Hebrew, yetzer hara) or, more generally, the forces that prevents human beings from submitting to divine will. He is also sometimes regarded as a heavenly prosecutor or accuser, a view given expression in the Book of Job, where Satan encourages God to test his servant.

Kabbalistic sources expand the view of Satan considerably, offering a rich and detailed portrayal of the demonic realm and the forces of evil in the world, which are to be warded off in some cases with various forms of magic, from amulets to exorcisms.

Satan in the Bible

The Bible contains multiple references to Satan. The word appears just twice in the Torah, both times in the story of Balaam, the seer who is asked by the Moabite king Balak to curse the Jews. When Balaam goes with Balak’s emissaries, God places an angel in his path “l’satan lo” — as an adversary for him. The term appears in multiple other instances in the Prophets, often in a similar context — referring not to a specific figure as the Satan, but rather as a descriptor for individuals who act as a satan, i.e. as adversaries.

Only twice in the Hebrew Bible does Satan appear as a specific figure, as HaSatan — the Satan. One is a brief reference in the Book of Zecharia, where the high priest is described as standing before a divine angel while Satan stands at his right to accuse him. The other is in the Book of Job, where Satan has a central role in the story as an angel in the divine court. According to the biblical narrative, Satan — here too commonly translated as the Adversary — seems to urge God to create hardship for his righteous servant Job, arguing that Job is faithful only on account of his wealth and good fortune. Take those away, Satan claims, and Job will blaspheme. God permits Satan to take away Job’s wealth, kill his family and afflict him physically, none of which induces Job to rebel against God.

The Book of Job is sometimes cited to support the claim that the Jewish view of Satan as an agent of God is different from the Christian view, which sees Satan as an autonomous force opposed to God. In the story, Satan inflicts suffering on a human being and seeks to induce him to sin — but only with God’s permission.

Satan in the Talmud

Satan makes many appearances in the Talmud. A lengthy passage in the tractate Sanhedrin accords Satan a central role in the biblical story of the binding of Isaac. According to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, it was Satan that caused the Jewish people to despair of Moses returning from Mount Sinai by showing them an image of the prophet on his deathbed.  A passage in the tractate Megillah says that Satan dancing at the party of the Persian King Ahasuerus is what led to the killing of Queen Vashti in the Purim story.

In Tractate Bava Batra, Reish Lakish says that Satan, the yetzer hara and the Angel of Death are all one. Maimonides, the medieval Jewish philosopher, endorses this position in his Guide for the Perplexed. The word Satan, Maimonides writes, derives from the Hebrew root for “turn away.” Like the evil inclination, Satan’s function is to divert human beings from the path of truth and righteousness. Maimonides seems not to believe Satan actually exists, but rather that he is a symbol of the inclination to sin. The entire Book of Job, he writes, is fictional, intended merely to elucidate certain truths about divine providence. And even if it is true, Maimonides continues, certainly the portion in which God and Satan speak with each other is merely a parable.

Satan in Kabbalah and Hasidism

The Jewish mystical tradition has much to say about Satan. Indeed, kabbalistic texts offer a rich description not merely of Satan, but of an entire realm of evil populated by demons and spirits that exists in parallel to the realm of the holy. Satan is known in Kabbalah as Sama’el (rendered in some sources as the Great Demon), and the demonic realm generally as the Sitra Achra — literally “the other side.” The consort of Sama’el (who is mentioned in pre-kabbalistic Jewish literature as well) is Lilith, a mythic figure in Jewish tradition more commonly known as the rebellious first wife of Adam.

The kabbalistic sources portray the demonic as a separate and oppositional realm in conflict with God. Kabbalah even offers explanations of the origins of the demonic realm, the most common of which is that this realm emerges when the attribute of God associated with femininity and judgment, is dissociated from the attribute of God associated with grace and masculinity, and becomes unconstrained. Evil, in this reading, results from an excess of judgment.

Many of these ideas would later find expression in Jewish folk beliefs and in the works of the Hasidic masters. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Poloniye, one of the chief disciples of Hasidism’s founder, the Baal Shem Tov, wrote in his Toldos Yaakov Yosef that God would eventually slaughter the angel of death during the messianic age — a belief that clearly echoes the Christian view of a final showdown between God and Satan at the End of Days. Hasidic folk tales are replete with descriptions of demonic forces, among them a famous story in which the Baal Shem Tov defends a group of children from a werewolf. Even today some  Hasidic Jews will seek out protections from such forces in the form of amulets or incantations. Some Jewish communities, particularly in the Sephardic world, also prize amulets as protection from evil spirits and maintain a number of customs and rituals aimed at keeping those spirits at bay. Jewish sources dating back to biblical times including formulas for exorcisms to free the possessed of an evil spirit, known as a dybbuk.

Jewish vs. Christian Conceptions of Satan

On the whole, Satan occupies a far more prominent place in Christian theology than in traditional rabbinic sources. The Book of Revelation, in the New Testament, references an “ancient serpent” — commonly understood as the snake that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden — “who is the Devil and Satan.” It describes a red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns that stands opposite a pregnant woman about to give birth in order to devour the child — that is, Jesus. Revelation further describes a war in heaven in which Satan is hurled to earth, where he proceeds to lead the world astray. (In the New Testament’s Book of Luke, Jesus says he saw Satan “fall like lightning from heaven.”) According to Christian prophecy, Satan will be bound by a chain for 1,000 years after the return of Jesus.

Some of these Christian ideas are echoed in Jewish tradition, but some also point to fundamental differences — most notably perhaps the idea that, in the Hebrew Bible at least, Satan is ultimately subordinate to God, carrying out his purpose on earth. Or that he isn’t real at all, but is merely a metaphor for sinful impulses.

The kabbalistic and Hasidic literature complicate this view, offering a closer parallel to Christian eschatology. Both the kabbalistic/Hasidic and Christian traditions describe the forces of the holy and the demonic as locked in a struggle that will culminate in God’s eventual victory. According to some scholars, this is born of the considerable cross-pollination between Christian and Jewish thinking in the so-called “golden age” of Jewish culture in Spain during the Middle Ages, from whence many of the early kabbalistic texts, including the Zohar, emerged.

The post Do Jews Believe in Satan? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Answer: I have to quibble a little with your question, Alan. I’m guessing that you’ve seen Jewish men wearing yarmulkes, or kippot, and you haven’t seen women wearing them, so you’ve assumed that women don’t, as a rule, wear kippot. But that’s not actually true–go into any Reform or Conservative synagogue and you’re likely to see a fair number of women covering their heads.

Some women wear crocheted yarmulkes just like the ones worn by men. Others wear wire or beaded yarmulkes that are more feminine, and others cover their heads with scarves, hats, even headbands. Though these headcoverings may not look the same as the traditional ones you recognize, they are intended to serve the same purpose as the yarmulke on a man.

So what is the purpose of wearing a yarmulke? Covering one’s head is not a commandment found in the Torah or the Talmud. Instead, it’s a sign of reverence for God, a custom that became popular in the Middle Ages, and has stuck around since. Though some have suggested that covering one’s head is a way to remind oneself that God is always above, the primary function of a kippah today is to act as a sign of belonging to a certain group of people and of commitment to a certain way of life.

Why is the kippah only worn by men in traditional Orthodox communities? In these communities all ritual clothing–such as a prayer shawl, a Hasidic stock coat, or a kittel–is only worn by men. Women are not considered obligated to perform the commandments associated with some of these garments, so they don’t wear any of them. However, in these communities, married women do cover their hair, usually with hats, scarves, or wigs. This goes back to a commandment hinted at in the Torah, and stated more explicitly in the Talmud and later rabbinic texts. It’s a law unrelated to the kippah custom.

As you can see, there’s a lot of head and hair-covering in Jewish life, for men and women alike, in Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and other Jewish communities.

The post Ask the Expert: Can Women Wear Kippot? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Learn how to affix a mezuzah to your doorpost!

The box that holds the scroll can be decorated in a variety of ways, and often has a Hebrew letter shin on it, which is the first letter of one of God’s names, Shaddai.

Some people believe that the mezuzah provides special protection over the residents of the home where it hangs, and when they pass by a mezuzah some people have the custom of kissing it (usually touching the mezuzah with their hand, then kissing their hand).

The post What is a Mezuzah? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Where This Practice Comes From

The origin of the tradition lies in the Sotah ritual, a ceremony described in the Bible that tests the fidelity of a woman accused of adultery. According to the Torah, the priest uncovers or unbraids the accused woman’s hair as part of the humiliation that precedes the ceremony (Numbers 5:18). From this, the Talmud (Ketuboth 72) concludes that under normal circumstances hair covering is a biblical requirement for women.

The Mishnah in Ketuboth (7:6), however, implies that hair covering is not an obligation of biblical origin. It discusses behaviors that are grounds for divorce such as, “appearing in public with loose hair, weaving in the marketplace, and talking to any man” and calls these violations of Dat Yehudit, which means Jewish rule, as opposed to Dat Moshe, Mosaic rule. This categorization suggests that hair covering is not an absolute obligation originating from Moses at Sinai, but rather is a standard of modesty that was defined by the Jewish community.

Having first suggested that hair covering is a biblical requirement — rooted in the Sotah ritual — and then proposing that it is actually a product of communal norms, the Talmud (Ketuboth 72) presents a compromise position: Minimal hair covering is a biblical obligation, while further standards of how and when to cover one’s hair are determined by the community.

Elsewhere in the Talmud (Berakhot 24a), the rabbis define hair as sexually erotic (ervah) and prohibit men from praying in sight of a woman’s hair. The rabbis base this estimation on a biblical verse: “Your hair is like a flock of goats” (Song of Songs 4:1), suggesting that this praise reflects the sensual nature of hair. However, it is significant to note that in this biblical context the lover also praises his beloved’s face, which the rabbis do not obligate women to cover. Though not all would agree, the late medieval German commentator Mordecai Ben Hillel Hakohen, known as the Mordecai, explains that these rabbinic definitions of modesty — even though they are derived from a biblical verse — are based on subjective communal norms that may change with time.

Historically speaking, women in the talmudic period likely did cover their hair, as is attested in several anecdotes in rabbinic literature. For example, Bava Kama (90a) relates an anecdote of a woman who brings a civil suit against a man who caused her to uncover her hair in public. The judge appears to side with the woman because the man violated a social norm. Another vignette in the Talmud describes a woman whose seven sons all served as High Priest. When asked how she merited such sons, she explained that even the walls of her home never saw her hair (Yoma 47a). The latter story is a story of extreme piety, surpassing any law or communal consensus; the former case may also relay a historical fact of practice and similarly does not necessarily reflect religious obligation.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Jewish authorities reinforced the practice of covering women’s hair, based on the obligation derived from the Sotah story. Maimonides does not include hair covering in his list of the 613 commandments, but he does rule that leaving the house without a chador, the communal standard of modesty in Arabic countries, is grounds for divorce (Laws of Marriage 24:12). The Shulchan Aruch records that both married and unmarried women should cover their hair in public (Even Haezer 21:2), yet the Ashkenazic rulings emphasize that this obligation relates only to married women. The Zohar further entrenches the tradition by describing the mystical importance of women making sure that not a single hair is exposed.

Varying Interpretation in the Modern Era

Today, in most Conservative and Reform communities, women do not cover their hair on a daily basis, though in some synagogues women still cover their heads during prayer. A Reform responsum (1990) declares: “We Reform Jews object vigorously to this requirement for women, which places them in an inferior position and sees them primarily in a sexual role.”

Both the Conservative and Reform movements allow, and in some cases encourage, women to cover their heads when praying or learning Torah, because of the requirement to wear a kippah. These rulings take head covering out of the realm of female sexual modesty, and instead define it as a ritual practice — for men and women alike — that signifies respect and awareness of God above.

In the contemporary Orthodox world, most rabbis consider hair covering an obligation incumbent upon all married women; however, there is variation in the form this takes. Some maintain that women must cover all their hair, for example the Mishnah Berurah forbids a man from praying in front of his wife if any of her hair is showing.

READ: It’s Yelp for Sheitels — the First-Ever Wig Review Site

Other Orthodox rabbinic figures have suggested that hair is no longer defined as erotic in our day and age, because most women in society do not cover their hair in public. Based on this logic, the Arukh HaShulhan concludes that men are no longer prohibited from praying in the presence of a woman’s hair, and Rav Moshe Feinstein ruled that women may show a hand’s-breadth of hair.

A few Orthodox rabbis in the early 20th century justified women’s decisions not to cover their hair at all, including the Moroccan chief rabbi in the 1960s, HaRav Mashash, and the lesser known American Modern Orthodox rabbi, Isaac Hurwitz — though they drew criticism for this opinion. In their writings, they systematically review the sources surveyed above and demonstrate that those sources describe a social norm of modest dress, but not a legal requirement.

“Now that all women agree,” Rabbi Mashash wrote, “that covering one’s hair is not an issue of modesty and going bare-headed is not a form of disrespect — in fact, the opposite is true: Uncovered hair is the woman’s splendor, glory, beauty, and magnificence, and with uncovered hair she is proud before her husband, her lover — the prohibition is uprooted on principle and is made permissible.”

What Women Do

While only a few traditional rabbis have reinterpreted the law of hair covering, throughout the generations women have acted on their own initiative. The first sparks of rebellion occurred in the 1600s, when French women began wearing wigs to cover their hair. Rabbis rejected this practice, both because it resembled the contemporary non-Jewish style and because it was immodest, in their eyes, for a woman to sport a beautiful head of hair, even if it was a wig. However, the wig practice took hold and, perhaps ironically, it is common today in many Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox communities. In some of these communities the custom is for women to wear an additional covering over their wig, to ensure that no one mistakes it for natural hair.

As the general practice of covering one’s head in public faded in Western culture in the past century, many Orthodox women also began to go bare-headed. Despite rabbinic opinions to the contrary, these women thought of hair covering as a matter of custom and culture.

Many women who continue to cover their hair do not do so for the traditional reason of modesty. For example some women view head covering as a sign of their marital status and therefore do not cover their hair in their own home. Others wear only a small symbolic head covering while showing much of their hair. Also in many communities, women have persisted in covering their hair only in synagogue.

In recent decades, there is an interesting trend among women who have learned the Jewish legal sources for themselves, due to advances in women’s education, and have decided to adopt a stringent stance toward hair covering, rather than following the more permissive norms of their parents’ communities. An entire book, Hide and Seek (2005), tells these women’s stories.

Modesty, as a Jewish value, is continually being refined and redefined by Jewish women and their communities. Just as some women have chosen to deemphasize hair covering as a marker of modesty, in other communities women may choose to embrace it, developing and reinforcing a more traditional communal norm. As modesty is subjectively defined, the community to which one wishes to belong may play a large role in determining practice. The decision to cover one’s hair rests at the crossroads between law and custom, personal choice and community identification.

For further reading check out:

What to Watch After Unorthodox

18 Things to Know About Shira Haas

On the Set of Unorthodox I Brushed Up Against My Hasidic Past

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Extensive sources from the Torah through the later rabbinic authorities attest to this requirement, and there is a powerful taboo against cremation reinforced by the millions of Jews burned in Nazi crematoria during the Holocaust. Nevertheless, as cremation becomes more common in mainstream society, the number of Jews opting for cremation appears to be increasing, forcing Jewish authorities to consider a number of related issues, including whether cremated remains may be interred in a Jewish cemetery and whether a rabbi may officiate at a funeral for someone who has been cremated.

Is cremation permitted by Jewish law?

Defenders of cremation point out that there is no explicit prohibition against cremation in Jewish legal sources. However there are prohibitions on defiling dead bodies and detailed procedures for handling them prior to burial — all of which appear inconsistent with the act of cremation. Proponents of cremation also point to biblical sources suggesting that Jews may have practiced the burning of dead bodies in ancient times.

Against that is a large body of Jewish literature that deals extensively with burial of the dead. In Genesis (3:19), God declares of man: “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” Deuteronomy (21:23) commands in the case of an executed criminal, “You shall surely bury him.” The requirement of burying the dead is explicitly codified in multiple later rabbinic sources as well, including Sanhedrin 46b, Maimonides’ Sefer Hamitzvot and the Shulchan Aruch.

Moreover, there are additional historical, cultural and spiritual arguments against cremation. According to the Jewish mystical tradition, the soul does not immediately depart the body after death, and the process of decay in the earth allows a gradual separation rather than the more immediate and painful one resulting from the burning of the body. Cremation was historically associated with pagan practices that Jews are repeatedly enjoined in the Torah to reject. And because the body is traditionally considered the property of God, it is forbidden to defile it, which some regard the willful burning of human remains to be.

For all these reasons, Orthodox and Conservative rabbinic authorities maintain that cremation is prohibited. The Reform movement has adopted conflicting positions on this question over the years, but the most recent rabbinic opinion on the subject states that while cremation ought to be discouraged, the practice is not considered sinful.

Can the remains of cremated Jews be buried in a Jewish cemetery?

Generally yes. Even in traditional communities, the fact that someone may not have adhered to Jewish law in their lifetime does not constitute grounds for their exclusion from Jewish burial grounds. Individual burial societies or Jewish cemeteries might decline to inter the ashes of a cremated body, in part as a deterrent to others who might also choose cremation. But there is nothing in Jewish law that bars them from burying ashes. Many Jewish cemeteries are known to bury ashes upon request , and the Reform movement has said explicitly that cremated remains of a Jewish person should be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Can a rabbi officiate at a funeral for someone who was cremated?

It depends on the circumstances. According to a ruling adopted by the Conservative movement’s legal authorities in 1986, in a case where a family declines the advice of a rabbi not to cremate a family member’s remains, the rabbi should not officiate at the interment, but may choose to officiate at a ceremony prior to the cremation. If the family did not consult a rabbi prior to cremation, the rabbi may choose to officiate at the interment.  The Reform movement does not object to its rabbis presiding over a funeral at which a cremation is to take place.

Does a deceased’s wish to be cremated have to be honored?

The Shulhan Arukh rules explicitly, citing Maimonides, that heirs must not respect the wishes of a deceased person not to be buried. While some rabbinic authorities differed on this point, contemporary Orthodox and Conservative authorities uphold the view that next of kin are not obliged to defer to the wishes of the deceased in such a case. The Reform movement has said that children are not forbidden from honoring a parent’s request to be cremated, yet neither are they obliged to do so if it contravenes their own religious principles.

Is cremation cheaper than burial?

Yes. According to a study from the National Funeral Directors Association, the median cost of a funeral in the United States in 2014 was $7,181, while cremation cost $6,078 — and could easily be far lower if certain services were foregone.  However, given the importance traditionally accorded to Jewish burial, many Jewish communities have resources, such as free burial societies, to subsidize a traditional burial in cases where the family lacks sufficient financial resources. In addition, it is traditional Jewish practice to bury someone in a simple pine casket, rather than the more expensive types of caskets that funeral homes often market.

Is embalming permissible in Jewish tradition?

Embalming is the process of preserving human remains, often to enhance presentability for public viewing. As with cremation, embalming is traditionally viewed as inconsistent with Jewish practices surrounding death and burial. Embalming a body is generally seen as a form of mutilation of the dead body, while the whole notion of preservation runs counter to the tradition that the dead be buried quickly and in as natural a state as possible. However exceptions for certain embalming procedures are occasionally made in extenuating circumstances, as when it is required by law or if a body must travel overseas for burial.

Articles on Cremation and the Jewish Community

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Nonetheless, psychiatric ailments continue to be stigmatized. And while Jews have been instrumental in establishing the field of psychology — and are often stereotyped as being “neurotic” and more likely to undergo psychotherapy —  the Jewish community, like society in general, is not always comfortable openly talking about mental illness or dealing with those who suffer from it. Indeed, in some quarters of the Jewish community, there remains a great reluctance to discuss the issue at all, much less to relate to it as just another medical condition. This is despite the fact that references to mental illness can be found in some of the earliest Jewish textual sources.

Do classical Jewish texts discuss mental illness?

There is little direct discussion of mental illness in the Bible, though some have suggested that various biblical figures, most notably King David, may have suffered from depression. In the Bible, “madness” is described in several places as a form of divine punishment. In Deuteronomy, shigaon — an antecedent term for the common Yiddish expression meshuggeneh, or crazy — is one of the forms of divine retribution for those who don’t heed the word of God. Later in that section, God says that the Jewish people will become “m’shuga” after a foreign people steals their crops and abuses them.

The rabbis of the Talmud mostly addressed the issue in legal terms, as a question of mental competence — their concern being principally whether someone of unsound mind is obligated by religious commandments. However, there are talmudic sources that continue the biblical equation of madness and sinfulness. In Tractate Sota, the third-century sage Reish Lakish says a person only sins when the spirit of “shtut” — madness or folly — comes over him or her. Contemporary Orthodox writers have echoed both these ideas — that mental illness is a form of sinfulness and a punishment for it.

According to traditional Jewish law, someone who is mentally incompetent — a category known as a shoteh, derived from the Hebrew word for wanderer or vagrant — is exempt from most religious obligations and cannot get married or bear witness. The Talmud describes such a person as someone who goes out alone at night (despite the dangers) or sleeps in a cemetery — signs of his or her detachment from reality. Maimonides said the shoteh is someone who runs around naked or throws rocks. According to the Israeli psychiatrist Rael Strous, the classic definition of a shoteh is essentially a psychotic.

Echoing our contemporary understanding of the various forms of mental illness, the rabbis distinguished between those who are completely insane, those who cycle in an out of lucidity and those who are insane only in certain respects. However, their understanding of the causes of insanity would not be embraced by contemporary mental health professionals. In Tractate Ketubot, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel warns that idleness leads to “shimaon,” which the commentator Rashi equates with the biblical “shigaon” — craziness.

Do Jews suffer from mental illness at higher rates than the general population?

The idea that Jews are more anxious and neurotic than the norm is a widely repeated stereotype, one that has been attributed both to the many well-known Jewish neurotics who have played up their anxieties for comedic effect in film and television, as well as a tendency to celebrate Jewish anxiety as a sign of heightened intelligence. But the scientific data does not support the idea that, on average, Jews suffer from mental illness at higher rates than the general population.

A 1992 analysis of data from the National Institutes of Mental Health found that “the overall lifetime rate of psychiatric disorder did not differ among Jews as compared to non-Jews, even after controlling for demographic factors.”  The study did find that Jews suffer from certain mental illnesses at higher rates, including major depression, dysthymia, schizophrenia and simple phobia, but had lower rates of others, including alcoholism. This finding echoes the results of studies conducted in the 1950s and 1960s that found elevated rates of neurosis and manic depression (now known as bipolar disorder) among the Jewish population. The 1992 analysis found that rates of bipolar disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and drug abuse did not differ significantly between different religious groups. A 2007 study found that the frequency of mood and anxiety disorders in Israel is within the range of rates found in other Western countries.

More recently, scientists discovered a genetic variation among Ashkenazi Jews that increases their risk of developing schizophrenia, but that genetic variant is also found among other religious and ethnic groups. In addition, researchers in the emerging field of epigenetics —which investigates how environmental factors can affect genetic expression — have found evidence that communities that have suffered from trauma and persecution can experience genetic changes that can then be transmitted to future generations.

In the Orthodox community, considerable attention is now being directed to the prevalence of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, a condition that can sometimes be hard to distinguish from a hyper vigilance (sometimes referred to as scrupulosity) regarding the performance of Jewish religious commandments.  Avigdor Bonchek, an Orthodox clinical psychologist and the author of Religious Compulsions and Fears: A Guide to Treatment, has suggested that one can distinguish between OCD behavior and healthy religious devotion in two ways: True OCD sufferers, he says, carry heavy stress and emotional burdens in their focus on strictly observing the commandments, and they demonstrate an extreme inflexibility that makes it difficult for them to violate commandments even when religiously obliged to do so.

Is there a stigma against mental illness in the Jewish community?

The stigma against mental illness is not limited to Jews. Mental illness is still often perceived as less “real” than physical illness, a sign of weakness or a defect of character. Surveys have shown that American employers are reluctant to hire people with histories of psychiatric problems or who are undergoing treatment. Research suggests that a majority of people hold negative attitudes toward the mentally ill and that, for many families, mental illness is a source of shame and embarrassment. That in turn leads sufferers to conceal their condition, making it less likely that they will seek treatment.

Jews are not immune to these tendencies, as evidenced by efforts in recent years to foster a more candid discussion about mental illness in the Jewish community. However, there are also indications that Jews are more open about mental health issues than other groups. A 2012 study of older New Yorkers found that Jews had a more positive attitude toward psychotherapy than non-Jewish whites and blacks, were more tolerant of the stigma surrounding therapy and were more open to sharing their feelings. The 1992 study based on the NIMH data also found that Jews were more open to seeking professional mental health assistance than were Catholics or Protestants.

In recent years, numerous efforts have been made to address the stigma in the Orthodox community, where the fear of harming marriage prospects has drawn a curtain of secrecy around those suffering from mental illness. Marvin Winkler, an Orthodox mental health practitioner, wrote in 1977: “The fear and shame associated with mental illness in the Torah community can be compared only to that associated with the most severe Halachic transgressions.” Today, there are a number of Jewish groups focused exclusively on mental health issues in the Orthodox community, including Refuat Hanefesh, which seeks to destigmatize mental illness among the Orthodox; Chazkeinu, which offers supportive phone meetings for women struggling with mental illness; Refa’enu, which runs educational programs in Jewish schools and support groups; and Relief, which makes mental health referrals.

Are there any Jewish organizations that focus on mental health?

Yes, Besides those noted above, Elijah’s Journey is a national Jewish nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention. In addition, virtually every local Jewish federation in North America has a Jewish Family Services agency that provides, among other things, counseling and other assistance for families and individuals suffering with mental health issues.

There seem to be so many Jewish psychiatrists and therapists out there. Is the field of psychology dominated by Jews?

Anecdotally, this sometimes seems to be the case, but there is scant hard data to support it. One study published in 2007 found that American psychiatrists were more likely than other types of physicians to be Jews (Jews made up 29 percent of psychiatrists and only 19 percent of physicians overall), but the study, of 1,000 physicians, surveyed only 100 psychiatrists.

However it is true that Jews have been instrumental in the development of psychology and psychiatry. Probably the most famous psychologist in history and the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, was Jewish, as were many of his early associates in the field,  including Erich Fromm, Alfred Adler and Bruno Bettelheim. Most of the major theorists of Gestalt psychology were Jewish. Joseph Jastrow, a Polish-born psychologist and the son of the author of a famous talmudic dictionary, was the first recipient of an American doctorate in psychology in 1898. Abraham Maslow, the psychologist famous for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, was born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. Theorists have posed a number of ideas for why Jews are so prominent in early psychology, among them a Jewish penchant for expressing emotions verbally and a greater willingness among Jews to consult professionals about personal issues.

<!–Louis Jacobs, a British rabbi and theologian, served as rabbi of the New London Synagogue. Rabbi Jacobs lectures at University College in London and at Lancaster University. He has written numerous books, including Jewish Values, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, and Hasidic Prayer.

© Louis Jacobs, 1995. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be stored, transmitted, retransmitted, lent, or reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of Oxford University Press.

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