My Rage Against the Machine.

September 30, 2007

Who is a Jew: What Do Jews Believe?

Filed under: Who is a Jew? — crimzonsol @ 4:47 pm

This is a far more difficult question than you might expect. Judaism has no dogma, no formal set of beliefs that one must hold to be a Jew. In Judaism, actions are far more important than beliefs, although there is certainly a place for personal beliefs within Judaism. 

The closest that anyone has ever come to creating a widely-accepted list of Jewish beliefs is Rambam’s thirteen principles of faith. Rambam’s thirteen principles of faith, which he thought were the minimum requirements of Jewish belief, are:

1.  G-d exists
2.  G-d is one and unique
3.  G-d is incorporeal
4.  G-d is eternal
5.  Prayer is to be directed to G-d alone and to no other
6.  The words of the prophets are true
7.  Moses’ prophecies are true, and Moses was the greatest of the prophets
8.  The Written Torah (first 5 books of the Bible) and Oral Torah (teachings now contained in the Talmud and other writings) were given to Moses
9.  There will be no other Torah
10. G-d knows the thoughts and deeds of men
11. G-d will reward the good and punish the wicked
12. The Messiah will come
13. The dead will be resurrected

I personally ascribe to 11 of the 13 one this list. In that you can see that Jews all have their own beliefs about reliogion, but these thirteen beliefs are basically the foundation for Jewish beliefs.

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