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The term covenant signifies a formal agreement between two parties, in which “one or both make promises under oath to perform or refrain from certain actions stipulated in advance.” 1 In the religion Judaism, the term covenant refers in particular to the agreement God made with the people of Israel at Sinai. This agreement calls for the Jews to follow God's law, embodied in Torah. In return God promises to make of the Israelites a great nation dwelling in peace in the Promised Land. Described at Exod. 19–20 and elaborated i…

The inner, animating element of human beings, the soul stands in contrast to the physical body, generally comprehended as the vehicle that contains the soul. Within this general definition, cultures throughout the world express a wide range of understandings of the meaning and function of the soul. In ancient near-eastern cultures, for instance, the soul was broadly associated with physical appearance, destiny, and power. Within the culture of ancient Israel, by contrast, rather than being seen …

Judaism, like most systems of religion, distinguishes between miracles—the extraordinary deeds of the true God or agents of the true God—and magic—the extraordinary deeds of false gods or their agents. 1 The former acts are judged good and acceptable, so that a person who is able to use the power of the divine for purposes the religion deems right and appropriate is thought of as a holy man, miracle worker, or sage. By contrast, a person—usually an outsider or practitioner of a different religion—who demonstrates similar abilities is derided as a witch, demon, or fiend. This distinction b…

The charitable donation of money, goods, or services to the needy is understood in both secular and religious cultures to be a free tribute, given out of the liberality of one person to help in the support of another. People accordingly associate charity with generosity and comprehend it primarily to be an act of free will, in which one individual makes a personal decision to help another who is in need. Judaism, especially in modern times, comparably, recognizes the personal choices involved in…

The opposing concepts of free will and determinism (that is, fate) represent contrasting ways of understanding the world in which we live and of comprehending the ability of people to shape that world and to control their place in it. Ileana Marcoulesco defines the doctrines of free will and fate as follows: 1 [B]elief in free will amounts to the conviction that, as individuals, human beings are endowed with the capacity for choice of action, for decision among alternatives, and specifically that, given an innate moral sense, man can freely discer…

Extraordinary events that have no possible human or natural cause are recognized in the Hebrew Bible and in later forms of Judaism as deriving from the direct intervention of God in the human sphere. In the Rabbinic literature, such occurrences are referred to simply by the term nes, signifying a “wondrous event” and roughly comparable to the English term “miracle.” 1 In the Hebrew Bible, by contrast, events that violate the natural order much more commonly are designated as “signs” ( otot, mofetim), 2 a term that points to the distinctive role miracles play in ancient Israeli…

The worship of a physical representation of a deity was a central aspect of Mesopotamian and Egyptian religions in the period of the emergence of the religion of Israel, detailed in the Hebrew Scriptures. 1 In light of the prevailing practices of the peoples around them, practices that we refer to as idolatry, the official religion of the Israelites was striking. In contrast to those religions, the Israelite doctrine took as its fundamental precept the prohibition against creating and worshipping any representation of the Israel…

Formal statements of fundamental belief, or articles of faith, do not exist in Judaism in the same way in which they exist in Christianity and Islam. While, especially beginning in the medieval period, Jewish philosophers made many attempts to reduce the content of Judaism to a short statement of dogma, such creeds lacked the backing of a supreme ecclesiastical body, which does not exist in Judaism. Thus, while certain of these statements have been incorporated into the Jewish liturgy and functi…

The term tradition generally signifies the theological and ritual content of a religion, its beliefs, doctrines, cultural values, moral standards, and especially the particular behaviors through which individuals and communities express their participation in the religion. Tradition thus may refer to everything from modes of dress and choices of cuisine to language and approaches to rearing children. Insofar as these elements of communal life are transmitted from generation to generation, the te…

In Judaism a sin is any act that violates the stipulations of the covenant with God. This means that, within Judaism, sin encompasses not only religious or ritual offenses, which people today commonly think of as sins, but also includes all other crimes as well, whether they are against individuals or are violations of any of the community laws described in the Torah as a whole. Judaic thinking about sin grows out of the Hebrew Scriptures' comprehension that human beings are by nature morally flawed. 1 People, this is to say, have an innate disposition to transgress God's comman…