Encyclopaedia of Judaism

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General Editors: Jacob Neusner, Alan J. Avery-Peck and William Scott Green

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The Encyclopaedia of Judaism Online offers more than 200 entries comprising more than 1,000,000 words and is a unique reference tool.  The Encyclopaedia of Judaism Online offers an authoritative, comprehensive, and systematic presentation of the current state of scholarship on fundamental issues of Judaism, both past and present. While heavy emphasis is placed on the classical literature of Judaism and its history, the Encyclopaedia of Judaism Online also includes principal entries on circumcision, genetic engineering, homosexuality, intermarriage in American Judaism, and other acutely contemporary issues. Comprehensive and up-to-date, it reflects the highest standards in scholarship. Covering a tradition of nearly four thousand years, some of the most distinguished scholars in the field describe the way of life, history, art, theology, philosophy, and the practices and beliefs of the Jewish people.

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Charity in Judaism

(9,488 words)

Author(s): Avery-Peck, Alan J.
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…
Source: Encyclopaedia of Judaism

China, Practice of Judaism in

(15,402 words)

Author(s): Xin, Xu
Judaism in China is unique, as China is the only country in the Oriental world in which Jews have continually lived for over one thousand years. Within this long history, a significant distinction must be made between Jews in pre-modern China, before 1840, and those in modern China, since 1840. Those who came before modern times became part of Chinese society without distinct features; those who have come since modern times have remained aliens. The beginnings of Judaism in China are buried in t…
Source: Encyclopaedia of Judaism

Christianity, Medieval Jewish Debates with

(9,748 words)

Author(s): Lasker, Daniel J.
Christianity emerged out of first-century Judaism, and Christians have always looked upon Jews differently from how they have viewed members of other religions. The vast majority of Jews' refusal to convert to Christianity, despite the fact that Jews and Christians both regard the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative and as predictive of the coming of the messiah, has been seen as a particular insult to the younger religion and its founder. Therefore, from the dawn of Christianity, Jews have been …
Source: Encyclopaedia of Judaism

Christianity on Judaism in Ancient and Medieval Times

(10,503 words)

Author(s): Brockway, Allan
At its inception a movement within Judaism, 1 the dramatic process by which Christianity came to be defined systemically as distinct from Judaism may be traced within the principal sources of the New Testament. That process was part and parcel of a redefinition of Israel, a redefinition that lead to a debate with Israel after the flesh during the period between the second and the fourth centuries. From the fourth century, with the emergence of Christianity as the principal religion of the Roman Empire,…
Source: Encyclopaedia of Judaism

Christianity on Judaism in Modern Times

(7,468 words)

Author(s): Brockway, Allan R.
From the late sixteenth through the seventeenth century, Christendom, splintered by the Protestant Reformation, continued to develop its centuries old hate-love conception of Judaism. On the one hand, Judaism was a fossil that inexplicably refused to act like a fossil. Since it had long ago been replaced in God's economy by Christianity and the Church, it had to be eradicated, preferably by the conversion of its adherents to Christianity. On the other hand, the Christian “Old Testament” was Judaism's Bible., and the Bible. was the rock upon which the Reformation stood. Both Catholics …
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Circumcision

(4,560 words)

Author(s): Hoffman, Lawrence A.
Milah (“circumcision”), or, more properly, brit milah (“the covenant of circumcision”), consists of the removal of the foreskin from the penis of a baby boy, with the purpose of initiating him into the “covenant of Abraham.” The term borrowed from the Rabbinic reading of Gen. 17, where Abraham and all his male heirs in perpetuity are told to practice circumcision as a sign of the covenant that God establishes with the people of Israel. …
Source: Encyclopaedia of Judaism

Circumcision, The Current Controversy

(7,559 words)

Author(s): Bleich, J. David
For Jews, circumcision is first and foremost fulfillment of a divine command. But circumcision is unique among mitzvot in that it represents the covenant established between God and Abraham and, through Abraham, with his progeny. Since the covenant represented by circumcision is shared by the entire people of Israel, circumcision also serves as a symbol of identification as a member of the community of Israel. As stated by Sefer ha-Hinnukh, no. 2, circumcision is designed “to separate [Israel] from other nations in the form of their body as in their souls.” Thus,…
Source: Encyclopaedia of Judaism

Cloning

(2,749 words)

Author(s): Bleich, J. David
There is no gainsaying the fact that the world has witnessed quantum leaps in scientific and technological advances since the mid-nineteenth century or, according to Jewish reckoning, since 5600, i.e., the year six hundred in the sixth millennium. As foretold by the Zohar, Bereshit 117a, the benefits are not merely pragmatic; the explosion of human knowledge is categorized by the Zohar as the direct result of heavenly inspiration and serves to herald the advent of the eschatological era of the seventh millennium. God revels himself in the processes of nature with the result t…
Source: Encyclopaedia of Judaism