Unit 5 Flashcards
(39 cards)
A charismatic faith healer, mystic, and teacher (whose given name was Israel ben Eliezer) who is generally regarded as the found of the Hasidic movement.
Baal Shem Tov (1698-1776)
A rite of passage for adolescents in Judaism (for age males/females age thirteen), signals their coming of age and the beginning of adult religious responsibility.
Bar/Bat Mitzvah
A biblical concept that describes the relationship between God and the Jews in contractual terms, often thought of as an eternal bond between the Creator and the descendants of the ancient Israelites.
covenant
Religious literature hidden in caves near the shores of the Dead Sea (c. second-first centuries B.C.E.)
Dead Sea Scrolls
A Greek word in origin, it refers to those Jewish communities that live outside of the historical land of Israel.
Diaspora
The belief that the biblical God “chose” the people of Israel to be His “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation.” This biblical concept is logically connected to the idea of the covenant, and it entails the belief that the Jews’ relationship with God obliges them to conform to His laws and fulfill His purposes in the world.
election
Any belief in an “End-Time” of divine judgment and world destruction.
eschatological
A core concept of Judaism: the belief that the world was created and is governed by only one transcendent Being, whose ethical attributes provide an ideal model for human behavior.
ethical monotheism
The escape (or departure) of Israelite slaves from Egypt as described in the Hebrew Bible (c. 1250 B.C.E.)
Exodus
An authoritative formulation of traditional Jewish law.
halacha
A popular movement within eighteenth-century eastern European Judaism, stressed the need for spiritual restoration and deepened individual piety. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the movement spawned a number of distinctive communities that have physically separated themselves from the rest of the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds and who are often recognized by their attire and their devotion to a dynasty of hereditary spiritual leaders.
Hasidism
The genocidal destruction of approximately six million European Jews by the government of Nazi Germany during World War II. This mass slaughter is referred to in Hebrew as the Shoah.
Holocaust
The divine attribute of in-dwelling, or God being present to human consciousness.
immanence
One of the dominate forms of Jewish mysticism, texts began to appear in Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Mystics belonging to this tradition focus on the emanative powers of God – referred to in Hebrew as Sephirot – and on their role within the Godhead, as well as within the human personality.
Kabbalah
A sixteenth-century mystic who settled in Safed (Israel) and gathered around him a community of disciples. Lurianic mysticism seeks to explain the mystery surrounding both the creation of the world and its redemption from sin.
Luria, Isaac
A twelfth-century philosopher and rabbinic scholar whose codification of Jewish beliefs and religious practices set the standard for both in subsequent centuries.
Maimonides
A possibly supernatural figure who will judge and transform the world.
Messiah
A ritual bath in which married Jewish women immerse themselves each month, after the end of their menstrual cycle and before resuming sexual relation with their husbands.
mikveh
Literally translated, the Hebrew word means “commandments,” and it refers to the 613 commandments that the biblical God imparted to the Israelites in the Torah (i.e., the first five books of the Hebrew Bible).
mitzvot
The legendary leader and prophet who led the Israelite slaves out of Egypt, he serves as a mediator between the people of Israel and God in the Torah and is later viewed as Israel’s greatest prophet. It is to him that God imparts the Ten Commandments and the teachings that later became the Torah.
Moses
The divine attribute of total and eternal power.
omnipotence
The divine attribute of total and eternal knowledge.
omniscience
An early spring harvest festival that celebrates the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, (better known as “Passover” in English), is celebrated for seven days in Israel and eight days in the Diaspora. The first two nights are celebrated within a family setting.
Pesach
The Jewish New Year, it is celebrated for two days in the fall (on the first day of the month of Tishrai) and accompanied by the blowing of a ram’s horn (a shofar, in Hebrew). It signals that beginning of the “ten days of repentance” that culminate with Yom Kippur.
Rosh Hashanah
