First Religion quiz Flashcards
aggadah
anecdotal or narrative material in the Talmud
apocalyptic
refers to the belief that the world is under the control of evil forces, but that God will intervene and defeat the powers of darkness at the end of time; from apocalypse, a greek term meaning unveiling. Apocalyptic literature flourished during the Hellenistic era.
ashkenazim
Jews of Central and Eastern European ancestry, as distinguisshed from Sephardim and Mizrahim.
baal shem tov
Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the founder of Hasidism, also know as the Besht
bar mitzvah
son of the commandment; the title given to a 13-year old boy when he is initiated into adult ritual responsibilities; some branches of Judaism also celebrate a bat mitzvah for girls.
bris
the yiddish form of the Hebrew brit
brit
treaty or covenant in Hebrew; the special relationship between God and the Jewish people. Brit milah is the covenant of circumcision.
cantor
the liturgical specialist who leads the musical chants in synagogue series; haze in Hebrew.
diaspora
a collective term for Jews living outside the land of ancient Israel; from the Greek meaning ‘dispersal.’ The Diaspora began with the Babylonian Exile, from which not all Jews returned to Judea.
Documentary Hypothesis
the theory that the Pentateuch was not written by one person (Moses) but was compiled over a long period of time from multiple sources; proposed by the German scholar Julius Wellhausen in 188.
Exile
the deportation of Jewish leaders from Jerusalem to Mesopotamia by the conquering Babylonians in 586 BCE; disrupting local Israelite political ritual, and agricultural institutions it marked the transition from Israelite religion to Judaism.
Exodus
the migration of Hebrews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, understood in later Hebrew thought as marking the birth of the Israelite nation
Gaonim
the senior rabbinical authorities in Mesopotamia under Persian and Muslim rule; singular Gaon
Gemarah
the body of aramaic commentary attached to the Hebrew test of the Mishnah, which together make up the Talmud ( both the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud).
Haggadah
the liturgy for the ritual Passover dinner .
Halakhah
Material in the Talmud of legal nature; see also Aggadah
Haredim
a rigorously observant subgroup of Orthodox Judaism
Hasidism
Movement founded in Eastern Europe by the eighteenth-century mystic known as the Baal Shem Tov. Today the movement encompasses many subgroups each of which has its own charismatic leader, The Hasidim make up a significant part of Orthodox Judaism.
Haskalah
The Jewish Englightenment
Hebrew Bible
The sacred can of Jewish texts, know to Jews as the Tanakh and to Christians as the Old Testament.
Holocaust
the mass murder of approximately 6 million European Jews by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler during the Second World War; from the Greek words meaning “whole” and “burnt.” the Hebrew term is Shoah “catastrophe”
Israelites
the biblical people of Israel
Kabbalah
the medieval Jewish mystical tradition; its central text is a commentary on scripture called he zohar. which is thought to have been written by Moses of Leon but is attributed to Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. a famous second-century rabbinic mystic and wonder-worker.
Karaites
“Scripturalists”; an eighth century anti-rabbinic movement that rejected the Talmud, takin only the Bible as authoritative
kippah
dome or cap; the Hebrew word for the skullcap that Jewish men wear; yarmulke
Ladino
a language composed mainly of Spanish and Hebrew, spoken by some Sephardic Jews.
Luria, Isaac
Influential Kabbalah scholar.
Maimonides, Moses
Latinized name of Moses ben Maimon, one of the most famous Jewish philosophers and legal scholars of the Islamic age, identified in religious texts as Rambam. (1135-1204)
menorah
the seven-branched oil lamp that has been a Jewish symbol since ancient times, well before the widespread adoption of the six-pointed stay; the one branched menorah used at Hanukkah is sometimes called a hannukiah.
kosher
term for food that is ritually acceptable, indicating that all rabbinic regulations regarding animal slaughter and the like she been observed in its preparation
messiah
from the Hebrew Mashiach, anointed one. The Greek translation is Christos, from which the English term Christ is derived
midrash
Rabbinic commentary on scripture
minyan
the quorum of ten required for a prayer service. In more rigorously observant synagogues, only adult males qualify; in more liberal synagogues adult women may also participate in the minyan.
mishnah
the oral law- inherited from pharisaism and ascribed to Moses- written down and codified by topic; edited by Rabbi Judah hanse around 220 CE, it has an authority paralleling that of the written Torah.
Mishneh Torah
A topically arranged code of Jewish law written in the twelfth century by Maimonides
mitzvah
a commandment in the Roman era, the rabbinic movement identified exactly 613 specific commandments contained within the Torah
mizrahim
Jews of Middle Eastern ancestry, as distinguish from Ashkenazim and Sephardim
mohel
a ritual circumciser
passover
rebirth, but came to commemorate the supposed liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt under Moses’ leadership major celebration of agricultural
Pentateuch
the Greek name fro the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. ascribed by tradition to Moses but regarded by modern scholars as the product of several centuries of later literary activity
phylacteries
the usual English term for tefillin
Purim
literally lots; the holiday commemorating the escape of the Jews of Persia from an evil plot of a Persian official name Haman, as described in the Book of Esther. Human used a lottery system to determine the date for the destruction oft he Jews. hence the name of this holiday.
rabbi
literally teacher, but by the second century CE the official title of an expert on the interpretation of Torah; once priestly sacrifices had ended with the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the rabbi became the scholarly and spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation.
rabbinic movement
legal teachers and leaders who inherited the teachings of the Pharisees and became the dominate voices in Judaism after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE/