Terms Flashcards
bar mitzvah
coming of age ceremony for boys; bear their own responsibility for Jewish ritual law, tradition, and ethics, and are able to participate in all areas of Jewish community life.
bat mitzvah
coming of age ceremony for girls; bear their own responsibility for Jewish ritual law, tradition, and ethics, and are able to participate in all areas of Jewish community life.
brit milah
male circumcision ceremony
covenant
agreement -> Noahic (never to destroy everything again - rainbow); Abrahamic (father of many nations and descendents, promised land, make his name a great nation for blessings - circumcision); Mosaic (promise to make Israelites his people if they follow commandments - shabbat); Priestly (God to Aaron for continued lineage of priests); Davidic (David and his descendents have lineage of rightly kinghood of united kingdom of Israel)
halakhah
jewish law
kabbalah
study of mystic elements of the Torah
kashrut
dietary laws
ketubah
jewish prenup agreement
kippah
tiny circular hat
kosher
foods that can be consumed under kashrut
mashiach
messiah, savior
messiah
promised deliverer
midrash
process of interpretation by rabbis to fill in the gaps in the Torah
mishnah
first major written redaction of the jewish oral traditions; collection of rabbinic commentaries on Biblical law, published in 200 CE
mitzvah
613 commandments in the Torah given at Mt. Sinai
pesach
Passover story in Exodus
Rosh ha-Shanah
Jewish New Years celebration
Sefer Torah
handwritten copy of the Torah
Shabbat
Jewish day of rest; 39 prohibitions deal with creation and destruction -> tabernacle
Tallit
prayer shawl
Talmud
contains the Mishnah and Gemara, central text of Rabbinic Judaism; collection of rabbinic commentaries on the work referred to in Mishnah
Tanakh
canon of the Hebrew Bible, contains the Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim
Tefillin
prayer boxes
Torah
first five books of the bible, G, E, L, N, D
Yom Kippur
holiest day of the year, day of atonement on the 10th day of the 7th month
Sect
Small organized group that separates itself from a larger religious body and asserts that it alone embodies the ideals of a larger group because it alone understands God’s will
Pharisees
torah and law, rather than sacrifice; individual power
Zealot
revolutionaries against rome
Essenes
moved out o the desert, semimonastic community; dead sea scrolls; dualism (good vs evil) and apocalypticism
Messianists
christians
Sadducees
rival group of priests, but not from Aaron
“J”
writer who used four-letter personal name of God (Jawwe in German); pronounced ADONAI in Hebrew; translated as LORD in English lived in the southern kingdom of Judah around 848-722 BCE
“E”
writer who calls God “Elohim” (“gods”) translated into English as GOD lived in the northern Israel sometime between 922 and 722 BCE
“P”
writer who was a priest; alternative to J/E written sometime between 722 and 586 BCE (after fall of north but not yet the first temple)
“D”
legal material found in Deuteronomy; based on very old legal code that laws being read publicly in Judah by 700 CE
“R”
redactor: editor either Schama -> many editors in Babylon Friedman -> Ezra in Babylon before 458 BCE
Prophets vs Priests
HOW DID THE ISRAELITES EXPRESS THEIR UNIQUE IDENTITY AND DIFFERENTIATE THEMSELVES FROM THEIR NEIGHBORS?
1) through a shared language (hebrew)
2) through shared stories (exodus from egypt)
3) through genealogy (long lists of “begats”)
4) through shared rituals
Development of Israelite Monotheism
- Period of the Judges (1200-1000 BCE)
* Yahweh begins to emerge as the central Israelite diety - Early Monarch (1000-800 BCE)
* Yahweh becomes the patron god of the king
* the king and Yahweh had a covenant whereby Yahweh would protect the king and, through him, the kingdom in return for primary worship
* religion and government were centralized in Jerusalem
* other cults still permitted within this framework - Later Monarchy (800-587 BCE)
* Yahweh’s pre-eminence grows even greater
* prophets begin to attack the monarchy for weakening worship of Yahweh – and therefore the nation – by permitting other cults - Exile (587-538 BCE)
* unambiguous monotheism -> only one God
* model of a family of gods is replaced by a single individual God
* Yahweh is no longer God only of Israel, but of entire world
Yeshiva
major rabbinic academy established in 219
Sosipatra
- lived in the 200s CE
- “a mind not like a woman’s or a mere human beings” -> philosopher
- gifts discovered when she was 5, but divine mysterious men initiated her into religious rite and mysteries of the world
Emperor Constaintine
- Christianity’s rise to dominance in the eastern Mediterranean (and later in Europe) was due to his conversion to Christianity
