Terms

Question 1

bar mitzvah

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

bat mitzvah

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

brit milah

Answer 3

male circumcision ceremony

Question 4

covenant

Answer 4

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)

Question 5

halakhah

Answer 5

jewish law

Question 6

kabbalah

Answer 6

study of mystic elements of the Torah

Question 7

kashrut

Answer 7

dietary laws

Question 8

ketubah

Answer 8

jewish prenup agreement

Question 9

kippah

Answer 9

tiny circular hat

Question 10

kosher

Answer 10

foods that can be consumed under kashrut

Question 11

mashiach

Answer 11

messiah, savior

Question 12

messiah

Answer 12

promised deliverer

Question 13

midrash

Answer 13

process of interpretation by rabbis to fill in the gaps in the Torah

Question 14

mishnah

Answer 14

first major written redaction of the jewish oral traditions; collection of rabbinic commentaries on Biblical law, published in 200 CE

Question 15

mitzvah

Answer 15

613 commandments in the Torah given at Mt. Sinai

Question 16

pesach

Answer 16

Passover story in Exodus

Question 17

Rosh ha-Shanah

Answer 17

Jewish New Years celebration

Question 18

Sefer Torah

Answer 18

handwritten copy of the Torah

Question 19

Shabbat

Answer 19

Jewish day of rest; 39 prohibitions deal with creation and destruction -> tabernacle

Question 20

Tallit

Answer 20

prayer shawl

Question 21

Talmud

Answer 21

contains the Mishnah and Gemara, central text of Rabbinic Judaism; collection of rabbinic commentaries on the work referred to in Mishnah

Question 22

Tanakh

Answer 22

canon of the Hebrew Bible, contains the Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim

Question 23

Tefillin

Answer 23

prayer boxes

Question 24

Torah

Answer 24

first five books of the bible, G, E, L, N, D

Question 25

Yom Kippur

Answer 25

holiest day of the year, day of atonement on the 10th day of the 7th month

Question 26

Sect

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Pharisees

Answer 27

torah and law, rather than sacrifice; individual power

Question 28

Zealot

Answer 28

revolutionaries against rome

Question 29

Essenes

Answer 29

moved out o the desert, semimonastic community; dead sea scrolls; dualism (good vs evil) and apocalypticism

Question 30

Messianists

Answer 30

christians

Question 31

Sadducees

Answer 31

rival group of priests, but not from Aaron

Question 32

“J”

Answer 32

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

Question 33

“E”

Answer 33

writer who calls God “Elohim” (“gods”) translated into English as GOD lived in the northern Israel sometime between 922 and 722 BCE

Question 34

“P”

Answer 34

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)

Question 35

“D”

Answer 35

legal material found in Deuteronomy; based on very old legal code that laws being read publicly in Judah by 700 CE

Question 36

“R”

Answer 36

redactor: editor either Schama -> many editors in Babylon Friedman -> Ezra in Babylon before 458 BCE

Question 37

Prophets vs Priests

Answer 37

Question 38

HOW DID THE ISRAELITES EXPRESS THEIR UNIQUE IDENTITY AND DIFFERENTIATE THEMSELVES FROM THEIR NEIGHBORS?

Answer 38

1) through a shared language (hebrew)
2) through shared stories (exodus from egypt)
3) through genealogy (long lists of “begats”)
4) through shared rituals

Question 39

Development of Israelite Monotheism

Answer 39

1. Period of the Judges (1200-1000 BCE)
   * Yahweh begins to emerge as the central Israelite diety
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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

Question 40

Yeshiva

Answer 40

major rabbinic academy established in 219

Question 41

Sosipatra

Answer 41

• 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

Question 42

Emperor Constaintine

Answer 42

• Christianity’s rise to dominance in the eastern Mediterranean (and later in Europe) was due to his conversion to Christianity