Neo-Orthodox Jews
The majority amounts of Jews in Britten are Orthodox Jews.
The movements of Orthodox Jews are known as ‘Neo- Orthodox Jews’. Normal orthodox Jews are very strict and follow correctly the mitzvoth of the torah which they believe is directly from g-d.
Orthodoxy is not really a movement but a whole range of traditional Jews who aren’t reformed or liberal. Jews live in a modern world which they should study and take part in but by doing so they should still make sure they are following their own religion and do not brake the mitzvoth’s.
A man called Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirskh, who was a German theologian, was concerned that many Jews were turning down orthodoxy towards reformed movement.
A02
Explain how the differing worship and lifestyle of these groups might reflect and assist belief
Orthodoxy Jews
Orthodoxy is made up of several different Jewish groups, ‘It includes the modern Orthodox, who have largely integrated into modern society while maintaining observance of halakha (Jewish Law), the Chasidim, who live separately and dress distinctively (commonly, but erroneously, referred to in the media as the "ultra-Orthodox"), and the Yeshivas Orthodox, who are neither Chasidic nor modern.’
All the Orthodox movements are very similar, they all believe that G-d gave Moses the Torah; the whole torah includes both the written torah and the oral torah. (the oral torah explains the written torah). They believe that the torah contain the 613 mitzvoth and they should follow them very strictly.
Reformed Jews
Reform Judaism does not believe that the Torah was written by G-d. they accepts the critical assumption of Biblical authorship of it being written by different people and then connect together once finished. The reformed Jews do not believe the commandments as much as they used to but do keep the tradition of following them as best as they can, and followed practices and the culture as best as they could.
A03
‘Festivals are the best way to learn about your faith’
I agree that this is the best way to learn about your faith because they are actually doing the what they need to learn rather than reading about it. In Judaism they have a lot of festivals in their religion, this maybe be because Jew have figured this out that this is the best way that people learn things because it covers a range of different ways of learning. They have learned that doing the activity is the best way.
In the festival Sukkot they spend seven days in their Sukkot’s that they have made them self’s, Sukkot is a hut that has to have more than 3 walls and is only allowed to be build out of things that have fallen to the ground also building a hut is the most obvious way in which Jews celebrate the festival and the most physical. Every Jewish family will build an open air structure in which to live during the holiday. The essential thing about the hut is that it should have a roof of branches and leaves, through which those inside can see the sky. The family will collect four types of plants; an etrog (a citron fruit), a palm branch, a myrtle branch and a willow branch.
As you can see all this part is physical and people are learning about their religion. The reason for the Sukkot is because in these modern days everyone lives in either houses or apartments and forget the years that the Jews spent in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, and celebrates the way in which G-d protected them under difficult desert conditions.
Orthodox Judaism
Judaism's beginning starts strangely enough without Jews. The Bible records twenty generations of humanity before the appearance of the First Jew, Abraham.
His personality would act as a paradigm for his descendants who would eventually become the Jewish people. He was a religious revolutionary who refined his spirituality to such a degree that G-d spoke to him, in other words, he became a Prophet (although his wife Sarah became a greater Prophet) He was an iconoclast who openly challenged the universal beliefs of his time and insisted that there was only one G-d. He was stubbornly willing to give up his own life rather than compromise his beliefs.
The people that would evolve from Abraham would have to manifest all of those qualities in order to perform the role that G-d had set for them. In fact the only time the Torah defines the nature of the Jewish people it is to identify them as a 'Stiff necked' or stubborn. Still, if G-d required a people to carry a message through Crusade, Inquisition, Pogrom, and Holocaust, stubbornness would be the essential character trait.
Orthodox Judaism believes that the Jewish people left the slavery of Egypt and rendezvoused with G-d at a mountain called Sinai. There, through Moses, they would be given the Torah. Moses was also taught the deeper meaning of that book and that explanation was passed from teacher to pupil and was known as the 'oral tradition'.
The Torah's insistence of "An eye for an eye", for example, was never meant to be taken literally, Moses was taught that it meant the financial value of the lost eye. The Oral tradition was in fact a system which allowed the 304,805 letters that are contained in the Torah to expand into a set of legal rulings that covered, building law, agricultural law, criminal law, sexual Law, business law and in fact a complete set of legislation for every conceivable aspect of a society.
The form that the Talmud takes is a key set of statements know as the Mishna, which draws its information from the Torah. These statements are then discussed at great length sometimes comparing the information in one Mishna with another and clarifying seeming contradictions. Once the discussions reach a conclusion that becomes the Jewish legal ruling or Halachah. The Talmud also carries background to the stories in the Torah and so the dialogue in Genesis between Rachel and Jacob is expanded upon and a deeper insight gained.
After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70, the Talmud needed to be written down. Those who carried it in their minds were being systematically persecuted and killed by Rome. There was a danger that it could become lost and so the oral law too became written. Its' scope is vast and it is contained in twenty huge volumes as thick as a telephone directory and twice the height.
