What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew about Judaism. Robert Schoen

help, this assistance often coming from students at rabbinical or cantoral seminaries.

      The word havurah refers to a small group that functions either independently of a larger religious congregation or as part of an organized synagogue. The word comes from the Hebrew root word for “friend.” The havurah serves as a fellowship group and extended family with which to celebrate holidays, share support in times of crisis, enjoy religious and non-religious events, and maintain a network of people who share the faith.

      In addition, there are “alternative” congregations or organizations that combine Jewish traditions and beliefs with mysticism, vegetarianism, New Age philosophy, or social and political action. For example, Jewish meditation, spirituality, and education combine to form the basis of a very popular Jewish community group where I live in Northern California’s Bay Area.

      In other words, there is more than one place for Jewish people to meet, study, socialize, solve problems large and small, and worship.

       A Personal Observation

      I grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s attending a Conservative congregation. As any child brought up in a system, I believed that this was the norm in the same way that I thought my household was the norm and my high school was the norm and my rock-and-roll band was the norm and my mom and dad were the norm. As I matured, I was often shocked to discover that not only are things different out in the real world but also there is oftentimes no norm.

      In my synagogue, it was typical for men and boys to wear a kippah (skullcap) when in the synagogue, to wear a tallit (prayer shawl) when attending religious services, and to recite certain prayers in Hebrew and others in English. At the time, few adult women in the congregation participated in leading religious services. However, more than ever before, girls were attending Hebrew school and participating in the bat mitzvah ritual, just as the boys celebrated their bar mitzvah. (The girls were the ones from whom I copied my Hebrew school homework.)

      The first time I attended a Reform Shabbat service, I was quite surprised. For the most part, the congregants did not wear a kippah or tallit; much more of the service was in English than in Hebrew; and when the rabbi read the Torah portion, he translated it into English, line by line, as he went along—I liked this method since it meant I did not have to read the English to know what he was talking about.

      Through the years, I have belonged to more than one Reform congregation, and I have generally found the services stimulating and informative. I have also attended Conservative services reminiscent of the synagogue of my youth as well as Orthodox services, which reflect traditional Judaism as it has been practiced for centuries. On occasion I’ve attended what I would refer to as “alternative” congregations and taken part in services that were outside my own definition of mainstream. I did note, however, the joy and delight with which the congregants participated, and I respected their enthusiasm.

      My search for a religious or spiritual life has been a dynamic process. The spirituality I desired in my youth changed as I matured. Marriage and children affected the decisions about the type of religious observance my family and I sought and the degree to which we sought it. As I entered middle age, I found myself looking once more for a meaningful spiritual life, one that maybe was quite different from what I previously wanted or needed.

      With its vast sources of ritual and history, Judaism provides each Jewish person with a wealth of options for how best to shape his or her spirituality. Basic to Judaism is a belief in the one God and the wisdom of the Torah. In the words of the prophet Micah (6:8), “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

      Finally, the scholar and teacher Hillel was inspired by Leviticus 19:18 (“you shall love your neighbor as yourself”) when he said, “The entire Law [Torah] may be reduced to one statement, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor,’ the remainder being but commentary on this fundamental principle.” In this statement, both he and Jesus, certainly inspired by the same Scripture, were in total agreement.

       Inside the Synagogue

       The Torah and the Law

      If you have ever been to a synagogue service or seen parts of a service on television or in a movie, you know that Jews read from a scroll. This scroll is the Torah. In this day of sophisticated digital publishing, a highly trained scribe (sofer in Hebrew) still produces each scroll by hand. The sofer writes on parchment using a quill and special ink in the same way and to the same exacting standards as has been done for centuries. Specifically, the Torah refers to the Five Books of Moses (the Pentateuch). Sometimes, however, people may use the word Torah in a general sense to refer to the entire Bible or to all the religious texts of the Jewish people.

      The phrase “the Jewish Bible” refers to three distinct groups of Jewish writings. First is the Torah (the Pentateuch). These are the Five Books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), recorded on the Torah scroll as described previously. Portions are read each week during synagogue services.

      The second section is known as the Prophets (in Hebrew, Nevi’im) and includes the Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel I and II, Kings I and II, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets, which count as one book (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi).

      The third section is variously known as the Writings, the Hagiographa, or Ketuvim, a Hebrew word. This section includes the books of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah (these count as one book), and Chronicles I and II.

      Using the first letters of the word Torah and the Hebrew words for the other two books (Nevi’im and Ketuvim), you arrive at the acronym TNK, which is pronounced “Tanakh” and is what Jewish people call the Bible (the Holy Scriptures) in Hebrew.

      Many of the laws, passages, and directives in the Torah are not fully explained, are confusing, or may seem contradictory. Over the centuries, law based upon study and analysis of the Torah was passed down by word of mouth. This oral law, which provided explanations and amplifications of the written law, was finally organized and written down by the earliest rabbinic scholars in the first through third centuries CE and is known as the Mishnah (Hebrew for “recapitulation”). The Mishnah deals with temple rituals, holiday observances, agricultural issues, and family life, but it also contains many proverbs and philosophical observations.

      As scholars studied the Mishnah, they wrote down their commentaries and discussions about it. These commentaries, called the Gemara (Aramaic for “study”), are interspersed into each paragraph or section of the Mishnah and give insight into historical, spiritual, ethical, and legal issues.

      The combination of the Mishnah and the Gemara is called the Talmud. In case you’re not already confused, there are two versions of the Talmud: the Jerusalem (or Palestinian) Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. These days, when we refer to the Talmud, we refer to the Babylonian Talmud, which was completed in about 500 CE. Talmudic study, while quite challenging, opens a world of spiritual wisdom, humor and anecdote, and rabbinical arguments and puzzles.

      As a matter of fact, the Talmud is a storehouse of advice, recommending that it’s a good idea to begin a lecture with a humorous story, that we should try not to have more than twenty-five students in a classroom, and that we should always give a person the benefit of the doubt. It also gives practical advice for otherwise arguable situations. For example, when is Shabbat over? The answer is at the end of the day, when it is dark. How dark must it be for the day to be ended? The Talmud