Religion: What Jews Believe

What do modern Jews believe? To answer this question briefly for U.S. Christians and for Jews themselves, Rabb Philip Bernstein, president of the Centra Conference of American Rabbis, wrote an article for LIFE last fall. Now expanded and published in book form, with wood cuts by Quaker Fritz Eichenberg, Wha the Jews Believe (Farrar, Straus & Young; $1.25) is a lucid and readable primer of Judaism from a cheerfully humanistic point of view.

Ten Adult Males. In marked contrast to Christianity’s promises of salvation, Jewish religious thought concerns itself primarily with the here & now, says Bernstein ; the Jew’s chief reward for an ethical and God-centered life is the good life itself. “Most Jews have assented to the judgment of an olden rabbinic teacher who, after describing our earthly life as an antechamber, added, ‘One hour of repentance and good deeds in this world is better than the whole life of the world to come.’ “

Center of the Jewish community is the synagogue. But though the synagogue was probably a model for the churches set up by the early Christians, the Jews did not think of synagogues as houses of God, nor were they served by priests. This honor was reserved for the Temple. Since the last Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. in the siege of Jerusalem, Jews have recognized no Temple in Judaism (though Conservative and Reform Jews call their synagogues temples). The synagogues, originated as study and worship centers during the exile in Babylon, have kept the faith alive.

Ten adult male Jews can establish a synagogue anywhere, with or without a rabbi. Rabbis are not priests but teachers, learned in religious law but without priestly authority. Any Jewish layman can conduct any Jewish religious service if he has sufficient knowledge of the prayers and the laws.

Rallying Point of Loyalty. Torah is the keystone of Jewish spiritual life. The word Torah, according to Bernstein, has a triple meaning—the sacred scrolls used ritualistically in every synagogue, the first five books of the Bible which they contain, or the whole body of Jewish learning. Trie study of Torah is the duty of every religious Jew. “It is an unending source of inspiration, wisdom and practical help. Its requirements bring God into his life every day, constantly. He begins and ends the day with prayers. He thanks God before and after every meal, even when he washes his hands. All his waking day the traditional Jew wears a ritual scarf beneath his outer garments which reminds him of God’s nearness and love. There are prescribed prayers for childbirth, circumcision, marriage, illness, death … In effect, law means the sanctification of all life.”

Most important Jewish prayer is the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” This affirmation of monotheism was originally a protest against idolatry. Bernstein retells the legend of how Abraham, left as a boy to keep his father’s idol shop, smashed every idol but the largest, and told his father that this one had broken all the others.

“How can it be?” asked his father. “These idols cannot think or do anything.”

“Let your ears hear what your mouth is declaring,” said Abraham.

With the coming of Christianity, the Shema acquired a new significance. Writes Bernstein: “Although the Jews are able to understand Jesus, the Jew of Nazareth, they have never been able to understand or accept the idea of the Trinity. Down through the ages innumerable Jews suffered, and many were put to death for rejecting this church doctrine . . . Thus from the beginning of the Christian era . . . the Shema has been the rallying point of Jewish loyalty confronting the persecution or the blandishments of the daughter religion.”

Down to the Grave. Second most important Jewish prayer, says Bernstein, is the Kaddish, originally a hymn of praise to God, used especially in honoring the dead. The words of the Kaddish suggest that it was the basis of the Lord’s Prayer: “Exalted and hallowed be the name of God throughout the world . . . May His kingdom come, His will be done.”

Though it honors the dead, the Kaddish takes no attitude toward immortality. The Jews, says Rabbi Bernstein, have never agreed on what happens after death, though most of them in recent centuries have recited the Credo of Maimonides, the great 12th Century physician-philosopher who believed in the physical resurrection of the dead. “But the hearts of many stricken Jews have also echoed the lament of Job: ‘As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.’ It is growing harder for modern Jews to believe in physical resurrection. This probably accounts for the increasing trend toward cremation which is found among non-Orthodox Jews.”

Who Was Jesus? “The catechism of the Jew is his calendar,” said famed 19th Century Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. There are five major festivals in the Jewish year, but the weekly observance of the Sabbath—from Friday’s sunset to Saturday after sundown—as a day in which no work may be done, except for self-protection or to save life, is the core of Jewish religious practice. Rabbi Bernstein takes pains to point out how this custom of a day of rest “hewn from the social consciousness of a little desert tribe became in time an established practice for the entire civilized world.”

On the question of Jesus, Bernstein finds that a new attitude has been growing among Jews during the past generation, as “the religious factors in anti-Semitism have become less prominent.” There seems to be a trend, he says, toward bringing Jesus back into “the mainstream of Jewish history. A Jewish basis has been found for most of his teachings. His stature is that of the Hebrew prophet, fearless fighter for righteousness. Like all religious geniuses, he was unique. As with Isaiah and Amos before him, he did not merely echo his people’s convictions.”

But Rabbi Bernstein denies that the new attention Jews have come to pay to the figure of Jesus can ever lead to accepting him as the Messiah. The very idea of Messiahship, he says, is undergoing a change. Though the Orthodox still believe in a personal Messiah and pray for his coming each day, “a large segment of the liberal Jewish community has discarded the notion of a single messianic personality who is to save mankind … In its place they affirm their faith in a messianic era which is to be achieved by the cooperative efforts of good men of all nations, races and religions.”