Doctrines and beliefs

Because the emphasis of Judaism is on obedience to the Torah rather than subscribing to a set of beliefs — yet key beliefs are important.

The oneness of God in the Shema; the holiness of God and the choosing of Israel as a holy people; the love of God and the human response; the justice of God as King and Creator.

Deuteronomy 6: 4–9; 11: 13–21; Numbers 15: 37–41.

The covenant between God and Abraham, Moses and the Jewish people. Jewish monotheism is expressed through a relationship rather than as an abstract claim about number.

A formal statement of Jewish faith, expressed in the Yigdal in the synagogue service.

On Jewish teaching God is the sole creator, gives human beings free will and requires their cooperation, struggling between good and bad inclinations, to produce a world of peace and justice for all.

The reparation of the universe — the human task of completing an unfinished world, listed by the guide under cosmology rather than ethics.

A fundamentally new age, coming after the Messianic Age of peace and justice for humankind. Judaism emphasizes observance in this life rather than elaborating on the hereafter.

That an individual Messiah, a human being anointed by God, will usher in the Messianic Age.

As a challenge to this faith posed by the death of six million Jews — a question put to the tradition, to which Jewish thinkers have given profoundly different answers.

The Bible and the Talmud. They differ over which mitzvot bind and over who may interpret.

Orthodoxy and Ultra-Orthodoxy hold all ritual and ethical mitzvot binding. Conservative, Reform and Liberal Judaism hold the ethical mitzvot binding and allow ritual mitzvot to be modified or abandoned if they do not serve their original purpose.

Ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Liberal.

Prophets, priests in temple times, and rabbis — a historical sequence, since the priesthood belonged to a temple that no longer stands.

The rabbinic court. A potential convert must appear before it, and it decides questions of status.

Interpretation continues through law codes and responsa, but in Orthodoxy it always goes back to first principles rather than treating later rulings as free-standing.

Only Orthodox authority is accepted there, and laws of status — birth, adoption, conversion, marriage, divorce — follow Orthodox tradition, so no non-religious or non-synagogue marriage is allowed for Jews in Israel.

Cultural influences in nineteenth-century Germany; the Jewish enlightenment led some to reject belief in God's giving the entire Torah, written and oral, to Moses on Sinai.

Because it contains debates between rabbis rather than settled verdicts, so each generation must decide — which is why continuing rabbinic interpretation is built into the tradition.