THE QUESTION:
What is Judaism?
THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:
How are we to comprehend the series of attacks on American Jews during the holiday season? Why were there 1,879 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. during 2018, by Anti-Defamation League count, which was double the 2017 total and the third-worst year on record?
Whatever the explanation, the three-word question above was the headline and subject of an online article just before the recent repellent events. Author Dennis Prager is a religiously and politically conservative Jew whose talk show airs on many “Christian-formatted” stations in the Salem Radio Network.
Prager said he raised this very fundamental question because “fewer and fewer Jews know anything about Judaism,” and many non-Jews “erroneously identify Judaism with what most Jews believe,” namely some vague secularized outlook.
This is no easy question because Jewish identity has a dual nature, religious and ethnic. Many Americans who consider themselves Jewish may be religiously Buddhist, or atheistic, or could care less about any religion and see their identity only as a cultural heritage. Also, unlike Christianity, Judaism is not a religion with defined creeds and confessions.
The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906 told us Judaism is quite simply “the religion of the Jewish people,” which doesn’t get us very far.