For this project, I chose to interview a person of the Jewish faith, as well as do research on Judaism. I have some friends of the Jewish faith and have always had an interest in learning more about their beliefs. In this paper, I will provide answers to questions I have had about Judaism. These answers will come from a person of the Jewish religion and research I have done.
First off, I wanted to get some basic ideas about what the Jewish faith is. Since I was raised in a Christian household, I am only familiar with Christianity and the beliefs within. So, from my interviewee and my research, I found that there is a basic and often misunderstood difference between Judaism and Christianity. To simplify, Christianity is a religion. If one believes in the divinity of Jesus, one is Christian. But Judaism is different. Judaism is an entity for which there is no satisfactory English word, since Judaism did not arise in Western lands. It is like a tribe, or a family. One can be born Jewish or convert to Judaism. One cannot properly be "born" Christian, since Christianity is essentially a faith statement. Judaism is a religious civilization, or a faith family. .
Although there have been many attempts throughout Jewish history to define a Jewish doctrine, or a list of beliefs that all Jews must agree upon, none has been successful in establishing itself. Nonetheless, until the modern times certain elements were considered almost universal. First was the belief in one God. Another was revelation, the divine origin of the Bible. Third was ultimate redemption, that eventually God would, through the agency of a messiah, guide the world into a better time. All three of these have been questioned in recent times. But it is an indication of how powerful these beliefs have been in Jewish history that even those schools of thought that question these groundwork beliefs find it necessary to somehow explain the theological holes left by their extraction.