Judaism: history, beliefs, and practices

Judaism, a philosophy, religion as well as a way of life of the Jewish people (Jacobs, 2007) has played an important role in the shaping of Middle East today. In this paper, we explain the key religious beliefs of Judaism, and how the Diaspora cast Jews in socio-religious seclusion and persecution amidst their host Christian and Muslim countries throughout the centuries ending with the Holocaust.

The key religious beliefs of Judaism

It is worth noting that unlike Islam or Christianity, Judaism does not have an official creed. It also does not possess any form of universal doctrinal conditions for membership. It however has significant influence on Christianity and Islam (Falcon and Blatner, n.d) indicated that Judaism was the very first tradition to include monotheism in its teaching. Monotheism is the belief that only one God exists. The key religious beliefs of Judaism are summarized by Rambam's/Maimonides' 13 principles of faith (Shaul,2008).

These principles are;

The Creator exists

The Creator is one and is unique

The Creator is incorporeal

The Creator is eternal

Pray is to be duly directed to the Creator alone and to no other

Prophet's words are true

The prophesies of Moses are true and he was the greatest prophet

The Written Torah (the first five books of the bible) as well as the Oral Torah (the teachings that are contained in Talmud as well as other writings) were provided to Moses

No other Torah exists or will ever exists

The Creator knows the thoughts as well as the deeds of all men

The Creator will punish the wicked and reward the good

The Messiah will surely come

The dead will on the day of resurrection rise up from the dead.

It is worth noting that Judaism has a deep focus on the relationship that exists between the God, making and Israel (holy land).

How the Diaspora cast Jews in socio-religious seclusion and persecution amidst their host Christian and Muslim countries throughout the centuries ending with the Holocaust.

The socio-religious seclusion as well as persecution of the Jews by the Christians and Muslims is one that can be traced to the early centuries of religious faith. According to Goldschmidt & Davidson (2009), the conflict between Muslims and Jews could have been intensified by the quarrel that took place between Muhammad and the Jews of Medina. In fact Goldschmidt & Davidson (2009) indicate that there never used to be war between Jews and Muslims even though the Zionist are indicated to have believed that the Jews while under Muslim rule were treated like second-class citizens. Christian anti-Semitism as well held prejudice against Jews. The Diaspora cast Jews in socio-religious seclusion and persecution in a manner that set extremely terrible standards in regard to religious toleration. The worst cases of Jewish persecution by Muslims were in the Medieval times. For instance Bat Ye'or and Stillman were involved in forceful conversion of Jews to Islam by offering them either conversion to Islam or death (Snow,2010,p.8).Christians on the other hand have participated in the socio-religious seclusion as well as persecution of Jews by practicing anti-Semitism as well persecuting them across centuries (Sloyan,2001) . The rivalry between Jews and Muslims was however ignited by the creation of Israel (Goldschmidt & Davidson, 2009). Ibrahim (2009) argued that indeed Jews and Christianity are also violent as Islam. Jews of Albania were persecuted by Muslims and Christians (Christo,2005)