ICJudaism: A Teacher’s Guide to Judaism

      Hosted by ICTeachers                                                                Formerly: Mike’s Rough Guide to Judaism

Disclaimer:

The contents of these pages represent the author’s personal views, experience and understanding.
There are bound to be some things here that some Jews would disagree with.

 

Israel

 

The land of Israel is named after the Jewish patriarch, Jacob. In Torah we read of Jacob wrestling all night with a strange being. Genesis 32:23-30 says that “a man wrestled with him” after which the man tells him that henceforth his name will be Israel “because you have wrestled with God and man” (The name, Israel means One who has struggled with God). Jacob’s descendents are often referred to as The Children of Israel or The Israelites.

The early history of the Jewish people is told in the Tanach (Hebrew Bible). Most of it took place in the land that is now called Israel and Jews consider Israel to be their ancestral homeland. The Torah tells us that this was the land promised to us by God and long tradition tells us that we will one day return there. Many Jews believe that there is a God-given right for Jews to live there. Others believe that the establishment of a religiously observant Jewish land in Israel cannot come about until the coming of Moshiach.

Zionism, the idea of a modern State in Israel as a Jewish homeland really got started in the late 19th Century with the writings of Theodore Herzl, and really took off after WWII and the Holocaust (more often known to Jews as the Shoah), when Jews around the world felt the need of a safe haven.

In the present day there is a wide diversity of opinion among Jews both within and outside Israel.

Many, but by no means all, Jews are strong supporters of the State of Israel. A significant minority of Jews, while agreeing, to a greater or lesser degree, on the need for a state where Jews can feel safe (antisemitism has not gone away, and in some places is currently on the increase) have serious misgivings about the present nature and, more specifically, the conduct of The State of Israel.

There are particular discussions around questions about whether Israel should behave like any other political entity or whether its role as a Jewish state requires a different approach. Many Jews have particular concerns about how closely the State of Israel should be bound by Jewish ethics and how those ethics are interpreted (beyond the scope of this website).

You can read broader discussions of Israel at Judaism101 or in CM Hoffman’s book Judaism An introduction (in the Teach Yourself series).