Among the "Great Religions" of the world may be discovered repetition and similarity, as well as, variations and significant differences. This similarity becomes clear when it is understood that of the five great religions-Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism-a reduction to two may be made historically. Hinduism and Judaism may be considered the genesis of the other three: Hinduism ...

Daniel Boyarin’s latest book explores the beginnings of Christianity and Judaism and the formation of Judaism and Christianity as two distinct cultural-religious systems. The book is structured in three main parts: Part I – Making a Difference: The Heresiological Beginnings of Christianity and Judaism; Part II – The Crucifixion of Logos: How Logos Theology Became Christian; and Part III – Spark...

Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period testifies to the great variety of religious practices that characterized Judaism in the twelve hundred years between approximately 600 C.E. and 1800 C.E. Although this vast span of time has often been regarded monochromatically, scholars have increasingly come to speak of this period’s enormous complexity. The more that w...

Reproductive technology offers a bewildering number of options for infertile men and women to have children, including ovary and testis freezing, transplantation, in vitro fertilization (IVF), donor sperm, donor eggs, stem cells, gestational surrogacy, genetic diagnosis of embryos, and, of course, birth control. These technologies cut to the very core of personal and religious belief systems. T...

In 1996 I wrote an essay on Jewish-Christian relations entitled “What Has 2000 to Do with 5760?,” in which I expressed concern over the possible effect that the passage of 2000 might have on the exceptional period of philo-Judaism that has marked Western society from the end of the Holocaust until the present. Indeed, the last 60 years may well mark the most exceptional and sustained period of ...

As China is the only country in the Far East world in which Jews have continually lived for over 1,000 years, "Chinese Judaism" -referring to the religious belief and practices of those Jews who had lived or are now living in China -is unique. Within this long history, a significant distinction must be made. Jews who came before modern times, before 1840, became part of Chinese society almost w...

Introduction: Rabbinic Sacramentalism? It is no news to announce that in rabbinic Judaism learning and study are holy, even sanctifying activities. But what is gained by asserting, as I do in the title of this essay, that aspects of classical rabbinic learning, particularly its insistence on the oral mastery of textual material, are usefully described as not merely 'sanctifying' but 'sacramenta...

Religion and theology are central ways that many people make sense of the world and their own place in that world. But the insights of critical studies of religion, or what is sometimes positioned as religious studies as opposed to theology, are scarce in disability literature. This article suggests some of the costs of this oversight and some of the benefits of including religion. First, this ...

©FSRH J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2009: 35(1) Jewish law Jewish law consists of two sections: written law and oral law. The foundation of the written law and the origin of its authority is the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. The Torah is traditionally believed to have been given in a theophany on Mount Sinai and to contain the literal direct word of God. After the destruction of th...

Many religions, I'm tempted to say all religions except Judaism, are death cults. Religions deal typically with the problems of death and are attempts to bypass death, deny death, or distort death. The most obvious example would be the Eygptian religion, since, as we now know, the cult, the pyramids, the priest-craft, and the sacred texts were all designed to assure at least the Pharaoh of immo...