Transcript The Jewish people

The Jewish people
5 Important Focal Facts
1. Jews are a minority group sharing both racial and religious
heritage, and comprise 0.2% of the world’s population.
2. Like Christianity and Islam, Judaism emanated from
Abraham and is monotheistic (belief in one god).
3. There is diversity of religious beliefs in Judaism, with
mainstream and Orthodox branches and non-practising Jews.
4. Most Jews follow social and religious customs, such as
circumcision, adulthood ceremonies and various holy days.
5. Jews also follow dietary restrictions, eating only kosher food
and avoiding products such as pork and shellfish.
• Before undertaking study of anti-Semitism and
the Holocaust, it is important to learn about the
Jewish people.
• Jews are an ethno-religious group, which they
share an ethnic and racial heritage as well as
similar religious beliefs.
• The Jews have been a small but notable minority
group for thousands of years.
• Today, they constitute a very low percentage of
the world’s population; most studies put this at
around 0.2 per cent.
• In 2007 ,the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute
reported the world population of Jews to be
approximately 13.2 million people, or less than three
quarters of the population of Australia.
• North America (6.8 million) and Israel (6 million) have
by far the largest Jewish populations.
• Approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in before World
War II and the Holocaust; today there are only around
1.6 million Jews living there.
• Around 125,000 Jews live in Australia, many of them
direct descendants of wartime refugees and Holocaust
survivors.
• The religion practised by Jewish people is
called Judaism.
• Along with Christianity and Islam, Judaism is
one of the three main Abrahamic religions
(named because the Biblical figure Abraham is
an important patriarch in all three religions).
• Like Christianity and Islam, Judaism is a
monotheistic religion because its followers
believe in and worship only one God.
• Religious Jews hold different beliefs about God and
divinity than the other Abrahamic religions.
• For example, Jews do not share the Christian view that
Jesus Christ was the Son of God; instead, they believe
that Christ falsely claimed to be the Messiah.
• The most significant Jewish holy book is called the
Torah, a Hebrew word that variably translates as
“teaching”, “theory” or “guidance”.
• Religious teachers in Judaism are called rabbis, while
Jewish places of worship are called synagogues.
• The Jewish holy day, or Sabbath, begins at
sundown on Friday and continues until the
first stars are seen on Saturday evening.
• Jews are not permitted to work or play sport
on the Sabbath.
• Instead, they are encouraged to relax, give
thanks and spend time with their family.
• As in other religions, Judaism contains a
considerable diversity of religious belief and
worship.
• Not all Jews are religious or religiously active:
many are atheist, agnostic or non-practising.
• Regardless of this, their ethnic heritage means
they are still considered to be Jewish.
• Judaism also has different branches, based on
differences of doctrine and interpretation.
• Orthodox Jews, for instance, embrace a much
stricter interpretation of the Torah and the
Talmud (Jewish oral traditions).
• They adhere to Jewish laws and customs more
rigidly than more liberal branches of Judaism.
• Some of the religious customs and ceremonies
observed by most Jews include:
Significant events in the Jewish
religious calendar include:
• Brit Milah. The circumcision of the penis on the eighth day of a
young male’s life.
• Bat Mitzvah. A graduation ceremony marking a young girl’s
ascension into adulthood, generally celebrated on her twelfth
birthday.
• Bar Mitzvah. A graduation ceremony marking a young boy’s
ascension into adulthood, generally celebrated on his thirteenth
birthday.
• Marriage. The happy couple are married beneath a chupah
(canopy) which symbolises a happy home.
• At the conclusion of the ceremony, the groom breaks a glass with
his foot, symbolising an act of mourning for the Great Temple and
the continued struggle of the Jewish people.
Significant events in the Jewish
religious calendar include:
• Passover or Pesach. A week long holiday commemorating
the exodus of Jewish people from Egypt.
• Shavuot. A celebration of the revelation of the Torah to the
Israelites on Mount Sinai, a mountain in modern day Egypt.
• Sukkot. An event where Jews celebrate the resilience of
their ancestors, the Israelites, who wandered the desert in
search of the Holy Land promised to them by God.
• Jews traditionally celebrate in makeshift shelters,
mimicking the shelter their ancestors would have used
during their 40 years wandering the deserts.
Significant events in the Jewish
religious calendar include:
• Rosh Hashanah. The Jewish New Year, a ten day
period where Jews pray for forgiveness and
absolution of their sins during the previous year.
• Yom Kippur. The most important of Jewish holy
days, celebrated at the end of the ten days of
Rosh Hashanah. Many Jews spend Yom Kippur
entirely inside the synagogue, praying for their
sins to be absolved. They also fast (eat no food)
as a sign of their commitment to a more pious life
in the following year. Jews traditionally wear
white on Yom Kippur.
Adhering to Kashrut
• Perhaps the best known Jewish religious custom
is adhering to kashrut, the dietary laws governing
what Jews may and may not eat.
• Food permitted to be eaten under kashrut is
described as kosher.
• Some of the foods Jews may not consume include
meat made from the flesh of pigs (such as pork,
ham or bacon), rabbit and kangaroo, food
containing blood or any shellfish (including
prawns, lobsters, oysters and mussels).
Shechita
• For meat to be considered kosher, animals
must be killed by religious slaughter
(shechita).
• This involves the cutting of the throat with a
very sharp blade, so that the windpipe,
oesophagus and major veins are all severed
and the animal bleeds to death quickly.
• Contrary to myth, Jewish people have no
physical stereotypes and most look no
different to other members of society.
• Jews can occasionally be identified by their
traditional items of clothing, some of which
are worn on holy days or at times of worship.
• The best-known of these is probably the kippah
or yarmulke, a small skullcap worn by males on
the crown of their head.
• The tzitzit, or prayer shawl, has knotted fringes
on its four corners; it can be worn by both males
and females.
• Followers of Orthodox Judaism tend to dress
conservatively: the men often grow a beard and
wear black suits and hats, while the women dress
modestly.