I need help with History please help me!! (on Judaism)?

Question

What kinds of celebrations/festivals/holidays does the religion Judaism celebrate? Why?

Answer 1

Oy vey! To answer that question can (and does) fill an entire library of books. Celebrations could be interpreted pretty broadly, and just in addition to the regular holidays, you have major lifecycle events like the birth of a child and subsequent naming for girls, naming and circumcision for boys. Also growing in popularity (I think it was originally a chassidishe custom) is the celebration of the upsherin, where a boy gets his first haircut upon turning three years old. There's a symbolic connection to the law regarding first fruits, that the trees can't be harvested for the first three seasons. More on that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upsherin

Then there's the coming of age ceremony, the bar (means "son") or bas ("daughter") mitzvah ([of the] commandment), which is the term commonly used to describe the celebration itself, but really denotes a Jew of a certain age (13 for boys, and 12 for girls, who typically mature faster), who at said age, become obligated in the mitzvot (commandments). It is at this age that they enter a whole new world both of obligation and opportunity, as they become responsible for their choices, but also have the opportunity to perform good deeds by virtue of the fact that those deeds become incumbent upon the bar/bas mitzvah.

But none of these are history-specific, though they could be, obviously, if you explore their origins (a lot of this stuff is biblical, for example).

In terms of festivals and holidays, well, frankly, we have so many that this isn't really an appropriate forum to address them all.

You should know that Jewish holidays come in two flavors, Torah (i.e. those instituted explicitly within the Torah, the first five books of the Bible), and rabbinic. Typically, certain types of labor are prohibited on the Torah holidays, and not on the rabbinic ones.

Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) and Rosh Hashanah (the New Year), called the "High Holidays" could arguably be called the most important, and for many assimilated/liberal Jews, these are the only times each year they go to synagogue (kind of like how some Christians only go to church for Christmas and Easter, only Christmas and Easter are at least spaced out - Yom Kippur is ten days after Rosh Hashanah). Anyhoo, those are straight Torah holidays. An example of a rabbinic holiday would be Chanukah, which celebrates the re-dedication of the Temple (Chanukah means dedication) following a miraculous victory of Jewish rebels (led by the priestly Hasmonean family and perhaps better known as the "Maccabees" - "Maccabee" being Hebrew for hammer) against the much more powerful Syrian-Greeks under Emperor Antiochus. Chanukah is actually one of the least important Jewish holidays (don't get me wrong, they're all important, but this carries with the few mitzvot, and of course, they don't derrive from scripture, since the events celebrated are post-biblical, unless you count the Apocrypha, which is part of neither the Jewish [nor the Protestant] canon). It is with a bitter sort of irony that this minor holiday, one of the main themes of which is maintaining the integrity of the Jewish people and resisting assimiltion, has become the most assimilated, Hallmark-ified Jewish holiday, with many Christians, and sadly, a great number of Jews, thinking of it and treating it like "Jewish Christmas".

The three big biblical festivals are Succos (non-Jews would call this the "Feast of Tabernacles"), Shavuos ("Feast of Weeks" - Shavuos actually means "Weeks") and Pesach ("Passover"). So anybody who's seen the movie with Charlton Heston has a rough idea what Passover is about. Commemorating the exodus of the Jews from Egypt (check your Bible, under "Exodus"). Shavuos is celebrated 50 days after the start of Pesach, and on it we commemorate (or in the case of Torah-observant Jews, re-live) the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.

Succos is an autumn holiday that an anthropologist might interpret as a "harvest festival". It comes right after Yom Kippur, and it commemorates the Jewish people's trek through the wilderness following the exodus, and the divine aegis we received during those 40 years, symbolized by the booths (sukkot), temporary dwellings where we eat our meals, and as is the custom of many, sleep, for those seven days. Interesting bit of historical trivia for you: Often, when an American steps into a Succah for the first time, their instictive reaction is that it reminds them of Thanksgiving (often you will find a Succah decorated with colorful gourds and stuff like that), and this is no coincidence. When the pilgrims wished to thank G-d for their survival that first grueling winter, they looked to the Bible for inspiration. They got their idea from the very passages describing the Festival of Succos, and perhaps not realizing that this was already a holiday, "invented" Thanksgiving.

Then of course, there's the Sabbath (Friday at sunset until Saturday at nightfall - every day on the Jewish calendar starts in the evening, as it is written [check the creation narrative in Genesis] "and there was evening, and there was morning, day one"). For traditional Jews, the Sabbath is actually the most important holiday (with the arguable exception of Yom Kippur, as it is called a "Sabbath of Sabbaths," and while any other fast day is moved if it falls on the Sabbath, where we're supposed to enjoy three lavish meals, if Yom Kippur falls on the Sabbath, it takes precedence, and we fast on that day). It has been said that more than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews. Surely the Sabbath (Shabbat or Shabbos, depending on where one's parents are from) has been the cornerstone of Jewish observance for millenia. It represents a taste of the world to come, where we refrain from all creative labor and simply enjoy, spending the much of the day feeding our stomachs, minds, and spirits (and the occasional nap is fine, too - it is the day of rest, afterall). It's a testament to the Jewish belief that G-d created the world in six days (how literally this is to be taken is the subject of debate), and that he's running the show. And when we step back and stop interfering in the world, it keeps spinning without us. In other words, it's a weekly opportunity to relax, nourish our souls, and put things into perspective.

Let's see...what else? There are SO many holidays, again, I can't do them justice here. This really isn't the kind of question you should be bringing to Yahoo! Answers. It's something you ought to research yourself, and can research quite easily. In fact, let me help you get started.

http://www.jewfaq.org - Judaism 101, this website might have everything you're looking for. It contains articles on all the holidays, as well as some basics on Jewish history, symbols, the Hebrew language, etc.

http://www.aish.com - Aish HaTorah, a Jewish organization primarily concerned with outreach to Jews; lots of neat articles here.

http://ohr.edu/yhiy.php/holidays/ - Ohr Somayach is a very well-reputed instiution of Jewish learning (called a "yeshiva"). I saw this page on their website dedicated to the holidays, and thought you might find it useful, in case searches in those first two sites doesn't yield all the info you're looking for.

You can also try Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.org ); they've got a lot info on Jews and Jewish history - I only hesitate to mention it because as an open-source encyclopedia, some of the people writing stuff can get sloppy with the facts (though most of the stuff on Judaism at first glance looks pretty solid - things get murkier when you venture into Israeli and Palestinian history), so be sure to check anything you read against at least one other source if you can.

I hope this helps, and good luck with your assignment.

Answer 2

Christianity started out as a small cult... most Jews had never even heard of Jesus at the beginning of the Common Era. A small band of Jews who had begun following Jesus tried to convince other Jews that the Messiah had come... with little success... so this small Jesus cult decided to spread the word to the gentiles instead. But they had trouble converting the gentiles to Judaism, since Jewish traditions were so strict and were really hard to follow for those not brought up Jewish-- imagine them running around telling various Pagans they had to go kosher and get circumsized and learn Hebrew and study the Torah all of a sudden. It didn't fly. They decided that the old covenant was no longer necessary and to dispense with many of the Jewish laws. With that, more gentiles came on board. Little pockets of these Jesus cults began establishing churches which were beginning to flourish in various places. And of course, when Constantine decided he needed a more conservative religion to try and tame the wild, self-destructive behavior of the Romans, and he brought leaders of these churches together, compiled the Christian Bible and unified Christianity, the church was solidified.

Answer 3

Yom Kippur
Passover - to commemorate the angel of death passing through Egypt, killing all first born sons but passing over houses whose door frames have been painted with the blood of lamb, an event which made the pharoah release Hebrews from slavery.
Bar Mitzvah

Answer 4

Try the website http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/jewish_festivals/index.htm