Do Jews believe the Torah should be taken literally or symbolically?

Answer 1

Funny enough it is really a sort of combo. I call it "derivatively." In and of itself the Torah has no purpose, it is only a tool to have us know God's will. Since it would be kind of hard to remember God devised a system to codify whatever he wanted us to know and told us how to understand everthing. A well known compilation of various decoding formulae used in the Talmud is in beginning of the morning prayers ("Rabbi Ishmael..."). The understand is then passed down generation to generation.

So for example, while we take the Torah accurately, terms may have a purpose e.g. "eye for an eye" refers to equal compensation and Nachmonadies explains this term is used to express the severity of harming someone else, that you actually deserve what you did to him (however, we human beings have no right to them purposely harm someone).

If you think about what people call "symbolically" they mean they want to pick and choose. They'll follow the things they like, or rather, understand, such as "Love your fellow, etc." but never really come up with what the other things are supposed to symbolize. Following "symbollically" is an easy way out of saying "I don't understand things, maybe I should ask someone who knows more about what I'm doing."

Answer 2

Taken with the proper commentary..