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What characterizes the culture of Judaism

Every religion has its own cultural traits, and Judaism, as the earliest and oldest religion, is not only the way of life but also the faith of the Jewish people.

So, here's a look at what characterizes the culture of Judaism!

Jewish culture is a rather distinctive national culture, and looking at its development, "it is not difficult to see that, from ancient times to the present day, Jews have always been able to find ways to adapt their civilization to the challenges of the times without destroying the core of Jewish values." In other words, Jewish culture has been able to adapt itself, transform itself, and perfect itself in its interaction with other civilizations without losing itself. This article summarizes and analyzes the basic features of Jewish culture from three aspects: religiousness, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism.

Religious Jewish culture has always been a highly religious culture, the Jewish people's "canonical" culture is a completely religious doctrine of the formation of history. Religious concepts are used to explain social and cultural phenomena, and social and cultural phenomena to argue that religion is the most significant feature of Jewish culture. The Jewish people, having lost the relatively stable geographic territory that was the key element of its history, has managed to survive in the form of a national ****similarity, and has created a historical and cultural miracle that has flowed but not been dispersed. To a large extent this should be attributed to religion. Religion became an indispensable cultural tool for ensuring the integration and harmonization of Jewish society, and all aspects of Jewish social life were subject to religious constraints and influences. The process of the emergence of Judaism is still an open academic question, but there is no doubt about the fact that in ancient times, when polytheism was widespread, the Hebrews founded the oldest monotheistic religion in the world, a monotheistic religion that denied the sanctity and legitimacy of other gods and goddesses, by making their own national god the only one. Judaism is a constantly developing and evolving religion that has passed through the stages of development of Biblical, Pre-Rabbinic, Rabbinic, Medieval, Transitional, Emancipation and Modern Judaism. Throughout the pre-liberation era, Jewish religion dominated Jewish culture. It was only with the rise of the emancipation movement and the impact of modernism that the status of Jewish religion declined significantly and Jewish secular culture flourished.

But to this day, Judaism still has a strong influence in the Jewish cultural system, and the maintenance of this influence is due to the active adaptation of Judaism to the development trend of the world, and the continuous reform of doctrine and practice. The close relationship between Jewish religion and culture is perhaps best illustrated by the connotation of the word Jud-aism, which was first used by Greek-speaking Jews to refer to Jewish beliefs and views. In medieval Christian literature it was used to refer to Judaism, and in modern times it has been widely used by Jews. Judaisn really means the theological system of thought of the Jews, which is why many English-Chinese dictionaries translate it as "Judaism," and many Chinese treatises still understand it as the religious beliefs of the Jews. Because Judaism emphasizes daily behavior rather than doctrine, it reflects more of a Jewish code of conduct and way of life, and many modern Jewish scholars believe that Judaism is more accurately described as a cultural system. Danial. Jeremy. Silver states, "We no longer understand Judaism strictly as a system of creeds, rules of behavior, or worship; Judaism encompasses all of these, but is not limited to them; it includes the entire ideology and culture of the Jewish people, as well as phenomena that have profoundly influenced the inner life of the Jewish people." In this sense the influence of Judaism on the Jews is by no means less than that of Confucianism on the Chinese in their traditional society, and its universality and profundity far exceeds that of religious beliefs of a single nature. Therefore, just as we do not recognize Confucianism as a religion, we should likewise not regard Judaism as a pure faith. The Encyclopedia Judaica in English explains Ju-daism as "the religion, philosophy, and way of life of the Jews". Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, has always maintained that Judaism is not a religion but a civilization in the broad sense of the word, encompassing all aspects of Jewish theology, history, literature, philosophy, language, science, art, architecture, dress, social organization, and ethical standards.

Judaism, as an ideology, has become the basic element of national culture and the carrier of its inheritance, which to a large extent and over a long period of time has manifested the mainstream and characteristics of Jewish culture. Without understanding Judaism, it is impossible to interpret Jewish culture. Even in modernized societies, Judaism remains an important element of the Jewish spiritual and cultural system. On the one hand, it is the main element of Jewish tradition, which, in its contact with modernism, has conditioned the development of Jewish society through its own cultural role; on the other hand, it has realized its cultural function through its influence on other cultural phenomena. In the State of Israel today, Judaism is not only the spiritual pillar of the Jewish people, but also the identifying criterion of national identity, the essence and character of Israeli national culture. Orthodox Judaism seriously constrains the country's politics, economy, culture, education, art, etc. Religious holidays are the country's legal holidays, and religious taboos permeate all aspects of social life. However, while playing a positive function, the negative function of religious salvation is also manifested, and its resistance and obstruction of modern trends has become an increasingly thorny problem.