Judaism

Family and Community

Family and community form the foundations of Jewish identity. It is the extended family (mishpacha in Hebrew) that is the basic unit of Jewish ritual and ceremonial life, and it is by the family in its home that Jewish culture is perpetuated. While definitions of who is considered a Jew vary, a sense of belonging to the Jewish people as a whole is integral to them all. This emphasis on family and community is due not least to the Jews' long history of exile, dispersal, and statelessness. Community is what has given our people structure and strength through the vagaries of history.

• The Jewish community, and our relationship to one another within it, transcends time. Its historical past and its creative present nourish and support us…. The role of the community is constant. (Ochs & Olitzky 1997, p. 174)

Humanity

Judaism stresses the common origin of all humanity. In the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), humans are said to share a common descent from Noah, whose family was the only one to survive the Flood (God's intended eradication of his creation), for it was from Noah's descendants that “the nations branched out over the earth” (Genesis 10:32, Jewish Publication Society [JPS] Version). Humanity's divisions and disunity, despite a common heritage, is explained by the authors of the Torah as stemming from an inability to communicate with one another. In the story of the Tower of Babel, a still united humanity sets out on a hubristic project, only to find that God punishes them, “one people with one language,” by confusing their speech and scattering them over the whole earth (Genesis 11:1–10, JPS Version).

The Jewish People

Judaism emphasizes not an individual's relationship with God but the relationship between God and his people as a whole. God's covenant with the Jews at Sinai was not made solely with those Jews present in the wilderness, but with all future generations: “not with you alone,” but also “with those who are not with us here this day” (Deuteronomy 29:14, JPS Version). This idea of corporate personality is central to the Jewish concept of community. Jewish festivities often stress Jews' identification with their ancestors and the community as a whole, such as at Passover, the Jewish spring festival commemorating the exodus from Egypt. As instructed by an ancient rabbinic text, “Each person in every generation must regard himself as having been personally freed from Egypt” (quoted in Gindi 1998, p. 1). This identification with the experience of exile carries over into Jewish attitudes to strangers, for, as it is written [Page 814]in the Torah, “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:20, JPS Version).

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