Jews and Judaism
The Jews, descendants of the biblical Abraham, passed down their religious traditions from generation to generation. What ideas guided these traditions? How were they expressed throughout the ages?
A covenant with God, religious laws, holidays, life-cycle rituals, religious objects, and text study are central to Jewish life. In major centers or remote communities, Jews established prayer houses (synagogues), and centers for Torah study. Hebrew remained their holy language, used in prayer and study, but Jews often spoke a vernacular. Faced with challenges of modernity, they responded by creating new religious and philosophical movements, expressing ancient traditions in more contemporary forms.