Jewish Denominations Explained

hi this is Matt Baker recently I finished an eight-part series on the family tree of Christian denominations as you might know I'm actually Jewish and Therefore several people have asked me to do a similar tree for Jewish denominations now the concept of denominations doesn't really carry over perfectly from Christianity to Judaism but despite this I think I can make it work so long as you understand that I'm using the term a bit Loosely so in this video I'm going to show you the family tree of Jewish denominations it's going to be a single episode so also take note that I'll be mostly focusing on the present and on the United States but first I want to shout out Dr Henry Abramson who has a wonderful YouTube channel that goes much deeper into Jewish history and thought he provided me with some great feedback for this episode so I want to say thank you to him as well as to several useful charts viewers who gave feedback as well [Music] foreign [Music] some important differences between Judaism and Christianity one of the things that drives Jews crazy is that Christians tend to assume that they already know lots about Judaism because they've read the Old Testament I've even had many Christians tell me that I'm not a real Jew because I don't match their expectations of what a real Jew is you see most Christians as well as most former Christians have only ever viewed the Old Testament through a Christian lens and therefore they assume that Judaism basically uses the same framework that Christianity does but that it simply does so without Jesus which is not actually how Judaism works so I'm going to start by explaining some basic differences between these two religions that you might not be aware of the first thing you need to know is that Christianity is much more concerned with the question what should a person believe when choosing whether or not to join a church most Christians especially Protestants will first of all ask what does that church believe which is why almost every Church website always includes a section called statement of faith it's also why the ancient Church developed Creeds such as the Nicene Creed in order to make a list of what a Christian needs to believe in order to be considered a Christian and of course the most important thing that a Christian needs to believe is that Jesus was God and that he died for our sins for example the famous scripture John 3 16 says for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life so obviously belief is a key part of what it means to be a Christian but this is not exactly true for Judaism nor is it exactly true for most other religions most religions are more concerned with what should a person do so for example for many modern day Jews it's far less important that you believe that Moses was a historical person then it is that you follow the Jewish Traditions that are said to go back to him so for example when I converted to Judaism which in my case was a year-long process at no point was I asked to agree to a certain list of beliefs instead I was taught mostly about Jewish practices and traditions as well as a lot about the history and language of the Jewish people the other thing that Christianity is very much concerned with is salvation the whole thing hinges on the question what must a person do or believe in order to be saved so the assumption that most Christians make about Judaism is that Jews are also concerned with salvation and that Jews simply have a different way of obtaining it the further assumption based mostly on the writings of Paul is that Jews try to obtain salvation by obeying Jewish law but that's simply not true because there is no such thing as original sin in Judaism nor is there much of a focus on the exact details surrounding the afterlife to put it simply Jew do not follow Jewish law in order to be saved from some future punishment or in order to gain some future reward for some Jews they followed the law simply because God told them to for others it's because we believe that many of those laws which we call mitzvote serve a purpose in the here and now the best way that I can explain this is by giving the following analogy in our modern society we have many traffic laws that are designed to keep everyone safe if you break one of those laws say by going too fast in your car you might get a ticket as a punishment but do you obey the traffic rules simply because you don't want a ticket perhaps but I hope that you also obey them because for example you don't want to hit some kid while passing through a school zone likewise one of the Jewish mitzvote is to rest on Shabbat or Saturday we do this not because we're scared that God will punish us if we don't but because we see a benefit in taking some time off at least once per week now as you probably know different Jews take a different approach to how carefully they follow this Mitzvah and I'll get to that in a moment but for now please understand that for all Jews no matter what denomination they belong to what they do or don't do is not based on trying to earn a future reward this is summed up by the following principle given by the early Pharisee antigonus of Soco be not like servants who serve their Master for the sake of reward rather be like servants who do not serve their Master for the sake of reward and let the awe of Heaven be upon you now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that Christians are not at all concerned with what they do of course they are but in Christianity belief always comes first followed by a changed life and I'm also not saying that there are absolutely no beliefs in Judaism for some Jews their only Creed is the Shema prayer hear o Israel the Lord Is Our God the Lord is one for others especially the Orthodox there are the 13 principles of Faith by maimonides my point though is that generally speaking Christians put a stronger emphasis on believing and Jews put a stronger emphasis on doing so with that under our belts let's now look at the family tree as I mentioned in episode 1 of the Christian denominations series Judaism has its roots in ancient Israelite religion which was practiced by the kingdoms of Israel and Judah Israel and Judah were relatively small kingdoms but they happened to be located right in between two of the most important centers of civilization in the ancient world Egypt and Mesopotamia which is why Egypt and then later Assyria and Babylon played such a huge role in their history now there are two main explanations for where ancient Israelite religion came from one of course is that it came directly from God through divine revelation specifically when Moses received the Torah the other is that it developed slowly over time based on its interactions with both Egypt and Mesopotamia in fact the scholarly consensus nowadays is that the Israelites actually started out as a subset of Canaanites and then slowly went from polytheism to monotheism over time either way what we're concerned with here is what happened during the late Iron Age basically Israel fell to the Assyrians and Judah fell to the Babylonians but then following a brief Exile in Babylon the former inhabitants of Judah now called Jews were able to return to their land and rebuild their Temple which is why Judaism between 537 BCE and 70 CE is known as second temple Judaism during this time it was influenced by both Zoroastrianism which was the religion of the Persians as well as by Hellenism which was the religion of the Greeks but most importantly by this point Judaism was definitely monotheistic which is to to this day it's defining feature however by the time that the Romans took over there were four major sects within second temple Judaism the Pharisees who represented the Everyday People the essenes who were a mystical Bunch the zealots who wanted to fight against the Romans and the Sadducees who were the elites who ran the temple to this was added a fifth group The Early Christians however Christianity quickly became a separate mostly Gentile meaning non-jewish religion the early Christians who continued to maintain Jewish Traditions such as the ebionites and nazarenes eventually went extinct although there is evidence that they had an influence on the development of Islam before doing so anyway the essenes zealots and Sadducees also all went extinct back when the Romans destroyed the the Jewish temple in 70 CE thus the only sect of second temple Judaism that survived was that of the Pharisees now the New Testament does not have a lot of nice things to say about the Pharisees but for Jews today the Pharisees are actually our spiritual ancestors after the destruction of Jerusalem they set up a school in the nearby town of iafne known in Christian sources as jamnia which is where they helped Judaism evolve from being a temple-based religion to one that is based mostly on communal prayer and on studying the five books of Moses known as the Torah the scholars at this yavne school eventually became known as rabbis thus Judaism as it exists today can more accurately be called rabbinic Judaism in order to distinguish it from the earlier second temple Judaism one of the things that the early rabbis did was to develop the talmud which actually has two components the mishna which was written first and the gemara which was written later and consists of commentary on the mishnah according to tradition the mishnah is based on the oral Torah which consisted of various clarifications that were given to Moses around the same time as the written Torah these were supposedly passed down by word of mouth until the time of the rabbis however according to Modern critical scholarship the oral Torah likely does not go all the way back to Moses but it does at least go back to the second temple period to figures like Hillel and shimai who lived just prior to the time of Jesus if you want to learn more about the various rabbis mentioned in the mishnah we actually have a video on that which I'll link to in the description now in case you've heard some of the nasty things that sometimes gets said about the talmud let me make it clear that in those cases the talmud is usually being taken out of context for anti-semitic reasons rather than being a list of clear-cut rules the talmud and the various notes that now come with it are more like a collection of case law in which various opinions are given in addition to opinions about those opinions and then opinions about the opinions about the opinions which is why a typical talmud page looks something like this now it's at this point that I should bring up the karate Jews carite Jews reject the talmud and therefore some people claim that the modern caraites can trace their lineage all the way back to the Sadducees but what's more likely is that they were simply a group that broke away from mainstream rabbinic Judaism around the year 800 and even earlier group to break away from or at least lose contact with rabbinic Judaism is beta Israel based in Ethiopia they may go all the way back to second temple times but there is also evidence that they initially maintained some contact with the early rabbis but then for some reason that contact was eventually severed it wasn't actually until modern times that beta Israel was quote unquote rediscovered and integrated back into mainstream Judaism so again I wouldn't consider beta Israel to be outside of rabbinic Judaism but rather to be a unique stream within it but then there's the Samaritans who definitely are a separate group from rabbinic Jews they claim to be the descendants of the northern ten tribes of Israel however according to historians the situation is much more complicated when Assyria conquered Israel some Israelite lights were carried away and then non-israelites were brought in to replace them however other Israelites simply moved South to Jerusalem where they became integrated into the kingdom of Judah then when the Babylonians conquered Judah a split occurred whereby many of the elites were carried off to Babylon whereas the everyday people were left behind where they sometimes intermarried with foreigners when the Judean Elites returned to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple some of those who had been left behind who the Bible calls the people of the land wanted to build a separate Temple which they did at Mount gerizim which happened to be in the territory where the northern tribes used to live so to me it's unclear whether the Samaritan Jewish division was more about an ethnic division or a class division either way what we do know is that the Samaritans eventually dwindled in size and today consist of just around 850 people okay so let's now look at how the main branch of rabbinic Judaism evolved generally speaking from 70 CE to around 1740 CE there was nothing within Judaism that was anything like what the word denomination refers to there was simply Judaism this is partly because Jews were very much the minority wherever they were found so when you're already a small persecuted group you tend to stick together however it also boils down to the fact that Judaism to this day has no Central leadership if you're looking for an analogy from within the Christian framework it would be best to say that Jews follow a congregational style of governance sort of like the Baptists rabbis get trained at rabbinical colleges where some rabbis end up being more influential than others but then each congregation gets to choose who they want to be their Rabbi and how they want to run things although note that nowadays some countries do have what's called a chief Rabbi which I'll get to later now don't get me wrong when I say that there was just one Judaism until 1740. I'm not saying that there were absolutely no differences to be found there were which brings me to the terms Safari Ashkenazi and Mizrahi but please note these are not different denominations they are more like Regional subcultures to explain let's bring up a map basically following the fall of Jerusalem Jews ended up all over the Roman Empire one particular area where a lot of them ended up is in what we today call Spain and Portugal Jews from this area became known as Sephardic Jews sephirad simply being the Hebrew word for Spain for many centuries they were were ruled by Muslims who generally treated them very well however following the Reconquista and the shift back to Christian control Jews were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula and thus many of them ended up back in the Middle East where they were welcomed by the Ottoman Empire others ended up in North Africa or in the low countries or in the so-called new world where they settled long before the arrival of the now more dominant Ashkenazi Jews the word Ashkenazi comes from the name ashkenaz which was a very old Jewish name for Germany based on recent DNA studies we now know a lot about the origins of the Ashkenazi Jews it's now thought that they originated in southern Italy before next settling in Germany around the year 800. at some point though their numbers dwindled to around just 350 people which led to what's called a genetic bottleneck before before this point there was a good deal of intermarriage with non-jews particularly Southern Italians but then after this point the group mostly intermarried amongst themselves resulting in the creation of a distinct ethnic group called Ashkenazi Jewish which has clear DNA markers that can show up on a TNA test but take note even though Ashkenazi Jews are at least partially European a good amount of their DNA can still be traced all the way back to the Middle East particularly along the male only line so the old theory that the Ashkenazi are somehow fake Jews descended from The khazars Who merely converted to Judaism is now known to be false I should also note that while the Ashkenazi Jews originally settled in Germany most of them ended up being pushed into Eastern Europe which is where most of them lived until the 20th century okay so in addition to Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews they are also Mizrahi Jews which is sort of a catch-all term for Jews that never left the Middle East Mizrahi Jews ended up assimilating a lot of Sephardic Customs though because remember many Sephardic Jews ended up back in the Middle East so take note that nowadays the mizrahis are often lumped together with the Safari Jews but again before I move on I want to emphasize that the Safari versus Ashkenazi division has nothing to do with denominations nor with any theological differences in Judaism we have a concept called minhag which can be roughly translated as custom Safari Jews and Ashkenazi Jews may have different Min hog but they share the same religion the best analogy from within the Christian framework would be to compare Catholics who use the Latin right with those who use the Syriac right their clothing and liturgy might be different but their theology is not to this day Ashkenazi Jews rely heavily on philosophical Works developed by Safari Jews and vice versa one good example is maimonides who I mentioned earlier as being the one who developed the 13 principles of Faith he was Safari but he's just as important to ashkenazis in contrast there's Rashi whose commentaries are included in all modern editions of the talmud he was Ashkenazi but he is also considered authoritative by Safari now before I move on to the modern denominations of Judaism I want to point out a book called the written in 1565 by the Sephardic Rabbi Joseph Caro it also contains notes by the Ashkenazi Rabbi Moses Israelis to this day it's kind of the authoritative text for all things related to Jewish law but it's important to note that it is used by both Ashkenazi Jews and Safari Jews although when it comes to minhog or Customs ashkenazis follow the rulings of Rabbi isilis whereas sephardis follow the rulings of Rabbi Karo okay so like I say from 70 CE to around 1740 CE there was pretty much just one Judaism albeit with different costumes depending on where you lived but from 1740 onwards this changed nowadays it's said that Judaism particularly in Western countries has three main branches reform conservative and Orthodox so before we continue down the tree I want to explain the main differences between these three branches or as I'm calling them here denominations at the end of the day the difference boils down to just one thing and one thing only their approach to Jewish law which is called halacha Orthodox Jews see halacha as being binding and for the most part unchanging binding means you have to follow it not in order to obtain salvation but simply because God says so so Orthodox Jews followed the law very carefully in the same way that it's been followed for over two thousand years in contrast conservative Jews known as mazorti Jews outside of North America see halacha as being binding but not unchanging in other words the law should evolve over time in order to keep up with how Human Society has evolved so for example Orthodox Jews won't drive a car on Shabbat because both combustion engines and Electric engines involve lighting a fire and in the Torah lighting a fire is considered work and you're not supposed to work on Shabbat however conservative Jews have come to the conclusion that in our modern world being able to attend synagogues which are often no longer within walking distance is more important than following the original rule so conservative rabbis have actually changed Jewish law to say that driving a car on Shabbat is permitted for this special circumstance they have done similar things in terms of allowing women to become rabbis and supporting LGBT rights now before I move on let me mention the principle of Pico aknife which is followed by every branch of Judaism this law states that any other law can be broken in order to protect the life or health of a person so for example if a person has a medical emergency on Shabbat even the most Orthodox Jew will drive a car in order to get that person to the hospital as fast as possible however there are three exceptions you can't murder you can't worship idols and you can't commit a sexual sin okay so finally there are reform Jews reformed Jews see halacha as being neither binding nor unchanging this means that each individual Jew can make up their own mind about how to follow Jewish law so for example the Torah says that Jews must not eat certain shellfish such as prawns but it says that beef is okay however in today's world due to climate change it can be argued that eating beef is more problematic than eating prawns so some reformed Jews might decide to adopt a full pescetarian diet for ethical reasons instead of following traditional kosher rules a lot of reformed Jews like to focus on the phrase tikkun Olam which means repairing the world and therefore they tend to prioritize ethical mitzvote over ritual mitzvot now these may seem like some pretty big differences but surprisingly on the surface these three groups can often look almost the same the one exception to this is a subset of Orthodox Jews known as heredi or ultra-orthodox although note that the term ultra-orthodox is usually considered offensive heredity Jews can be broken down further into Hasidic and non-hasidik I'll explain Hasidic Judaism in more detail in a moment but for now note that these are the Jews that tend to be Jewish in very visible ways they are the ones with big black hats and long side curls many Christians when forming a mental picture of what a Jew looks like will tend to think of a Hasidic Jew well I just want to caution you against that stereotype because that would be like a Jew assuming that all Christians look like this even among Orthodox Jews there are many who don't really stand out as being Jewish in a highly visible way and are more integrated into the greater Society these non-haredi Orthodox Jews are usually called modern orthodox okay so how did all these various denominations of modern Judaism come about well let's actually start with hasidism it was founded by the Bal Cham Tov who lived in what is today Ukraine during the 1700s which is why I've shown the Hasidic movement as stemming from the ashkenazis however take note that nowadays some sephardis have also adopted hasidism what a lot of non-jews don't realize about hasidism is that it is actually a very mystical version of Judaism in addition to being outwardly quite conservative it relies heavily on Kabbalah which is a mystical school of thought within Judaism that goes back to Isaac luria in the 1500s and Moses de Leon in the 1200s and perhaps even further the other thing you need to know about hasidism is that each Hasidic group is centered around a single rabbinic Dynasty that can be traced back to a specific Eastern European Village so take for example Chabad which is one of the largest and most well-known Hasidic groups it was originally based in a Russian village called Lubavitch which is why followers of Chabad are also known as labavichers the famous 20th century leader of this group Mendel schneerson was a descendant of schneer Zalman the founder of Chabad however not all Ashkenazi Jews embraced hasidism those who did not became known as minogdim meaning opponents although they would later become known as litvax because a lot of them were based in Lithuania around the year 1770 another major event occurred mostly among the midnagdem known as the haskala or Jewish Enlightenment it stemmed from and was very similar to the general Age of Enlightenment that had occurred in Europe about a century earlier base basically it led to Judaism being re-examined using the lens of modern critical scholarship but it was not all simply about new ideas it was also about new freedoms around the same time as the hostila Jewish emancipation was achieved throughout most of Europe meaning that for the first time Jews were given the same legal rights as Christians at this point some Jews simply became secular whereas other Jews particularly in Germany sought to Reform Judaism in order to bring it up to speed with what had been learned through science and textual criticism now for the next little while I'm going to be talking exclusively about the United States that's because other than Israel this is where most of the world's Jews currently live but don't worry once I'm done I will be talking about Israel and other countries as well note that it's mostly in the U.S and in some similar countries like Canada and the UK okay that Judaism can be divided into various denominations so let's start with the migration of German Jews to the U.S between 1840 and 1860. prior to this point most Jews in America had actually been Sephardic but pretty soon most Jewish congregations were not only Ashkenazi but they were also leaning towards reform so in 1873 the union of American Hebrew congregations was established in order to serve as the main Organization for American Jews this was followed by the founding of Hebrew Union College in 1875 as the main rabbinical School however While most American Jews were reform at this point some were not therefore in 1886 some more conservative leaning rabbis broke away from Hebrew Union College and established instead the Jewish Theological Seminary although please note that these so-called conservative Jews were only conservative in comparison to reformed Jews in the eyes of many Eastern European Jews these so-called conservatives were actually quite liberal what happened next was that many of those Eastern European Jews ended up migrating to the U.S between 1880 to 1925 due to persecution in Russia they were even more conservative than the conservatives and thus became known as orthodox therefore we ended up with three main denominations or branches within American Judaism the union of American Hebrew congregations ended up being the main Organization for reformed Jews eventually changing its name to the union for Reform Judaism the United synagogue of America established in 1913 became the main Organization for conservative Jews although it too later changed its name to the United synagogue of conservative Judaism finally the Orthodox Union established in 1898 became the main Organization for modern Orthodox Jews now even if you've never heard of any of these organizations you've probably seen this symbol on various food packages it means that the Orthodox Union has deemed that item to be kosher I also want to point out aguda which is another Orthodox organization separate from the Orthodox Union it consists mostly of haretti congregations both non-hassidic and Hasidic although notably Chabad is not a member altogether among those who attend synagogue in the U.S approximately 50 percent are reform around 30 are conservative and 20 are Orthodox I should also point out Reconstructionist or reconstructing Judaism which can be considered a fourth branch of modern Judaism founded by Mordecai Kaplan in the 1950s it can be seen as a breakaway from conservative Judaism however like Reform Judaism it does not see Jewish law as being binding but in contrast to reformed Judaism it tends to place more value on preserving old traditions and on maintaining a very distinct Jewish identity so you can kind of think of Reconstructionist Judaism as being somewhat conservative on the outside but very liberal on the inside there's also renewal Judaism which is even more recent having its roots in the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s and 70s it too is a very liberal branch of Judaism but tends to incorporate more mystical elements from Hasidic Judaism which is why its followers are sometimes nicknamed hippie Jews now one other thing I should make clear is that in Judaism denominational lines can be quite blurry especially in areas where there aren't many Jews so for example I live in Canada and when I converted to Judaism I did so through a reform synagogue although one of the teachers was a Reconstructionist however after one year of study and the approval of abate Dean I had a hatafat Dom Brit performed by an orthodox Rabbi and was immersed in a Mikvah at the Orthodox synagogue on top of this the synagogue that my wife and I are most likely to attend simply because it's the closest one to our home is actually renewal so when people ask me which branch of Judaism I belong to it's a difficult question to answer I usually just say that I'm a progressive Jew which basically encompasses everything other than Orthodox and in North America at least is the dominant type of Judaism but even between Progressive Jews and Orthodox Jews there is often a lot of mixing while each set of rabbis might hold very different views the actual members might not so it's not unusual for a Jew with reform leadings to attend an orthodox synagogue or a fully observant Orthodox Jew to attend a reformed synagogue and then of course there are sometimes separate Safari congregations they usually see themselves as being outside of the whole reform conservative Orthodox trichotomy but then there's also individual visual Sephardic Jews who do see themselves as belonging to one of the three streams so it's complicated there are even humanist Jews who do not even believe in God but still gather to celebrate certain holidays or Rites of Passage now what about Messianic Jews well Messianic Jews are really Christians so I actually talked about them already on my series about Christian denominations if you're interested to hear my take on them you can find it in episode 8. okay so that was just how Judaism works in the U.S and maybe a few other countries like Canada and the UK in the UK there are actually two major reform denominations liberal Judaism and the movement for Reform Judaism however quite recently in April of 2023 they announced their intention to merge into a single organization they also have a chief Rabbi for their Orthodox Jews who you might have seen seen in the news recently as he participated in the coronation of King Charles III let's now look at how Judaism Works in Israel which now has a Jewish population that has surpassed that of the United States although reform and conservative synagogues do exist in Israel in small numbers the reformed conservative Orthodox trichotomy is far less important there instead in Israel Jews are usually classified into four main categories first there are the haloni these are secular Jews and they actually make up a full half of all the Jews in Israel next are the mazorti who are traditional meaning that they are only partially observant they make up another quarter of the Israeli population the final quarter consists of the dati and haredi these are the fully observant Jews with the heredi like I discussed earlier being the most strictly observant now I'm not going to address Zionism in this video because Zionism is more of a political thing than a religious thing individual Jews across the world and across all denominations have differing views on Zionism and the politics within Israel so it's important to remember that just because someone is Jewish that doesn't mean that they support every single thing that the state of Israel does but returning to the four categories of Israeli Jews I want to make it clear that these are not four different denominations for the most part Israeli Jews are not really divided into denominations at all instead anything to do with Jewish religious matters in Israel falls under the jurisdiction of the Two Chief rabbis one of whom represents Ashkenazi Jews and the other who represents Safari Jews this system is actually the one that is used in most countries in the world some countries such as France have just one Chief Rabbi whereas others like Argentina have to okay so that was a look at the family tree of Jewish denominations now as you might know Jews are famous for having differing opinions on just about everything so in a few weeks time the Jewish history YouTuber Sam aarono will be releasing a video in which he sort of reacts to mine and gives you his own take on the subject his will be a bit more chronological and will include a look at some denominations that lasted for a little while but then went extinct so keep an eye out for that thanks for watching [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: UsefulCharts

Views: 423,871

Keywords: Judaism explained

Id: AsBgluFGz7Y

Length: 39min 12sec (2352 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023