One of the best parts of my Jewish education was the fact that in any class about the Tanakh or Talmud, you were encouraged to ask questions, point out flaws, express your own opinion, and generally tell the teacher why he is wrong. It ends up less a class and more of a very long argument about incredibly trivial things, like carrying stuff outside a city, or how to get away with property damage. It is the only class you can take where you are encouraged to be a tricky asshole and argue about everything.
Yep, if you look at Nobel prizes, a large amount of them go to Jewish people. Judaism pulls out curiosity and opinion, unlike other religions which squash it. It’s like how other religions are normal schools (prying the general love of learning away from you) and Judaism is what we want schools to be like, encourage learning!While I don’t find myself part of the religious aspect anymore, I still stay with the culture.
It certainly serves as an insight into SO MANY Jews being scientists, researchers, explorers, scholars in general. Asking questions and arguing about it, discussion, sussing it out... It's integral to your identity.
I am Jewish and religious. Your viewpoint on the Tanach as allegory is one hundred percent valid. Many big names in Judaism agree, that it's not a history book; it's a rule book. I am completely orthodox; I also believe in evolution. The are not contradictory terms. God, I love this channel.
@@nethanelartsi6909 its his opinion , it cannot be wrong or right, its a personal thing. התנ''ך ברובו אכן ספר חוקים ולא צריך להתייחס אליו כספר היסטוריה אלא כמשלים לסיפורים בהם הכותבים רוצים לתת עמדה או נקודה במצב גיאופוליטי כולשהו. דוגמא סיפור הגבעה מהווה משל למשהו שקרה אחרכך וכיוצא בזאת.
Mostly agree, but there are definitely bits that make zero sense outside of it being a history book. The genealogies, for instance, which are literally a dry list of names. There's also some accounts of historical events that have _absolutely no_ decipherable moral message. The conclusion I draw is that it was multiple authors scrambling to cobble together as much ancient knowledge as they could before it was lost forever and who were determined to leave nothing on the cutting room floor. This would explain why _Genesis_ contains *two separate and contradictory* creation myths and why so much of the content is far from internally self-consistent.
@@GSBarlev There are actually a lot of theories on why those contradicitons exist. You can watch UserfulChart's video for a more in depth analysis, but something that was proposed that to me makes a lot of sense is that a unified Jewish State under King Solomon never existed. Instead, the separate states of Israel and Judea have always been separate, but when the North fell to the Assyrians, the people migrated to the south and all of a sudden there was a push to unify both tranditions. For instance, it could be argued that Jacob and the Patriarchs was the Southern/Judean origin story, meanwhile Moses and the Exodus was the Northern/Israelite origin story. After the fall of Israel, and especially during the post temple period, the Jews came together to basically stitch both traditions into a single continuous narrative, but of course that means there's a lot of duplication and contradictions, such as how things like the creation of the world is written twice, or why there's a huge time gap between the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. Later on, the characters of King David and King Solomon were created as a historic justification to suggest that there is historical precedent for the 2 kingdoms to be united.
Don't forget the parts involving slavery, burning/razing of things, being thrown out of their homes, and ALL the racism... probably missing some stuff though.
You might have been able to simplify some of the discussion by recalling two very common Jewish in-jokes: 1) The definition of a Jewish holiday: "They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat." 2) One Jew in a room is a discussion; two Jews in a room is an argument. Aside from that, you done good! :-) Oh, and a joke for a joke... One night, a rabbi (hey, let's call him Jacob!) notices at dinner that his son is just picking at his food, isn't participating in family discussion, and is pale & sweaty. He asks his son what's wrong, and his son nervously admits that he will be leaving in the morning because he has decided to convert to Christianity. The heartbroken rabbi finds his way to the synagogue, where his quiet prayer slowly builds into an anguished questioning. Suddenly he hears a booming voice from above... "Your son converted to Christianity? Yeah, I know how you feel..."
Btw with that joke at the end; the Talmud actually has a story whereby a voice from the heavens tells a group Rabbis that one opinion is correct, and they respond with "The Torah is not in the heaven, you don't get to decide what's correct anymore"
Reminder that one of the primary founders of our homeland, Yaakov, earned the name Yisrael by _wrestling_ a divine presence that is sometimes argued to have actually been Adonai Themself. Hence the name Yisrael, meaning "one who contests with G-d".
Pretty sure they're all Grandfather Paradoxes. But, anyway, I'd settle for figuring out the ancient Egyptian language once and for all. Hey, _vowels are a thing,_ you jackasses!
I'm a Jewish girl (With an upcoming batmitzfah), and this is one of the rare descriptions of Jewish history I've seen that is A) pretty damn accurate B) Goes into the deeper realms of what Judaism IS. I applaud you sir, good job!
@@Sean-no3zv I can't tell if this is blatant anti-Semitism or a joke, so I'll treat it like the latter. It's one of the few industries gentiles have allowed us to (kinda sorta not really) thrive in. Let us do what we know and love.
Yeah, but you missed the reference that in the Bible there is a prophecy “epic guitar solo” that Carthage will be raised and salted so nothing will grow. There was also a specific part that said fishermen would lay their nets to dry. Then a couple hundred years later, the Romans razed and salted Carthage in the Punic Wars
As an Indian, it's always interesting to know about our ancient contemporaries. To all Hebrews, congrats for surviving against the entire world. Most others didn't.
Thank you :) There are many similarities between the Jewish tradition and the Vedic tradition. For example, the Bible says the 12 sons of Abraham and Keturah, among them Ashurim and Avida, were given gifts and sent to the lands of the east. At around the same time (correct me if I am wrong), the Vedas record great ones who came from the west. Today, there are places called ashrams (like Ashurim, whose name meant "camp"), and the word Veda even sounds like one of Abraham's sons' names. Even the word "Brahman" seems to come from "Abraham"
@@solomonz2821 brahma and saraswati, abraham and sarah. Archetypes are more or less similar all over the world. There is either a common older origin, or mutual influence/inspiration through trade and contact.
@@pripegalapobedonosni3324 Common origin from the Proto-Indo European people, who originated somewhere around Ukraine and expanded from the brithis isles to north India. Because of them there are a lot of things in language, culture, genetics and religion that tie people from all over Europe to the middle east and India. A little tidbit about this that I like is that the latin and sanskrit words for fire are "igni/s" and "agni".
@@JuanManuel-ii1ov oganj on slavic. Or Bog from the Iranian Baga and sanskrit Bhaga. Also slavs had polycephalic deities as one few cultures in the world, including hinduism. Look at svantevit who is similar to brahma, or porenut with five heads like some buddha depictions, triglav with three heads like some shiva depictions etc etc. Cant recall it among celts or later British people. It makes sense with slavs since they are closer to india and eastern iranian steppe people(specifically scythians, sarmatians and alans) and are a later migration out of the steppes that they were inspired. There is also loan words from. both Indian and irian languages in proto slavic.
Hey, y'know, if it's a period, it proves the Rambam's point, if it's a comma, it proves Rashi's point, and if it's a grease spot, it proves Akiva's point.
Person 1: "Ah yes, that period is when that people wanted to kill the jews" Person 2: "Which people?" Person 1: "All of them, except the Persians, they're cool I guess"
@dimapez it wouldn't do anything. That would still alert everyone. Just don't respond to comments not addressed to you and you would not have to be in this type of situation again
@dimapez just learn how the internet works. I'm not trying to stop you, but prevent you from having this issue again. Do with it what you will. I don't really care
Here's a joke I love for ya; A Rabbi, a Priest, and a Father are debating about whom best can spread the word of their Lord. The agree to go into the woods and convert a bear to their religion. Whoever can, is a powerful mouthpiece of God. They meet back up the following week and the Priest says "I found a bear feasting on berries. I preached to him the Good Word from the book of Genesis. His first service is this Sunday." The Father says "I found a bear drinking from a stream! I spoke to him of Revelations, and he allowed me to Baptize him then and there!". they look to the Rabbi, who is lying silent in a full body cast. The Rabbi looks to them and says "Looking back, I probably shouldn't have started with circumcision."
See, this is why Judaism is an in-group. You can't convince another person to become Jewish, they have to WANT IT, ad then you test them on how bad they want it before deciding if they're worthy.
@@feelthepony not exactly. yes, it is to weed the weak, but it is also for sanitary uses. According to the old jewish traditions, it would prevent sexual diseases from spreading. Not sure how accurate it is, but that's the general consensus.
I'm making my way through the OSP playlists and I gotta say I actually teared up at this one. I grew up as a Jew in NYC so haven't personally experienced a whole lot of antisemitism and YET it's still so rare to find non-Jewish sources of history that handle Jewish history, faith, & status as an ethnoreligion with the empathy and even-handedness shown here. Also, I want to say, about the nature of commentary in Judaism. One of my favorite little Jewish stories is about a man seeking to convert who goes to a series of rabbis and says, "I'm interested in converting to Judaism, but I'll only do it if you tell me the entire Torah while I stand on one leg." Most rabbis send him packing for his disrespect. But the last rabbi he visits says to him. "This is the Torah: What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. All the rest is commentary. Now, go and read it." (Also, also: all fanfiction is midrash.)
If you believe in God how come you put ethnicity first when it is God who is the centre of the whole universe and your life is just a moment in eternity? Is God universal or just there for the Jews? Who created the other human then etc...
@Isrel156 fanatic? Isn't it fanatic to put one over other cause they're of different ethnicity in the first place? A feature you can't even change while you can choose to follow or not follow any religion. Nationalism is the biggest threat in modern history though. Both can be radicalised while you can't do anything against nationalism being on the other side of their angle
@@Erg893 You're missing the point, he means to say that when you're talking about Jewish people you have to first see it as an ethnic group and later as religion, he's not implying that God is less important than people.
i just want to say that this video almost made me cry from happines. as an israeli jew i've been living my whole life with my jewish identity and every time i tried to understant "what is a jew?" and so "what am i?" i got confused because of the complexity of judaism. but after seeing this video everything suddenly feel into place. so thank you blue, you solved my identity crisis. and thank you for giving me something to show my non-jewish friends instead of giving me (and them) a headache.
You are a member of the longest lived ethnic group in history, who use their longevity and disproportionate power to skew world events in the favour of their tribe. You're a member of the Illuminati.
My teacher during my last year of high school said that The Bible is a source of wisdom not knowledge. Taking the words literally will stop you from gaining the wisdom The Bible had to offer. I love her interpretation of the Genesis. Adam was made in the image of God does not mean that he looks like God or that we are molded to look like him. It means that humanity (Adam means human) was made using the image we interpret God as. It means that humanity was made under the image of love, kindness, and light. However, I believe that it could also mean that if you interpret God as vindictive, intolerant, and merciless, so would you be.
I've always heard the statement of Adam being made in God's image interpreted as more of a mental thing. It was not that man's was body created in the imagine of some divine body, but that the human mind was created in the image of the divine mind. I suppose the moral one can take from that is that our capacity to imagine and understand is limitless, and is thus the aspect of humanity that is closest to the divine.
That's actually a really good interpretation. You view the world around you with a mirror, after all. My religion, and therefore I, think that we are essentially made with the form that God has, i.e. human, but each person is, has always been, and always will be, individual. Some people, like Christ, look exactly like one of their parents, while others have very little of their actual parents' features.
Metaphore is the kindest description one could give of Genesis, since it's hardly factual. The one part that even gets close is chapter 11, featuring the Marduk ziggurat, aka, the Tower of Babel, and even that is just because the structure actually existed. The tower was abandoned, not because people forgot how to communicate, but because the empire surrounding it broke down, and consequently, everybody forgot how to read and write cuneiform. Everything before that is GROSSLY inaccurate as a historical or scientific refrence, and is based on elder mythos, where everything after chapter 11 is better viewed as an "origin story" of where the Hebrew people came from. The latter part of Exodus might be viewed as a beginning of a chronicle of legendary conquest by a scattering of nomadic tribes, but the first part of it (Moses and the Exodus) has no basis in historical fact whatsoever.
Hebrew language and culture is more focused on function and not appearance. However, even though it is very likely we dont look the same as God, theres not enough evidence to prove that we dont. The word for image in the creation account is 'tselem' which literally means a shadow or an imitation of an original object (which would be a shadow). 'Tselem' is also the same word used for an idol, which is a physical representation of a deity.
About Spain, the whole systematic oppression of Jews only really started after Ferdinand and Isabella finished the Reconquista. Prior to that, Christian Spanish kings had ambivalent relationships with their conquered Jewish and Muslim subjects, mostly leaving them well enough alone, but not being cool necessarily with having to do that.
I’m a muslim and I agree with your theory about Judaism being an ethnicity first before being a religion! This was an amazing video. I’d love to learn more about Judaism. I also appreciate that Jewish people are encouraged to debate. I wish Muslims could debate about the meaning and context of the Quran. I firmly believe it was left so that every word could apply to everybody - so debate and discussion is necessary.
It wasnt it doesn’t have 5 meaninf so people who worship 10 gods is the wuran for them ? Is people who worship men n women is it for them no please don’t say such things
Muslims are actually encouraged to debate and absorb knowledge. It happens all the time. Dr. Zakir Naik is excellent. You may need to do a lot more research...
they did try to debate, henceforth you have shia, sunny and ibadi and suffy (no one remmbers that islam is not just shia and sunny) , also you have the druze as offshot of islam. bektashi alevism is also islamic off shot
I really enjoyed this summary! One thing to consider is that this is mostly an Ashkenazi history, and that the Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, etc. parts of Judaism also are important to the explanation of the cultural and ethnic history of Jews.
I need to send this to my rabbi. I think he'll get a kick out of it. That joke is no joke, btw. Rabbanim can sometimes agree on where to go to lunch. Sometimes. This is why the office manager makes those decisions.
My late-Ex-grandmother was an office manager for a whole building worth of Jewish doctors, she confirmed this argument with several stores before her passing, and crazy enough she was Jehovah. On another note, I had a Jewish neurologist doctor at the Va the receptionist settled arguments in the office too as there was a Jew, catholic, Christian, Hindi, atheist, and agnostic. The only thing they could actively agree on was that the psychology department was crazy.
God, I love this. As an atheistic Jewish person raised by parents who were married Hasidic (they're less extreme in devotion, but they married in such way so that if they or my siblings or I wish to make an aliyah one day, our Jewish identities won't be questioned), it has been important to me and other Jewish people I know that we're recognized as ethnically and culturally Jewish, and that our possible lack of belief in a godly figure does not erase the fact that we ENJOY following the traditions and the community that builds around them. More to that, one of my favorite things that my parents tell me is that "It's Jewish to question." It's just something that sticks, and could also explain why many of us question the idea of a higher power; because our culture does not look down upon those who ask questions. (Also, great joke lmao)
the joke in the end actually originates from a part of the talmud that roughly translates to "achanai's furnace". a story in which a rabi proves himself right over and over again but the other ones do not believe him. it's much more complex than that but that's where the joke originates from.
Thank yo SO much for this! I'm an ultraorthodox jew and I have rarely if ever seen a respectful, factual representation for judaism.This was so awesome! thank you so much. On an important side note: it really really depends what kind of rabbi you ask about allegory/literal (reform, orthodox, ultraorthodox, hasidic...)
Nowhere Man wow. that is a tall order. can you specify some exact questions? if you are in the mood to do some reading chabad.org has some interesting articles as well as a lot of information on judaism. i would love to answer any questions (if i can)
Lynn Waterhouse Can you explain anything about Jews in Poland in the 14th to 15th centuries? From what I've heard (that not being much) is that they bankrupted Poland by making most of the wheat farmed into alcohol, which led to the starvation of Poland. Is there any truth to this? Is it Russian bias on the part of the Czar?
Nowhere Man i have less knowledge than i would like about polish jewery in the 14th and 15th centuries so i will do a bit of research and get back to you. it is a few minutes to sabbath where i am so i will only be online again saturday night. hopefully then i will have a full answer and some sources.
Thank you so much for this :) I am not Jewish, but i am friends with a lot of Jewish people. They are one of the most tenacious and forward thinking people out there (next to Rwandans). Despite all the centuries of persecution they received, they continued to better themselves and their society, rather than act like victims. As a black man, I am always inspired by their strength of character.
Islam was very hit and miss with Judaism. It’s very dependant on the region and the culture and the ruler. There were massacres in Arabia and the Levant but peace and prosperity in Spain and Egypt. Baghdad saw both oppression and great harmony.
@@Emir_969 The ones I know of are mostly from the later 19th century and early 20th century, but I heard there were some others across the years. however, For the most part, while still being second class citizens, jews were living pretty normal lives in muslim coutnries.
@@Emir_969 The Banu Qurayza were slaughtered by Muhammed. That's one Islamic sources agree on, there are others that are disputed so I only gave the one that Islamic sources agree on
JTPri12345 Jewish history is a roller coaster were the tracks break and the car falls off from the theme park and down a very rocky mountain were Hitler is standing at the bottom with a rifle
Owning all the banks, medias, governments, web infrastructure, and getting to invade and genocide Palestine with no consequences sure is victimhood at its worst.
I was so happy hearing a good representation of the history of my people, but when you called the Hebrew Bible the Tanakh instead of just the Torah... wow that made me feel special :)
Great attempt to summarize a complex history of the Jewish people. I found every few sentences of this video to weigh heavy. As a non traditional god believing Jew, I do like the explanation of the laws at the end. It is these rules that have given us a culture that has lasted through the centuries. I will also mention that one thing that I find has held the culture together is the emphasis on keeping the tradition of the holidays. Great video!
This was very cathartic to hear. I was raised Jewish but decided that I’m agnostic. I never lost my ties with the culture of Judaism though. I’d say I’m culturally Jewish, but my religious beliefs fall more in line with being agnostic.
same except I consider myself culturally Jewish and religiously atheist. but somehow those can co-exist. I remember being 13 and going to talk to my rabbi before my bat mitzvah and telling him, this man who had watched me grow up, known me and my family my whole life. and telling him I didn't think I believed in God and him saying ok, let's talk about it. there was no judgement, no get out, no you're wrong just let's talk about it. the most he really questioned me was asking if any of the lessons I learned from the Torah were less relevant now. through my entire entire learning we always looked at the Torah as a set of stories to teach moral lessons
@@brynbloom5993 same here, while I never outright said I’m atheist to my rabbi, all through Sunday school I was always pointing out the bs in the Torah. Yet something I always appreciated was when they said to not focus on the god part but more so the morals and lessons from it. Honestly, this video just helped me understand the whole process I went through. Another thing is, at my temple something that was said often, or at least at the start of services was that EVERYONE was allowed to attend, no matter what you believe, you can always have sanctuary in a temple. Judaism has made it through all the oppression through thousands of years because we learned to respect, forgive, and most importantly tolerate other peoples beliefs. Every Jew has their own beliefs towards Judaism, the religion/culture would have fallen apart if it wasn’t accepting. Judaism is about learning.
Christian Dauz I don’t think that’s how things work. Judaism and Christianity are perfectly capable of coexisting, as Jerusalem’s population and the current state of the globalization of the west have proven.
@@christiandauz3742 Also a fun fact, Hindu Indian pricipalities (and to a slightly lesser extent the Muslim Mughals) has been one of the two best places on Earth to be a Jewish minority (the other being Japan). To this day there is still a maassively Jewish area in India called Kochin (ofc given that Israel exists now it's been mostly depopulated due to emigration or aliyah), originally a trading port city started up in the Bronze Age, supposedly by merchants sent by King Solomon/Shlomo himself, it grew into a Jewish cultural and religious center for over 2500 years. Also, Jews who were fleeing the Holocaust and were barred from Britain and the US fled to the German ally Japan, and the Japanese Empire would guarantee their safety. Mussolini's Italy also attempted this but, being Mussolini's Italy, it didn't go over very well and towards the end they were forced to comply with Berlin. Ironically, Jews were the only gaijin the Japanese didn't hate at that time, mostly due to how similar Jewish practices and Japanese culture were. Also the stark contrast between the Jews, who shut up, sat in their corner shops, and paid theor taxes with a smile, vs the Christians who held up a map of the Spanish Empire and said "Convert or die," probably had a little something to do with it too.
You know, that joke is actually a famous Talmudic debate that happened (maybe or whatever), and is often used to demonstrate how after the Torah was given, the interpretation of the laws and their execution in the world was given to mankind to debate and discuss on their own, so that even though the original intent of the law (from god) went along with "Jacob", the details of the law went along with the majority of the Rabbis decision. There are a bunch of other things like this too around the books
God gave a set of rules that were best for the people of the time, but the rules must evolve alongside the people. The word of God we follow is there to keep us on the same spirit of the law, even if the rules themselves change to fit an ever-changing world.
I was raised as a lutheran and so my teachers tried always to take us back to simpler, older worship and they even encouraged questions on theistic matters based on accounts from the bible of temple life, in particular, jesus and his debates in the temple as a child. Lutheranism was conceived to take christianity back to its judaic roots in many ways(not intentionally perhaps, but it was the only well to go to) so it seemed important to my teachers that we have that sort of lively debate around the nature of god and faith. They tried to help raise us according to the law from the book. They tried to teach the ideas behind the stories instead of just recitation. Why Lot opened his doors and gave his daughters to the crowd was explained not just as sacrifice for its own sake but as a function of the rules of hospitality. I dont know if im atheistic now but im sure temples should be for debate and not a matter of simple attendance. As ive gotten older ive appreciated judaism more and more and realized i decided a long time ago for myself to hold to the book, with a few exceptions for diet. I honestly consider myself more culturally jewish than anything else and its because of how the bible was taught to me by christians. And i feel like that fits pretty well with judaism in general: it is a body of law but it is also, at the same time, a nebulous thing representative of a nebulous and varied people. Am i a jew? Probably not. Do i love getting into it with rabbis? Definitely. Ill leave it to you what that really makes me lol hebrew curious? Gentile with benefits? Who knows but i do love debating the faith and the book and the context of the history around it
@@pudgeboyardee32 you might want to look into the noahide movement as I'm an orthodox Jew myself but Judaism does not require that everyone be Jewish. May G-d aid you on your journey
...huh. You know, "Jewish law" is a phrase I've heard plenty of times (being Jewish and all). Somehow it didn't click until this video that, A, Judaism really is more a system of law than a belief system, and B, the extent to which my views on religion in general have been shaped by that fact. ("Suddenly a lot of things make sense" is always a great feeling: thanks for providing me an opportunity to feel it!)
Very impressed! I'm a religious Jew and you very accurately and respectfully described a lot of my heritage. Thank you for being factual and truthful! B'vakasha achi
When someone asks “Do you believe the Bible is true?” the best answer is “Do you believe the library is true?” The Bible, old testament AND new are compilations, not single continuous works like the Qu’ran. And the different books making up the Bible are often in completely different genres, written down by different human authors (even if you believe the words were dictated directly by the big man himself, He at least gave them words that matched their writing style) intended for different audiences with different expectations for the mixture of historical fact, allegorical truism, and artistic license to be included. (For the record I’m a Catholic, and the official stance of the Church on the Bible is that God inspired the right people to write about the right subjects, and do so without introducing anything obviously errant-at least not when read in the light of the full Bible and surrounding Tradition of apostolic teachings-but didn’t dictate their exact words, so metaphors, artistic license, and phrases that, when taken out of that proper context, teach the wrong things (like the half the book of Jonah) are absolutely present)
Going to insert myself here as a no-longer-practicing Catholic (unless you count that OVERWHELMING guilt complex) to say that even that Church's view of the Bible is extremely tilted as they decided entire books weren't REALLY meant to be part of the Bible at all and you should just ignore those (re: everything considered apocryphal). Then again, it was basically the Catholic Church going "we need to make sure only OUR version of the Bible gets read and obeyed! Chuck all those books describing heaven and the fall of Lucifer and the ones that might have been written by women".
At least, in a Library, the books are codified and classified according to genre, date published, etc. The Bible is just a mix of mysticism interspersed with a little pinch of history.
@@jmercedesd what the hell are you on about? 1- it was the Catholic Church that compiled the Bible in the first place, ask around the first few centuries of Christianity for a Bible and they'll say to you "a what?" 2- If they compiled the Bible, and they did, what the hell would they be "removing" from? Indeed, the only dude who removed Books from Holy Scripture was Martin Luther (The Deuterocanons, what he called "Apocrypha"). 3- When Martin Luther removed several books of the Holy Scripture (for in there he found evidence that his heretical schism could not have been justified), he kept them as part of the Bible (apparently he thought a book could be Biblical but not Holy Scripture) but a century and a half later prots ultimately removed the Deuterocanons from the Bible as a whole, and after that you'll struggle to even find a mere mention of them among protestant circles, so the only one going "we need to make sure only OUR version of the Bible gets read and obeyed" were the heretical protestants. But hey, Protestants accusing Catholics of what they did? Nothing new to see here.
@@aryanpandey7284 False. It was not compiled after his death, no mention anywhere that it needs to be sung or vocalized although it happens often. Education is important!
I cannot begin to describe the enormous amount of pride I hold as a Jew. My people are the strongest, the most faithful people. *Thank you* for talking about this. I'm so used to casual anti-Semitism at this point, this more positive viewpoint can _not_ be taken for granted. Thank you, blue.
Fellow Jew here, while I count myself as atheist, I still participate in the culture, because it is still very important to me. Also do you also find it almost funny that Christianity is one of the most oppressive religions to Judaism and yet it is literally AN OFFSHOOT of it!
Archaelogical and literary evidence has established that during the Bronze Age, the people of that region worshipped the same or similar deities. The Bible is actually one source of that evidence. Some books of the Tanakh/Old Testament describe communities where monotheism competed with polytheism, and name a few of the deities worshipped by the polytheists, including Ba'al, Astarte, Asherah, and El. Those deities were worshipped under similar names from Egypt to Mesopotamia. So there's no question that proto-Judaism developed in a polytheistic context. You start seeing controversy when you discuss the relationship between proto-Judaism and the surrounding polytheism. The "official" story (i.e. the narrative in the modern Tanakh/Old Testament) is that monotheism begins when Abraham makes his covenant with Yahweh, is affirmed on Sinai when Yahweh reveals the Ten Commandments, and triumphs when the monotheists slowly but surely stamp out the polytheistic apostasy. A lot of people believe the Bible is correct about this. However, most secular historians do not. Right now, the dominant theory among secular historians goes like this: There is no compelling archaelogical evidence for the exodus from Egypt, so it's likely that the Israelites were native to the area, just one Canaanite tribe among many. If they didn't come to the area from elsewhere, that means they couldn't have brought monotheism into the area. It's likely that their monotheism developed in Canaan. There is evidence that Yahweh was worshipped in several places in the near east. He was worshipped as one god in a great pantheon, not as the only divine being in existence and not as the creator of the universe. There is also evidence that some people in Canaan worshipped Asherah and Yahweh at the same time, believing Asherah was Yahweh's consort (i.e. wife or lover). The Bible supports this, actually, since Josiah is said to have removed Asherah paraphernalia from Yahweh's temple. Which suggests that Yahweh-Asherah worship was not a fringe practice. There's extensive evidence that near eastern cultures believed that dozens or hundreds of deities existed, but chose one to be their special patrons. For example, when one culture defeated another in battle, it was suggested that the victor's patron deity was better than the loser's. Consistent with this trend, Yahweh was the special patron deity of the Israelites. They thought he was their favorite, but they didn't think he was the only. This is called henotheism. Worship of Yahweh merged with worship of El, another near eastern deity, a father-god and head of the pantheon. At some point, the Israelites demoted or denied all deities other than Yahweh, becoming truly monotheistic. I believe the most popular theory dates this to the Babylonian captivity. In a massive ret-con, much of the Tanakh was written or re-written at this time to suggest that Yahweh's followers had always been monotheists and the names Yahweh and El/Elyon/Elohim had always referred to the same entity. In short, the theory suggests that incremental changes took the Israelites from "Yahweh is our god" to "Yahweh is not only our god, he's also the father/creator god" to "Yahweh is the creator god, and in fact the only god." This is probably the theory behind the show you saw on the History Channel. It's not the only way to make sense of the evidence, but it's a popular way. You asked about "remnants" of polytheism in the Bible. There are quite a few. Here are some things that might support the polytheistic-origin theory: "Elohim" is plural. This might mean that it once referred to a pantheon rather than an individual deity. Sometimes the Bible calls God "Yahweh," sometimes "Elohim," sometimes "El," sometimes "Elyon," etc. That could be a holdover from a time before a Yahweh-El merge. Psalms frequently refers to multiple gods. Yahweh is "the great King above all gods," the deity "all the gods bow down before," the one who makes decisions "in the midst of the gods," and "superior to all gods." At a few points in Genesis, God seems to be talking to other divine beings: "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness." "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil." The wording "You shall have no other gods before me" fits the theory that Yahweh was going to be the Israelites' patron deity but was not recognized as the only god. After all, it's not asserting that no other gods exist; it requires the people to stick with Yahweh instead of choosing a different god. Obviously Jewish and Christian traditions have other interpretations of these passages. Sometimes, translators have fudged a bit to support those interpretations. Whenever you're exploring what the original writers of the Bible meant to say, look at lots of different translations, and look for commentary that talks about the words in the original language. (I'd also encourage you to remember that our translations are not based on the original words. We're talking copies of copies of copies, sometimes filtered through several languages. Just saying.) In closing, I'll say this: You asked what we "know" about the origins of Judaism. Not to go on a big philosophical tangent but, like, how do you know that you know anything, man? [keanu_whoa.jpg] We're talking about events that occurred 2,500-4,000 years ago. Sometimes we dig things up from that time period. Sometimes we find texts, often on broken clay or crumbling papyrus. We're trying to build a car with bolts and scotch tape. That doesn't mean this theory, or any theory about history, is wrong. It means there's lots we can't know and probably will never know. We can't run experiments on historical narratives to determine whether or not they're true. We look at the new things we dug up and see if they fit the story, or if they stick out from the story like a sore thumb and suggest the story is bogus. Welcome to history. I've been madly clicking between tabs to write this and haven't included citations. If you want any, ask and I'll go back and find the source I used for it, up to and including pulling my undergrad textbooks off my bookshelf.
An excellent analyses of the whole thing but if I could request you not use the Tetragrammaton with the vowels like that. As a jew it kinda makes me uncomfortable, even when couched in such a remarkable essay.
a great essay! indeed, You can trace a lot of polytheism in proto-judaism. As a side note, about YHWH's origin, the most popular theory is that he is misstranslation of Ea, the Akkadian/Sumerian god of creation, slayer of the monster of the abyss (similar to the great aligators in genesis, and the whole abyss, or the Tohu VaBohu, which is akin to Absu, whom Ea slew), The omniscience and omnipotent God who was the father of the king of he gods, Merdukh, in Babylonian lore. According to most theories, his worshipped was widespread across the middle east, and his name, Ea, transformed into Yewa, which was eventually turned into Yaweh and then to Yehova, or Jehova. And of course, the word in hebrew for God, El, and Elohim, spesifically for that God, derive from the canaanite god El.
What's strange is how my own religion accounts for most of this, with Elohim being essentially the All-Father, Jehovah being essentially the God of this world, other primordial beings (children, but not heirs, of Elohim) helping Him create the Solar System, and Lucifer being (from what I understand, since I'm not as familiar with his backstory) a member of a High Council that was greedy and didn't really care about others. We get around being called Polytheistic or Trinitarian by saying that we believe in a Godhead. It's one of those "makes sense in context" things. Also, given the story of Abraham's two sons and Isaac's two sons, they probably stayed and worshiped Abraham's God while the Jews were in Egypt.
@Nick Pinto Eh, from a certain perspective, he's correct. Outside of prayer books (written for the benefit of poor slobs like me) and early grade school books, vowel markings are pretty much non-existent. And, Hebrew's perchance for playing with letters to make new words probably only includes the consonant letters, and not the vowels. If he's correct on the origin of the world "Tanakh", notice there is no O sound following the Tav character, but Torah does have the O sound following it's Tav. Simply put, yeah, they're there, but they're so rarely used they might as well not be there.
@@jackielinde7568 The O sound in Torah comes from the letter Vav. Since the acronym only uses the first letter of each word, it only takes the Tav from Torah. Vav is sometimes pronounced like an O, sometimes a U, and other times a V, so depending on the context, it can be a vowel.
11:21 Hebrew does have vowels you just don't write them. When I was learning the language I used vowels but eventually you don't need them anymore since you know the word. That's why you don't seen any vowels on signs, in books, etc. By the way, I adore your videos and have learned so much more from them then I have in school. They have really helped me especially with online learning. So thank you so much!
Dang. This was pretty accurate. I've never seen/heard anyone, besides other Jews, tell the history of our people so... correctly. And that end joke is very funny. Very, very funny. I mean "fell out of my bed and hurt my back, but kept laughing," funny. Jesus, man.
It kinda completely ignored/denied the centuries of persecution the Jews suffered at the hands of the paynim, and even claimed that there was harmony between the Jews and a death cult whose holy book specifically mentions slaughtering the Jews by name in more than one place.
Evan Friend There was actually a few centuries where Jews were treated as... well, sort of like "Slaves, but better." Many Jews were able to live happy lives. But yeah... golden chains still bite the skin. Can't deny that.
I love that end joke, though I've heard it in the form of a parable. Shammai says "if I am correct, let this river flow backwards" and Hillel replies "what does a river know of the Law?" Shammai says "if I am correct, may the wall of the synagogue fall down" and Hillel's response is "the shul houses learning, but that does not make it a scholar." Then Shammai invokes God, to whom Hillel responds with "stay out of this! You gave us the Laws, and now they're ours to interpret. Let Shammai make his own argument." And God left pleased in his children.
I admire the Hebrews. They've existed fro thousands of years despite the perpetual existence of those who would rather they not. Better still, part of their culture is remembering their ancestors who told said hateful people to "Fuck off!" Party strong, my dudes!
@@monkeyon777 There's no real one answer to this. Part of it is tribalism - just about every person in the Middle East has claimed rightful ownership over all of it (which is why modern Jerusalem is an enormous mishmash of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim inhabitants, and why the current Israeli parliament is made up of about 1/6 ethnic Arabs), so there's always been conflict and different groups driving other groups out. Part of it is conquest - c.f. the Babylonians kicking our sand castle over at the start of the video for no other real reason than "nice place you've got here, I own it now." But a lot of it hinges on the way the Church has tried to have it both ways with Jews since... basically the first or second century CE. Strap in, this is a long one - long enough that noted Catholic historian James Carroll was able to write a nearly-700 page treatise on the subject, which explains this in far more detail and sobering revelation than I can muster in a TH-cam comment - if you'd rather do that, "Constantine's Sword" is your berth. If you'd rather just see my attempts to sum up one of his core theses... strap in. As you probably are aware, Church tradition holds that the Pharisees, the forerunners of Rabbinic Judaism, arrested Jesus of Nazareth for blasphemy, brought him before Pontius Pilate, and demanded that he be put to death. The story has a number of, shall we say, aspects which appear to have been embelished, on top of this. Most notably, Pontius Pilate by all historical records was a brutal and vicious man, making the idea that he pleaded with the Pharisees to spare Jesus and then "washed his hands" of the crime. The sum total of this is that the core story of Christ's crucifixion is also an open and direct condemnation of the Jews _as a people._ And if you look at the liturgies of Mass up until around the 1950s, you see this position clear as a bell in the text; John Paul XXIII had a _lot_ of work to do trying to scrub out things like "wicked Jews" from the text. So you have, essentially at the core of Christian learning, the exhortation that the Jews killed Jesus, that the Jews reject the Bible - this is even why the Tanakh becomes the "Old" Testament, because it is supposed to be supplanted by the "New" Testament comprised of the Gospels and attendant works. This learned animus is the source of many endemic lies about the Jews, like the blood libel, a false charge that -Hollywood elites- Jews are kidnapping children and using their blood -to get high on adrenochrome- in blasphemous rituals. Because the Jews, after all, don't follow God, they _refuse_ to follow God, else why wouldn't they follow the _New_ covenant between God and Their people and accept Christ as their messiah? At the same time, the Church wanted the Jews alive to serve as an _example._ We were a useful boogeyman to have around to point to and say, "thus are the wages of sin, this is what you must not become" - and also to _punish_ as an example to show people what should happen to sinners and to those who reject the Most High. This is where we got things like edicts banning Jews from owning property (thereby forcing them to subsist as bankers and moneylenders) and the ghettos, the first of which was established in _the Vatican_ and surrounded by a -big, beautiful- wall which -Mexico- the Jews were forced to pay for the construction of. The Church wanted the Jews to go on existing, but also to subject them to perpetual punishment. It's perhaps no surprise that this dissonance, bordering on doublethink, led to murder and massacre again, and again, and again, and again. As early as the 400s, there were high-ranking Church officials like Ambrose who would hold the position that it was not only right but a moral imperative to _burn synagogues_ but also that the Jews should not be _killed._ (Said official was later canonized as a saint, and remains on the rolls to this day, just in case you thought that the Church is actually ready to make a serious committment to rooting this shit out.) On top of this, as Blue points out, Jews were frequently _forced_ into purely commerce-based careers like moneylending. But the same people who enacted these edicts also fostered a stigma against usury and banking; both forcing Jews into a single small sector of the workforce and then villainizing that very sector. It's no surprise that Jews came to be seen as pariahs, because yes, Varis, *it was by design.* (Why yes, this is also why _certain people_ refuse to shut the hell up about the Rothschilds in parts of society that have deemed it unacceptable to -hold up signs as a "joke" that- say "death to all Jews".) But of course it's also true that at the heart of it, Jews were severed from their homeland. Perhaps that's why it's so easy to draw parallels between us and the Romani, who are one of the only other major ethnic groups to go through a diaspora that spans centuries? They even have their own version of the blood libel, although theirs is more an excuse for authority figures to raid their camps and make off with anyone with the audacity to not "look like a g*psy".
As a jew with a much more agnostic view of God, thank you for explaining the cultural and historical contexts of Judaism so that everyone else can understand what I try (and usually fail) to explain when the topic of religion VS ethnicity comes up.
At 14:35 , a Rabbi I know actually wrote his Master's thesis on the similarities between Daoism and Judaism so even within Jewish communities this similarity is known lol
Lovely video, overall a very respectful look at Judaism from an outsiders perspective. I feel that most of this is as accurate as a person can get sticking to the facts, but the only thing I feel is "wrong" is the way the Tanakh is described as being written or compiled during the Diaspora, when in reality the last work added was during the Babylonian Exile. Thats not to say that the stories of the Tanakh aren't a guide for Jews after the destruction of the Temples, but to say the Tanakh was a result of the Diaspora ignores the purpose the Tanakh had for hundreds of years before exile. The part about the Oral Torah is true though, the Rabbis feared that the oral commentary would be lost in exile if they didn't write it down. Love to answer any questions if anyone has any, I'm an ultra-orthodox Jew who had to take many, many Jewish history classes
I think Blue meant to say that the texts were _codified_ after the end of Second Temple era, not written for the first time. It's exactly the same as legal codification; the already-existing texts are collected and compiled into a book.
You didn't spoke about the relationship that Byzantines had with Jewish people. I have met some Israelis and they said that our people have a long friendship. My Grandmother visited Jerusalem and she said that Greek priests always get more respect than the others. For example Israelis give the holy light to Greeks first as a tradition
I'm currently studying history and I'm attending several courses that heavily focus on judaism... and I gotta say that this video is very well made! Historically very accurate! Loved that you mentioned Maimonides who really is a great example of jews and muslims being able to live together :)
17:59 I think there's a very interesting parallel in Shintoism. It's not that you worship kami every sunday (though you could). It's the practice of respect and mindfulness because god(s) are everywhere.
Judaism has always been, and now continues to be, an ethnoreligious tribal group from the Levant. We are still primarily first and foremost an ethnic/tribal identity over a distinctly "religious" one.
Then why do Jews anglicize their names? Rodney Dangerfield=Jacob Cohen Larry King=Larry Zeiger Mel Brooks=Melvin Kaminsky Kirk Douglas = Isadore Demsky Bob Dylan=Robert Zimmerman Cary Grant =Larry Leach Joan Rlvers=Joan Molinsky Gene Wilde=Jerome Silberman 90% of Jews identify as European "white", rather than persons of color , while simultaneously advocating for the gradual displacement of native European cultures and inheritance of Arab/Semite lands.. Why?
Fourthaeon Why do you think that these are mutually exclusive? The demographic definition of Caucasian is white-skinned and of European descent. Ashkenazi jews certainly fit the bill. If your argument is that their distinct ethnic identity excludes them from this term, then it follows that both the French and Russians can’t be white caucasians simultaneously, considering how different their ethnic and cultural identities are. If you think that being Caucasian is defined by a group of nationalities and ethnicities that don’t include the Ashkenazi Jews, then what exactly are your criteria?
Jews *still are* primarily an ethnicity. This isn't something that went away. We are now, just as we have always been, primarily an ethnoreligious group.
With fair and likely heavy influence in terms of ethnicity but it is true that key generic differences are apparent. I mean. It kind of creates a racist issue out of religious between what pretty much is white on white. I would say that even today jews remain ethnically separated more out of religion than anything else. Hehe, i have found out that about 6/8 generations back someone from my family was a jew by decent or jew fully.
I myself a muslim im disappointed in the current generation because this gen of muslims is all about hating jews and christians to all my jew and christian brothers out there ❤❤ we all bros!
@@fakebaguetteyou were treated right in north africa and you justifying the Zionists actions as a mean to defend your"land" reminds me of germans justifying Nazism to aquire more land and at the end Jerusalem will once again be muslims we lost it before against the latins but we retook it and we will retake it again
@sneksnekitsasnek man I live in isreal and most of my teachers and even my favorite one in school are muslims and I love them with all of my heart and love learning about islam because we are cousins and our religion is based on the same principals
Good video! I thought it was a really nice touch that you mentioned the amount of religious Jews who are a bit iffy on the whole Gd thing. I remember hearing a conservative Rabbi talking about this: he made the mistake of asking his congregation, on Rosh Hashana(one of the biggest holy days of the year) to raise their hand if they believed in Gd. About a third raised their hand, another third didn't, and the final third awkwardly looked around and kinda-sorta raised their hand if their neighbors were. I do think the assertion that Jewish identity is ethnic first and religious second is a bit off, though. Those two aspects of Jewish identity are too interconnected to be separated like that. If it's mostly an ethnic identity, then you have to explain why not only why conversion is a thing, and why a valid convert is considered as Jewish as someone who can trace their Jewish ancestry back centuries. You can argue till you're blue in the face over which aspect is more important, and the best answer is simply "it's both."
All right. So. A Jew here, from Israel. Great video! It's mostly accurate, there were a few slips when you showed the content of some books. You showed the Mishna, which was written in Israel, while talking about books codified in Babylon, and when showing the Midrash (and that's a fun one, actually, I really hope someone else noted it already), the text you claimed to be quotes from the Torah is actually the Midrash, what you said was commentary is actually commentary on the Midrash, written throughout the centuries (mostly during the second millenium to the Christian count of years). Meaning, not only there's a lot of commentary in the Midrash, there's a lot of commentary on it. The Torah is a somewhat fluid term. It can be used only for the Pentateuch, for the entire written Torah or for the entirety of Jewish religious writings ever. There is something to be said about the point that half of modern American Jews have doubts about G-d existing. It's interesting to claim we are first an ethnicity and then a religion, and base it on things that happen with diaspora Jews, when you have the State of Israel - which is full of people taking culture and ethnicity over religion. The founders of the state were exactly this kind of people - who loved the Tanakh but didn't see it as obliging. I actually kind of have a berserk button over the "most Jews don't believe in G-d" thing because it was pulled against me in an argument and to this day I don't get the point of it being raised at all. But that's a personal thing, really.
But Judaism doesn't say "you can ignore the Torah, if you share". I interpret it as such: Being a good person is a foundation. You need it for a Jewish life, but it isn't the end goal.
@@universalcitizen9429 Unfortunately, Israeli culture has always been military. It has to be as a matter of survival. Israelis (thought it may seem hard to believe) are much more comfortable around firearms on average than Americans because 99% of them go through compulsory military service directly out of high school. Also you're living in the West Bank dude lol what did you expect. It's been violently contested since 1948.
Tobi Stein it’s a matter of survival for Israelis because they’re the colonists. The colonists always have to militarize to maintain control of the colony from the natives they colonized. It always fails in the end. Also understand me. Israelis point guns in my face, not Palestinians. Not ever has a Palestinian threatened my life. But an Israeli will happily do so for some zealous blind faith bullshit reason and on Palestinian soil.
I work at a steel mill, and I listen to you and blue a lot while at work through an earbud. That joke at the end made crack up while calling out information over the radio. Great video as always.
A very late response, but I found as I learned more about Judaism, as an Atheist, the more I stopped disrespecting faith itself, and more finding a burning rage at the shallowness of a lot of modern, post-Revivalist Christian sects.
@@jacobbohl192 I have a lot of Atheist friends who grew up Christian, and one thing they always seem confused about is why I feel comfortable telling my Rabbi that I don't believe in God, or why I can ask, "Why this thing, but not the other?" The fact that I can debate religious leader as a lay person and have a fun time doing it absolutely blows their mind.
What’s funny about the third tablet breaking, is that the tablets where smashed by Moses because of a certain story involving golden calf statue worship, and he had to go up the mountain for the second time so he could write the rules again
Hey, Jew here. Great job on the vid, man. The Mishnah was the only oral tradition. Talmud and Gemora are Mishnahs with commentary, and Talmud and Gemorah are different names for the same book. About the ethnicity vs religion thing, I'm not sure you're right. The whole being spread out in exile thing does wonders for assimilating cultures, so there isn't really one specific ethnicity to latch on to. It's more split into two ethnicities now, called Ashkenazi and Sefardic, with Ashkenazi being the more Germanic and European cultural blend, and Sefardic being the Middle-Eastern/Mediterranean archetype. The way we practice is at it's core mostly the same, but the traditions are wildly different in many cases. The more you know.
There's not just Sephardim and Ashkenazi. There's also Mizrahi, Karaites, Krymchaks, Maghrebi, and other Jewish groups. Ashkenazi and Sephardim are just the largest groups.
@@slook7094 it seems like he included the mizrachim (basically just means easterns) within the sepharadim (means spanish, because the majority of them originated from spain, and got spread all across europe and the mediterranean after the exile of 1492), which makes sense, as many of them are. Karaites are still not entierly accepted by the Orthodox Judaism, the biggest branch, as jews, and the Krymchaks are too small for anyone to even mention them (sorry for any Krymchak I might have just insulted).
This view of Judaism also unfortunately implies that Jewish converts are "second class" since they're not ethnically Jewish. Judaism is a people. Not specifically a religion, ethnicity, or culture. It's a people. There are through-lines, sure, but Jews come in all colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religious hybrids, levels of orthodoxy, political views (oh god the political views), and native languages. There's a large Mexican Jewish community in Mexico City. There are Chabad (a specific branch of Orthodox Judaism) houses and synagogues in Tokyo and Beijing just as sure as there are in London and New York. There are Jews who intermarry with Christians, Muslims, and other religions and have children who grow up with Jewish and other religious influences. It's a wide, wide world. And Jews are pretty much everywhere.
@@tobistein6639 When you say "This view of Judaism implies..." Are you referring to what I said? I didn't mention conversion at all, never mind anything about second class.
The joke at the end is actually pretty similar to a real story from the Talmud. There is a rabbi that disagrees with the majority, and asks God to intervene. God gives them gradually clearer signs that he is right, finally speaking directly to them and saying so. Instead of giving up, the majority respond by basically saying "you gave us these rules to keep, their interpretation is in our hands now". At which point God himself admits defeat, the majority win, and the lone rabbi is cast out. It is a powerful allegory meant to illustrate the importance of shared discussion and unity - which are more important even than the truth.
As a Jew, I just wanted to thank you for making this video and clearing some misconceptions about Judaism and the Jewish people. As terrible as my people's history is its still important for people to understand the history. This made me really happy.
In Israel learning about the old testament is mandetory, and I hated it when I was younger because I didn't belive in god, I still don't belive in god but I fricking love the stories of the bible because they are stories of pepole. you can see deeper meaning in many of the stories and you can debate them for hours, and you can literally read hunderds of pages of what other pepole thought about it. there are some really beautiful stories in the old testament, right now it's passover so we're talking about the egypt story (I don't know how you call it in english) and there are sooo many layers to it, let me fix you a misconception, moses and the jews weren't lost in the desert, they've been to israel but god knew that the old generation from egypt can't start the new order, do he sent them to the desert for 40 years so the old generation could die out. in the end, after serving god for decades, and after being the closest to god any man has ever been in jewish history, moses himself wasn't let into israel, and he watched from a mountain top how his pepole enter the promise land, and he died. HAPPY PASSOVER!!!
I know what you mean. For me, I am catholic and Nigerian. During my time in Catholic boarding school, I had very limited access to much entertainment. So i would read, re-read and re-read the old testament from this bible with illustrations. The stories were so mythical in scale and always kept my attention. Plus, all the sexual references were funny to read. lol
Check out the Book of Enoch. I found a PDF file on the internet for it. It is one of the books that where removed from the bible for being controversial.
I can't quite place why but I find it really awesome to see someone appreciating these stories as stories, from an outside perspective. Maybe it's because, having heard them throughout my life in a religious context, I never really considered their merit as stories? Because when I think about it, it's absolutely there, you just need to look at it differently (and maybe with a bit of dramatic flair).
+Daniel Early That's not how Judaism works, well, unless you meet a hardcore follower of Kabbalah, the mystic Theology part of our religion. But aside from this all Jews are encouraged to see the Thora as something to be criticized and therefore actively debated with others. It's a tradition born of necessity because we had no written down version of it for quite a long time and later on we got spread out around the world. So we, more or less, invented this behavior to keep us in touch with the word of Adonai Elohim and our brethren.
One of the things that you touch on (re: ancient Judaism as a culture first, then a religion) but don't say definitively is that Judaism-- unlike most other religions-- is not proselytizing. Rather, it is considered a birthright, borne out through the first covenant between the Hebrew People and their God, and then reinforced through tradition and common knowledge of Jewish Law. Also, an important bit of context is that ancient Hebrews were likely not monotheists in the strict understanding of the word that we have today. In the English translation of that first commandment, it says (and I paraphrase): "I am the Lord your God (who delivered you from Egypt). You shall have no other gods *before* me." That "before" word is important, because the entire civilized world around the Jews was pantheistic or polytheistic, and their God, YHWH, told them that by His deliverance of their people from Israel, He had renewed for them that ancient compact, and that sure, there may be other gods in the pantheon, but He was the greatest and the one to be worshipped (and appeased) first and foremost. The view of course gradually evolved, and for a small and vulnerable population of people at the crossroads of some of history's mightiest and most expansion-minded empires, the belief in one God that usurped all others in a wide pantheon became a point of solidarity and cultural identity (why else would the Jews be delivered from exile so many times if it weren't for the fact that their God was more powerful than all others?). The Romans, of course, recognized this YHWH as a minor god of their own pantheon that the Jews-- for whatever reason-- had a special affinity for, and recognized the Jews themselves as a secondary, but civilized, People, who although did not enjoy all of what the Romans considered hallmarks of civilization (engineering, temple worship, medicine, writing, poetry, history, rule of law, etc), enjoyed far more of them than any barbarian Rome had encountered in Europe. Up until the time of Jesus and past it, Rome ruled Judea much like a client state, where an agent of Rome was present to keep law and order (along with the military), but where the day-to-day affairs of the Jewish people were delegated to the Pharisees in a form of quasi-self-governance. As an aside, this provides excellent context for the Passion. Pontius Pilate, Rome's agent-of-state in Judea, cannot understand why the Pharisees are so insistent on Jesus being executed when his crime-- heresy-- was not considered a capital offense in Jewish Law (those convicted of heresy I believe were supposed to live away from society for a while and if they recanted could then be reintegrated). To Pilate, the Pharisees wanting to crucify Jesus was inconsistent with his-- and Romans'-- perception of the Jews as a people ruled by law.
That is... likely because certain aspects of the Passion are likely... not literal. Historical records show Pilate as an absolute bastard who would very likely not have questioned for a second why the Pharisees wanted this man put to death. The crimes of Jesus of Nazareth likely go far beyond the simple claim in the text that "well he said he's the son of God and that's blasphemous". Carroll suggests that it may be connected to his actions in the Temple, especially considering that the traditional story that Jesus upended a bunch of greedy people who were doing _business_ in his Father's house would... not actually have been a bad or even unusual thing. It was a long-standing tradition at the time to sell, for a small pittance or tithe to the Temple's upkeep, things for people to offer up on the altar. And Jews coming into Jerusalem from afar for important observances (read: the High Holy Days) would likely need to be able to exchange the currency they used in whatever place they lived in for shekels.
@@kiraina25 No, Jesus was crime-less, sinless. Even if your Talmud encourages it, do not partake in defamation of the Son of God, *this is blasphemy against the own God*
As a Jew, I agree with your analysis 100%. I'm not religious at all, but I still practice Jewish holidays, and consider myself a part of the Jewish culture.
I learned a lot about myself because of this video, I have been raised in the jewish culture all my life but for most of it I never really thought about it. I knew we came up around a few thousand years ago and there was something about oil and candles and stuff. Because of content like this I feel more in touch with my identity as a person. I've begun reading joys of yiddish and looking into other content that helps me learn about myself. Thank you
I’ve taken classes in Exergesis, Hermenuetics, and Old Testament surveys & I’ve got to agree about Judaism being summarized as “law.” I view it as more historical than you, but I mostly agree with your allegories. I’m not a scholar, but I’ve studied a good bit.
This is very well thought-out and actually mirrors some of what I learned in the study I did in the high school summer program where I spent 6 weeks in Israel. The idea of the Jewish People (using the word People here rather than faith or religion is important) is tough to sum up in such a short time but you did a good job of hitting a lot of the important points so good on you!
You know, ever since seeing this video, I've come to truly understand why my grandfather, a survivor of the camps, was so vehimont when it came to the suffering of our people. Five genocides. I knew history is stained red with bloodshed but that's a lot for any community.
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
One of the best parts of my Jewish education was the fact that in any class about the Tanakh or Talmud, you were encouraged to ask questions, point out flaws, express your own opinion, and generally tell the teacher why he is wrong. It ends up less a class and more of a very long argument about incredibly trivial things, like carrying stuff outside a city, or how to get away with property damage. It is the only class you can take where you are encouraged to be a tricky asshole and argue about everything.
Yep, if you look at Nobel prizes, a large amount of them go to Jewish people. Judaism pulls out curiosity and opinion, unlike other religions which squash it. It’s like how other religions are normal schools (prying the general love of learning away from you) and Judaism is what we want schools to be like, encourage learning!While I don’t find myself part of the religious aspect anymore, I still stay with the culture.
@@bananaeclipse3324 me too!
Mhm. Treat the Tanakh and the Midrash and the Talmud the way the rabbis did, a centerpiece of discussion
It certainly serves as an insight into SO MANY Jews being scientists, researchers, explorers, scholars in general. Asking questions and arguing about it, discussion, sussing it out... It's integral to your identity.
That’s why their such good accountants and finding loopholes in tax laws
I am Jewish and religious. Your viewpoint on the Tanach as allegory is one hundred percent valid. Many big names in Judaism agree, that it's not a history book; it's a rule book. I am completely orthodox; I also believe in evolution. The are not contradictory terms.
God, I love this channel.
זה לא לגמרי נכון.
מה שהוא אומר
@@nethanelartsi6909 its his opinion , it cannot be wrong or right, its a personal thing.
התנ''ך ברובו אכן ספר חוקים ולא צריך להתייחס אליו כספר היסטוריה אלא כמשלים לסיפורים בהם הכותבים רוצים לתת עמדה או נקודה במצב גיאופוליטי כולשהו. דוגמא סיפור הגבעה מהווה משל למשהו שקרה אחרכך וכיוצא בזאת.
Mostly agree, but there are definitely bits that make zero sense outside of it being a history book. The genealogies, for instance, which are literally a dry list of names. There's also some accounts of historical events that have _absolutely no_ decipherable moral message.
The conclusion I draw is that it was multiple authors scrambling to cobble together as much ancient knowledge as they could before it was lost forever and who were determined to leave nothing on the cutting room floor. This would explain why _Genesis_ contains *two separate and contradictory* creation myths and why so much of the content is far from internally self-consistent.
@@GSBarlev There are actually a lot of theories on why those contradicitons exist. You can watch UserfulChart's video for a more in depth analysis, but something that was proposed that to me makes a lot of sense is that a unified Jewish State under King Solomon never existed. Instead, the separate states of Israel and Judea have always been separate, but when the North fell to the Assyrians, the people migrated to the south and all of a sudden there was a push to unify both tranditions. For instance, it could be argued that Jacob and the Patriarchs was the Southern/Judean origin story, meanwhile Moses and the Exodus was the Northern/Israelite origin story. After the fall of Israel, and especially during the post temple period, the Jews came together to basically stitch both traditions into a single continuous narrative, but of course that means there's a lot of duplication and contradictions, such as how things like the creation of the world is written twice, or why there's a huge time gap between the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. Later on, the characters of King David and King Solomon were created as a historic justification to suggest that there is historical precedent for the 2 kingdoms to be united.
A Jewish friend of mine had the best summary of nearly every Jewish holiday: "They tried to kill us and they failed. Let's eat."
literally everyone says this
As another Jewish person; yeah pretty much
except Yom Kippur
Don't forget the parts involving slavery, burning/razing of things, being thrown out of their homes, and ALL the racism... probably missing some stuff though.
I'm Jewish. This is painfully accurate
You might have been able to simplify some of the discussion by recalling two very common Jewish in-jokes: 1) The definition of a Jewish holiday: "They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat." 2) One Jew in a room is a discussion; two Jews in a room is an argument. Aside from that, you done good! :-)
Oh, and a joke for a joke... One night, a rabbi (hey, let's call him Jacob!) notices at dinner that his son is just picking at his food, isn't participating in family discussion, and is pale & sweaty. He asks his son what's wrong, and his son nervously admits that he will be leaving in the morning because he has decided to convert to Christianity. The heartbroken rabbi finds his way to the synagogue, where his quiet prayer slowly builds into an anguished questioning. Suddenly he hears a booming voice from above... "Your son converted to Christianity? Yeah, I know how you feel..."
Lmao these jokes are fire ngl
Yep, that sounds right! Two jews, three opinions.
I'll admit, the last joke took me a while to get.
You get an upvote purely because of that second joke.
This made my day!
Btw with that joke at the end; the Talmud actually has a story whereby a voice from the heavens tells a group Rabbis that one opinion is correct, and they respond with "The Torah is not in the heaven, you don't get to decide what's correct anymore"
I was going to comment this. It's possibly my favorite and personal connection to Judaism
Using death of the author on god. What a powermove
Reminder that one of the primary founders of our homeland, Yaakov, earned the name Yisrael by _wrestling_ a divine presence that is sometimes argued to have actually been Adonai Themself. Hence the name Yisrael, meaning "one who contests with G-d".
"כי לא בשמיים היא"
@@shirtzemah4560
she?!
Most people: Save the Library of Alexandria, kill Hitler, explore ancient Egypt
Blue: The Buble lol
very specific yet true nonetheless lol
tbh if you saved the library of Alexandria, you definitely wouldn't have had Hitler lol
Also kill Mohammed
@@fullmetalalchemist9126 killing Jesus and Constantine and Theodosius 👌🏻
Pretty sure they're all Grandfather Paradoxes. But, anyway, I'd settle for figuring out the ancient Egyptian language once and for all. Hey, _vowels are a thing,_ you jackasses!
I'm a Jewish girl (With an upcoming batmitzfah), and this is one of the rare descriptions of Jewish history I've seen that is
A) pretty damn accurate
B) Goes into the deeper realms of what Judaism IS.
I applaud you sir, good job!
I hope you had a great batmitzfah
Congratulations on your batmitzfah!
I too had mine last year (albeit a little later in life than intended) in Israel on my Birthright trip.
@@Sean-no3zv shut the fuck up you anti Semitic prick
@@Sean-no3zv I can't tell if this is blatant anti-Semitism or a joke, so I'll treat it like the latter.
It's one of the few industries gentiles have allowed us to (kinda sorta not really) thrive in. Let us do what we know and love.
This is late, but I hope you had a great batmitzfah! Mazel tov!!
Jewish history: What doesn't kill you causes you to develop an amazing sense of humor as a coping device.
Lol
I think you have done it, you have summed up Judaism.
Pretty sure Ireland agrees with that sentiment
And allot of food, so much holydays revolve around food its great
@@SamButler22 and us Latinos.
10:30 missed the perfect opportunity for a Sodom and Gamora reference:
"... So take what I'm saying with a Pillar of Salt."
X'D
Boo :)
Yeah, but you missed the reference that in the Bible there is a prophecy “epic guitar solo” that Carthage will be raised and salted so nothing will grow. There was also a specific part that said fishermen would lay their nets to dry. Then a couple hundred years later, the Romans razed and salted Carthage in the Punic Wars
@@conallthewolf4103 I've not heard of this. Where is it so I can read for myself?
@@conallthewolf4103 Seriously, that's interesting. What verse/chapter/book coordinates?
As an Indian, it's always interesting to know about our ancient contemporaries.
To all Hebrews, congrats for surviving against the entire world. Most others didn't.
Thank you :)
There are many similarities between the Jewish tradition and the Vedic tradition. For example, the Bible says the 12 sons of Abraham and Keturah, among them Ashurim and Avida, were given gifts and sent to the lands of the east. At around the same time (correct me if I am wrong), the Vedas record great ones who came from the west. Today, there are places called ashrams (like Ashurim, whose name meant "camp"), and the word Veda even sounds like one of Abraham's sons' names. Even the word "Brahman" seems to come from "Abraham"
They hate us cause they aint us. 😁
@@solomonz2821 brahma and saraswati, abraham and sarah. Archetypes are more or less similar all over the world. There is either a common older origin, or mutual influence/inspiration through trade and contact.
@@pripegalapobedonosni3324 Common origin from the Proto-Indo European people, who originated somewhere around Ukraine and expanded from the brithis isles to north India.
Because of them there are a lot of things in language, culture, genetics and religion that tie people from all over Europe to the middle east and India. A little tidbit about this that I like is that the latin and sanskrit words for fire are "igni/s" and "agni".
@@JuanManuel-ii1ov oganj on slavic. Or Bog from the Iranian Baga and sanskrit Bhaga.
Also slavs had polycephalic deities as one few cultures in the world, including hinduism. Look at svantevit who is similar to brahma, or porenut with five heads like some buddha depictions, triglav with three heads like some shiva depictions etc etc. Cant recall it among celts or later British people. It makes sense with slavs since they are closer to india and eastern iranian steppe people(specifically scythians, sarmatians and alans) and are a later migration out of the steppes that they were inspired.
There is also loan words from. both Indian and irian languages in proto slavic.
My mom once said this: you could put three Jews in a room, and end up with four different opinions. As a Jew myself, I very much can see that.
Hey, y'know, if it's a period, it proves the Rambam's point, if it's a comma, it proves Rashi's point, and if it's a grease spot, it proves Akiva's point.
@@technicallythecenteroftheu1349 So what if it's a yud? Does that prove Maimonides'?
kiraina25 Rambam is Maimonides’es Hebrew name.
@@frankwest5388 rambam is his nickname. His real name was Moshe ben Maimon
@@tomerschubert2095 true, he just usually referred to by that nickname, to the point where it becomes more identifiable than his real one
Person 1: "Ah yes, that period is when that people wanted to kill the jews"
Person 2: "Which people?"
Person 1: "All of them, except the Persians, they're cool I guess"
The Americans have been okay so far.
@dimapez you can't tag the op unless they comment themselves. Assume they're talking to you when they tag you themselves
@dimapez it wouldn't do anything. That would still alert everyone. Just don't respond to comments not addressed to you and you would not have to be in this type of situation again
@dimapez just learn how the internet works. I'm not trying to stop you, but prevent you from having this issue again. Do with it what you will. I don't really care
except for the entire story of purim
Here's a joke I love for ya; A Rabbi, a Priest, and a Father are debating about whom best can spread the word of their Lord. The agree to go into the woods and convert a bear to their religion. Whoever can, is a powerful mouthpiece of God. They meet back up the following week and the Priest says "I found a bear feasting on berries. I preached to him the Good Word from the book of Genesis. His first service is this Sunday." The Father says "I found a bear drinking from a stream! I spoke to him of Revelations, and he allowed me to Baptize him then and there!". they look to the Rabbi, who is lying silent in a full body cast. The Rabbi looks to them and says "Looking back, I probably shouldn't have started with circumcision."
This made my day
See, this is why Judaism is an in-group. You can't convince another person to become Jewish, they have to WANT IT, ad then you test them on how bad they want it before deciding if they're worthy.
the whole genital mutilation is just a test then weed the weak willed then?
@@feelthepony It's actually the easier part lol. There are many restrictions and rules you have to obey to prove yourself "worthy".
@@feelthepony not exactly.
yes, it is to weed the weak, but it is also for sanitary uses.
According to the old jewish traditions, it would prevent sexual diseases from spreading.
Not sure how accurate it is, but that's the general consensus.
Judaism: the "I get knocked down but I get up again" religion.
Thousands of years of suffering have proven that nobody's ever gonna keep the Jews down.
It is the Rocky Balboa of Raligions. It isn't about how hard you hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and still keep moving.
I can do this all day
@@sflaningam7680 *Down.
@@alexpage10 i understood that reference
I'm making my way through the OSP playlists and I gotta say I actually teared up at this one. I grew up as a Jew in NYC so haven't personally experienced a whole lot of antisemitism and YET it's still so rare to find non-Jewish sources of history that handle Jewish history, faith, & status as an ethnoreligion with the empathy and even-handedness shown here.
Also, I want to say, about the nature of commentary in Judaism. One of my favorite little Jewish stories is about a man seeking to convert who goes to a series of rabbis and says, "I'm interested in converting to Judaism, but I'll only do it if you tell me the entire Torah while I stand on one leg." Most rabbis send him packing for his disrespect. But the last rabbi he visits says to him. "This is the Torah: What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. All the rest is commentary. Now, go and read it."
(Also, also: all fanfiction is midrash.)
There is even a saying "כל התורה על רגל אחת"
Basically: all this subject proven or summerised by a single sentence or action.
"! FANFICTION! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOUR HERESY"
*I say in a mostly joking voice*
I think that was Rabbi Hillel (or at least he's the one people like to credit with the saying.)
Being Jewish, I absolutely agree that it's ethnicity first and religious beliefs second..and of course Tradition...great job, well done!!
If you believe in God how come you put ethnicity first when it is God who is the centre of the whole universe and your life is just a moment in eternity? Is God universal or just there for the Jews? Who created the other human then etc...
did you say...TRADITION!
@@faeriedragon348 I also thought of the "Fiddler on the Roof" musical :)
@Isrel156 fanatic? Isn't it fanatic to put one over other cause they're of different ethnicity in the first place? A feature you can't even change while you can choose to follow or not follow any religion. Nationalism is the biggest threat in modern history though. Both can be radicalised while you can't do anything against nationalism being on the other side of their angle
@@Erg893
You're missing the point, he means to say that when you're talking about Jewish people you have to first see it as an ethnic group and later as religion, he's not implying that God is less important than people.
i just want to say that this video almost made me cry from happines. as an israeli jew i've been living my whole life with my jewish identity and every time i tried to understant "what is a jew?" and so "what am i?" i got confused because of the complexity of judaism. but after seeing this video everything suddenly feel into place. so thank you blue, you solved my identity crisis. and thank you for giving me something to show my non-jewish friends instead of giving me (and them) a headache.
How is it complicated?
@OP Damn, youtube has come a looong way from cats videos.
Shaked Geffen אני ממליץ לך ללמוד יותר לעומק את ההיסטוריה היהודית. הסרטון הזה הוא הנרטיב הפופולרי והמלאכותי לחלוטין.
You are a member of the longest lived ethnic group in history, who use their longevity and disproportionate power to skew world events in the favour of their tribe.
You're a member of the Illuminati.
זה מאוד לא מדויק, כדאי ללמוד את הדעה של היהודים בנושא ;)
I just want to say it’s really heart warming to see all the nice comments on this video the last one on judaism that I watched had a neo Nazi flam war
There's a lot of dickheads out there.
Calling everyone a Nazi is such a Jew thing.
@@dansmith1661 actually we tend to be pretty cautious about that. kinda a sore subject and all.
@Digicraftmon the Crystal Gem Sure is.
@@dansmith1661 uh oh
My teacher during my last year of high school said that The Bible is a source of wisdom not knowledge.
Taking the words literally will stop you from gaining the wisdom The Bible had to offer.
I love her interpretation of the Genesis.
Adam was made in the image of God does not mean that he looks like God or that we are molded to look like him. It means that humanity (Adam means human) was made using the image we interpret God as. It means that humanity was made under the image of love, kindness, and light.
However, I believe that it could also mean that if you interpret God as vindictive, intolerant, and merciless, so would you be.
an interesting interpertation.
I haven't thought about it as such, honestly, so thank you for food for thought!
I've always heard the statement of Adam being made in God's image interpreted as more of a mental thing. It was not that man's was body created in the imagine of some divine body, but that the human mind was created in the image of the divine mind. I suppose the moral one can take from that is that our capacity to imagine and understand is limitless, and is thus the aspect of humanity that is closest to the divine.
That's actually a really good interpretation. You view the world around you with a mirror, after all.
My religion, and therefore I, think that we are essentially made with the form that God has, i.e. human, but each person is, has always been, and always will be, individual. Some people, like Christ, look exactly like one of their parents, while others have very little of their actual parents' features.
Metaphore is the kindest description one could give of Genesis, since it's hardly factual. The one part that even gets close is chapter 11, featuring the Marduk ziggurat, aka, the Tower of Babel, and even that is just because the structure actually existed. The tower was abandoned, not because people forgot how to communicate, but because the empire surrounding it broke down, and consequently, everybody forgot how to read and write cuneiform. Everything before that is GROSSLY inaccurate as a historical or scientific refrence, and is based on elder mythos, where everything after chapter 11 is better viewed as an "origin story" of where the Hebrew people came from. The latter part of Exodus might be viewed as a beginning of a chronicle of legendary conquest by a scattering of nomadic tribes, but the first part of it (Moses and the Exodus) has no basis in historical fact whatsoever.
Hebrew language and culture is more focused on function and not appearance. However, even though it is very likely we dont look the same as God, theres not enough evidence to prove that we dont. The word for image in the creation account is 'tselem' which literally means a shadow or an imitation of an original object (which would be a shadow). 'Tselem' is also the same word used for an idol, which is a physical representation of a deity.
About Spain, the whole systematic oppression of Jews only really started after Ferdinand and Isabella finished the Reconquista. Prior to that, Christian Spanish kings had ambivalent relationships with their conquered Jewish and Muslim subjects, mostly leaving them well enough alone, but not being cool necessarily with having to do that.
I’m a muslim and I agree with your theory about Judaism being an ethnicity first before being a religion! This was an amazing video. I’d love to learn more about Judaism. I also appreciate that Jewish people are encouraged to debate. I wish Muslims could debate about the meaning and context of the Quran. I firmly believe it was left so that every word could apply to everybody - so debate and discussion is necessary.
I think they do have this debate, but in a higher academic level between scholars
It wasnt it doesn’t have 5 meaninf so people who worship 10 gods is the wuran for them ? Is people who worship men n women is it for them no please don’t say such things
Muslims are actually encouraged to debate and absorb knowledge. It happens all the time. Dr. Zakir Naik is excellent. You may need to do a lot more research...
they did try to debate, henceforth you have shia, sunny and ibadi and suffy
(no one remmbers that islam is not just shia and sunny) , also you have the druze as offshot of islam. bektashi alevism is also islamic off shot
I'm Jewish, and I adore this video. The in-depth analyses and compassion shown to my people by you brought me to tears. Thank you so much.
I really enjoyed this summary! One thing to consider is that this is mostly an Ashkenazi history, and that the Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, etc. parts of Judaism also are important to the explanation of the cultural and ethnic history of Jews.
Alexander the "______" jokes are one of the reasons I love this channel. Keep up the good work!
"One metric Carthage of salt"
I get it!
yeah, cause carthage had a lot of salt
panteleimon ponomarenko Carthage WAS a lot of salt.
The holy boble!
LOL
it ain't funny but i get it -me a salty Carthagian -
"Now it's three against two." I laughed so hard at that, oh my gosh.
Pokegeek151 X'D
I normally don’t laugh much at jokes but I started uncontrollably laughing at that
For the life of me, I cannot figure it out though! I hate to make anyone ever explain a joke but this went over my head somehow.
The joke is that the rabbis are only treating Actual God like one voice in the argument rather than a final authority
I guess but why three against two? Isn't it then two against two since it's only three rabbis?
I need to send this to my rabbi. I think he'll get a kick out of it.
That joke is no joke, btw. Rabbanim can sometimes agree on where to go to lunch. Sometimes. This is why the office manager makes those decisions.
you know what they say, put two rabbis in a room and you'll end up with three jewish sects.
@dimapez I unironically had this argument with my Mom one time...no I lied it was two time's...
My late-Ex-grandmother was an office manager for a whole building worth of Jewish doctors, she confirmed this argument with several stores before her passing, and crazy enough she was Jehovah. On another note, I had a Jewish neurologist doctor at the Va the receptionist settled arguments in the office too as there was a Jew, catholic, Christian, Hindi, atheist, and agnostic. The only thing they could actively agree on was that the psychology department was crazy.
God, I love this. As an atheistic Jewish person raised by parents who were married Hasidic (they're less extreme in devotion, but they married in such way so that if they or my siblings or I wish to make an aliyah one day, our Jewish identities won't be questioned), it has been important to me and other Jewish people I know that we're recognized as ethnically and culturally Jewish, and that our possible lack of belief in a godly figure does not erase the fact that we ENJOY following the traditions and the community that builds around them. More to that, one of my favorite things that my parents tell me is that "It's Jewish to question." It's just something that sticks, and could also explain why many of us question the idea of a higher power; because our culture does not look down upon those who ask questions.
(Also, great joke lmao)
the joke in the end actually originates from a part of the talmud that roughly translates to "achanai's furnace". a story in which a rabi proves himself right over and over again but the other ones do not believe him. it's much more complex than that but that's where the joke originates from.
Randy Wilks stop proselytizing in the comment section. Please. Nobody likes it.
@@fuzzytheduck he was giving context and I appreciate it.
that isn’t context, he’s pushing his disguised xtian beliefs on Jews.
@@fuzzytheduck even of it's not my religion I respect and even appreciate it as it gives understanding.
Ah yes, Bava Metzia 59b.
You just a gotta love the Achaemenid Persians. Those were (mostly) really swell dudes and great empire builders.
Friggin Spartans amirite
Thank yo SO much for this! I'm an ultraorthodox jew and I have rarely if ever seen a respectful, factual representation for judaism.This was so awesome! thank you so much. On an important side note: it really really depends what kind of rabbi you ask about allegory/literal (reform, orthodox, ultraorthodox, hasidic...)
Also that joke you told basically happened according to jewish tradition (Achnai's oven)
Lynn Waterhouse Recently I've been trying to understand Jews and anti semitism. Can you give me a brief rundown?
Nowhere Man wow. that is a tall order. can you specify some exact questions?
if you are in the mood to do some reading chabad.org has some interesting articles as well as a lot of information on judaism.
i would love to answer any questions (if i can)
Lynn Waterhouse Can you explain anything about Jews in Poland in the 14th to 15th centuries? From what I've heard (that not being much) is that they bankrupted Poland by making most of the wheat farmed into alcohol, which led to the starvation of Poland. Is there any truth to this? Is it Russian bias on the part of the Czar?
Nowhere Man i have less knowledge than i would like about polish jewery in the 14th and 15th centuries so i will do a bit of research and get back to you. it is a few minutes to sabbath where i am so i will only be online again saturday night. hopefully then i will have a full answer and some sources.
Thank you so much for this :) I am not Jewish, but i am friends with a lot of Jewish people. They are one of the most tenacious and forward thinking people out there (next to Rwandans). Despite all the centuries of persecution they received, they continued to better themselves and their society, rather than act like victims. As a black man, I am always inspired by their strength of character.
The fact that Judaism gets knocked around and keep trucking even to this day is simply amazing. They already gained my respect.
**drops 5 commandments** "10, 10 COMMANDMENTS!"
Dallon long legs Gotta love Mel Brooks and "A History of the World, Part I"
"'S good to be the king!"
Dallon long legs Did they happen?
Solitary Ghost XD
Andrew Stirling There was 20, the first 10 was broken.
MOSES! Makin' copies! The Mozo Show! Mozorino!
Islam was very hit and miss with Judaism. It’s very dependant on the region and the culture and the ruler. There were massacres in Arabia and the Levant but peace and prosperity in Spain and Egypt. Baghdad saw both oppression and great harmony.
Name me some of these massacres?
@@Emir_969
The ones I know of are mostly from the later 19th century and early 20th century, but I heard there were some others across the years.
however, For the most part, while still being second class citizens, jews were living pretty normal lives in muslim coutnries.
@@Emir_969 The Banu Qurayza were slaughtered by Muhammed. That's one Islamic sources agree on, there are others that are disputed so I only gave the one that Islamic sources agree on
ARedJay C
If I remember correctly, there was a peace treaty between the Muslims and the Banu Qurayza who broke that treaty.
@negro bsr as we can see from what? don't make shit up...
Jewish history in seven words: "More or less _fine,_ until it _wasn't."_
Usuary
Usuary
Usuary
Usuary
Usuary
Usuary
Usuary
@@monkeyon777 7 tries and he still didn't spell _usury_ right. -10 on message delivery.
@@monkeyon777 Gesundheit.
“HEY JEWS? WANT AN EXILE?”
“no?”
“LOL HERE YOU GO ANYWAY”
Which one?
@@haberak3310 Exactly
This is how my grandma has taught me our people's history. Very effective. Very sad.
All of Jewish history is summed up here
You know that joke about Russian history and how it only ever gets worse. Yeah, they got that wrong. Jewish history is a freaking roller coaster.
JTPri12345 Jewish history is a roller coaster were the tracks break and the car falls off from the theme park and down a very rocky mountain were Hitler is standing at the bottom with a rifle
Chris Ramsey and that's only a slight exaggeration, and it continues to go down
Try Jewish people who live in Russia/former Soviet Union...😊now, that's a brain-twister..
Old Jewish breakdown of our holidays:
Group tried to kill us.
Group failed.
WE EAT!
Owning all the banks, medias, governments, web infrastructure, and getting to invade and genocide Palestine with no consequences sure is victimhood at its worst.
I was so happy hearing a good representation of the history of my people, but when you called the Hebrew Bible the Tanakh instead of just the Torah... wow that made me feel special :)
Great attempt to summarize a complex history of the Jewish people. I found every few sentences of this video to weigh heavy. As a non traditional god believing Jew, I do like the explanation of the laws at the end. It is these rules that have given us a culture that has lasted through the centuries. I will also mention that one thing that I find has held the culture together is the emphasis on keeping the tradition of the holidays. Great video!
The Old Testament could of been called the Buble?
Buble...
I always knew Micheal Buble was holy.
In that alternate reality, rome would have become "reme" and justin bieber would become "theo boober"
“That says the Bibble”
11:28 Going to Booble study sounds a bit different - but hey, BIBAION / BUBLION ... same contents.
A Nigerian Prince that’s why he only appear at Xmas, to praise Jesus
@@thousandpagesofmadness *"YOU DARE MOCK THE WORD OF THE GREAT JIMMY?!"*
This was very cathartic to hear. I was raised Jewish but decided that I’m agnostic. I never lost my ties with the culture of Judaism though. I’d say I’m culturally Jewish, but my religious beliefs fall more in line with being agnostic.
same except I consider myself culturally Jewish and religiously atheist. but somehow those can co-exist.
I remember being 13 and going to talk to my rabbi before my bat mitzvah and telling him, this man who had watched me grow up, known me and my family my whole life. and telling him I didn't think I believed in God and him saying ok, let's talk about it. there was no judgement, no get out, no you're wrong just let's talk about it. the most he really questioned me was asking if any of the lessons I learned from the Torah were less relevant now. through my entire entire learning we always looked at the Torah as a set of stories to teach moral lessons
Same here except I count myself as atheist.
@@brynbloom5993 same here, while I never outright said I’m atheist to my rabbi, all through Sunday school I was always pointing out the bs in the Torah. Yet something I always appreciated was when they said to not focus on the god part but more so the morals and lessons from it. Honestly, this video just helped me understand the whole process I went through. Another thing is, at my temple something that was said often, or at least at the start of services was that EVERYONE was allowed to attend, no matter what you believe, you can always have sanctuary in a temple.
Judaism has made it through all the oppression through thousands of years because we learned to respect, forgive, and most importantly tolerate other peoples beliefs.
Every Jew has their own beliefs towards Judaism, the religion/culture would have fallen apart if it wasn’t accepting.
Judaism is about learning.
tbh seeing all the happy jewish people in the comments makes my heart happy
Christianity is the biggest threat to Judaism
As long as it exist, the Jews should be wary of them
Happy Jews make a happy you.
Christian Dauz I don’t think that’s how things work. Judaism and Christianity are perfectly capable of coexisting, as Jerusalem’s population and the current state of the globalization of the west have proven.
@@christiandauz3742
Also a fun fact, Hindu Indian pricipalities (and to a slightly lesser extent the Muslim Mughals) has been one of the two best places on Earth to be a Jewish minority (the other being Japan). To this day there is still a maassively Jewish area in India called Kochin (ofc given that Israel exists now it's been mostly depopulated due to emigration or aliyah), originally a trading port city started up in the Bronze Age, supposedly by merchants sent by King Solomon/Shlomo himself, it grew into a Jewish cultural and religious center for over 2500 years.
Also, Jews who were fleeing the Holocaust and were barred from Britain and the US fled to the German ally Japan, and the Japanese Empire would guarantee their safety. Mussolini's Italy also attempted this but, being Mussolini's Italy, it didn't go over very well and towards the end they were forced to comply with Berlin. Ironically, Jews were the only gaijin the Japanese didn't hate at that time, mostly due to how similar Jewish practices and Japanese culture were. Also the stark contrast between the Jews, who shut up, sat in their corner shops, and paid theor taxes with a smile, vs the Christians who held up a map of the Spanish Empire and said "Convert or die," probably had a little something to do with it too.
Thanks
You know, that joke is actually a famous Talmudic debate that happened (maybe or whatever), and is often used to demonstrate how after the Torah was given, the interpretation of the laws and their execution in the world was given to mankind to debate and discuss on their own, so that even though the original intent of the law (from god) went along with "Jacob", the details of the law went along with the majority of the Rabbis decision. There are a bunch of other things like this too around the books
God gave a set of rules that were best for the people of the time, but the rules must evolve alongside the people. The word of God we follow is there to keep us on the same spirit of the law, even if the rules themselves change to fit an ever-changing world.
I was raised as a lutheran and so my teachers tried always to take us back to simpler, older worship and they even encouraged questions on theistic matters based on accounts from the bible of temple life, in particular, jesus and his debates in the temple as a child. Lutheranism was conceived to take christianity back to its judaic roots in many ways(not intentionally perhaps, but it was the only well to go to) so it seemed important to my teachers that we have that sort of lively debate around the nature of god and faith. They tried to help raise us according to the law from the book. They tried to teach the ideas behind the stories instead of just recitation. Why Lot opened his doors and gave his daughters to the crowd was explained not just as sacrifice for its own sake but as a function of the rules of hospitality. I dont know if im atheistic now but im sure temples should be for debate and not a matter of simple attendance. As ive gotten older ive appreciated judaism more and more and realized i decided a long time ago for myself to hold to the book, with a few exceptions for diet. I honestly consider myself more culturally jewish than anything else and its because of how the bible was taught to me by christians. And i feel like that fits pretty well with judaism in general: it is a body of law but it is also, at the same time, a nebulous thing representative of a nebulous and varied people. Am i a jew? Probably not. Do i love getting into it with rabbis? Definitely. Ill leave it to you what that really makes me lol hebrew curious? Gentile with benefits? Who knows but i do love debating the faith and the book and the context of the history around it
@@pudgeboyardee32 you might want to look into the noahide movement as I'm an orthodox Jew myself but Judaism does not require that everyone be Jewish. May G-d aid you on your journey
“My children have defeated me!”
...huh. You know, "Jewish law" is a phrase I've heard plenty of times (being Jewish and all). Somehow it didn't click until this video that, A, Judaism really is more a system of law than a belief system, and B, the extent to which my views on religion in general have been shaped by that fact. ("Suddenly a lot of things make sense" is always a great feeling: thanks for providing me an opportunity to feel it!)
Very impressed! I'm a religious Jew and you very accurately and respectfully described a lot of my heritage. Thank you for being factual and truthful! B'vakasha achi
Since your religious and not secular what did you think of him calling the Bible allegorical?
When someone asks “Do you believe the Bible is true?” the best answer is “Do you believe the library is true?” The Bible, old testament AND new are compilations, not single continuous works like the Qu’ran. And the different books making up the Bible are often in completely different genres, written down by different human authors (even if you believe the words were dictated directly by the big man himself, He at least gave them words that matched their writing style) intended for different audiences with different expectations for the mixture of historical fact, allegorical truism, and artistic license to be included.
(For the record I’m a Catholic, and the official stance of the Church on the Bible is that God inspired the right people to write about the right subjects, and do so without introducing anything obviously errant-at least not when read in the light of the full Bible and surrounding Tradition of apostolic teachings-but didn’t dictate their exact words, so metaphors, artistic license, and phrases that, when taken out of that proper context, teach the wrong things (like the half the book of Jonah) are absolutely present)
Going to insert myself here as a no-longer-practicing Catholic (unless you count that OVERWHELMING guilt complex) to say that even that Church's view of the Bible is extremely tilted as they decided entire books weren't REALLY meant to be part of the Bible at all and you should just ignore those (re: everything considered apocryphal). Then again, it was basically the Catholic Church going "we need to make sure only OUR version of the Bible gets read and obeyed! Chuck all those books describing heaven and the fall of Lucifer and the ones that might have been written by women".
At least, in a Library, the books are codified and classified according to genre, date published, etc. The Bible is just a mix of mysticism interspersed with a little pinch of history.
@@jmercedesd what the hell are you on about?
1- it was the Catholic Church that compiled the Bible in the first place, ask around the first few centuries of Christianity for a Bible and they'll say to you "a what?"
2- If they compiled the Bible, and they did, what the hell would they be "removing" from? Indeed, the only dude who removed Books from Holy Scripture was Martin Luther (The Deuterocanons, what he called "Apocrypha").
3- When Martin Luther removed several books of the Holy Scripture (for in there he found evidence that his heretical schism could not have been justified), he kept them as part of the Bible (apparently he thought a book could be Biblical but not Holy Scripture) but a century and a half later prots ultimately removed the Deuterocanons from the Bible as a whole, and after that you'll struggle to even find a mere mention of them among protestant circles, so the only one going "we need to make sure only OUR version of the Bible gets read and obeyed" were the heretical protestants.
But hey, Protestants accusing Catholics of what they did? Nothing new to see here.
@@albehoe2327 hey, if there was only an infallible authority to guide us all on Biblical readings...
@@aryanpandey7284 False. It was not compiled after his death, no mention anywhere that it needs to be sung or vocalized although it happens often. Education is important!
I cannot begin to describe the enormous amount of pride I hold as a Jew. My people are the strongest, the most faithful people. *Thank you* for talking about this. I'm so used to casual anti-Semitism at this point, this more positive viewpoint can _not_ be taken for granted. Thank you, blue.
Fellow Jew here, while I count myself as atheist, I still participate in the culture, because it is still very important to me.
Also do you also find it almost funny that Christianity is one of the most oppressive religions to Judaism and yet it is literally AN OFFSHOOT of it!
Archaelogical and literary evidence has established that during the Bronze Age, the people of that region worshipped the same or similar deities. The Bible is actually one source of that evidence. Some books of the Tanakh/Old Testament describe communities where monotheism competed with polytheism, and name a few of the deities worshipped by the polytheists, including Ba'al, Astarte, Asherah, and El. Those deities were worshipped under similar names from Egypt to Mesopotamia. So there's no question that proto-Judaism developed in a polytheistic context.
You start seeing controversy when you discuss the relationship between proto-Judaism and the surrounding polytheism. The "official" story (i.e. the narrative in the modern Tanakh/Old Testament) is that monotheism begins when Abraham makes his covenant with Yahweh, is affirmed on Sinai when Yahweh reveals the Ten Commandments, and triumphs when the monotheists slowly but surely stamp out the polytheistic apostasy. A lot of people believe the Bible is correct about this. However, most secular historians do not.
Right now, the dominant theory among secular historians goes like this:
There is no compelling archaelogical evidence for the exodus from Egypt, so it's likely that the Israelites were native to the area, just one Canaanite tribe among many.
If they didn't come to the area from elsewhere, that means they couldn't have brought monotheism into the area. It's likely that their monotheism developed in Canaan.
There is evidence that Yahweh was worshipped in several places in the near east. He was worshipped as one god in a great pantheon, not as the only divine being in existence and not as the creator of the universe.
There is also evidence that some people in Canaan worshipped Asherah and Yahweh at the same time, believing Asherah was Yahweh's consort (i.e. wife or lover). The Bible supports this, actually, since Josiah is said to have removed Asherah paraphernalia from Yahweh's temple. Which suggests that Yahweh-Asherah worship was not a fringe practice.
There's extensive evidence that near eastern cultures believed that dozens or hundreds of deities existed, but chose one to be their special patrons. For example, when one culture defeated another in battle, it was suggested that the victor's patron deity was better than the loser's.
Consistent with this trend, Yahweh was the special patron deity of the Israelites. They thought he was their favorite, but they didn't think he was the only. This is called henotheism.
Worship of Yahweh merged with worship of El, another near eastern deity, a father-god and head of the pantheon.
At some point, the Israelites demoted or denied all deities other than Yahweh, becoming truly monotheistic. I believe the most popular theory dates this to the Babylonian captivity.
In a massive ret-con, much of the Tanakh was written or re-written at this time to suggest that Yahweh's followers had always been monotheists and the names Yahweh and El/Elyon/Elohim had always referred to the same entity.
In short, the theory suggests that incremental changes took the Israelites from "Yahweh is our god" to "Yahweh is not only our god, he's also the father/creator god" to "Yahweh is the creator god, and in fact the only god." This is probably the theory behind the show you saw on the History Channel. It's not the only way to make sense of the evidence, but it's a popular way.
You asked about "remnants" of polytheism in the Bible. There are quite a few. Here are some things that might support the polytheistic-origin theory:
"Elohim" is plural. This might mean that it once referred to a pantheon rather than an individual deity.
Sometimes the Bible calls God "Yahweh," sometimes "Elohim," sometimes "El," sometimes "Elyon," etc. That could be a holdover from a time before a Yahweh-El merge.
Psalms frequently refers to multiple gods. Yahweh is "the great King above all gods," the deity "all the gods bow down before," the one who makes decisions "in the midst of the gods," and "superior to all gods."
At a few points in Genesis, God seems to be talking to other divine beings: "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness." "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil."
The wording "You shall have no other gods before me" fits the theory that Yahweh was going to be the Israelites' patron deity but was not recognized as the only god. After all, it's not asserting that no other gods exist; it requires the people to stick with Yahweh instead of choosing a different god.
Obviously Jewish and Christian traditions have other interpretations of these passages. Sometimes, translators have fudged a bit to support those interpretations. Whenever you're exploring what the original writers of the Bible meant to say, look at lots of different translations, and look for commentary that talks about the words in the original language. (I'd also encourage you to remember that our translations are not based on the original words. We're talking copies of copies of copies, sometimes filtered through several languages. Just saying.)
In closing, I'll say this: You asked what we "know" about the origins of Judaism. Not to go on a big philosophical tangent but, like, how do you know that you know anything, man? [keanu_whoa.jpg] We're talking about events that occurred 2,500-4,000 years ago. Sometimes we dig things up from that time period. Sometimes we find texts, often on broken clay or crumbling papyrus. We're trying to build a car with bolts and scotch tape. That doesn't mean this theory, or any theory about history, is wrong. It means there's lots we can't know and probably will never know. We can't run experiments on historical narratives to determine whether or not they're true. We look at the new things we dug up and see if they fit the story, or if they stick out from the story like a sore thumb and suggest the story is bogus. Welcome to history.
I've been madly clicking between tabs to write this and haven't included citations. If you want any, ask and I'll go back and find the source I used for it, up to and including pulling my undergrad textbooks off my bookshelf.
Great essay
An excellent analyses of the whole thing but if I could request you not use the Tetragrammaton with the vowels like that. As a jew it kinda makes me uncomfortable, even when couched in such a remarkable essay.
Fantastically written, I'm keeping this for future use
a great essay!
indeed, You can trace a lot of polytheism in proto-judaism.
As a side note, about YHWH's origin, the most popular theory is that he is misstranslation of Ea, the Akkadian/Sumerian god of creation, slayer of the monster of the abyss (similar to the great aligators in genesis, and the whole abyss, or the Tohu VaBohu, which is akin to Absu, whom Ea slew), The omniscience and omnipotent God who was the father of the king of he gods, Merdukh, in Babylonian lore.
According to most theories, his worshipped was widespread across the middle east, and his name, Ea, transformed into Yewa, which was eventually turned into Yaweh and then to Yehova, or Jehova.
And of course, the word in hebrew for God, El, and Elohim, spesifically for that God, derive from the canaanite god El.
What's strange is how my own religion accounts for most of this, with Elohim being essentially the All-Father, Jehovah being essentially the God of this world, other primordial beings (children, but not heirs, of Elohim) helping Him create the Solar System, and Lucifer being (from what I understand, since I'm not as familiar with his backstory) a member of a High Council that was greedy and didn't really care about others. We get around being called Polytheistic or Trinitarian by saying that we believe in a Godhead. It's one of those "makes sense in context" things. Also, given the story of Abraham's two sons and Isaac's two sons, they probably stayed and worshiped Abraham's God while the Jews were in Egypt.
"Hebrew doesn't have vowels"?????? No. The Hebrew script doesn't write short vowels by default, but the language most definitely has vowels.
Nick Pinto which letters?
@@yonatanbeer3475 they are added in under the letters.
@Nick Pinto Eh, from a certain perspective, he's correct. Outside of prayer books (written for the benefit of poor slobs like me) and early grade school books, vowel markings are pretty much non-existent. And, Hebrew's perchance for playing with letters to make new words probably only includes the consonant letters, and not the vowels. If he's correct on the origin of the world "Tanakh", notice there is no O sound following the Tav character, but Torah does have the O sound following it's Tav. Simply put, yeah, they're there, but they're so rarely used they might as well not be there.
@@jackielinde7568 The O sound in Torah comes from the letter Vav. Since the acronym only uses the first letter of each word, it only takes the Tav from Torah. Vav is sometimes pronounced like an O, sometimes a U, and other times a V, so depending on the context, it can be a vowel.
@@_chew_ well, it's been years since I last flunked Hebrew 101 in college. :P
11:21 Hebrew does have vowels you just don't write them. When I was learning the language I used vowels but eventually you don't need them anymore since you know the word. That's why you don't seen any vowels on signs, in books, etc.
By the way, I adore your videos and have learned so much more from them then I have in school. They have really helped me especially with online learning. So thank you so much!
Nikud is not exactly vowels since they're not letters.
Except for 5 letters that can also be used as vowels and do get written in texts
What is the exact conversion of Carthages to Kilograms?
All of them.
Spite
Dang. This was pretty accurate. I've never seen/heard anyone, besides other Jews, tell the history of our people so... correctly.
And that end joke is very funny. Very, very funny. I mean "fell out of my bed and hurt my back, but kept laughing," funny. Jesus, man.
It kinda completely ignored/denied the centuries of persecution the Jews suffered at the hands of the paynim, and even claimed that there was harmony between the Jews and a death cult whose holy book specifically mentions slaughtering the Jews by name in more than one place.
Evan Friend
There was actually a few centuries where Jews were treated as... well, sort of like "Slaves, but better." Many Jews were able to live happy lives.
But yeah... golden chains still bite the skin. Can't deny that.
Trent Pattillo There were also relatively routine pogroms.
I love that end joke, though I've heard it in the form of a parable.
Shammai says "if I am correct, let this river flow backwards" and Hillel replies "what does a river know of the Law?"
Shammai says "if I am correct, may the wall of the synagogue fall down" and Hillel's response is "the shul houses learning, but that does not make it a scholar."
Then Shammai invokes God, to whom Hillel responds with "stay out of this! You gave us the Laws, and now they're ours to interpret. Let Shammai make his own argument."
And God left pleased in his children.
How do you know he doesn't have a Jewish background?
I admire the Hebrews. They've existed fro thousands of years despite the perpetual existence of those who would rather they not.
Better still, part of their culture is remembering their ancestors who told said hateful people to "Fuck off!"
Party strong, my dudes!
thx homie!
Thank you, my good man
Thank you :D
Why do they keep getting kicked out of places?
@@monkeyon777 There's no real one answer to this. Part of it is tribalism - just about every person in the Middle East has claimed rightful ownership over all of it (which is why modern Jerusalem is an enormous mishmash of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim inhabitants, and why the current Israeli parliament is made up of about 1/6 ethnic Arabs), so there's always been conflict and different groups driving other groups out. Part of it is conquest - c.f. the Babylonians kicking our sand castle over at the start of the video for no other real reason than "nice place you've got here, I own it now."
But a lot of it hinges on the way the Church has tried to have it both ways with Jews since... basically the first or second century CE. Strap in, this is a long one - long enough that noted Catholic historian James Carroll was able to write a nearly-700 page treatise on the subject, which explains this in far more detail and sobering revelation than I can muster in a TH-cam comment - if you'd rather do that, "Constantine's Sword" is your berth. If you'd rather just see my attempts to sum up one of his core theses... strap in.
As you probably are aware, Church tradition holds that the Pharisees, the forerunners of Rabbinic Judaism, arrested Jesus of Nazareth for blasphemy, brought him before Pontius Pilate, and demanded that he be put to death. The story has a number of, shall we say, aspects which appear to have been embelished, on top of this. Most notably, Pontius Pilate by all historical records was a brutal and vicious man, making the idea that he pleaded with the Pharisees to spare Jesus and then "washed his hands" of the crime. The sum total of this is that the core story of Christ's crucifixion is also an open and direct condemnation of the Jews _as a people._ And if you look at the liturgies of Mass up until around the 1950s, you see this position clear as a bell in the text; John Paul XXIII had a _lot_ of work to do trying to scrub out things like "wicked Jews" from the text.
So you have, essentially at the core of Christian learning, the exhortation that the Jews killed Jesus, that the Jews reject the Bible - this is even why the Tanakh becomes the "Old" Testament, because it is supposed to be supplanted by the "New" Testament comprised of the Gospels and attendant works. This learned animus is the source of many endemic lies about the Jews, like the blood libel, a false charge that -Hollywood elites- Jews are kidnapping children and using their blood -to get high on adrenochrome- in blasphemous rituals. Because the Jews, after all, don't follow God, they _refuse_ to follow God, else why wouldn't they follow the _New_ covenant between God and Their people and accept Christ as their messiah?
At the same time, the Church wanted the Jews alive to serve as an _example._ We were a useful boogeyman to have around to point to and say, "thus are the wages of sin, this is what you must not become" - and also to _punish_ as an example to show people what should happen to sinners and to those who reject the Most High. This is where we got things like edicts banning Jews from owning property (thereby forcing them to subsist as bankers and moneylenders) and the ghettos, the first of which was established in _the Vatican_ and surrounded by a -big, beautiful- wall which -Mexico- the Jews were forced to pay for the construction of.
The Church wanted the Jews to go on existing, but also to subject them to perpetual punishment. It's perhaps no surprise that this dissonance, bordering on doublethink, led to murder and massacre again, and again, and again, and again. As early as the 400s, there were high-ranking Church officials like Ambrose who would hold the position that it was not only right but a moral imperative to _burn synagogues_ but also that the Jews should not be _killed._ (Said official was later canonized as a saint, and remains on the rolls to this day, just in case you thought that the Church is actually ready to make a serious committment to rooting this shit out.)
On top of this, as Blue points out, Jews were frequently _forced_ into purely commerce-based careers like moneylending. But the same people who enacted these edicts also fostered a stigma against usury and banking; both forcing Jews into a single small sector of the workforce and then villainizing that very sector. It's no surprise that Jews came to be seen as pariahs, because yes, Varis, *it was by design.*
(Why yes, this is also why _certain people_ refuse to shut the hell up about the Rothschilds in parts of society that have deemed it unacceptable to -hold up signs as a "joke" that- say "death to all Jews".)
But of course it's also true that at the heart of it, Jews were severed from their homeland. Perhaps that's why it's so easy to draw parallels between us and the Romani, who are one of the only other major ethnic groups to go through a diaspora that spans centuries? They even have their own version of the blood libel, although theirs is more an excuse for authority figures to raid their camps and make off with anyone with the audacity to not "look like a g*psy".
Cyrus the great IS the one man who deserve to be call to be great
True
And Casimir the Great! My ancestors came to Poland because of him.
No he isnt. He is one of many grate rulers trough out history.
Honestly, yeah. he was a pretty cool dude.
@@definitelynotobama6851 He was cool but not the only grate leader trough out history.
I'm Jewish, this was emotional.
Thanks.
As a jew with a much more agnostic view of God, thank you for explaining the cultural and historical contexts of Judaism so that everyone else can understand what I try (and usually fail) to explain when the topic of religion VS ethnicity comes up.
Thank you for that joke. I'm using that for the Passover sedar tonight.
Skylar Potter
Wel a similar story is writing in the Gmara
search תנורו של החנאי
Extra points for Age of Mythology soundtrack.
At various points of the video, I felt the words "prostagma" , "bulome", "leye", "isboli" in my head.
At 14:35 , a Rabbi I know actually wrote his Master's thesis on the similarities between Daoism and Judaism so even within Jewish communities this similarity is known lol
Lovely video, overall a very respectful look at Judaism from an outsiders perspective. I feel that most of this is as accurate as a person can get sticking to the facts, but the only thing I feel is "wrong" is the way the Tanakh is described as being written or compiled during the Diaspora, when in reality the last work added was during the Babylonian Exile. Thats not to say that the stories of the Tanakh aren't a guide for Jews after the destruction of the Temples, but to say the Tanakh was a result of the Diaspora ignores the purpose the Tanakh had for hundreds of years before exile. The part about the Oral Torah is true though, the Rabbis feared that the oral commentary would be lost in exile if they didn't write it down. Love to answer any questions if anyone has any, I'm an ultra-orthodox Jew who had to take many, many Jewish history classes
I think Blue meant to say that the texts were _codified_ after the end of Second Temple era, not written for the first time. It's exactly the same as legal codification; the already-existing texts are collected and compiled into a book.
You didn't spoke about the relationship that Byzantines had with Jewish people. I have met some Israelis and they said that our people have a long friendship. My Grandmother visited Jerusalem and she said that Greek priests always get more respect than the others. For example Israelis give the holy light to Greeks first as a tradition
Thessaloz George The Byzantines were cool for the most part. FAR better than the Arab and Ottoman Muslims that replaced them.
11:38
A: The Bible.
B: That says The Buble.
A: YOU DARE QUESTION THE WORDS-
I'm currently studying history and I'm attending several courses that heavily focus on judaism... and I gotta say that this video is very well made! Historically very accurate! Loved that you mentioned Maimonides who really is a great example of jews and muslims being able to live together :)
Muslims and Jews Living peacefully together will hopefully never happen again in the future, you can be sure on that.
The holy buble 😂😂😂
17:59 I think there's a very interesting parallel in Shintoism. It's not that you worship kami every sunday (though you could). It's the practice of respect and mindfulness because god(s) are everywhere.
Judaism has always been, and now continues to be, an ethnoreligious tribal group from the Levant. We are still primarily first and foremost an ethnic/tribal identity over a distinctly "religious" one.
So why do you claim to be white caucasian people.
We don't.
Then why do Jews anglicize their names?
Rodney Dangerfield=Jacob Cohen
Larry King=Larry Zeiger
Mel Brooks=Melvin Kaminsky
Kirk Douglas = Isadore Demsky
Bob Dylan=Robert Zimmerman
Cary Grant =Larry Leach
Joan Rlvers=Joan Molinsky
Gene Wilde=Jerome Silberman
90% of Jews identify as European "white", rather than persons of color
, while simultaneously advocating for the gradual displacement of native European cultures and inheritance of Arab/Semite lands..
Why?
Fourthaeon Why do you think that these are mutually exclusive? The demographic definition of Caucasian is white-skinned and of European descent. Ashkenazi jews certainly fit the bill. If your argument is that their distinct ethnic identity excludes them from this term, then it follows that both the French and Russians can’t be white caucasians simultaneously, considering how different their ethnic and cultural identities are. If you think that being Caucasian is defined by a group of nationalities and ethnicities that don’t include the Ashkenazi Jews, then what exactly are your criteria?
Fourthaeon lol those are stage names. almost every celebrity changes their name to suit their public persona
Jews *still are* primarily an ethnicity. This isn't something that went away. We are now, just as we have always been, primarily an ethnoreligious group.
With fair and likely heavy influence in terms of ethnicity but it is true that key generic differences are apparent.
I mean. It kind of creates a racist issue out of religious between what pretty much is white on white.
I would say that even today jews remain ethnically separated more out of religion than anything else.
Hehe, i have found out that about 6/8 generations back someone from my family was a jew by decent or jew fully.
Ah, the Bmehheimeieh period, your pronunciation is flawless
That age of empires soundtrack thoooooooo
It's Age of Mythology
Sounds like Assassins creed 2 to me
Nope, Age of Mythology. Though OP isn't technically wrong since AoM is a game made by the same people that for a time made AoE games.
BazongaMelons AC2 and AC:R.
I myself a muslim im disappointed in the current generation because this gen of muslims is all about hating jews and christians to all my jew and christian brothers out there ❤❤ we all bros!
we don't hate the Jewish people we hate the Zionists
@@fakebaguetteyou were treated right in north africa and you justifying the Zionists actions as a mean to defend your"land" reminds me of germans justifying Nazism to aquire more land and at the end Jerusalem will once again be muslims we lost it before against the latins but we retook it and we will retake it again
I honestly wish everyone would just calm down and stop hating people based on their world views.
Humans can be so stupid.
@sneksnekitsasnek nah fam we do
@sneksnekitsasnek man I live in isreal and most of my teachers and even my favorite one in school are muslims and I love them with all of my heart and love learning about islam because we are cousins and our religion is based on the same principals
'so it's one explanation that I happen to quite like amidst multiple viable options'
good job, blue, you're already in the jewish mindset!
Good video! I thought it was a really nice touch that you mentioned the amount of religious Jews who are a bit iffy on the whole Gd thing. I remember hearing a conservative Rabbi talking about this: he made the mistake of asking his congregation, on Rosh Hashana(one of the biggest holy days of the year) to raise their hand if they believed in Gd. About a third raised their hand, another third didn't, and the final third awkwardly looked around and kinda-sorta raised their hand if their neighbors were.
I do think the assertion that Jewish identity is ethnic first and religious second is a bit off, though. Those two aspects of Jewish identity are too interconnected to be separated like that. If it's mostly an ethnic identity, then you have to explain why not only why conversion is a thing, and why a valid convert is considered as Jewish as someone who can trace their Jewish ancestry back centuries.
You can argue till you're blue in the face over which aspect is more important, and the best answer is simply "it's both."
Hard agree.
Friendly reminder: DON'T FEED THE TROLLS.
Jack Coleman Feeding the trolls
+Robert K Yes, they bite you know.
but... but... but.. I like getting religious people all riled up..
Robert K You fool! You messed with the natural order!
I know. It's fun!
All right. So.
A Jew here, from Israel. Great video! It's mostly accurate, there were a few slips when you showed the content of some books. You showed the Mishna, which was written in Israel, while talking about books codified in Babylon, and when showing the Midrash (and that's a fun one, actually, I really hope someone else noted it already), the text you claimed to be quotes from the Torah is actually the Midrash, what you said was commentary is actually commentary on the Midrash, written throughout the centuries (mostly during the second millenium to the Christian count of years). Meaning, not only there's a lot of commentary in the Midrash, there's a lot of commentary on it.
The Torah is a somewhat fluid term. It can be used only for the Pentateuch, for the entire written Torah or for the entirety of Jewish religious writings ever.
There is something to be said about the point that half of modern American Jews have doubts about G-d existing. It's interesting to claim we are first an ethnicity and then a religion, and base it on things that happen with diaspora Jews, when you have the State of Israel - which is full of people taking culture and ethnicity over religion. The founders of the state were exactly this kind of people - who loved the Tanakh but didn't see it as obliging.
I actually kind of have a berserk button over the "most Jews don't believe in G-d" thing because it was pulled against me in an argument and to this day I don't get the point of it being raised at all. But that's a personal thing, really.
דרך ארץ קדמה לתורה
being a good man came before the thora
ita a basic saying thet means: first be a good man only after then be a beliver
free.messianicbible.com/
But Judaism doesn't say "you can ignore the Torah, if you share".
I interpret it as such: Being a good person is a foundation. You need it for a Jewish life, but it isn't the end goal.
Tell this to the Israelis that stick guns in my face everyday. I’m an American living in the West Bank.
@@universalcitizen9429 Unfortunately, Israeli culture has always been military. It has to be as a matter of survival. Israelis (thought it may seem hard to believe) are much more comfortable around firearms on average than Americans because 99% of them go through compulsory military service directly out of high school.
Also you're living in the West Bank dude lol what did you expect. It's been violently contested since 1948.
Tobi Stein it’s a matter of survival for Israelis because they’re the colonists. The colonists always have to militarize to maintain control of the colony from the natives they colonized. It always fails in the end.
Also understand me. Israelis point guns in my face, not Palestinians. Not ever has a Palestinian threatened my life. But an Israeli will happily do so for some zealous blind faith bullshit reason and on Palestinian soil.
2:51 Cyrus the Great is my main in Overwatch!
The enigmatic Account *Drop the Beat!* Also screw Vishkar
That has nothing to do with this video stay on topic.
I'm already Cyrus the Great..
I work at a steel mill, and I listen to you and blue a lot while at work through an earbud. That joke at the end made crack up while calling out information over the radio. Great video as always.
I think Blue just solved almost every conflict I ever had with religion...And I'm not even Jewish!
A very late response, but I found as I learned more about Judaism, as an Atheist, the more I stopped disrespecting faith itself, and more finding a burning rage at the shallowness of a lot of modern, post-Revivalist Christian sects.
@@jacobbohl192 I have a lot of Atheist friends who grew up Christian, and one thing they always seem confused about is why I feel comfortable telling my Rabbi that I don't believe in God, or why I can ask, "Why this thing, but not the other?" The fact that I can debate religious leader as a lay person and have a fun time doing it absolutely blows their mind.
_He is the Kwisatz Haderach!_
"I don't want to change your mind, I just want to get you thinking" - bless you for that line alone.
What’s funny about the third tablet breaking, is that the tablets where smashed by Moses because of a certain story involving golden calf statue worship, and he had to go up the mountain for the second time so he could write the rules again
Hey, Jew here. Great job on the vid, man.
The Mishnah was the only oral tradition. Talmud and Gemora are Mishnahs with commentary, and Talmud and Gemorah are different names for the same book.
About the ethnicity vs religion thing, I'm not sure you're right. The whole being spread out in exile thing does wonders for assimilating cultures, so there isn't really one specific ethnicity to latch on to. It's more split into two ethnicities now, called Ashkenazi and Sefardic, with Ashkenazi being the more Germanic and European cultural blend, and Sefardic being the Middle-Eastern/Mediterranean archetype. The way we practice is at it's core mostly the same, but the traditions are wildly different in many cases.
The more you know.
There's not just Sephardim and Ashkenazi. There's also Mizrahi, Karaites, Krymchaks, Maghrebi, and other Jewish groups. Ashkenazi and Sephardim are just the largest groups.
@@slook7094 it seems like he included the mizrachim (basically just means easterns) within the sepharadim (means spanish, because the majority of them originated from spain, and got spread all across europe and the mediterranean after the exile of 1492), which makes sense, as many of them are.
Karaites are still not entierly accepted by the Orthodox Judaism, the biggest branch, as jews, and the Krymchaks are too small for anyone to even mention them (sorry for any Krymchak I might have just insulted).
This view of Judaism also unfortunately implies that Jewish converts are "second class" since they're not ethnically Jewish. Judaism is a people. Not specifically a religion, ethnicity, or culture. It's a people. There are through-lines, sure, but Jews come in all colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religious hybrids, levels of orthodoxy, political views (oh god the political views), and native languages. There's a large Mexican Jewish community in Mexico City. There are Chabad (a specific branch of Orthodox Judaism) houses and synagogues in Tokyo and Beijing just as sure as there are in London and New York. There are Jews who intermarry with Christians, Muslims, and other religions and have children who grow up with Jewish and other religious influences.
It's a wide, wide world. And Jews are pretty much everywhere.
Ekaterina H Unfortunately... what? I don’t catch your meaning.
@@tobistein6639 When you say "This view of Judaism implies..." Are you referring to what I said? I didn't mention conversion at all, never mind anything about second class.
“So what now it’s three against two” is now my favorite punch line
As an Israeli Jew I have to say I loved this video!!!
Also you're amazing keep up the good work
This is the best Jewish history video on TH-cam. Very well done, and thank you.
עם ישראל חי
1. Great joke.
2. I love hearing people trying to say stuff in Hebrew.
Oy vey?
@@qerwerg2341 That's Yiddish, not Hebrew.
@@jackielinde7568 Oy vavoy, then
@@qerwerg2341 Oy va'avoy sounds more accurate.
The joke is a story about Rabbi Eliezer
The joke at the end is actually pretty similar to a real story from the Talmud.
There is a rabbi that disagrees with the majority, and asks God to intervene. God gives them gradually clearer signs that he is right, finally speaking directly to them and saying so. Instead of giving up, the majority respond by basically saying "you gave us these rules to keep, their interpretation is in our hands now". At which point God himself admits defeat, the majority win, and the lone rabbi is cast out. It is a powerful allegory meant to illustrate the importance of shared discussion and unity - which are more important even than the truth.
As a Jew, I just wanted to thank you for making this video and clearing some misconceptions about Judaism and the Jewish people. As terrible as my people's history is its still important for people to understand the history. This made me really happy.
In Israel learning about the old testament is mandetory, and I hated it when I was younger because I didn't belive in god, I still don't belive in god but I fricking love the stories of the bible because they are stories of pepole.
you can see deeper meaning in many of the stories and you can debate them for hours, and you can literally read hunderds of pages of what other pepole thought about it.
there are some really beautiful stories in the old testament, right now it's passover so we're talking about the egypt story (I don't know how you call it in english) and there are sooo many layers to it, let me fix you a misconception, moses and the jews weren't lost in the desert, they've been to israel but god knew that the old generation from egypt can't start the new order, do he sent them to the desert for 40 years so the old generation could die out.
in the end, after serving god for decades, and after being the closest to god any man has ever been in jewish history, moses himself wasn't let into israel, and he watched from a mountain top how his pepole enter the promise land, and he died.
HAPPY PASSOVER!!!
I know what you mean. For me, I am catholic and Nigerian. During my time in Catholic boarding school, I had very limited access to much entertainment. So i would read, re-read and re-read the old testament from this bible with illustrations. The stories were so mythical in scale and always kept my attention. Plus, all the sexual references were funny to read. lol
Check out the Book of Enoch. I found a PDF file on the internet for it. It is one of the books that where removed from the bible for being controversial.
The English term for us leaving Egypt would be Exodus brother. Shalom!
I can't quite place why but I find it really awesome to see someone appreciating these stories as stories, from an outside perspective. Maybe it's because, having heard them throughout my life in a religious context, I never really considered their merit as stories? Because when I think about it, it's absolutely there, you just need to look at it differently (and maybe with a bit of dramatic flair).
+Daniel Early That's not how Judaism works, well, unless you meet a hardcore follower of Kabbalah, the mystic Theology part of our religion. But aside from this all Jews are encouraged to see the Thora as something to be criticized and therefore actively debated with others. It's a tradition born of necessity because we had no written down version of it for quite a long time and later on we got spread out around the world. So we, more or less, invented this behavior to keep us in touch with the word of Adonai Elohim and our brethren.
One of the best summaries of Jewish History that I have heard yet. I very much appreciate how you try not to over simplify the subject., Good on you!
Am I watching this instead of studying for my bat mitzvah? Absolutely
Mood
You could include some information here into your portion/ceremony! Mazel tov.
I am a year late but congratulations? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One of the things that you touch on (re: ancient Judaism as a culture first, then a religion) but don't say definitively is that Judaism-- unlike most other religions-- is not proselytizing. Rather, it is considered a birthright, borne out through the first covenant between the Hebrew People and their God, and then reinforced through tradition and common knowledge of Jewish Law.
Also, an important bit of context is that ancient Hebrews were likely not monotheists in the strict understanding of the word that we have today. In the English translation of that first commandment, it says (and I paraphrase): "I am the Lord your God (who delivered you from Egypt). You shall have no other gods *before* me." That "before" word is important, because the entire civilized world around the Jews was pantheistic or polytheistic, and their God, YHWH, told them that by His deliverance of their people from Israel, He had renewed for them that ancient compact, and that sure, there may be other gods in the pantheon, but He was the greatest and the one to be worshipped (and appeased) first and foremost.
The view of course gradually evolved, and for a small and vulnerable population of people at the crossroads of some of history's mightiest and most expansion-minded empires, the belief in one God that usurped all others in a wide pantheon became a point of solidarity and cultural identity (why else would the Jews be delivered from exile so many times if it weren't for the fact that their God was more powerful than all others?).
The Romans, of course, recognized this YHWH as a minor god of their own pantheon that the Jews-- for whatever reason-- had a special affinity for, and recognized the Jews themselves as a secondary, but civilized, People, who although did not enjoy all of what the Romans considered hallmarks of civilization (engineering, temple worship, medicine, writing, poetry, history, rule of law, etc), enjoyed far more of them than any barbarian Rome had encountered in Europe. Up until the time of Jesus and past it, Rome ruled Judea much like a client state, where an agent of Rome was present to keep law and order (along with the military), but where the day-to-day affairs of the Jewish people were delegated to the Pharisees in a form of quasi-self-governance.
As an aside, this provides excellent context for the Passion. Pontius Pilate, Rome's agent-of-state in Judea, cannot understand why the Pharisees are so insistent on Jesus being executed when his crime-- heresy-- was not considered a capital offense in Jewish Law (those convicted of heresy I believe were supposed to live away from society for a while and if they recanted could then be reintegrated). To Pilate, the Pharisees wanting to crucify Jesus was inconsistent with his-- and Romans'-- perception of the Jews as a people ruled by law.
That is... likely because certain aspects of the Passion are likely... not literal. Historical records show Pilate as an absolute bastard who would very likely not have questioned for a second why the Pharisees wanted this man put to death. The crimes of Jesus of Nazareth likely go far beyond the simple claim in the text that "well he said he's the son of God and that's blasphemous". Carroll suggests that it may be connected to his actions in the Temple, especially considering that the traditional story that Jesus upended a bunch of greedy people who were doing _business_ in his Father's house would... not actually have been a bad or even unusual thing. It was a long-standing tradition at the time to sell, for a small pittance or tithe to the Temple's upkeep, things for people to offer up on the altar. And Jews coming into Jerusalem from afar for important observances (read: the High Holy Days) would likely need to be able to exchange the currency they used in whatever place they lived in for shekels.
@@kiraina25 No, Jesus was crime-less, sinless. Even if your Talmud encourages it, do not partake in defamation of the Son of God, *this is blasphemy against the own God*
As a Jew, I agree with your analysis 100%. I'm not religious at all, but I still practice Jewish holidays, and consider myself a part of the Jewish culture.
“Moses Maimonides-“
HOLY SHIT ITS RAMBAAAAAAAAM
My man Rambam, back again babyyyyyy
I learned a lot about myself because of this video, I have been raised in the jewish culture all my life but for most of it I never really thought about it. I knew we came up around a few thousand years ago and there was something about oil and candles and stuff. Because of content like this I feel more in touch with my identity as a person. I've begun reading joys of yiddish and looking into other content that helps me learn about myself. Thank you
It's not often a summary of a subject adds so much to my understanding of it.
Very nice job.
I’ve taken classes in Exergesis, Hermenuetics, and Old Testament surveys & I’ve got to agree about Judaism being summarized as “law.”
I view it as more historical than you, but I mostly agree with your allegories.
I’m not a scholar, but I’ve studied a good bit.
Love the idea of using Carthage as a unit of measurement
This is very well thought-out and actually mirrors some of what I learned in the study I did in the high school summer program where I spent 6 weeks in Israel. The idea of the Jewish People (using the word People here rather than faith or religion is important) is tough to sum up in such a short time but you did a good job of hitting a lot of the important points so good on you!
You know, ever since seeing this video, I've come to truly understand why my grandfather, a survivor of the camps, was so vehimont when it came to the suffering of our people. Five genocides. I knew history is stained red with bloodshed but that's a lot for any community.
I wonder why they (allegedly) suffered that many...
Nah, I'm sure it was without reason.
@@melofiloxd1429 The reason is that humans are tribal by nature and hate anything that challenges their core believes on instinct.
@@melofiloxd1429Tyrants hate people they can't control.