Jewish people

Core values & worldview

If you ask a Jewish friend what Judaism is “about”, you may get a question back, which is itself a very Jewish answer. Judaism has a creed, but it puts more weight on how you live than on what you profess, and it treats the asking of questions as a form of faith.^•

One God and a covenant. At the centre is the Shema: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” Jews believe in one God who created the world, revealed the Torah to Moses at Sinai and made a covenant with the people of Israel. “Chosen people” does not mean superior: in the Jewish understanding it means chosen for obligations, to live by the commandments and be “a light to the nations”.^•

Torah and commandments. The Torah contains, by traditional count, 613 commandments (mitzvot), and the rabbis spent centuries working out what they mean in practice. That body of law, halakha (“the way to walk”), covers prayer, food, the Sabbath, business ethics, family life and how to treat strangers and animals. In everyday speech a mitzvah is also just a good deed.^•

This world matters. Judaism has beliefs about the afterlife and the coming of a messiah, but it is famously focused on this life: on justice, family and community. Charity is tzedakah, from the word for justice, an obligation rather than a kindness. The phrase tikkun olam, “repairing the world”, has become a motto for many liberal Jews.^•

Learning and argument. Study of the Torah is considered equal to all the other commandments put together. Traditional learning is done in pairs, out loud, arguing, and the Talmud preserves minority opinions because truth is thought to emerge from debate.^•

That love of the question shows up in secular Jewish culture too: in the arts, the sciences, the law and the long tradition of Jewish humour, which often turns sharp wit against oneself and against God.^•

Who is a Jew? By traditional Jewish law, a Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother or who converts. Reform Judaism in the United States also recognises children of Jewish fathers raised as Jews. Because Jews are a people as well as a faith, a Jewish atheist is still a Jew, and many Jews feel a deep sense of family with Jews they have never met.^•

Daily life & customs

Shabbat. The Sabbath runs from sunset on Friday to nightfall on Saturday. It begins with lighting candles and blessings over wine (kiddush) and two loaves of challah, usually followed by a family dinner, and ends with a short ceremony, havdalah, with a braided candle and spices. Observant Jews refrain from work, which traditional law defines broadly to include driving, using electricity, cooking, writing and handling money, and spend the day in prayer, meals, study and rest. Many less observant Jews still keep Friday-night dinner.^•

Kashrut (keeping kosher). The dietary laws allow only certain animals: mammals that chew the cud and have split hooves (so no pork), fish with fins and scales (so no shellfish), and birds that are not birds of prey. Meat must be slaughtered in a particular way, and meat and dairy are never eaten together, so observant kitchens have separate dishes. Practice ranges from strict kosher to “no pork, no shellfish” to not keeping kosher at all.^•

Prayer and the synagogue. Traditional Jews pray three times a day, ideally with a minyan, a quorum of ten. In the synagogue the Torah is read from a handwritten scroll, in a cycle that covers all five books every year. Men, and in non-Orthodox communities women too, may wear a skullcap (kippah or yarmulke) and a prayer shawl (tallit). A small case containing a scroll, the mezuzah, is fixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes.^•

The festivals. The year follows a lunar-solar calendar:^•

• Rosh Hashanah, the New Year in autumn, with the blowing of the ram’s horn (shofar) and apples dipped in honey for a sweet year.
• Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement ten days later, the holiest day, spent fasting for about 25 hours and praying for forgiveness. Even many non-religious Jews observe it.
• Sukkot, when families eat in a temporary hut open to the sky, followed by Simchat Torah, dancing with the Torah scrolls.
• Hanukkah, eight nights of candles in winter, with fried foods like latkes and doughnuts.
• Purim, a carnival-like festival with costumes and the reading of the Book of Esther.
• Passover (Pesach), in spring, when families gather for the Seder to retell the Exodus and eat matzah for a week. It is the most widely celebrated Jewish holiday.
• Shavuot, marking the giving of the Torah, and Tisha B’Av, a summer fast mourning the destruction of the Temples.

Life events. Baby boys are circumcised on the eighth day at a brit milah. At 13, boys become bar mitzvah, and in most non-Orthodox communities girls become bat mitzvah at 12 or 13, often by reading from the Torah in front of the congregation. Weddings take place under a canopy, the chuppah, and end with the groom breaking a glass, partly in memory of Jerusalem. The dead are buried quickly, ideally within a day; mourners “sit shiva” at home for seven days while friends visit and bring food, and children say the Kaddish prayer for a parent for eleven months. Visitors to a grave leave a small stone rather than flowers.^•

Everyday words. You may hear Shabbat shalom (“a peaceful Sabbath”), mazel tov (“congratulations”), l’chaim (“to life”, as a toast) and plenty of Yiddish that has passed into English, from chutzpah to schlep and kvetch.^•

Wounds & sensitivities

The Holocaust. About six million Jews, two-thirds of Europe’s Jews, were murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. For many families it is not history but grandparents’ stories, numbers tattooed on an arm, or a family tree that simply stops in 1942. Holocaust denial, jokes and casual comparisons (“grammar Nazi”, likening everyday rules to the Holocaust) hurt deeply.^•

See The Holocaust.

Antisemitism, old and new. Christian Europe for centuries accused Jews of killing Christ, of murdering children for their blood and of poisoning wells; the Catholic Church formally rejected the charge of collective guilt for Jesus’ death only in 1965.^•

Modern antisemitism added conspiracy theories of secret Jewish power, spread by forgeries like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Tropes about Jews and money, “controlling” the media or banks, or “dual loyalty” echo that history even when people repeating them do not know it.^• In 2020, 75% of American Jews said there was more antisemitism than five years earlier; in a 2023 EU survey, 96% of Jewish respondents said they had encountered it in the past year.^•

Being held responsible for Israel. Jews in London, Paris or New York are often asked to explain or answer for the actions of the Israeli government, which they do not control and may oppose. Many experience attacks on synagogues or Jewish students in the name of Palestine as antisemitism, not politics. At the same time Jews disagree fiercely among themselves about Israel, and many find their own critical views dismissed from both sides.^•

7 October 2023. The Hamas attack on Israel, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, and the surge of antisemitism that followed, including deadly attacks in Washington, Manchester and Sydney, have left many Jews feeling more exposed than at any time in their lives. The war in Gaza has also divided Jewish communities, friends and families.^•

See 7 October and a new wave of antisemitism.

Erasure and conversion. Centuries of forced baptism, missionary pressure and assimilation have left many Jews sensitive to efforts to convert them, and to the idea that Judaism is merely an “old” version of Christianity. Jews also worry about their own continuity: intermarriage is common, and in Pew’s 2020 survey about six in ten US Jews who married in the previous decade had a non-Jewish spouse.^•

Modern attitudes

What being Jewish means. In Pew’s 2020 survey of American Jews, the things most often called “essential” to being Jewish were remembering the Holocaust (76%), leading an ethical and moral life (72%), working for justice and equality (59%) and being intellectually curious (56%). Observing Jewish law came far lower, at 15%.^•

Denominations. In the same survey, 37% of American Jews identified as Reform, 17% as Conservative and 9% as Orthodox, while 32% said they belonged to no particular branch. The Orthodox share is much higher among the young, because Orthodox families have more children.^•

In Israel, Pew found in 2016 that about half of Jews call themselves secular (hiloni), about three in ten traditional (masorti), 13% religious (dati) and 9% ultra-Orthodox (Haredi).^•

Israel. Most Jews outside Israel feel some attachment to it, but attachment is stronger among older Jews than younger ones: in Pew’s survey, about two-thirds of American Jews aged 65 and over felt attached, compared with 48% of those under 30. Views of Israeli governments and of the war in Gaza vary enormously.^•

Politics. Jews have historically been prominent in liberal and left-wing movements, from socialism to the American civil rights movement, and most American Jews still vote Democratic, while Orthodox Jews and many Israelis lean to the right.^•

Not all Jewish people are the same

Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi and more. About two-thirds of American Jews say they are Ashkenazi, descended from the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, whose language was Yiddish and whose foods, gefilte fish and bagels, many people think of as “Jewish food”. Sephardim descend from the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal and spread across the Mediterranean; Mizrahim come from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Morocco and the wider Middle East. In Israel these groups are of similar size, and their different histories, including discrimination against Mizrahi immigrants in Israel’s early years, still shape politics there. There are also Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel), Indian Jews, Bukharan Jews from Central Asia and others.^•

Jews of every colour. Jews are not a single race. In the US, about 8% of Jewish adults, and 15% of those under 30, identify as Hispanic, Black, Asian, another race or multiracial, and converts and adoptees join Jewish families from every background.^•

From Haredi to secular.^•

• Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews, including Hasidic groups such as Chabad and Satmar and the “Lithuanian” yeshiva world, live strictly by Jewish law, dress distinctively and often limit contact with secular culture.
• Modern Orthodox Jews keep Jewish law fully while working and studying in the wider world.
• Conservative (in Israel and elsewhere, Masorti) Judaism keeps Jewish law but believes it develops over time; most of its synagogues now count women equally.
• Reform, Liberal or Progressive Judaism treats tradition as a guide rather than binding law, ordains women and LGBTQ rabbis, and is the largest movement in the United States.
• Secular and cultural Jews may not believe in God at all but celebrate holidays, eat the food, support Jewish causes and feel strongly Jewish.

Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists. Most Jews support Israel’s existence, but their politics run from the religious nationalist right to the peace-camp left. Some Haredi groups reject a Jewish state before the messiah, and a growing minority of left-wing Jews call themselves anti-Zionist.^•

Meeting someone

Conversation starters

• Food and holidays. Ask about their family’s Passover Seder, Friday-night dinner or favourite holiday dish. Almost every family has its own customs and arguments about them.
• Where the family came from. Many Jews love talking about grandparents from Odesa, Baghdad, Casablanca or Buenos Aires, and the roads that led from there to here.
• Books, music and comedy. Jewish writers, songwriters and comedians are a rich and often funny way into the culture.^•
  • No Joke: Making Jewish Humor — Ruth R. Wisse, Princeton University Press (2013)
• Greetings. “Happy Hanukkah”, “Happy Passover” or “Shana tova” (“good year”) at Rosh Hashanah are warm and welcome. On Yom Kippur, the usual wish is “an easy fast”.

Topics to approach carefully

• Israel and Gaza. Don’t assume what a Jewish person thinks, and don’t ask them to defend or apologise for a government. Ask, then listen.
• The Holocaust. Don’t make jokes or comparisons. If someone shares a family story, it is a gift of trust.^•
  • Introduction to the Holocaust (Holocaust Encyclopedia) — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• “You don’t look Jewish.” It is usually meant kindly, but it implies there is a Jewish “look”, an idea with an ugly history.
• Money and power. Even light-hearted jokes about Jews and money, or about Jews “running” anything, carry centuries of baggage.^•
  • Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History — Robert M. Seltzer, Macmillan (1980)
• Scheduling. Avoid booking important events on Yom Kippur or the High Holidays, and remember that observant Jews cannot travel, use phones or write on the Sabbath.

Common misconceptions

• “Judaism is just Christianity without Jesus.” Judaism developed its own vast tradition, the Talmud and rabbinic law, over the same centuries that Christianity did. Its practices, from the Sabbath to the dietary laws, are not “Old Testament” leftovers but a living system.^•
  • From the Maccabees to the Mishnah — Shaye J. D. Cohen, Westminster Press (1987)
  • Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History — Robert M. Seltzer, Macmillan (1980)
• “Jews are a race” or “Jews are just a religion.” Neither fits. Jews are a people with shared ancestry, history and culture, which anyone can join by conversion, and which includes people of every colour and many non-believers.^•
  • Jewish Americans in 2020 — Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center (2021)
  • Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History — Joseph Telushkin, William Morrow (1991)
• “Jewish means Israeli, and Israeli means Jewish.” More than half of the world’s Jews live outside Israel, and about a fifth of Israel’s citizens are Arabs.^•
  • World Jewish Population, 2024 (American Jewish Year Book) — Sergio DellaPergola, Springer / Berman Jewish DataBank
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
• “Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas.” Hanukkah is a minor festival that happens to fall in December. The High Holidays and Passover matter far more.^•
  • Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History — Joseph Telushkin, William Morrow (1991)
• “Jews killed Jesus.” Jesus was a Jew executed by the Roman authorities. The charge of collective Jewish guilt fuelled centuries of persecution, and the Catholic Church formally repudiated it in 1965.^•
  • Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions — Second Vatican Council, Holy See (1965)
  • Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations — Martin Goodman, Allen Lane (2007)