Developments in Jewish Thought

What Developments in Jewish Thought covers

Component 05, one of the five Developments in Religious Thought options. The written and oral law, covenant, Maimonides, suffering and messianic hope, halakhah in daily life, conversion, and the modern questions of emancipation, Zionism, feminism and the Holocaust.

The 15 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• Jewish oral and written lawRecall questions on the Tanakh, the written and oral Torah, the Mishnah and Gemara, the rabbinic generations, the chain of transmission in Pirkei Avot, the Babylonian Talmud, halakhah, the Shulkhan Arukh and responsa, and how Orthodox and Progressive Jews regard the oral and written law.Open →
• Covenant in the TorahRecall questions on brit, the Abrahamic covenant, its ceremony, promises of land and chosenness and its sign, suzerainty and parity treaties, the Mosaic covenant at Sinai, its law and sign, what contemporary scholars say about both narratives, and whether chosenness is a privilege or a burden.Open →
• Maimonides and the Thirteen PrinciplesRecall questions on Maimonides' life and works, the origin of the Thirteen Principles, each group of principles on G-d, revelation and reward, prophecy and Moses, the messiah and resurrection, negative theology, the Principles in worship, and reason and revelation.Open →
• Debate over the Principles and Jewish beliefRecall questions on incorporeality and the eighth principle, the response of Maimonides' contemporaries, Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo on the number of principles, Orthodox and Reform views of their authority, the Principles in worship, and whether Judaism is defined by practice rather than belief.Open →
• Suffering and messianic hopeRecall questions on the book of Job, from the Adversary and Job's friends to the speech from the whirlwind and the ending, suffering as punishment, the suffering of the righteous, the meaning of messiah, the messianic age, messiah son of David and son of Joseph, and Maimonides on the messiah.Open →
• Kashrut and the dietary lawsRecall questions on the classification of the commandments, the scriptural origins of the dietary laws and the reasons for keeping them, meat and milk, parve, the kosher kitchen, shehitah and the shohet, trefah and nevelah, preparing meat, and why shehitah is controversial.Open →
• Business ethics and sexual ethics in halakhahRecall questions on verbal and monetary deception, weights and measures, lending at interest and heter iska, the poor borrower, business law today, sex as a mitzvah and pleasure within marriage, niddah and the mikveh, prohibited relations, same-sex relationships, and whether halakhah is still relevant.Open →
• Conversion to JudaismRecall questions on conversion in the Shulkhan Arukh, circumcision, the questions put to a convert, the mikveh, how men and women convert, descent and patrilineal descent, Orthodox and Progressive conversion, Judaism as non-missionising, and the community's role.Open →
• The Haskalah and Jewish emancipationRecall questions on Moses Mendelssohn, revealed legislation, the Lavater affair and the Biur, the Maskilim and secular Jewish culture, emancipation and civil liberties, the rise of Reform and Progressive Judaism, the challenge of science, and whether the period brought pluralism or fragmentation.Open →
• ZionismRecall questions on Herzl, his pamphlet on the Jewish state, the first Zionist Congress, his diplomacy and the Uganda proposal, Ahad Ha'am and cultural Zionism, the streams of modern Zionism, Orthodox and Progressive responses, non-Jewish support and opposition, and Zionism and anti-Semitism.Open →
• The land of Israel and the modern stateRecall questions on the land in Jewish thought, the Babylonian exile, shemittah, the Jubilee and stewardship, the kibbutz, the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars, Jewish responses to the state, and the promised land against the modern state.Open →
• Jewish feminism: Plaskow and AdlerRecall questions on the rise of Jewish feminism, Orthodox and Progressive responses, Plaskow on Jewish memory, Sinai and language about G-d, Adler's critique of traditional marriage, the agunah, the Brit Ahuvim, and tensions within Judaism and with secular feminism.Open →
• Responses to the HolocaustRecall questions on Rubenstein and the death of G-d, Fackenheim and the 614th commandment, Maybaum's churban, Berkovits and Hester Panim, Job in post-Holocaust thought, Orthodox responses, whether any theological response can succeed, and anti-Semitism since the Holocaust.Open →
• The Holocaust and the problem of evilRecall questions on the theological question the Holocaust puts to Judaism, the rejection of catastrophe as punishment, doubt about G-d, Maybaum's providential plan, Berkovits on hiddenness and free will, the challenge to classical theism, and Progressive responses.Open →
• Chagall: art as resistanceRecall questions on Chagall's life, the Nazi campaign against degenerate art, the Pale of Settlement and Hasidism, The Fiddler, The Praying Jew, tallit and tefillin, Solitude and White Crucifixion, the Jewish identity of Jesus, pogroms, and art as resistance.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Developments in Jewish Thought further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Written Torah vs Oral Torah

  Written Torah: the five books given at Sinai. Oral Torah: the interpretation transmitted alongside them and later written as the Mishnah.

• Orthodox Judaism vs Reform Judaism

  Orthodox Judaism: the movement holding the law divinely given and binding as traditionally understood. Reform Judaism: the movement treating the law as guidance open to revision.

• Political Zionism vs Religious Zionism

  Political Zionism: the movement for a Jewish state as a solution to persecution. Religious Zionism: the movement treating return to the land as part of a divine promise.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What does the word Tanakh stand for, and how does the Torah fit inside it?

   Model answer

   Tanakh is an acronym built from the first letters of its three divisions: Torah (the five books of Moses), Nevi'im (the Prophets) and Ketuvim (the Writings). Torah in the narrow sense is the first of those divisions, the Pentateuch, and it alone is written on the scroll read publicly in synagogue. In a wider sense Jews use the word Torah for the whole body of divine teaching, written and oral together, which is why the term can mean either a scroll or an entire tradition.

2. 2

   Jewish teaching separates a written Torah from an oral Torah. What is the difference between them?

   Model answer

   The written Torah, Torah shebichtav, is the fixed text of the five books. The oral Torah, Torah shebe'al peh, is the body of interpretation, application and detail that Orthodox Jews hold was given alongside the text at Sinai and passed on by word of mouth for generations before being committed to writing. On this view the two are one revelation in two forms, not a text plus later human commentary.

3. 3

   Why do Orthodox Jews argue that a written text alone could not have been enough?

   Model answer

   Because the written commands are compressed to the point of being unworkable on their own. Rest is commanded on Shabbat without any definition of the work being prohibited; tefillin are commanded without a description of what they are or how they are worn; animals are to be slaughtered in a manner the text never sets out. Orthodox Jews conclude that an authoritative interpretive tradition must have accompanied the text from the start, otherwise the law could never have been kept.

4. 4

   What is the Mishnah, and how is it arranged?

   Model answer

   The Mishnah is the first comprehensive written statement of the oral law, edited in the land of Israel around 200 CE under the direction of Judah ha-Nasi. Rather than following the order of scripture it is arranged by subject into six orders, covering agriculture, festivals and Shabbat, marriage and family law, civil and criminal law, the sacrificial system, and ritual purity. It records disputes as disputes, often preserving a minority view alongside the accepted ruling.

5. 5

   What is the Gemara, and what does it produce when joined to the Mishnah?

   Model answer

   The Gemara is the record of generations of rabbinic analysis of the Mishnah: objections, resolutions, derivations from scripture, case law, and narrative and ethical material woven in. Mishnah and Gemara together make up the Talmud. Because the Gemara preserves the reasoning and not only the conclusion, the Talmud reads as an ongoing argument rather than a finished code.

6. 6

   Who were the Tannaim, the Amoraim, the Savoraim and the Geonim?

   Model answer

   The Tannaim are the sages whose teachings make up the Mishnah, roughly the first two centuries CE. The Amoraim are the later sages whose discussions form the Gemara. The Savoraim are the generation of editors who worked over the Babylonian text after the main redaction. The Geonim are the heads of the Babylonian academies from roughly the seventh to the eleventh centuries, whose written rulings carried authority across the Jewish world. Each stage claims to be transmitting, not inventing.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Developments in Jewish Thought revision questions

What does Developments in Jewish Thought cover in OCR A-Level Religious Studies?

15 subtopics: jewish oral and written law, covenant in the torah, maimonides and the thirteen principles, debate over the principles and jewish belief, suffering and messianic hope, kashrut and the dietary laws, business ethics and sexual ethics in halakhah, conversion to judaism, the haskalah and jewish emancipation, zionism, the land of israel and the modern state, jewish feminism: plaskow and adler, responses to the holocaust, the holocaust and the problem of evil and chagall: art as resistance. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Developments in Jewish Thought organised?

By the OCR H573 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.