This paper explores how Judaism evolved from the historical Biblical religion of a desert people to the modern rabbinical Judaism that is practiced today. Although this transition was briefly discussed in the last reading, There was more detail in this reading. Additionally, several different sects and expressions of Jewish worship and belief were explored including Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Hasidic and those who study the Kabbalah.
As discussed in last week's reading, in 70 C.E., after the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple, the religious leaders of the Jewish community began to realize that they needed to adapt their religion to a lack of a temple and animal sacrifice. The dietary laws, together with the laws had been a way of keeping pure for the ultimate weekly visit to the temple for the animal sacrifice as way of asking for atonement for their sins. Around these laws and ways of keeping pure, two major schools of thought had developed, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. While the Sadducees, who were more a part of the upper classes, did not believe in an afterlife, they were very concerned with proper laws and protocols for congregational purity and temple sacrifice. The Pharisees, who were more a part of the middle class and the masses, were more concerned with interpreting the use of Torah law in everyday life. Although many historians saw this as a form of legalism, back then, they were simply the group who were trying to make living a proper Jewish life livable according to Torah law. After the destruction of the second temple, there really wasn't any more use for the Sadducee type school of thought and it was left to the Pharisees to work out a way to live in accordance with God's laws in the absence of a proper temple. Synagogues had already begun to develop as Jews had been forced, by exile and the Diaspora, to far distances from the major temple. After the temple destruction, the diet...