Word: torah
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...What the Torah teaches us is this: none but God can command us to destroy...
...essential idea of the Reconstructionist movement is that Judaism is neither religion, race nor culture, but a combination of all three, in what Dr. Kaplan calls "peoplehood." The three groupings of U.S. Jews-Torah-centered Orthodox, ethics-centered Reform, and the Conservatives who lie between them-can unite, says Dr. Kaplan, in this sense of peoplehood. "Jews must become spiritually united, though theologically diverse...
...traditional concept of Torah (Biblical law), the Reconstructionists maintain, "should be expanded" to include 1) ethical culture, "the fostering of love and justice"; 2) sancta, the heroes, events, texts, places and seasons that are symbolically significant to a people; and 3) "esthetic culture, the arts as a means of expressing the emotional values of Jewish life...
...Superficially, the first Christians seemed to be a sect of Judaism. Under the leadership of James, the brother of Jesus, the community in Jerusalem waited quietly for the end of the world, worshiping and sacrificing in the Temple, observing the fast and feast days and the stringencies of the Torah. Most of their converts were Jews; as for the Gentiles, it was understood that no man could be a Christian without first being a Jew-which meant circumcision and obedience to the dietary laws...
...Paul pointed to Jesus' consistent opposition to the tyranny of the Torah ("The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath"). Faith in Christ, plus baptism, rather than rites and observances, he maintained, is all that is necessary. This teaching greatly appealed to the Gentiles, who were interested in a religion of personal salvation rather than the national salvation hoped for by Judaism. As Paul and Barnabas made more and more converts, opposition to them began to grow among the conservative Jewish Christians, who were shocked to find communities calling themselves Christian whose members were uncircumcised...