DEUT200 … wide diversity of thought yet comparatively harmonious agreement on action has ancient roots in the Jewish tradition. "The interpretation is not the crucial thing, but the action," says Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel in the first chapter of a popular tractate of the Mishnah, Avot (Ethics of the Fathers). M. Avot 1:17. Jews, of course, disagree among themselves also about what is the appropriate action--virtually every page of the Talmud records such debates. In the end, though, the Rabbis had to come to some decision about what the law would be so that Jews would know what to do. In contrast, biblical and rabbinic Judaism do not insist that adherents affirm a specific list of beliefs. Those methodologies and beliefs could be multiple and varied as long as Jews did what God wanted of them. This stance, of course, differs from that of Christianity, which defines itself through creeds of belief. Judaism certainly has beliefs, and its core beliefs could be defined relatively easily. Even so, all the medieval attempts to articulate an official list of beliefs, created largely in response to the creedal assertions of Christianity and Islam, suffered from a distinctly Jewish fate--they were debated! Louis Jacobs, a British 20th century conservative rabbi and scholar, examines each of the beliefs on Maimonides' list of thirteen and demonstrates that every one of them had multiple interpretations among later rabbis and Jewish thinkers. Even something as essential to Judaism as the assertion in the Shema, the central Jewish prayer, that God is one [this verse] is interpreted by Jewish thinkers in thirty different ways, according to Jacobs's count. Principles of the Jewish Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1964; republished, Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1988), ch. 3) When it comes to action, however, with all the feisty debate and with continual evolving customs and practices, by and large one can describe what the Jewish tradition commands us to do with regard to specific issues, and one can also describe the extent to which Jews follow what that tradition bids them do.
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