Judaism:
Discovering Our Religious Roots

God invites us to live intimately with us. The human response of faith in God usually grows and becomes more mature over a lifetime--like a marriage should.

A) Like a Marriage Bond


1. Promise of a marriage bond unites; the bond between God and a person if faith is like that. One big difference: God never lets the other person down; God is always faithful, even when the other person lets God down.

B) God's Covenant: A Special Bond with a Whole People


1. The solemn promise between God and the people is called Covenant.God's covenant is a pledge of faithfulness forever; people part is to love God one another, and all that God has created.

C) Our People, Our Family, Our Roots


1. Ultimately God chooses all poeple and desires union with all of them. The Jews were chosen by God at a particular time in history, with whom God would have a special relationship.
   
   
2. The story of God, the Jews and their relationship with God is also Jesus' story, his "family background." We cannot understand Christianity without getting inside the mind and heart of Jesus. And we cannot get inside Jesus' mind and heart without understanding his Jewish roots.

D) The Need for a Sense of the Past


1. Without a sense of the past, our present life, like an amnesiac's, would be filled with confusion and loneliness. We need to know where we come from or else we do not recognize who we are. This is true for groups of people, families, nations, school and towns--even and religion.
   
   
2. Catholic Christianiyt emerged out of a history that stretches back nearly four thousand years to the beginning of what would become known as Judaism, the religion of the Jews. We cannot expect to understand Catholicism without a sense of that past.

E) More Than Just History


1. We are dealing with more than mere history, we are exploring salvation history, the story of God's action and Revelation among a people throughout their history. The story revolves around the Covenant that God made witht he Jews, the promise to be faithful to them and to bring salvation tothe whole world through them as a people.


II) The Beginnings of a People

A) Abraham: Father of Biblical Faith

B) Abraham's Descendants, the Israelites

Box: Timeline of Biblical History

III) From Slavery to Freedom

A) Moses, the People's Greatest Leader

B) In the Desert

Box: The Ten Commandments

IV) The Promised Land

A) Taking Over the Land

B) A Kingdom for the Israelites

Box: Jeremiah, the Young Prophet

V) Crushing Defeat and Painful Exile

A) The Babylonian Exile

B) Renewal in the Midst of Exile

Box: Song of a Sorrowful People

VI) After the Exile

A) The Faithful Practice of Judaism

B) A Series of Oppressors

C) Jesus: Fulfillment of the Longing for a Messiah Box: Social Classes at the Time of Jesus

VII) A Reflection on Judaism