PaC-D House of God Pacific Coast District

Judaism Judaism (from the Latin Iudaismus, derived from the Greek Ioudaismos, and ultimately from the Hebrew ?????, Yehudah, “Judah” in Hebrew: ????????, Yahadut) is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and explored and explained in later texts such as the Talmud. Jews consider Judaism to be the expression of the covenantal relationship God developed with the Children of Israel - - originally a band of around a dozen tribes claiming descent from the Biblical patriarch Jacob and later the Jewish people. Judaism can claim a historical continuity spanning close to three millennia. It is one of the oldest monotheistic religions, and the oldest surviving. Many of its texts and traditions are central to the other Abrahamic religions, with Jewish history and the principles and ethics of Judaism having influenced Christianity and Islam, as well as some non-Abrahamic religions. As the foundation of Western Christianity, many aspects of Judaism also correspond to secular Western concepts of ethics and civil law. Followers of Judaism, whether converts or born into the Jewish nation (including seculars), are called Jews. The Jewish collective is regarded as an ethnoreligious group, for reasons derived from the sacred texts that define them as a nation, rather than followers of a faith. In 2007, the world Jewish population was estimated at 13.2 million people, 41% of whom lived in Israel and 40% of whom lived in the United States. * From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia