It sounds like you are wanting to learn about Rabbinical Judaism, the more conventional form of Judaism. I'm not sure that this is the best place. Christian Forums is a Christian place, and most of the Jews in here are Messianic Jews (Christian Jews who maintain Jewish identity and practices).
Since Messianic Judaism is a Judaism, we can tell you about those things we have in common with Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism. There are also our Rabbinical Jewish friends here who can answer you. But you might also want to go to Jewish boards to ask your questions, if I'm right and you are curious about conventional Judaism.
Here are some of the things we all have in common:
TORAH TORAH TORAH TORAH TORAH TORAH TORAH! LOL
The Jewish people are not held together by bagels and lox, or latkes, or Chanukah, or speaking Yiddish, but by the Torah, the five books of law that Christians call the Pentateuch. The Torah contains the story of the Exodus, how Hashem (God) delivered us from slavery in Egypt and brought us to the promised land, and gave to us the 613 laws to guide us and create an ideal society. When Jews stop obeying the Torah, our children don't feel as Jewish, and usually intermarry, and then our grandchildren almost never identify themselves as Jews. It is Torah that holds us together as a people.
The heart of the Torah is two laws. The first is the Sh'ma and the beginning of the V'ahavta. "Hear, O Israel, the LORD is your God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might...." The second important commandment is "Love your neighbor as yourself." IOW kindness. The Rabbis say that all 613 laws come from these two laws.
There are ten laws that are so important that God didn't just say them aloud, but actually wrote them in stone. We know them as the ten commandments:
- I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
- Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments.
- Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.
- Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
- Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
- Thou shalt not murder.
- Thou shalt not commit adultery.
- Thou shalt not steal.
- Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
- Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
A great many of our laws, like not cheating on your spouse, or not beating people up, are laws we share with everyone. But some laws are peculiar just to the Children of Israel; they are laws we require ourselves to follow, but don't expect other people to do -- and they are JUST FINE not doing them. Of course there is nothing wrong if a Gentile WANTS to do them. We're just saying they are not obligatory. Most of these laws either revolve around temple practices, ritual purity, Shabbat, or Kashrut.
Shabbat, or Sabbath. God sanctified the seventh day, and calls us to keep it holy by refraining from work. It is how we remember that He delivered us from Egypt. But what is work? The judges looked and saw that God commanded all labor on the Tabernacle stop on Shabbat. They listed all those labors, and divided them into 39 categories. We call these categories the 39 Melachot, or work, and avoid them on Shabbat. For example, writing was involved in the building of the Tabernacle, so we avoid writing on Shabbat. Shabbat starts just before sunset on Friday night and ends just after sunset on Saturday. We begin Shabbat by lighting candles and saying a blessing. We have a special Shabbat dinner, with Wine and a braided egg bread called Challah that blessings are said over. Saturday morning is Synagogue and Torah classes.
Kashrut (eating clean foods): Think of this as an ideal to strive for. Very few people are kosher to Orthodox standards. Most observant Jews will do #1.
1. You begin by eating only Kosher animals. That means those that chew their cud and have cloven hooves (like a cow), or which have fins and scales. Obviously pigs, rabbits, and shellfish are out. The bible gives a list of what birds to avoid -- mostly birds of prey and scavengers.
2. They animals must be killed in a kosher manner, which is very quick and virtually pain free. The butchers are trained for many years before they can begin to shech for real. This meat today is sold as "certified kosher."
3. Meat and Dairy are kept separate. "You shall not cook a kid in its own mother's milk" is a commandment repeated three times. We do not cook meat and dairy together, we do not eat them together (no cheeseburgers), and we do not serve them together at the same meal.
4. Because we don't want even trace contaminants of dairy and meat to mix, we take special precautions. We buy separate dishes so that we don't cook them in the same pans, or eat them off the same plates. If we buy processed food in the store, we look for those foods which are certified Kosher, which means that during the processing, no mixing of meat and dairy happened, as was verified by Rabbinical supervision. It's actually pretty easy to find certified Kosher foods.
Judaism has wonderful Holy Days that all of us observe as well:
- High Holy Days: These are in the Fall. There are a bunch, but the two that are the best known are Rosh Hashana (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement).
- Chanukah: This remembers the overthrow of the Greeks by Judah Maccabee and the Hasmonean Jews.
- Purim: This remembers the story of Esther
- Pesach (Passover): This remembers when Hashem delivered us from slavery in Egypt
- Shavuot: This remembers when Hashem gave us the Torah
Judaism also has rites of passage
- Bris aka Circumcision on the eighth day
- Bar Mitzvah: when you take on responsibility for keeping the covenant, evidenced by reading from the Torah
- Marriage
- Burial
You cannot discuss Judaism, including Messianic Judaism, without discussing the Talmud. The Talmud is a written record of the thousand years of oral Law from the time of Moses. You can't have Law in the Sacred Text without it being interpreted for practical application. The judges aka rabbis did these interpretations. In Deuteronomy 17:8-13, God gives this authority to the judges to make these interpretations, and it is the death penalty for anyone who questions them. This is why the judges can interpret "work" on Shabbat to be the 39 Melachot, for example. Otherwise everyone would have a different opinion and the community would be in chaos.
Many of the most cherished traditions that Jews have, including Messianic Jews, come from the Talmud. Lighting Shabbat Candles, for example. Or celebrating Chanukah. The details of the Seder meal. If you know the Talmud well, you realize that many of Jesus' teachings come from this Oral Torah. Even if you don't give the same authority to the Talmud that an Orthodox Jew may, it is impossible to practice any form of Judaism, including Messianic Judaism, without honoring the place that Talmud has played in our history and culture.
