The central concept in Christianity is Salvation.
The central concept in Islam is Submission.
The central concept in Buddhism is Enlightenment.
What is the central concept in Judaism?
Wrestling with God.
Is it? Honest question, because I seriously just don’t know.
Possibly “the Law,” if you insist on breaking it into a single world.
But when asked to sum up the Torah in a sound bite, Hillel famously said “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to others. The rest is commentary.”
The central concept of Judaism is that there is one God. Christianity and Islam copied that and added some more stuff. The concept of the Law in Judaism hinges largely on the idea that there is no other god to appeal to if you don’t like what the Big Guy told you what to do.
In one word: Mitzvah
As Wikipedia says:
I don’t know how much more central you can get than the religion being named for the concept. Dr. Mahmoud in Stranger In A Strange Land agreed and if you can’t trust Wikipedia and hippy fiction, who can you trust?
What’s wrong with the Ten Commandments?
The word “Islam” means “submission.”
But I agree there is more to it than that because submission to the will of God is certainly a requirement of Judaism and Christianity as well.
Yes. I think this is the best choice. It’s the first commandment of the Ten Commandments - everything else comes later. Judaism arose in a milieu of Canaanite, Egyptian, and Arabian polytheism, and distinguished itself by the assertion that the single god of Judaism was the god of the entire universe.
Yes, I know what “Islam” means. That’s not the question I asked. Is “submission” the central concept of that religion?
I have always liked, “To make the world a better place”.
Sanctification.
I’m not a Jew, but my initial thought was “righteousness”.
The central concept of Judaism? To apologize to your mother. You know what you did.
The central concept is that there is exactly one god (not zero, not hundreds), and that this one god has a special covenant with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
However the Patriarchs are noted for arguing with God all the time. So plain all submission isn’t it.
Look the Sh’ma - Hear oh Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is One - is what goes on your doorposts and on you in the Tefillin. (spelling optional.) That is probably as close as you’re going to get.
Covenant?
Actually, any one of these, while defensible, could be its own GD thread.
I’d second this. In my opinion (as a non-Jew) the central tenet of Judaism is that there is a defined agreement between God and the Jewish people.