Is the God of the Jews strictly for them (and converted gentiles)? Does their god care for non-jews? I understand that Christianity opened YHWH’s “grace” to all those who would accept him, jews and gentiles alike. But how do Jews feel about this? Isn’t YHWH a tribal deity created just to watch over the Chosen People? As far as I know, Jews feel that the laws of the Old Testament and the Leviticus guidelines only apply to themselves. Does this mean god only cares for them?
Jews do no accept Jesus as the prophet of salvation. So they are still waiting, are they not? Do they believe that this savior will come for the Jews only? Will the savior bring salvation to gentiles too?
And Jews don’t believe in hell, correct? But what is their concept of heaven? Do gentiles go to heaven? What of a Jew that does not follow biblical law? Is there some form of punishment after death?
In the view of Judaism, God is the God of all. He is, therefore, for all people for al time.
Judaism, itself, celbrates the specific covenants with Abraham (to preserve his line, forever), and with the Jewish people following Moses after the deliverance from Egypt. The laws that were set forth as a pledge of that covenant at Sinai are binding on the Jewish people as a reminder of that covenant,
People who are not Jews are still held to goodness as indicated by the seven Noachide Laws (do a search, either on this site or with Google to see a further explanation).
The issue of salvation is, more or less, a Christian concept. The messiah on whom the Jewish people wait is not seen in the same way as the Pauline messiah of Christianity. Nevertheless, the messiah to whom the Jews look forward will bring blessings to all perople, not just Jews.
The Tanakh (or Old Testament when viewed from the perspective of Christianity) does not address the issue of an afterlife, explicitly. Nevertheless, the Jewish faith has developed a considerable body of commentary regarding the afterlife, so the belief in an afterlife among Jews is present. However, different Jewish traditions hold slightly different views regarding the nature of the afterlife, so there is no one answer that is clearly held by all Jewish people.
You might want to search on both Great Debates and General Questions for various Jewish beliefs. (Just put “jewish” or “judaism” into the search argument and specify a search on title instead of text.) They have been discussed here on many occasions and you appear to hold several assumptions that are not consistent with their beliefs.
Answering your question about Jewish heaven/hell: The Jewish Kaballah contains reincarnation. So there is not need for a heaven or hell, but there is an afterlife.
See: http://www.kabbalah.info/engkab/book_1/book1eng_ch08.htm
Despite the dodging around on the linked site, this is simply false. It could not have been “removed” from the Old Testament without showing up as clear discrepancies between the Jewish and Christian versions of Scripture. There are sufficient copies of variants among the different Christian Scriptures to put the lie to the notion that, somehow, the church got New Testament Scripture changed as late as 553.
(There was discussion of reincarnation in the early church, but the linked site seriously overstates that discussion and a claim that Scripture was modified is just not true.)
First of all, Judaism, like Christianity or Islam, consists of many subgroups with diverse beliefs. As far as I can tell, most American rabbis today do not believe in hell and do not preach about it. However, although most American Jews do not realize it, sermons concerning heaven and hell were a nineteenth century commonplace in the large Jewish communites of Eastern Europe.
What about the question as to whether the Jewish God is just for the Jews? This is one of the few questions where there is a pretty definitive answer - no. For more liberal Jews, there are no really religious requirements put on man by God–only requirements for moral behavior to other humans. For the more religious, there are religious obligations for Jews but only moral ones for others. There is a rather strange ultra-orthodox minority which does maintain that there is a strict list of rules that non-Jews must follow to find a favorable place in the world to come. See:
However, the Jews who put together the web site above are really at an extreme.
A famous ultra-orthodox rabbi made a statement to the following effect a few decades ago: When the messiah comes, the Jews will be sure that their messianic hopes have been realized, but the Christians will be just as sure that their traditional hopes have been realized. How this could actually happen, I am not sure, but it is consistent with the general spirit of most Jewish theology.
I’ve always had my quick and dirty brief synopsis to explain the fundamentally different perspectives between Christianity and Judaism. (I’m sure learned folk on both sides will correct me!)
Christian theology preaches that one knows God and is thus guided to do the right things; Jewish theology says that if you do the right things you will come to know God.
Christian theology says that an individual should know God and do the right things to earn a place in heaven. Jewish theology doesn’t spend much time on heaven; you do the right things because God said so. That’s not enough? - He got you (as a people) out of bondage and you owe him. The Covenant, remember, bubbeleh? A deal is a deal. You don’t want to keep the deal? Well, God don’t need to wait til you die. He’ll write the book for the next year at Rosh HaShanah, and if you don’t really make good on what you’ve done wrong, then by Yom Kippur your fate is sealed. Heaven? Heaven can wait.
Now reality is more complex: lots of different Christian belief systems and many differences between segments of Jewish thought. But I still think that this captures the essence.
As to God’s requirements of non-Jews … tradition has it that God requires them to follow the seven Noahide Laws, which I won’t bother to list, whereas Jews are supposed to follow the 613 Mitzvot. Easier to be a rightous Gentile, than a rightous Jew, if you are a traditionalist. Some Orthodox rabbis are reluctant to convert non-Jews for just that reason: What if (s)he doesn’t observe all of the Torah’s commandments? Better to be a rightous Gentile than to take on the requirements of Torah without fulfilling them.
And the Messiah? As told in Telushkin’s Jewish Literacy there is an old Jewish story: A Russian Jew is paid a ruble a month to wait on the edge of town to greet the Messiah. A freind says “But the pay is so low.” “Yes, but the job is permanent!”
The Messiah is not a big part of many secular Jews belief systems, but tradition has it that the Messiah will be a descendent of the convert Ruth through her descendent King David. Nothing about salvation. That aint a Jewish thang. The gig is that he’ll gain sovereignty over Israel, gather all Jews to Israel, and bring world peace. With that as the definition, it isn’t hard to see why Jews don’t believe the Messiah’s been here yet. The Reform movement believes in a metaphorical Messiah, in which group human effort perfects the world (tikkun olam)
Well, the respondents have pretty much answered this one for you. In short, while we do believe that there is a special relationship between God and the Jewish people, that does not preclude Him from caring about everyone else. Indeed, support for this can be found from the Bible itself, where God sent Jonah to preach repentence to the people of Nineveh, who were not Jewish. Had God not cared about them, He could have chosen to (a) just let them be wicked or (b) wiped them out without warning. By sending someone to warn them to change their ways, God was obviously concerned about their self-improvement.
In addition, as others have pointed out, Judaism teaches that non-Jews are not responsible to keep the commandments in the Bible. If they choose to convert and do so, they may. A non-Jew who keeps the seven commandments required of them are rewarded in the afterlife, as is a Jew who keeps the commandments required of him/her.
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Jews don’t accept Jesus as the prophet of salvation, or indeed, as a prophet at all. Traditional Judaism teaches that prophecy ended well before Jesus’ time.
As for the messiah, there is a world of difference between the Christian concept of a Messiah and the Jewish concept of the same. The Christian Messiah is one who is God’s son, died for sins of mankind and attained salvation for mankind. The messiah of the Jews will be a normal human being, conceived of two human parents in the normal fashion. He will be a Torah scholar and righteous. He will bring about the ingathering of the Exiles, rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, reestablish the Davidic dynasty and bring about an era of peace for Israel and the world.
Judaism indeed has a hell, but, again of a different concept than Christianity. Whereas (and if I’m generalizing, please forgive me and provide correction) in most Christian denominations once you are consigned to hell you are there for eternity, that is not the case in Judaism. In Judaism, one is punished for one’s sins in the afterlife, and then rewarded for the good one does. Aside from the most truly wicked, no one spends more than 12 months in Hell.
As for non-Jews, as I mentioned above, non-Jews do go to heaven by keeping the seven commandments that are required of them.
<< Isn’t YHWH a tribal deity created just to watch over the Chosen People? >>
There is a line of historical interpretation that says that the development of Jewish thought began that way, with a tribal deity who was stronger than other gods and looked after his people. Over time, say these historians, the Jews became monotheist, and reinterpreted their history; the Babylonian Exile allowed the evolution that their God was not a local mountain deity but universal.
I personally think this is pretty much a bullshit argument, but my point is that even if you credit it, Judaism had evolved to a belief in a universal God who cares for all peoples by (say) 500 BC.