Christian and Jewish mystical thought have also influenced the development of Anthroposophy.

According to a Jewish legend, one of the Essenes, named Menachem, had passed at least some of his mystical knowledge to the Talmudic mystic Nehunya ben HaKanah, to whom the Kabbalistic tradition attributes Sefer HaBahir and, by some opinions, Sefer HaKanah, Sefer HaPeliah and Sefer HaTemunah.

During the Middle Ages, passages from the Sefer Yetzirah ( Book of Creation ) were studied as a means to attain the mystical ability to create and animate a golem, although there is little in the writings of Jewish mysticism that supports this belief.

According to some of the adepts of the Jewish Merkabah mystical tradition, if one wished to " descend to the Merkabah " one had to adopt the prayer posture taken by the Prophet Elijah in I Kings 18: 42, namely to pray with one's head between one's knees.

His role and unique talent as a teacher and communicator of mystical revival began a new era in Jewish mysticism.

Two of these derived from the Jewish mystical tradition, as it could tend towards piety over legalism.

The 18th-century Vilna Gaon, for instance, while the head of Rabbinic opposition to the new Jewish mystical movement that itself became known as " Hasidism ", was renowned for his righteous life.

His patristic commentaries align closely with Jewish tradition, and he indulges in allegorical and mystical subtleties after the manner of Philo and the Alexandrian school.

Historically, Kabbalah emerged, after earlier forms of Jewish mysticism, in 12th-to 13th-century Southern France and Spain, becoming reinterpreted in the Jewish mystical renaissance of 16th-century Ottoman Palestine.

The practice within Jewish tradition of assigning mystical meaning to words based on their numerical values, and on connections between words of equal value, is known as gematria.

While mainstream Rabbinic Judaism is classically monotheistic and follows in the footsteps of the Aristotelian theologian Maimonides, the panentheistic conception of God can be found in certain Jewish mystical currents.

Moreover, over a period of a thousand years, not a single Jewish woman wrote a halakhic, literary, theoretical, mystical, or poetic work, with the exception of a handful of poems written by Jewish women in Spain.

The Zohar (, lit Splendor or Radiance ) is the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah.

While many original ideas in the Zohar are presented as being from ( fictitious ) Jewish mystical works, many ancient and clearly rabbinic mystical teachings are presented without their real, identifiable sources being named.

Academic studies of the Zohar show that many of its ideas are based in the Talmud, various works of midrash, and earlier Jewish mystical works.

In Eros and Kabbalah, Moshe Idel ( Professor of Jewish Mysticism, Hebrew University in Jerusalem ) argues that the fundamental distinction between the rational-philosophic strain of Judaism and mystical Judaism, as exemplified by the Zohar, is the mystical belief that the Godhead is complex, rather than simple, and that divinity is dynamic and incorporates gender, having both male and female dimensions.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, " On the other hand, the Zohar was censured by many rabbis because it propagated many superstitious beliefs, and produced a host of mystical dreamers, whose overexcited imaginations peopled the world with spirits, demons, and all kinds of good and bad influences.

Founded in the 3rd century CE by Plotinus, The Neoplatonist tradition has clear echoes in the Zohar, as indeed in many forms of mystical spirituality, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

Two influences on Boole were later claimed by his wife, Mary Everest Boole: a universal mysticism tempered by Jewish thought, and Indian logic .. Mary Boole stated that an adolescent mystical experience provided for his life's work:

The most powerful effect of this particular Name of God stems from the Jewish mystical book the Zohar, the seminal document of Kabbalah that emerged in 13th century Spain.

Some authorities regard him as a contemporary of Abraham, and some Jewish traditions go so far as to claim that Abraham acquired a portion of his mystical knowledge from Hermes himself ( Kybalion ).

However, in private, many British officials agreed with the interpretation of the Zionists that a state would be established when a Jewish majority was achieved.

Concerning interpretation of Halakha ( or Jewish law ): because of Judaism's legal tradition, the fundamental differences between modern Jewish denominations also involve the relevance, interpretation, and application of Jewish law and tradition.

According to the traditional Jewish interpretation of the Bible, Israel's character as the chosen people is unconditional, as it says in,

However, none of Justinian's surviving edicts dealing with Jewish matters is explicitly directed against the Jewish calendar, making the interpretation of Procopius's statement a complex matter.

Depending on the stature of the posek and the quality of the decision, an interpretation may also be gradually accepted by rabbis and members of similar Jewish communities.

Those in the traditionalist wing of these movements believe that the halakha represents a personal starting-point, holding that each Jew is obligated to interpret the Torah, Talmud and other Jewish works for themselves, and this interpretation will create separate commandments for each person.

The particular Hasidic emphasis and interpretation of this earlier Jewish and Kabbalistic concept, became one of the ideas that singled it out from non-Hasidic Judaism.

Jewish law must be preserved but it is subject to interpretation by those who have mastered it, and the interpretation placed upon it by duly authorized masters in every generation must be accepted with as much reverence as those which were given in previous generations.

This understanding of traditional preservation of the law through its continuous interpretation lies at the heart of Klein's extensive study of Jewish law.

This is not limited to the traditional thirteen textual tools attributed to the Tanna Rabbi Ishmael, which are used in the interpretation of halakha ( Jewish law ).

In reaction to the emergence of Reform Judaism, a group of traditionalist German Jews emerged who supported some of the values of the Haskalah but who wanted to defend a conservative, traditional interpretation of Jewish law and tradition.

The first century Jewish interpretation found in Flavius Josephus explains the construction of the tower as a hubristic act of defiance against God ordered by the arrogant tyrant Nimrod.

Conversely, Elijah Delmedigo ( c. 1458 – c. 1493 ), in his Bechinat ha-Dat endeavored to show that the Zohar could not be attributed to Shimon bar Yochai, arguing that if it were his work, the Zohar would have been mentioned by the Talmud, as has been the case with other works of the Talmudic period, that had bar Yochai known by divine revelation the hidden meaning of the precepts, his decisions on Jewish law from the Talmudic period would have been adopted by the Talmud, that it would not contain the names of rabbis who lived at a later period than that of Simeon ; and that if the Kabbalah was a revealed doctrine, there would have been no divergence of opinion among the Kabbalists concerning the mystic interpretation of the precepts.

In this example, the nonviolent interpretation sees Jesus as placing criticism on an unjust and hated Roman law as well as clarifying the teaching to extend beyond Jewish law.

In normative Judaism, the Torah and hence Jewish law itself is unchanging, but interpretation of law is more open.

The word Zend or Zand, literally meaning " interpretation ", refers to late Middle Persian ( see Pazend and Pahlavi ) language paraphrases of and commentaries on the individual Avestan books: they could be compared with the Jewish Targums.

His father was an Orthodox Jew with a very literal interpretation of his faith, Gollancz's dislike of this attitude coloured his approach to organised Judaism for much of his life, however he continued to practise many Jewish rituals at home.

The group also provides programs that provide their Christian interpretation of Jewish holidays such as Passover, Sukkot and Hanukkah, explaining what they consider messianic elements and how they believe these festivals are related to Jesus.

`` Meet the Artist '' is the invitation issued by members of the Greater Philadelphia Section of the National Council of Jewish Women as they arrange for an annual exhibit and sale of paintings and sculpture at the Philmont Country Club on April 8 and 9.

The event is the sixth on the annual calendar of the local members of the National Council of Jewish Women.

The initial draft of the declaration, contained in a letter sent by Rothschild to Balfour, referred to the principle " that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people.

Reuben Breed ( Episcopal ), Michael Lodsin ( Baptist ), Brigadier Thomas Johnson ( Salvation Army ), Ludmila K. Foxlee ( YWCA ), Athena Marmaroff ( Woman's Christian Temperance Union ), Alexander Harkavy ( HIAS ), and Cecilia Greenstone and Cecilia Razovsky ( National Council of Jewish Women ).

* Elimination of the Jewish National Home in Palestine: The Einsatzkommando of the Panzer army Africa, 1942 by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers

* First Jewish player elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1956.

* Member of the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame ( 1996 ).

From 1920, the Va ' ad Leumi ( or Jewish National Council, or JNC ) was the main institution of the Jewish community (" Yishuv ") within the British Mandate of Palestine.

The final draft of the declaration was typed at the Jewish National Fund building following its approval earlier in the day.

After telling the audience " I shall now read to you the scroll of the Establishment of the State, which has passed its first reading by the National Council ", Ben-Gurion proceeded to read out the declaration, taking 16 minutes, ending with the words " Let us accept the Foundation Scroll of the Jewish State by rising " and calling on Rabbi Fishman to recite the Shehecheyanu blessing.

According to the 2001 edition of the National Jewish Population Survey, in the United States ' Jewish community — the world's second largest — 4. 3 million Jews out of 5. 1 million had some sort of connection to the religion.

* Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity

Unquestionably, however, the primary purpose of the Mandate, as expressed in its preamble and its articles, is to promote the establishment of the Jewish National Home.

These institutes are the Jewish Oral Traditions Research Center and the National Voice Archives ( the Phonoteca at the Jewish National and University Library ).

* Online Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts, Jewish National and University Library in Hebrew.

* Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts, Jewish National and University Library

* National Jewish Museum Sports Hall of Fame – inducted in 1992.

At the end of World War II, the National Jewish Welfare Board had a matzo factory ( according to the American Jewish Historical Society, it was probably the Manischewitz matzo factory in New Jersey ) produce matzo in the form of a giant " V " for " Victory ," for shipment to military bases overseas and in the U. S., for Passover seders for Jewish military personnel.