Thread by @Delafina777

Inspired by @ShammaiIntl’s very good quiz about Judaism, I figured I’d do my own here in between the train losing cell signal. Because this is about Judaism, not everyone is likely going to agree on the answers.

First, demographics:

I, the respondent, am:

Which of the following is not an acceptable number of deities to believe in for most forms of Judaism?

Jews for Jesus are

Which of the following is not a normative Jewish belief about the afterlife?

Which of the following is not traditionally considered a major Jewish holiday?

Which type of magic, in the majority opinion of the rabbis, is acceptable?

What is the majority opinion in the Talmud about astrology?

Which is not a potential moshiach?

According to the Hebrew text, which tree was at the center of the garden of Eden?

Which is not a suggestion found in Jewish texts for explaining the relationship between the two trees?

What’s the closest English equivalent to the way “good and evil” is used idiomatically in classical Hebrew?

Grammatically speaking, where was Adam while Eve was talking to the serpent?

Which is not a major topic in classical commentaries about the first verse of Genesis?

Ok, leaving cell signal area, back in a bit

Which of the following have special rights in wartime?

What does the Hebrew name for Egypt mean?

Who’s not an official messiah?

Who isn’t considered a false messiah?

What do we do for the challah?

What percentage of the world’s population is Jewish?

Who is not a famous Jewish commentator?

When does a fetus gain human status in Jewish law?

What is Pardes not?

Which of the following is not associated with the holiday of Lag B’Omer?

What do the two Liliths do on Yom Kippur?

What do we NOT do on the holiday of Tu Bishvat?

Which of these does not have its own trope (cantillation)?

Which of these is not a form of Judaism?

Which is not a form of liberal Judaism?

Which is is most often considered a fourth branch of Judaism along with the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox movements?

What is a NOT a reason Jews don’t evangelize?

Which of the following makes your hands tamei (ritually impure)?

What do Ezra’s Points mean?

Historically, what was a rabbi’s primary responsibility?

Okay, you want more questions or should I take a break and do some answers?

Gah, should have been “answers now” sorry, but it’s still winning handily so I’ll start adding answers.

Don’t worry, question-lovers, I suspect I’ll keep adding to this for a LONG time

Shout-out to gentile fam!

Also I love that on Twitter I can ask a question in public and almost half the people who respond are Jewish. :-)

The correct answer to this is C. While there are different *aspects* or *faces* of the divine in normative Judaism, God doesn’t incarnate.

You get one God or fewer.

While the broader category of “messianic Jews” (that is, Christians claiming to be Jews) is fuzzier, the Jews for Jesus movement was founded by a Baptist minister who was a member of a the Baptist American Board of Missions to the Jews when he started it.

While moshiach is associated with an age in which God will bodily raise the dead in some Jewish belief, you don’t get to heaven *through* them.

I am wondering if the 15% of you who answered Pesach just didn’t recognize it as the Hebrew name for Passover?

Hanukkah, traditionally, was considered a minor holiday.

I’m going to have to dig up the citation when I’m not on a train, bc Sefaria isn’t loading for me, but the debate concluded that it isn’t prohibited sorcery if you don’t use any material components, if you can make it happen just by speaking.

Most of the rabbis concede that there is something to astrology, but Jews aren’t subject to it:

sefaria.org/Shabbat.156a.1…

There are all KINDS of Kabbalistic theories about who or what the messiah might be, what will initiate the messianic age, etc. but one thing it’s pretty clear it wasn’t was Jesus.

Go do a close read of the text—there is something VERY weird going on with these two
trees. It says the tree of life is planted at the center of the garden and the tree of knowledge is ???

But then Eve identifies the forbidden tree as the one at the center.

Midrash goes WILD about the trees, but while the tree of knowledge is identified with Lilith in Kabbalah, I’ve never seen anything claiming Eve was a tree.

Much like “listen to X’s voice” is an idiom meaning “do what X says,” “good and evil” gets used to mean “everything,” like “from A to Z.”

Eve tastes the apple and hands it to her husband WITH HER—that preposition gets left out of a lot of translations.

The rabbis don’t talk about evolution, but they sure do talk about everything else.

Trees!

myjewishlearning.com/article/bal-ta…

Mitzraim refers to narrowness or restriction.

Moses, while possibly the most influential person in Judaism, is not described as a messiah. David is an anointed king, and Cyrus, IIRC, is the first person for whom the term actually gets used.

Saul, as a duly announced and crowned king of Israel, is not a false messiah.

We hide the knife from the challah. Don’t want to upset it.

I really want to know who the 3% of you who think 15% of the world is Jewish are.

We are (slightly less than) 0.2% of the population, although in the US, the most Jewish country in the world after Israel, we’re almost 2%.

Rambash is not a famous Jewish commentator.

Rambam and Ramban both are, though, and someone really should have thought that through.

A fetus is legally considered part of its mother’s body, not a full human being, until
It draws its first breath, although as @JewishConnectiv notes, “when it graduates from medical school” is also acceptable.

Pardes is both an orchard and an acronym listing different levels of abstraction in Torah interpretation.

Bonfires, archery, and rabbis shooting fire from their eyes are all things associated with Lag B’Omer. Shoes are not.

The two Lilliths have a scream-off on Yom Kippur.

On Tu Bishvat, as part of a medieval tradition, we have a mystical ritual dinner in which we hug trees, do complicated wine fraction math, and eat fruit, nuts, and seeds.

Hanukkah doesn’t have its own Torah trope.

Messianic “Judaism” is a form of Christianity, not Judaism.

Despite the name, the Conservative Movement falls under the umbrella of “liberal Judaism,” as do Reconstructionist and Reform Judaism.

Reconstructionist Judaism is often considered a fourth branch of Judaism—small but influential.

Jews don’t evangelize both because we don’t believe the only way to have a good relationship with God is to be Jewish and because for a lot of history, converting to Judaism was dangerous/illegal for both the convert and the community they joined.

Ritual impurity is a STATE, not an inherent characteristic, whether you’re Jewish or not.

Little surprising how many people got this one wrong.

Touching a Torah scroll, the holiest object in Judaism, makes your hands impure.

If you’re Christian clergy and talk about impurity, you might want to sit with that one, bc y’all misrepresent a lot.

sefaria.org/sheets/48984?l…

We’re not sure what Ezra’s points mean. The most common rabbinical explanation is that they indicate that something in the text is not as it seems.

Traditionally a rabbi’s primary function was to be a legal expert, not clergy in the Christian sense.