The form of Jewish religious beliefs and practices that developed following the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. during the First Jewish Revolt. This loss of the temple forced upon the Jewish religious teachers the twice focus that became fundamental to Rabbinic Judaism: negatively, there is the question how God is to be worshipped without the Temple and its sacrifices. A second major disaster befell the Jewish nation whe they revolted against Rome again in the Second Jewish Revolt (132-35 A.D.). Compelled to leave Jerusalem, and banned from the use of the name Judea (the land was renamed Palestine) for the land, many Jews left and/or were expelled, beginning an exile from the land for nearly two thousand years. This disaster forced upon the Jews oce again the question of how to relate to God in exile. Unlike their earlier exile under the Babylonians, there were no prophets to give them the clear sight of return and hope. This added a new dimension to the topography of Rabbinic Judaism. Collectively then Rabbinic Judaism may be said to be a religion/spirituality of exile, and its shape—in life and in thought—defined by the new understanding forged out of the Torah and centered on the Talmud. Rabbinic Judaism came under increasing pressure beginning in the late 18th Cent, when rising nationalism and anti-semitism led to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a Jew, and the rise of secular Zionism, and the eventual founding of religious Zionism.
©ALBERITH