A Study Of Learning Tradition In Judaism

In recent years,most research has acknowledged the importance of Jewish learning,and the Jewish love of learning has become an accepted fact both domestically and internationally.However,all of the current domestic research on Jewish learning lacks a systematic approach,and the sources of the scattered ideas are not very clear.Since the Jewish people has been inextricably linked to Judaism since its inception,it is important to trace the roots of Jewish learning to Judaism if we are to gain an accurate and in-depth understanding of it.Therefore,the work of this paper is to provide a relatively comprehensive and systematic introduction to the Jewish learning tradition based on the history of Judaism and the religious texts of the Bible and the Talmud,with the aim of providing a glimpse of Jewish learning through this window.The main work of the first chapter of this paper is to sort out the formation of the Jewish learning tradition in the context of the historical development of Judaism.Although the period of Biblical Judaism is centered on the Temple,the textual tradition of Judaism begins to emerge from the discovery of the Book of the Law by Josiah and the Religion Reformation.During the Second Temple period,when Ezra returned to Jerusalem with the"The Book of Moses",the development of Judaism began to center around the Temple and the Torah.On this basis,the Torah,which contains God’s law,as well as other historical narratives and traditional practices,became the authoritative text of the community.From then on,the Torah began to take its place alongside the Temple,and reading and interpreting the Torah gradually became part of the daily life of the Jewish people.In the 2nd century B.C.,under the impact of Greek wisdom,the Ben Sira scribes gave Judaism more room to grow by equating wisdom with the Torah in defense of Jewish tradition.After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.,the surviving sages of Yavneh and other Jewish intellectuals compiled the religious classics that had been handed down to the world,completing the canonization of the entire Bible,thus transforming Judaism from temple worship to book worship and making the Jews a "People of the Holy Book" in the true sense of the word.Thereafter,the study of the Bible,and especially the Torah,became a top priority in all matters.At this point,Jewish study was officially established as a religious duty.However,as new issues arose for Jews in exile,the Mishnah and the Talmud,which provided norms for Jewish life and interpreted the Torah,emerged,and the Talmud,which contained both the Bible and the Mishnah,in particular,became a religious classic second only to the Bible,and became a major part of Jewish learning in the Middle Ages.However,in a religious life that placed learning at the center,there was an inevitable contradiction or even disconnect between the study of the text and the actual practice of it.Therefore,the rabbis responded to the conflicts between learning and practice,learning and labor,and learning and prayer in a flexible manner,depending on the reality of each situation.The second chapter of this paper organizes and summarizes the five major aspects of Jewish learning:learning subject,learning content,learning time,learning place,and learning methods and the way of thinking,based on the Bible and rabbinic literature,especially the Babylonian Talmud.The third chapter is the significance of the Jewish learning tradition.On the religious level,every Jew can imitate the"learning God" and be a holy nation through the subjective activity of learning.On a national level,every Jew who studies the Torah,the Talmud and its commentaries can learn how to follow God’s laws in daily life and thus maintain his or her Jewish identity.On a secular level,the emphasis on learning led to a significant increase in Jewish literacy and greater ability to read and write.As a result,when urbanization accelerated in the Middle East in the seventh century A.D.and a large number of urban occupations emerged,Jews were the first to enter the cities to complete the occupational transition from agriculture to crafts and trade.In modern times,the wisdom of the scriptures,the methods of study,and the habits of thinking and reading cultivated by the ancient tradition of religious learning have enabled Jews to excel in both the natural and human sciences.