a thought: judaism as we understand is a creation of christianity. judaism as it was for the past 2,000 years was mostly a christian (and muslim) creation. as some of you might know before the year 300 or so there were many judaisms. specifically there was a difference between what might be called ‘hellenistic’ judaism and rabbnical judaism. orthodox judaism is the direct line descendant of the latter. with a few exceptions rabbnical judaism had the floor for nearly 1500 years, between 300 and 1800. what happened to hellenistic judaism? many argue most hellenistic jews became christian, that christianity is actually just a successful hellenistic jewish cult. the differences between rabbnical judaism and christianity are stark. those between hellenistic judaism (which was a plural movement which we define post facto) and christianity likely less so. in a christian environment rabbinical judaism was the only stable equilibrium for jews, or more precisely, the jewish community.
i thought about this when reading about the catholic church in the hapsburgh empire auditing jewish writings and works to make sure that it didn’t go beyond “old testament” principles. jews were given sufferance to exist because they were witness to the pre-christian covenant, and christians had specific ideas of what jews could be. this changed after 1800 as the monopoly of the christian church was broken, and constraints on jewish religious creativity were removed. reform judaism wouldn’t have been possible before 1800 because they would have been persecuted as heretical by christians and rabbincal jews. there is a reason that many reform jews explicitly feel kinship with hellenistic judaism: they fill the same space on the religious spectrum.