Religon Study Guide Terms Antiochus IV The Selucid ruler that ordered the conversion of the Jerusalem Temple into a Pagan shrine in 167 BCE Judah Maccebee Under his ruling a revolt was let against the Seleucid rule and Anti ochus IV and they defeated the Syrian forces and purified and rededicated the temple Josephus the Jewish Roman historian who is our principal source on the Jewish war against Rome Josephus was a supporter of the Pharisees Simeon Bar Kokhba Led the Bar Kokhba Revolt against the Romans and was totally and utterly defeated Some believed he was the Messiah Paul of Tarsus Shabbatai Tzvi He was convinced that he was the Messiah and started a movement called Shabbataenism He would travel through the Medditerranean and inform people of the Lurianic Kabbalah and that he was the Messiah Nathan confrmed that he was the Messiah and they continued to travel together telling people this Jews were torn of whether to believe this or not After careful consideration of this in the Jewish courts Tzvi was given the choice of converting to Islam or death he chose Islam Maimonides One of the giants of Jewish thought either inside or outside the circle of faith He wrote some of the most incisive commentaries on Talmud and Torah and the most distinguished work of explicitly Jewish Philosophy until this century an important and highly regarded physician and Jewish communal Leader RaMBan Spain Cairo Commentary on the Mishneh Mishneh Torah He said that we cannot know God just his effects Wrote Guide of the Perplexed 1185 1190 Nakhmanides RaMBaN 1194 1270 A physician that commented on the Bible and Halakhah After the Disputation at Barcelona he was exiled from Spain He ended up in Palestine and was a front leader of the Jewish Community with much respect He agreed with Maimonides on most things but did NOT agree with his enthusiasm for phi losophy as a guide to truth Judah Ha Levi his central purpose of his philosophical work is to refute the attachment of Sa adiah and Maimonides to reason and philosophy Issac Luria a mysterious figure No one knowds where he came from and he left no writings He taught his thought to a dozen or so followers before his death and one of his followers recorded his ideas and taught them to others Luria did not want his ideas taught to the masses but they had spread all throughout Europe by the 17th century and became a pillar of central Jewish thought Luria s ideology is now the Lurianic Kab balah see term below Theodor Herzl 1896 The Jewish State He was a totally assimilated Jew He argued that anti semitism is actually a natural response in an oppressed culture that is looking to blame someone and the most obvious person to blame is a minority such as the Jews He says that anti semitism is not irrational that it is an expected response in this situation Herzl then goes on to say that the only solution to this issue is for Jews to have their own Jewish state and to return to their homeland in Palestine where Jews can emerge with their own language Hebrew and practice how they want Herzl threw him self into this project Isaac Mayer Wise an immigrant from Bohemia he pioneered a specifically American brand of Judaism one that would reconcile the variety of practices coming out of Eu rope In 1887 he authored Minhag America a new prayer book attempting to devise a Jewish practice that would be suited to the New World Wise headed the Rabbinical conference in 1885 that issued the Pittsburgh Plat form Mordecai Kaplan an American theologian who founded the Reconstructionist move ment He envisioned the Synogogue as a place for the Jewish community rather than simply a place of worship He believed that Judaism was not merely a religon or nationality He believed Judaism was an evolving religious civilization a body of customs and folkways history language and culture a sense of attachment to Israel an ethical worldview which are all unified by a set of religous beliefs he thinks of Judaism as an ethnography a set of beliefs that have changed in the past and can be changed again as each generation brings its intelligence and expe rience to bear on them Solomon Schechter the Rabbi that took over the Conservative movement in 1902 He made the Jewish Theological Seminary JTS a training ground for a body of new rabbis and cantors who espoused Conservative Judaism Schechter hoped to make the Conservative umbrella wide enough to encom pass a wide range of observant Jews This was a perfect movement to answer the needs and changing demographics of the American Jewish Community Many immi grants from Eastern European Jewry adopted this Conservative Judaism as a pleasant middle ground to Reform and Orthodoxy Abraham Geiger A founding member of Reform Judaism that believed Judaism was an evolving process of belief not a fixed set of historically mandated rules and regulations Samson Raphael Hirsch Well educated leader of the 19th century He argued that Ju daism can t move away from the Halakhah He argued that the Bible is different it is au thoritative His motto was torah with the way of the world or abiding by the Torah in Modern Culture Hirsch College was named after him It was a college of Modern Orthodoxy like Yeshiva University Zecharias Frankel a founding member of the Coservative Movement of Judaism posi tive historical Judaism He argued that Judaism was developed over time He thought we should keep the old texts and practices and observe Halakhah agreeing with Ortho doxy However he agreed with Reform in the philosophical underpinnings because he argues that Conservative Jews should be less strict than Orthodox Jews Flagship for Conservative Jews Jewish Theological Seminary Menahem Mendel Schneerson was a Lubavichter Rebbe Moses Mendelssohn one of the first influential thinkers to emerge form the Enlighten ment period He was a German philosopher and a practicing Orthodox Jew He argued that Jews could live as free and equal citizens and that the ideas of Judaism could be understood in a rationalist text His writings had an incalculable impact on a group of German Jews who were rethinking the relationship between Judaism and Modernity Maccabean Revolt A conflict between the Jewish Rebel group known as the Mac cabees and the Seleucid Empire 1st Revolt against the Romans When the Roman Empire mandated that his statue be erect in the Jerusalem Temple the Jewish population threatened a revolt After many arguments about the Jews stopping their temple sacrifices on behalf of the