Judaism (originally from Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, "Judah") is an ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. Judaism is one of the oldest and also the tenth largest religion in the world.
While there are numerous strands and interpretations of Judaism, the core beliefs of all Jews are that there is one God, that God is concerned with the actions of mankind, and that God established a series of eternal covenants with the Jewish people. The first such covenant is believed to have been made with the Patriarch Abraham that promised him and his descendants the land of Israel. And the second covenant was made with the prophet Moses through which the Ten Commandments, the basis of Jewish law, were first revealed.
The key texts of Judaism have been developed over several thousand years, and play a critical role in the practice of the Jewish tradition. The oldest and most foundational text is the Tanakh (also known as the Hebrew Bible), which was composed over 3,000 years ago. Subsequent important texts that influence the modern practice of Judaism include the the Talmud, the Midrash, and the Zohar.
For Jews, the written words and letters of the Tanakh, in particular, are believed to hold great significance, beginning with the four-letter Hebrew word יהוה, or "Yahweh", which is the name of the biblical God in Hebrew. Indeed, Jews believe that not only the word for God, but all words and their component letters have significance and meaning. In Judaism’s Kabbalah tradition, for example, each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet not only have a specific value, but also represent one of the paths or spheres within the Jewish Tree of Life. In this tradition, there are 10 nodes in the Tree of Life, each of which represents one of the 10 attributes/emanations through which God reveals Himself. Between these nodes, or sephira, lie 12 paths, each one corresponding to one of the twelve months of the Hebrew calendar. Thus, in Kabbalah tradition, when a person is born and what name they are given at birth can manifest itself in both physical and cosmic terms and can influence the type of person they become. In pre-modern Hebrew, this practice of birth date analysis was known as hokmat ha-mazalot (חוכמת המזלות), "the science of the constellations", and the Talmud teaches that “Abraham held great astrology in his heart, and all the kings of the east and west arose early at his door”.
The 12 paths of Judaism’s Kabbalah tradition are: Zain (The Path of Lovers) , He (The Path of Civilization), Cheth (The Path of Home), Vau (The Path of Grace), Yod (The Path of Purification), Lamed (The Path of Justice) , Teth (The Path of Creativity) , Ayin (The Path of Practicality) , Nun (The Path of Intimacy) , Samekh (The Path of Alchemy) , Tzaddi (The Path of Righteousness) , Qoph (The Path of Mystery)
