The Judaism Portal 4 Tammuz 5786Judaism (Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת, romanized: Yahăḏūṯ) is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which they believe was established between God and the Jewish people. The religion is considered one of the earliest monotheistic religions. Judaism as a religion and culture is founded upon a diverse body of texts, traditions, theologies, and worldviews. Among Judaism's core texts are the Torah (Biblical Hebrew: תּוֹרָה, lit. 'Teaching'), the Nevi'im (נְבִיאִים, 'Prophets'), and the Ketuvim (כְּתוּבִים, 'Writings'), which together compose the Hebrew Bible. In Modern Hebrew, the Hebrew Bible is often referred to as the Tanakh (תַּנַ׳׳ךּ, Tanaḵ)—an acronym of its constituent divisions—or the Miqra (מִקְרָא, Miqrāʾ, '[that which is] called out'). With some differences in order and content, what Christianity calls the Old Testament has the same books as the Hebrew Bible. (Full article...) Selected Article Congregation Beth Elohim is a Jewish Reform congregation located in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Founded in 1861 as a more liberal breakaway from Congregation Baith Israel, in its first 65 years it attempted four mergers with other congregations, including three with Baith Israel, all of which failed. The congregation completed its current Classical Revival synagogue building in 1910 and its "Jewish Deco" (Romanesque Revival and Art Deco) Temple House in 1929. The congregation went through difficult times during the Great Depression, and the bank almost foreclosed on its buildings in 1946. Membership dropped significantly in the 1930s because of the Depression, and again in the 1970s as a result of demographic shifts. Programs for young children helped draw Jewish families back into the neighborhood and revitalize the membership. By 2006 Beth Elohim had over 1000 members, and, as of 2008, it was the largest Reform congregation in Brooklyn, the "oldest Brooklyn congregation that continues to function under its corporate name", and its pulpit was the oldest in continuous use in any Brooklyn synagogue. (Read more...) Did You Know?Did you know...
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Related PortalsHistory Article Night is a work by Elie Wiesel (pictured) about his experience with his father in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945. In just over 100 pages of a narrative described as devastating in its simplicity, Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the father-child relationship as his father declines to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful caregiver. He was 16 years old when Buchenwald was liberated by the U.S. Army in April 1945, too late for his father who died in the camp after a beating. After some difficulty finding a publisher, Wiesel's work appeared in Yiddish in 1955 and French in 1958, and in September 1960 was published in English by Hill and Wang. Fifty years later it is regarded as one of the bedrocks of Holocaust literature. It is the first book in a trilogy—Night, Dawn, Day—marking Wiesel's transition from darkness to light, according to the Jewish tradition of beginning a new day at nightfall. "In Night," he said, "I wanted to show the end, the finality of the event. Everything came to an end—man, history, literature, religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with night." (Read more...) Picture of the WeekIn the News
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Weekly Torah PortionKorach (קרח)
Numbers 16:1–18:32
The Weekly Torah portion in synagogues outside of Israel on Shabbat, Saturday, 5 Tamuz, 5786—June 20, 2026
"You have gone too far, sons of Levi!" (Numbers 16:7.)
 The next day, the whole Israelite community railed against Moses and Aaron for bringing death upon God's people. A cloud covered the Tabernacle and the God's Presence appeared. God told Moses to remove himself and Aaron from the community, so that God might annihilate them, and they fell on their faces. Moses told Aaron to take the fire pan, put fire from the altar and incense on it, and take it to the community to make expiation for them and to stop a plague that had begun, and Aaron did so. Aaron stood between the dead and the living and halted the plague, but not before 14,700 had died.  God told Moses to collect a staff from the chieftain of each of the 12 tribes, inscribe each man's name on his staff, inscribe Aaron's name on the staff of Levi, and deposit the staffs in the Tent of Meeting. The next day, Moses entered the Tent and Aaron's staff had sprouted, blossomed, and borne almonds. God instructed Moses to put Aaron's staff before the Ark of the Covenant to be kept as a lesson to rebels to end their mutterings against God. But the Israelites cried to Moses, "We are doomed to perish!" God assigned the Levites to Aaron to aid in the duties of the Tent of Meeting. God prohibited any outsider from intruding on the priests as they discharged the duties connected with the Shrine, on pain of death. And God gave Aaron and the priests all the sacred donations and first fruits as a perquisite for all time for them and their families to eat. And God gave them the oil, wine, grain, and money that the Israelites brought. But God told Aaron that the priests would have no territorial share among the Israelites, as God was their portion and their share. God gave the Levites all the tithes in Israel as their share in return for the services of the Tent of Meeting, but they too would have no territorial share among the Israelites. God told Moses to instruct the Levites to set aside one-tenth of the tithes they received as a gift to God. Hebrew and English text The Weekly Torah portion in synagogues in Israel on Shabbat, Saturday, 5 Tamuz, 5786—June 20, 2026—is Chukat.
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