I have five today. The first 2 are the “normal” kind: ones held by those who just don’t know much about Judaism. But the last 3 are a kind I find a lot more annoying. These are misconceptions commonly held by Jews (especially of liberal/Reform/feel-good persuasions). Sometimes these are even found in lists on misconceptions about Judaism — the kinds of lists that start with the assumption that Judaism is “nice” or “fluffy” and work backwards. I may do more of these in the future.
1. Judaism is mainly about following the 10 commandments
Since there are 613 commandments in the Torah (as enumerated by several lists like this one), the commonly-known Ten Commandments make up only 1.63% of the total. And their importance largely comes from their symbolic value: they were the first commandments YHWH uttered during the giving of the Torah*. I don’t know of any reason why they should be considered intrinsically more important than the others. From some perspective, there are 3 commandments that are considered so important you’re supposed to die rather than commit them (idol-worship, murder, sexual offences), and all 3 are inside the Ten Commandments. But then we should be speaking about the importance of the Three Commandments not the Ten Commandments.
2. X isn’t “work”. Therefore X isn’t/shouldn’t be prohibited on the Sabbath
According to all strands of modern Judaism (AFAIK), the Torah is not referring to some folk/intuitive definition of “work” (eg. strenuous activity or paid tasks). Instead, “work” means the 39 prohibited categories of activity, as discussed at GREAT length in the rabbinic literature. Of course a common attitude is that these laws are trivial/ridiculous/hairsplitting. To which I say, yes. But that probably has more to do with what you’re used to — from some “objective” level, religious ritual laws are all arbitrary.
A related item is the idea that Judaism is largely about loopholes. I’m pretty unsympathetic to most claims that X is a loophole anyway. But the idea that an eruv is a loophole is probably a misconception. According to this misconception, an eruv is the set of wires/ropes etc that delineate an enclave within an urban area to allow Orthodox Jews to carry within said area on the Sabbath. Apparently YHWH doesn’t like Jews carrying on the Sabbath but the rabbis concocted this scheme to trick YHWH into looking the other way — but only inside the eruv. In reality, it’s closer to a set of rabbinnic laws created to make it easier to obey another set of rabinnic laws. Which while silly is not a loophole.
3. Judaism doesn’t believe in hell
Judaism has no centralised hierarchy to issue detailed dogmas. In a Christian-dominated society people are used to catechisms, statements of faith and things adherents are supposed to believe. Although Judaism has Maimonides’ 13 principles of faith, this has always been controversial and even where it’s taken very seriously, it’s not quite the same as a catechism.
So yes, there’s no authoritative belief on hell (or anything). But the idea of punishment in the afterlife is very common and occurs dozens of times in the Talmud. The concept of Gehinom actually corresponds nicely to idea of hell. There’s just a lot more debate about what kinds of behaviours will land you there and how long you’ll stay for (according to most opinions, 12 months). Of course there are entire movements in Judaism that reject all these, including individual Orthodox adherents. But to say Judaism “doesn’t believe” in hell is a falsehood.
4. Judaism doesn’t proselytise
It’s true that today Judaism doesn’t seek out full converts actively. However, this was not always the case: eg. the Hasmonean dynasty carried out forced conversions to Judaism of subjects whose lands they conquered. King Herod was a descendant of such people. This was controversial at the time and much opposed. But to argue this away you’d be forced to pull a No True Scotsman.
And then there are the 7 Noachide laws that YHWH supposedly commanded all non-Jews to follow. These are prohibitions of murder, theft, idolatry, blasphemy, sexual transgressions or eating a limb taken off a live animal and to establish courts of law to implement the other 6. There are many prophecies in the Bible that in the future the whole world will acknowledge YHWH as the One True GodTM which I believe means a global implementation of the 7 Noachide laws [ADDED: according to the standard interpretations of rabbinic Judaism]. According to the Talmud, every non-Jew must “convert” to following these 7 laws to be allowed to live in Israel. Therefore, there are Jews who (1) believe in expanding the borders of Israel and (2) forcing the conquered people to convert to being Noachides. Although this double-whammy is very uncommon, it has some decent support in Judaism. Finally some movements in Judaism are actively promoting the 7 Noachide Laws as a code for non-Jews to follow.
5. Judaism isn’t as anti-gay as you might think
One idea is that the prohibition of Leviticus only applies to male on male temple prostitutes and was therefore only instituted so the Israelites wouldn’t imitate the idolatrous practices of their neighbouring nations. Now, this might be true historically but Judaism is not about historic originalism. Each verse means precisely what rabbinnic tradition says it means, and on this verse the tradition is unequivocal. Of course human institutions and given time I think this interpretation will change simply by osmosis from outside social norms. Let’s hope this happens asap — but to say that it’s clearly not about sexuality as if that’s the end of the story is disingenuous.
A second thing I’ve heard sometimes is that according to Judaism “lesbians are ok” since it’s not explicitly prohibited by Torah law. Again, this is a little disingenuous since it is prohibited by rabbinic decree, which carries a helluva lot of weight in at least Orthodox Judaism. And while there are great arguments and discussions happening within the world of religious Judaism that try to inject some much-needed humanity, the idea that “the Torah has no problems with lesbians” is also disingenuous.
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