Judaism | Edexcel A-Level Religious Studies (9RS0)

Judaism

185 questions
14 subtopics
Paper 4: the study of one religion of six
Paper 4

One of the six Paper 4 options.

Ethical monotheism and covenant, revelation in Torah and Talmud, the development of rabbinic Judaism and its modern movements, Zionism and the Holocaust, and questions of pluralism, gender and identity.

Sample questions from Judaism

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

Ethical Monotheism

What follows practically from the belief that God alone may be worshipped?

Show the answer
Worship directed anywhere else, whether to images, to other gods or to a human being, counts as idolatry, which Jewish teaching treats as the gravest category of wrongdoing. It also shapes prayer: Jews address God directly, without going through any intermediary figure.
Ethical Monotheism

Why does Yom Kippur not automatically wipe out a wrong done to another person?

Show the answer
On the traditional reckoning the Day of Atonement covers offences against God, whereas harm done to a neighbour requires going to that person, putting the damage right and asking their forgiveness first. It is the sharpest practical expression of the two categories of duty.
Revelation in the Torah and the Talmud

How far into ordinary life does revealed law reach?

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On the traditional understanding, all the way. Halakhah drawn from revelation governs food, dress, business dealings, sexual conduct, speech, and the rhythm of the week and the year. No area of life is marked off as religiously neutral, which is why revelation shapes a whole community and not only its worship.
Revelation in the Torah and the Talmud

Explain the place of the Ten Commandments in Jewish teaching.

Show the answer
They carry great symbolic weight as the terms declared publicly at Sinai, but the tradition resists treating them as a summary that outranks everything else. The rabbis actually removed their daily recitation from the liturgy so that no one would conclude that only these ten, out of the whole body of commandments, were binding.
The Soul, Life After Death and the Purpose of Life

Does Judaism treat a person as a soul trapped in a body?

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Generally not. Jewish thought tends towards seeing the person as a unity of body and soul, both God-given and both good, rather than a spirit imprisoned in matter. That is why the body is treated with great respect after death, washed and buried promptly, and why traditional Judaism has resisted cremation.
The Soul, Life After Death and the Purpose of Life

How did Reform Judaism change Jewish teaching about the afterlife?

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Early Reform found bodily resurrection philosophically implausible and rewrote the relevant liturgy so that it speaks of God giving life to all, understood as the immortality of the soul rather than the raising of bodies. Orthodox Judaism kept the older wording and the older belief.
Jewish Values

What is the Noahide Code?

Show the answer
The set of obligations that rabbinic tradition holds to bind all humanity, not only Jews. It is usually counted as seven: rejecting idolatry, not blaspheming, not murdering, not stealing, avoiding forbidden sexual relations, not eating flesh taken from a living animal, and setting up courts of justice.
Jewish Values

How does Judaism hold together being a distinctive people and holding universal values?

Show the answer
Jews are understood to carry a particular covenant with its own detailed commandments, while the moral demands that matter most, against murder, theft and cruelty, are treated as binding on everyone. The particular obligations are the Jewish way of serving a God whose claims are held to reach the whole human race.

The 14 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Ethical Monotheism	Recall questions on ethical monotheism, God as creator and sustainer, God's Oneness and the ban on likenesses, reward and punishment, duties to God and to others, Yom Kippur, and Cohn-Sherbok and Robinson on Jewish belief about God.	11
Revelation in the Torah and the Talmud	Recall questions on chosenness, the Written and Oral Torah, the Talmud, revelation and Jewish identity, Moses and the Ten Commandments, the covenants, Cohen on rabbinic teaching, and Orthodox, Conservative and Reform views of Sinai.	11
The Soul, Life After Death and the Purpose of Life	Recall questions on nefesh, ruach and neshamah, Kaplan-Spitz and Weiss on the soul and survival, She'ol and Gehenna, resurrection of the dead, Reform teaching on the afterlife, and Buxbaum on the purpose of life.	12
Jewish Values	Recall questions on the Torah and Jewish values, the Ethics of the Fathers, gemiluth chasadim and tzedakah, the Noahide Code, God's qualities and holiness as values, God as the source of morality, and Kellner on Jewish ethics.	11
Tenakh: Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim	Recall questions on Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim and their authority, the Tenakh's presentation of God's self-disclosure, its use in worship and study, differing readings, and Cohn-Sherbok and Robinson on these books.	10
The Development of Rabbinic Judaism	Recall questions on Rashi and his commentary on Torah and Talmud, the tosafists, Judah Halevi on Israel, philosophy, prophecy and the Songs of Zion, and Potok and Halkin on Rashi and Halevi.	13
Orthodox Judaism	Recall questions on what Orthodox covers, the origin of the Torah and halakhic authority, the range of Orthodox communities, Samson Raphael Hirsch, literal readings, B Brown on Orthodoxy, synagogue practice and daily observance, and Robinson.	12
Reform Judaism	Recall questions on Reform views of revelation, changes to the synagogue service, observance and gender, the Haskalah, Reform in Germany, America and Israel, and Meyer and D E Kaplan on the movement.	12
Diaspora, Secularisation and Science	Recall questions on the destruction of the Temple, the diaspora and migration, key modern figures, Gafni on the diaspora, secularisation and Kogel's position, Jewish liberationist thinking, and Cantor and Swetlitz on Jewish responses to Darwin.	13
Zionism	Recall questions on the aims and origins of Zionism, the Haskalah, Herzl, religious, cultural and labour Zionism, the State of Israel after 1948, the covenant and the land, Jewish rejections and critiques, and Gorny and Neusner.	15
The Holocaust and Jewish Theology	Recall questions on the theological problem it poses, the responses of Rubenstein, Fackenheim and Wiesel, and the covenant after Auschwitz.	17
Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn	Recall questions on Maimonides, the Mishneh Torah, the Thirteen Principles and the Guide for the Perplexed, Mendelssohn's translation, immortality and the Haskalah, Hatam Sofer's objection, and Cohn-Sherbok, Robinson and Goodman.	20
Religious Pluralism and Jewish Identity	Recall questions on migration and Jewish-Christian dialogue, the Messiah and Jesus, observance in a secular society, exclusivism, inclusivism and Hick's pluralism, Persoff on Anglo-Jewry, and how Jewish identity is defined.	13
Gender, Equality and Jewish Feminism	Recall questions on same-sex relationships and sexual norms, men's and women's religious duties, women in the home and in education, Kaplan and D D Moore, women's leadership, Regina Jonas and Julia Neuberger, Koltun, Jewish feminism and the agunah problem.	15

Judaism is 185 of the 1,694 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £8

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.