Judaism is based on the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh. Jews trace their tribal origins to the patriarch Abraham who lived in Mesopotamia in the 17th century B.C.E. Their religion, however, is rooted in the experience of their delivery from Egyptian slavery and in the revelation to Moses at Sinai of the God of Israel.
This God was an exclusive God. His people were commanded: “Thou shalt have no other gods beside me.” God and Israel (the Jewish people) were linked by a covenant. The covenant was expressed in the commandments, which encompassed both ritual laws and ethical rules. The sign of the covenant among males was circumcision. After the revelation at Sinai, 12 Israelite tribes traveled to the land of Canaan, where in time they established a Jewish nation with David as their king. The capital of this nation was Jerusalem.
From the beginning, the history of the Jewish people has been a story of exile, survival, and return. The first exile followed the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century B.C.E. After a generation of exile in Babylonia, the Israelites returned to their land. The second exile began in 70 C.E., when the Romans sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and uprooted the Jewish people from their homeland. This exile defined Jewish existence for the next 1,878 years.
