Search results
The Pharisees (/ ˈfærəsiːz /; Hebrew: פְּרוּשִׁים, romanized: Pərūšīm, lit. 'separated ones') were a Jewish social movement and a school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism.
The most important of the three were the Pharisees because they are the spiritual fathers of modern Judaism. Their main distinguishing characteristic was a belief in an Oral Law that God gave to Moses at Sinai along with the Torah.
The denominations are mainly distinguished from one another on the basis of their philosophical approaches to Jewish tradition, and their degree of fidelity to and interpretation of traditional Jewish law, or halacha.
First century CE Jewish historian Josephus first introduces the sects in his account of Jonathan the Hasmonean leader who assumed the office of the high priest after the death of his brother Judah (ca. 150) as follows:
A brief summary of traditional Jewish views of death--including its tragedy and its inevitability. The Jewish religion encourages neither a morbid preoccupation with death nor any refusal to acknowledge the fact of human mortality.
- Rabbi Louis Jacobs
Less than three generations after the Besht's death, the sect grew to encompass hundreds of thousands by 1830. As a mass movement, a clear stratification emerged between the court's functionaries and permanent residents ( yoshvim , "sitters"), the devoted followers who would often visit the Righteous on Sabbath, and the large public which ...
In Modern Jewish Thought Orthodox Judaism has, throughout, maintained both a belief in the future resurrection of the dead as part of the messianic redemption, and a belief in some form of immortality of the soul after death.
