ABSTRACT
The history of Judaism is more the story of a people than a religion. Jewish history begins with the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob approximately 3500 years ago. Abraham embraced one God. He and his wife, Sarah, produced two sons, Esau and Isaac. Isaacs son Jacob had 12 sons, as well as a daughter, who formed the 12 tribes from which the entire Jewish people descend. Between 1939 and 1945 in Europe under the Nazis, a third of the Jewish people perished in the Holocaust. Jews who adhere strictly to traditional beliefs and practices consider themselves Orthodox. The Reform Movement reformed or abandoned many traditional Jewish beliefs and practices in an effort to adapt Judaism to the modern world. The ideological roots of the Conservative Movement began in nineteenth-century Germany among German-Jewish theologians who advocated change, but found Reform positions too extreme. The goal of Conservative Judaism is to conserve Jewish tradition and rituals, while embracing modernity.
