This book is intended for students of religion and others who seek an
introduction to Judaism. It is, as its title says, an introduction, and
nothing more.Some suggestions for further reading are given at the end.
I hope I have covered the main points, without becoming too embroiled
in details. I make no apology, however, for including a certain number
of quotations, from the prayer book and other sources, because Judaism
is a text-based religion, and to describe beliefs or rituals without giving
texts would be to offer a very faint glimpse.


The focus throughout is on contemporary Judaism. Insofar as I delve
into history, I do so through the eyes of the present. There are many
books which tell the story of the Jewish people, but what matters for this
introduction is the way that the past is perceived today and the ways that
it affects contemporary Judaism.


Judaism today is very fragmented, as I have tried to explain in the
book, and I have been careful to try to do justice to the different strands,
roughly in proportion to their numerical importance. If I have been less
than fair to secular Judaism that is because it does not yet seem to be as
articulate about itself as the other trends.

The main centres of Judaism today are in the United States and
Israel, and I have tried to reflect that importance in the book. However,
I have also referred to Judaism in Europe, not only before the Second
World War but today as well.Although the heyday of European Judaism
lies in the past, it cannot be written off.

I have designed the book so that the chapters can be read in any order,
and have deliberately included some repetition and cross-reference to
that end. However, I believe there is a certain logic in the order in which
the subject is presented, and recommend readers to follow the good
advice to ‘begin at the beginning’.

I acknowledge that my attempts to avoid sexist language may seem
half-hearted. I have aimed at a compromise between accuracy and
elegance, and I know I have not always succeeded. It is hard to avoid
sexism completely when writing about Judaism, because it pervades the
sources. I do hope, though, that when I refer to God as ‘he’ I do not give
the impression that he has a sex or gender, and I sincerely hope I do not
use the word ‘Jew’ to mean ‘male Jew’.

Since this is an introduction, I have allowed myself to use a simplified
system of transliteration of Hebrew, which aims to give an approxima-
tion of the pronunciation, rather than to permit words to be retran-
scribed directly into the Hebrew alphabet. There are pitfalls: in
particular, the letter h is used for two Hebrew letters, one of which is a
harder sound than English h. Those readers who know some Hebrew
should have no difficulty in identifying the transliterated words, but for
added clarity I have inserted a more exact transcription of each word in
the Glossary.

I have incurred many debts while writing this book. I must thank the
Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, for offering me shelter while I was
researching the Israeli aspects, and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and
Jewish Studies, Yarnton, for similar hospitality during the writing. I
derived terrestrial and intellectual nourishment from friends in both
places. I am grateful to my students in Cambridge and during a brief
stay at the Free University of Berlin for letting me test out my ideas on
them, and for trusting me with some of their own. Several friends have
offered advice and suggestions, for which I am duly grateful. Finally, my
warm thanks to my mother and to my children for not letting me stray
too far from reality, and for putting me right on lots of details.