Well, the differences between the denominations of Judaism are mainly in the view of observances. They all believe in HaShem. I’ll elaborate:
In Orthodox Judaism, they aspire to maintain the observance and the Halacha as before the modernization. When that denomination was founded, the first its members were against changes.
Inside it, there is Modern/Neo-Orthodox Judaism, which supports the combination of Judaism and modern values (so long as they’re not against the Halacha).
In The Reform Judaism, they canceled the commandments of the Torah (like Shabat, Kashrut, they allow interfaith marriage, etc.) and some beliefs (like the belief in the resurrection), claiming that those things are irrelevant for the modern time. In short, they rejected traditional practices.
The Conservative Judaism sees the Jewish law as obligatory, even though in practice there is an enormous range of observance among Conservative Jews. They adopted certain innovations like driving to synagogue (but nowhere else) on Shabbat and gender-egalitarian prayer (in most Conservative synagogues) but maintaining the traditional line on other matters, like keeping kosher and intermarriage (but they do allow marriage between Kohen and widow/divorced woman, which is prohibited. A Kohen/Cohen is NOT allowed to marry a widow/divorced woman or giyoret)
I hope this helps you. If anything is unclear, please let me know.
2 Likes
In Judaism, a Cohen is a Jew who’s a descendant of Aharon.
“Cohen” is the Hebrew word for “priest”.
1 Like
I believe you have heard the Jewish surname Cohen, no?
1 Like
So whoever holds this surname is considered to be Aharon’s descendant. There are also a few versions for that surname, such as Cahn, Kahane, Kogan (its Russian version), Katz ( a short for Kohen Tzedeq OR Kohen Tzadok), etc.
1 Like
I never knew that!
Wow, thank you, Kanubish.
1 Like
Small bump.
Any questions?
I am bored and I feel useless, so ask me any questions regarding Judaism
1 Like
Dumb question: who is the main god?
We Jews believe there is only one G-d (monotheism), and there are no other gods.
2 Likes
What is the name of the god?
G-d has many names in Judaism. I’ll elaborate:
YHVH
The most important name. Actually it is the four-letter Name represented by the Hebrew letters
Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (יהוה). It is referred to as the Distinctive Name or the Unutterable Name. We don’t pronounce it, as it’s a very holy name. You may find it written in the Tanach and siddur (= the Jewish prayer book), but we pronounce it as Adonai)
“Adonai”
It means “My Lord”. As I said, we call God like that only when praying, so in ordinary/causal talk, we don’t say it, as it is written: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”.
Instead, when we want to mention God, we call him HaShem, which means “The Name”. Another name: HaKadosh Baruch Hu (meaning “The Holy One, blessed be He”)
And we also call him “Elohim/Elokim”.
I named the known names. There are other names, but I believe the mentioned ones are enough for now.
1 Like
I’ve heard that there is only a small group of people who actually knows how it’s pronounced because the punctuation for it is missing in all texts, is that true? 

1 Like
Actually, whenever I saw that name in texts, whether in Tanach books or siddurim, there was punctuation.
But the punctuation can be different sometimes, and that’s for us to know what term should be said instead of the word.
Big time, the pronunciation is ye-ho-vah. That’s how (at least) most Jews read it.
1 Like
I just want to say: characters may be Jewish converts. Not all Jewish characters have to be Jewish from birth, so you can make some of them converts.
2 Likes
Bump.
Feel free to ask me questions.
1 Like