“Judaism?” The term never satisfies, similar to “anti-Semitism”,
“Judaism” is a misleading word. Anthropologists and linguists
first referred to “Semitism” based on languages, “Semitic” and
“Aryan”. We all know of Aryan racism, the Nazi misreading of
race. “Aryan” is a hypothetical, akin to “Nordic” and
“Caucasian” and other made up appellations. Biblically an anti
Semite would be an anti-Shemite, meaning, anybody against Arabs,
Babylonians, or Canaanites and Israelites or Judahites. Shem, as
you remember, is the son of Noah, the eponymous ancestors of the
Semites. There is no wonder why the genealogy of Shem follows
the story of the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. The
gateway to understanding “Judaism” is a clear definition of the
term, along with “Israelite” and “Hebrew”.(Hebrew is a language
but also means One who is a Jew or Israelite.) True story, I
once had a congregant exceedingly angry because I did not visit
him in the hospital. This was a puzzlement since I made daily
rounds and always worked