As with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the origins of Shearith Israel trace back to a small group of religious freedom-seekers and a treacherous ocean passage to the New World.
Jews focus on the Torah, the embodiment of God's will; Christians, on an embodied God.
To Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant Christians, communion involves partaking of the physical real presence of God in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. By contrast, the Torah draws the Jew into engagement with God's infinite mind. Torah learning is the definitive Jewish mode of communion with God.
The giving of the Torah is a story of God seeking to provide humanity with the opportunity to make moral decisions.
Jews seek to cleave to the will of God as set forth in the Bible and, particularly, the Pentateuch, with its rabbinic commentaries, the Mishnah and Talmud.
When the Temple was destroyed, the Jewish people faced a crisis unlike any other in its history. For centuries, the sacrificial system had served as the primary medium of atonement before the Almighty.
