To begin with, Judaism, began with an idea, a belief totally radical in its time, a belief in a Creator utterly unlike the gods of the ancient Middle East. Whereas the gods of the ancient Middle East and indeed of the entire ancient world ate and drank, fought, caroused, carried on love affairs with each other, the Creator of the Universe as conceived by the mind of the Israelites was and is utterly unlike human beings, has no gender, is invisible, omnipotent, omniscient and eternal. The intelligence of the Creator, while it may be rational, is infinitely greater than the intelligence of human beings. 

 In Judaism, we relate to God through love and obedience. We express our love in our prayers to the Creator. In our prayers we thank the Creator for all the Creator has done for us and continues to do for us – for our bodies that work in a healthy way, for our intelligence, for our capacity to earn a living and provide for our families, for beneficent nature which is all around us, and for so many other blessings and gifts which God has bestowed on us. We also ask for forgiveness for wrongs we have done to others and for our disobedience to God. We ask the Creator to help us in our daily lives. Through prayer, we examine our lives on a daily basis and resolve to constantly do better morally by acting according to God’s law and doing good to all our fellow human beings. Through prayer, we daily renew our emotional attachment to God, the Supreme Being. By thanking God, we are ourselves emotionally and spiritually fortified. Through thanking God daily, daily resolving to do our best, and asking God for help- through all these actions, we derive the strength to do our best and act morally.

 Judaism  has certain basic core beliefs about the nature of God. God is the Creator of the Universe and so there was a time when nothing existed except God. Every human, every living thing has a finite life span- only  God is eternal. So, we say that God is “the life of the universe”. According to the Jewish faith, the Creator is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful. The Creator is a unity unlike any unity in the cosmos, since God has no  visible presence. God has no visible presence, since if the Creator had visible presence the Creator would be subject to change and decay,  but God, the Creator is eternal, and not subject to change. Yet the Creator is not a force of nature, but the One who created the entire universe and all the forces within it, and continues to sustain it. It is important to know and understand in the deepest core of our being that God is the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful and unitary being who is the Creator of the universe. Our emotional strength and comfort and psychological and emotional support come from the knowledge that we are worshipping the Source of life itself, the Creator of the universe. Indeed, it is only the Source of life itself who can truly help and sustain us. 

      We are emotionally moved when we contemplate the wonders of nature which are the work of the Supreme Being. In the experiences of our own lives and the lives of our families, we recognize how the Supreme Being has helped us. In considering human history, we see how the world has been expressly created to function in a moral way and that doing wrong is not merely a personal choice, but affects society and even nature. Basically, goodness has been built into the universe by the Supreme Being, and the only way the universe can continue is through good actions.

      According to Jewish belief, a meaningful life is one of purpose. The purpose of life is to maximize one’s intellectual and spiritual potential. The way to maximize one’s spiritual potential is to serve the Creator through following the laws set out in the Torah (the 5 books of Moses).

      We all feel emotionally moved from time to time by events that happen in our lives. So, we are sometimes spontaneously moved to be grateful to the Creator. We sometimes impulsively perform good deeds. However, Judaism is a religion which tries to make gratefulness a habit of mind and good deeds part of our daily behavior. Jewish law mandates doing good deeds as part of the commandments given to us by the Creator, not just actions we do out of the goodness of our hearts and when we feel like it. This is because Judaism recognizes that sometimes, perhaps often, we may not feel like doing good deeds. For example, sometimes we may not feel like giving charity or we may not feel like helping a neighbor. If our doing good deeds depended on our emotional attitudes, performing good actions would become very much dependent on the whims of individuals or individual reactions to peer group pressure. Therefore, Jewish law commands we do the right and the good whether or not we feel like it, whether or not it is convenient. Judaism tries to make gratefulness to the Creator a habit of mind through the requirement of formal prayer, ideally three times per day and ideally as part of a group, but if not then certainly individually.

       Jewish philosophy, although it tries to concern itself with the positive, does squarely face the problem of very bad people existing in the world in spite of a good Creator who is all-powerful. The short answer is that the Creator has given humanity free will- the choice to do good or evil. If humans were not given free will then we would be like robots or like animals since morality would be instinctive.  So, bad people were not originally bad when they were born, but they have become bad by choosing to do the bad or evil instead of the good. Ultimately good will triumph, since good people are capable of self-sacrifice and are capable of trusting others, whereas bad people are not.

          One of the axioms of Judaism is that humans are born sinless and they have free will- they can choose to do good or bad. There is no determinism. While Judaism acknowledges that people can certainly be influenced by their environment, they still have a choice as to how they act.

      According to Judaism, humans are not sinful by nature, they become sinful if they choose to do the wrong instead of the right. Even then, repentance is almost always an option. In Judaism, repentance involves confessing one’s sins to the person who one has wronged or to God, if one has done an action which violates God’s instructions to humanity. However, that is only the first step. The second step is to solemnly commit oneself not to do that sin again. Then, later on, if an occasion presents itself to allow one to do that sin again, and one desists from sin, then one is deemed to have truly repented. However, if a person sins repeatedly, sinning becomes a habit and it becomes harder and harder to repent, and they may become locked into a vicious circle. However, miracles are still possible, if that person makes a supreme effort to repent. In the end, virtue is always rewarded, and sin is always punished. However, it is sometimes hard for us as human beings operating on our human time scale to understand that God operates on a different time scale and therefore punishment for sin may not be always speedy or obvious, in our human estimation.

       According to Judaism, everyone is accountable to the Creator for their own sins, and is rewarded by the Creator for their own good deeds. No-one can atone for the sins of another. No-one can take credit for the righteous deeds of another. The righteous do not and cannot atone for the wicked.