The Core Beliefs of Judaism: An Exploration

What does it mean to have faith? For most traditions, faith is a broad, often undefined feeling. But Judaism – at least in its most structured theological formulation – takes a remarkably precise approach. In the 12th century, the philosopher and jurist Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, universally known as Maimonides or the Rambam, sat down and did something no Jewish thinker had attempted before: he listed, clearly and concisely, the 13 core beliefs that he considered binding on every Jew. These became known as the Shloshah Asar Ikkarim – the Thirteen Fundamental Principles – and they remain the most widely recognized statement of Jewish belief to this day.

Who was Maimonides and why did these principles matter? 🔗

Maimonides (1138-1204) was, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes him, the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period and is still widely read today. Born in Córdoba, Spain, he eventually settled in Egypt, where he wrote his monumental works on Jewish law and philosophy. His Mishneh Torah, a 14-volume compendium of Jewish law, established him as the leading rabbinic authority of his time. His philosophical masterpiece, the Guide of the Perplexed, sought to resolve the tension between religious tradition and rational inquiry.

It was in his commentary on Chapter 10 of the Mishnaic tractate Sanhedrin – while discussing who has a share in the World to Come – that Maimonides first enumerated his 13 principles. He called them “the fundamental truths of our religion and its very foundations.” For Maimonides, these were not optional theological preferences. Anyone who denied even one of them, he argued, had removed themselves from the fold of Judaism. This was, as scholars note, the first attempt to introduce formal articles of faith into Judaism – and it set off a theological debate that continues to this day.

The nature of God: the first five principles 🔗

The first cluster of Maimonides’ principles concerns the nature of God directly, and they form the bedrock of everything else in Jewish theology.

God’s existence and primacy 🔗

The first principle affirms belief in the existence of the Creator, who is described as perfect in every manner of existence and as the Primary Cause of all that exists. According to Chabad.org’s rendering of Maimonides, if one were to contemplate a scenario in which God did not exist, all things would cease to exist – while if all other things ceased to exist, God’s existence would remain unaffected. This is the classical theological idea of a necessary being: God does not depend on anything else for existence, but everything else depends on God.

God’s absolute unity 🔗

The second principle is the belief in God’s absolute and unparalleled unity. This is not simply monotheism in the sense of “there is only one God.” It goes further, asserting that God’s oneness is of a categorically different kind from any unity we encounter in the world. No partnership, division, or plurality exists within the divine. This is encapsulated in the central Jewish prayer, the Shema: Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One (Deuteronomy 6:4), which Chabad identifies as the biblical basis for this principle.

God’s incorporeality, eternity, and exclusive worship 🔗

The third principle holds that God has no physical body and is not subject to any physical occurrence – no movement, rest, or spatial location. This leads directly into the fourth principle: God’s eternity. God existed before all else and is not bound by time in the way created beings are. The fifth principle then follows logically – because God alone is perfect, eternal, and the source of all existence, God alone deserves worship. My Jewish Learning notes that, according to this principle, one should not appeal to any intermediaries but should pray directly to God.

Together, these five principles establish a portrait of God that is radically transcendent: beyond space, time, physical form, and any dependence on created things. This has enormous implications for how Jewish thinkers read biblical passages that seem to describe God in human terms – Maimonides consistently treated such language as metaphor, not literal description.

Prophecy and its role in Jewish faith 🔗

The next group of principles – the sixth, seventh, and eighth – addresses prophecy and divine communication with humanity. These are not peripheral theological footnotes; they sit at the heart of how Judaism understands its own sacred texts and traditions.

The reality of prophecy 🔗

The sixth principle affirms that God communicates with human beings through prophecy – that certain individuals are elevated spiritually and intellectually to receive divine communication. Chabad’s overview of prophecy in Judaism explains that, according to Maimonides, a person who possesses the highest intellectual and moral virtues can receive prophecy through a process of self-purification and refinement – though prophecy is never automatic, since God may still withhold it even from someone who is fit for it. Prophecy, in this framework, is the channel through which divine wisdom enters the human world.

The unparalleled status of Moses 🔗

The seventh principle is among the most distinctive in Jewish theology: the belief that Moses was the greatest prophet who ever lived – categorically superior to all others, both those who preceded him and those who came after. As Gateways Online’s summary of Maimonides’ seventh principle explains, all other prophets received divine communication through intermediaries or in dreams and visions, while Moses communicated with God directly, face to face, fully conscious, without fear or trauma. Moses could receive prophecy at will – no other prophet could claim this. This explains why, in Jewish tradition, Moses carries the title Moshe Rabbenu – “Moses our teacher” – and is described as the father of all prophets.

The authority of this claim rests on an unusual historical argument. According to Maimonides, Jewish belief in Moses’ prophecy is not founded merely on miracles or faith but on the testimony of an entire people: the three million Jews said to have stood at Mount Sinai personally witnessed God speaking with Moses. No other prophetic tradition makes a comparable claim to mass public verification – which is why, for Maimonides, no subsequent prophet could ever contradict or supersede the Torah transmitted through Moses.

The divine origin of the Torah 🔗

The eighth principle states that the Torah – both the written and oral law – was given by God. This is the principle known in rabbinic tradition as Torah min ha-shamayim, “the Torah is from heaven.” The Jewish Encyclopedia records this as a fixed dogmatic belief in rabbinical tradition: every part of the Pentateuch was received by Moses at divine dictation. This does not mean all Jewish thinkers have interpreted this identically – some medieval scholars understood the transmission as more participatory, with human and divine dimensions intertwined – but the core claim that the Torah originates with God, not with human invention, is non-negotiable in Maimonides’ framework.

The immutability of the Torah 🔗

The ninth principle follows directly from the eighth: the Torah is eternal and cannot be altered. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be removed from it. As Maimonides states, one cannot supplement or diminish the written Torah or the oral Torah. This principle functions as a formal rejection of any claim that a later revelation has superseded or updated the Torah – a point of direct theological significance given Judaism’s historical relationship with Christianity and Islam. For Maimonides, any prophet who claimed to modify the Torah’s commandments was, by definition, a false prophet.

God’s knowledge, reward, and punishment 🔗

The tenth principle asserts God’s omniscience: God knows all the actions and thoughts of human beings. Sefaria’s rendering of Maimonides invokes the verse from Jeremiah: “Great in counsel and mighty in deed, Your eyes are cognizant to all the ways of mankind.” This is not a passive or impersonal omniscience – it is tied directly to the eleventh principle, which affirms that God rewards those who keep the commandments and punishes those who violate them. Maimonides teaches that the great reward is life in the World to Come, and punishment involves the soul’s exclusion from that world. These two principles establish the moral architecture of the universe: human choices have genuine consequences before a God who sees everything.

The coming of the Messiah 🔗

The twelfth principle concerns the coming of the Messiah (Mashiach, meaning “anointed one”). Wikipedia’s overview of Jewish principles of faith notes that Orthodox Judaism understands the Messiah as a future king from the line of King David who will rule the Jewish people according to Jewish law and bring about an era of redemption. The daily affirmation of this belief – even amid historical suffering and long waiting – is captured in the Ani Ma’amin prayer recited in many synagogues. The Messiah, in Maimonides’ conception, is a human figure: not a supernatural being, but a righteous leader who will restore sovereignty to Israel and lead the world toward the study of wisdom. Importantly, Maimonides is explicit that the Messiah will not change the Torah or be required to perform miracles – his authority will be established through natural means and moral leadership.

It is equally important to note what this principle rules out. Jewish tradition firmly holds that the Messiah has not yet come, and Jews historically rejected various messianic claimants on these grounds. Reform Judaism, which tends toward a more liberal interpretation, does not hold belief in a personal Messiah in the traditional sense, understanding redemption in a more collective and ethical framework.

The resurrection of the dead 🔗

The thirteenth and final principle is the belief in the resurrection of the dead (techiyat ha-meitim). Maimonides does not elaborate on this in exhaustive detail in the principles themselves, but the belief that the dead will be physically restored to life at some future point is a cornerstone of traditional Jewish eschatology. Maimonides concludes his principles by saying that when a person believes in all thirteen and his faith in them is clear, he enters the community of Israel – and it is a commandment to love him and to show him mercy. Even if such a person sins out of human weakness, he retains a share in the World to Come, being counted among the sinners of Israel rather than excluded from it entirely.

How these principles are understood today 🔗

The 13 principles were never universally accepted without debate. My Jewish Learning notes that many scholars – both before and after Maimonides – held views that diverged from his formulation, and some later authorities argued that Maimonides’ list was incomplete or set the bar too low. Rabbi Joseph Albo, for example, reduced the essential principles to just three. Others argued that every single belief in the Torah should be considered essential, not just thirteen selected items. As the Wikipedia article on Jewish principles of faith notes, there is no central authority in Judaism today that could definitively resolve these disputes – making the 13 principles the most widely recognized but not universally binding statement of Jewish belief.

Despite the debates, two poetic restatements of Maimonides’ principles – the Ani Ma’amin and the Yigdal – became embedded in the Jewish prayerbook and are recited in congregations across the world. This gives the principles a liturgical life that transcends academic argument: whatever scholars debate, ordinary worshippers have been affirming these beliefs daily for centuries.

What do you think? If you were to identify the single most philosophically challenging principle among Maimonides’ thirteen – perhaps the resurrection of the dead, God’s incorporeality, or the immutability of the Torah – which would it be and why? And do you think a religion needs a defined list of core beliefs in order to have coherence, or does such a list inevitably simplify something that is meant to be lived rather than catalogued?

References

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides/
2. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/332555/jewish/Maimonides-13-Principles-of-Faith.htm
3. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/949602/jewish/The-Biblical-Basis-for-the-13-Principles-of-Faith.htm
4. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-thirteen-principles-of-faith/
5. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/5183322/jewish/Prophecy-in-Judaism.htm
6. https://www.gatewaysonline.org/the-prophecy-of-moses-2/
7. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12713-revelation
8. https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/644549
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_principles_of_faith