One issue causing difficulty was the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, seen by Jews as a violation of the strict principle of monotheism.
Phylacteries or tefillin, boxes containing the portions of the Torah mandating them, are strapped to the forehead and forearm by religious Jews during weekday morning services.
After the Exodus from Egypt, God led the Jews to Mount Sinai and gave them the Torah, eventually bringing them to the land of Canaan, which they conquered at God's command.
Jewish community centers also represent an important center of Jewish life, attracting non-observant as well as religious Jews.
A kippah or yarmulke (skullcap) is a head covering worn during prayer by most Jews, and at all times by more orthodox Jews.
Orthodox Jews and some Conservative Jews keep kosher, to varying degrees of strictness, while Reform, Reconstructionist, and secular Jews generally do not.
The Samaritans, strictly speaking, are not Jews but Israelites, who believe they hold the true tradition of the Torah given by God to Moses.
From a Jewish viewpoint the the Holocaust represented the culmination of Christian civilization's animosity toward the Jews.
Non-Orthodox Jews include many other Jewish works of contemporary philosophy, theology, Biblical Criticism, and psychology.
King Cyrus of Persia allowed the Jews to return, and, under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah the Temple was rebuilt.
Recently, however, the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements have included those born of Jewish fathers and Gentile mothers, if the children are raised as Jews.
Names. The name of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton (YHWH Hebrew: יהוה). Jews traditionally do not pronounce it, and instead refer to God as HaShem, literally "the Name". In prayer the Tetragrammaton is substituted with the pronunciation Adonai, meaning "My Master".
Orthodox views have generally held that the Messiah will be descended from his father through the line of King David, and will gather the Jews back into the Land of Israel, usher in an era of peace, build the Third Temple, father a male heir, re-institute the Sanhedrin, and so on.