Ultimate reality — Judaism

What the specification asks for

Paper 1, Section 1, 1.5 (Judaism). Assessed on AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and AO2 (analysis and evaluation), weighted equally. Incandio is aligned to this specification. It is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's indicative content — the point numbers are given so you can check every unit against your own copy.

1 · Understand it

The central statement of Jewish belief does not begin by describing God. It begins by telling somebody to listen: Hear, O Israel. That framing is the clue — the sentence is addressed to a people and issued as a summons, which is what a religion of covenant produces where another would produce a creed.

What it means

The specification names three attributes and one text: the Almighty as holy, as just and as creator, and the beliefs expressed in the Shema. The Shema is the centre — Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one — recited morning and evening, written in the mezuzah and the tefillin, and traditionally said as the last words before death.

Echad means one, and it is not merely a count. It means indivisible: without parts, without partners, without physical form. That reading is what makes the difference from Trinitarian Christianity a genuine point of doctrine rather than a preference about wording, and it is why there are no images of God anywhere in Jewish practice.

Kadosh means holy, and the Hebrew leans towards set apart and utterly other rather than towards very good. That is why Jewish law divides time and space into holy and ordinary — Shabbat against the working week, the rules of kashrut — since the distinctions exist to teach the difference.

Tzedek is justice, and it is the attribute the prophets appeal to. Because God is described as just, justice is a standard that can be invoked, which is what allows a prophet to criticise a king. Micah's summary — do justice, love kindness, walk humbly — states what is required in place of sacrifice offered without them.

Why believers hold it

The reasoning is that everything else in Judaism runs on this. If God is one and has no image, then no created thing may be worshipped and no picture may stand in. If God is holy, then time and space can be divided into holy and ordinary, which is what Shabbat and the food laws actually do. If God is just, then a prophet can hold a king to a standard, which is what the prophetic books are.

The Shema is recited twice daily because it is the premise the rest of the system depends on, not because repetition is thought to be pious. And its framing as a summons rather than a proposition fits a religion whose primary category is covenant: Judaism has commandments where other traditions have doctrines, and a Jew's belief is demonstrated by what they do.

Two objections deserve real answers. That there is no reason to think any God exists, because the world is explicable without one — to which the reply is that explaining how the universe works does not explain why there is one, which is where the Jewish claim actually sits. And that a God who is both just and permits the Shoah cannot be described as either; that is the hardest objection in Judaism, it is taken seriously inside the tradition, and the responses belong to the unit on suffering rather than here.

The most interesting comparison is not with crude polytheism but with Hindu accounts of one reality approached through many forms, because that is a serious rival rather than a straw man. What the Shema rules out is division and partnership in the divine, and saying precisely that is worth more than asserting monotheism against everybody else.

Where it comes from

• The Torah; said in daily prayer — Deuteronomy 6:4–9 (the Shema) (translated)

  Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

  The central declaration of Jewish faith — the absolute oneness of God — said morning and evening, written in the mezuzah and the tefillin.

  What it is doing here: Carries the whole unit: it states the oneness, it is framed as a summons rather than a proposition, and it is the text physically placed on doorposts and worn.

• The Tanakh — Nevi'im (Prophets) — Micah 6:8 (translated)

  To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

  The prophetic summary of what God requires: justice, mercy and humility, in place of sacrifice performed without them.

  What it is doing here: Supplies the content of divine justice as a standard people are held to, which is what makes prophetic criticism of power possible.

• The Torah — Genesis 1:27 (translated)

  God created humankind in his own image.

  B'tzelem Elohim — every human bears the divine image, which grounds the infinite value of a human life and the equality of all people.

  What it is doing here: Connects the creator to the creature, since being made in the image is what gives a human being standing to be addressed at all.

Where it bites

It shows in the mezuzah on the doorpost containing the Shema, in its recitation morning and evening, in the absence of any image of God in a synagogue, and in the practice of substituting other words for the divine name in ordinary speech. It shows in the divisions Shabbat and kashrut draw between holy and ordinary time and food, and in the prophetic tradition's insistence that ritual performed without justice is worthless.

For an answer, the mezuzah is the most efficient single example available, because it evidences the oneness, the centrality of the text and the practice of household transmission in one object somebody can point at.

What people get wrong

People think: The ultimate reality is heaven — the place believers go after they die.

Actually: Ultimate reality is what is most fundamentally real, which in Judaism is the Almighty. Heaven is a destination inside a picture of the afterlife rather than the ground of everything, and the examiners record this substitution costing marks specifically.

People think: Saying God is one just means there is one of them rather than several.

Actually: Echad carries indivisibility as well as singularity: no parts, no partners, no form. Reading it as a count loses the force of the word and makes the difference from Trinitarian Christianity look like a disagreement about arithmetic rather than about what kind of thing God is.

People think: Judaism is the Old Testament part of Christianity.

Actually: Judaism is a living religion with its own scriptures, its own tradition of rabbinic interpretation, and its own account of what God requires. The Tanakh differs from the Christian Old Testament in arrangement and in authority, and the oneness of the Shema is precisely where the two accounts of God part company.

What the examiner expects you to understand

• Quote or paraphrase the Shema and explain echad as indivisible rather than as a number.
• Give the mezuzah or the absence of images as the practice that follows from the belief.
• Never say the ultimate reality in Judaism is heaven; the examiners name this error.
• Use Micah 6:8 for justice, and say that it replaces sacrifice offered without it.
• On the twelve-mark question, take Hindu accounts of one reality in many forms as the serious counter rather than polytheism.

2 · Grade 9 Notes

Core belief / issue

The specification names three things: the Almighty as holy, as just and as creator, and the beliefs expressed in the Shema. The Shema is the centre — Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one — and its declaration of oneness is not merely a count. It means God is indivisible, without parts and without partners, which is why Judaism has no images and why the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a genuine point of difference rather than a wording preference.

Key terminology

Incandio's mark schemes credit the religion's own vocabulary; spelling variants are accepted, a vague paraphrase is not.

Shema (also Sh'ma)

The central declaration of Jewish faith, recited morning and evening.

Echad

One; the word the Shema uses of God, meaning indivisible as well as singular.

Kadosh (also kodesh)

Holy; meaning set apart and utterly other, not merely very good.

Tzedek (also tzedakah (related))

Justice or righteousness; the attribute the prophets appeal to.

Mitzvot

The commandments through which the relationship with God is lived rather than merely believed.

What Judaism teaches

• shared — God is one — indivisible, without parts, without partners, and without physical form.
• shared — God is the creator of everything, and is therefore not a part of the universe or dependent on it.
• shared — God is holy — set apart and other — and Jewish law's distinctions between holy and ordinary exist to teach the difference.
• shared — God is just, and the prophets hold that worship without justice is rejected.

Why it teaches this

The reasoning is that everything else in Judaism depends on this. If God is one and has no image, then no created thing may be worshipped and no picture may stand in; if God is holy, then time and space can be divided into holy and ordinary, which is what Shabbat and kashrut do; if God is just, then a prophet can criticise a king, which is what the prophetic books are. The Shema is recited twice daily because it is the premise the rest of the system runs on.

Sources of authority

• The Torah; said in daily prayer — Deuteronomy 6:4–9 (the Shema) (translated)

  Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

  The central declaration of Jewish faith — the absolute oneness of God — said morning and evening, written in the mezuzah and the tefillin.

  How to use it: It is belief and practice in one object: the words on the doorpost mean the household's whole life is meant to be lived inside the claim.

  What it does not settle: Uncontested across Jewish traditions, so it distinguishes none of them from another.

• The Tanakh — Nevi'im (Prophets) — Micah 6:8 (translated)

  To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

  The prophetic summary of what God requires: justice, mercy and humility, in place of sacrifice performed without them.

  How to use it: It answers the accusation that religion is ritual: the prophet himself says ritual without justice is worthless.

  What it does not settle: It states the standard, not the policy.

• The Torah — Genesis 1:27 (translated)

  God created humankind in his own image.

  B'tzelem Elohim — every human bears the divine image, which grounds the infinite value of a human life and the equality of all people.

  How to use it: Because the value comes from God, it belongs to a person whatever their condition — the same premise reaches life, disability, race and human rights.

  What it does not settle: It does not settle abortion. Jewish law can require abortion to save the mother's life, which follows from the same premise read alongside pikuach nefesh.

• The structure of the Tanakh — Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim

  Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim — Law, Prophets, Writings.

  The three divisions of the Hebrew scriptures, whose initials give the name Tanakh. The Torah has the highest authority.

  How to use it: Knowing that the divisions are ranked explains why a Torah command outweighs a prophetic exhortation in halakhic reasoning.

  What it does not settle: Structure, not interpretation. The Oral Torah's authority is what divides the traditions.

Different interpretations

• Echad read as 'one and not two' — a rejection of the polytheism of the surrounding cultures — and read as 'indivisible', which is the reading that matters for the comparison with Trinitarian Christianity.
• Holiness read as moral perfection, and read as otherness; the Hebrew leans strongly to the second, which is why the laws of separation exist.
• Justice and mercy read as in tension, and read as the same attribute seen from two sides; Jewish liturgy uses two names of God partly to hold both.

Differences within Judaism

The oneness, holiness, justice and creatorhood of God are held across Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism. Differences concern how God's involvement in the world is described, not the attributes the specification names.

The traditions broadly agree here. Saying so is a stronger answer than inventing a division.

Application to the issue

It shows in the mezuzah on the doorpost containing the Shema, in its recitation morning and evening and traditionally as the last words before death, in the absence of images in synagogues, in the substitution of other words for the divine name in speech, and in the prophetic tradition's insistence that ritual without justice is worthless.

Arguments supporting

• Monotheism explains the unity of the universe better than many gods would. — One lawful order suggests one source rather than competing wills. (judaism)
  Answered by: Physics explains the order without invoking any source, so the argument is an inference to explanation rather than a proof.
• A God with no image cannot be captured by any human culture's picture of God. — The prohibition on images blocks every attempt to make the divine local. (shared)
  Answered by: Traditions with images do not necessarily worship the image, and the objection may aim at a practice rather than a belief.

Arguments challenging

• There is no reason to think any God exists. — The world is explicable without one. (non-religious)
  Answered by: Explaining how the universe works does not explain why there is one, which is where the Jewish claim is actually located.
• A God who is both just and permits the Shoah cannot be described as either. — Justice that is never enacted is not justice. (non-religious)
  Answered by: This is the hardest objection in Judaism and it is taken seriously inside the tradition; the responses belong to 1.7 and none of them is comfortable.

Secular / non-religious perspective

Atheists hold there is no God and that ultimate reality is the physical universe, which requires no explanation beyond itself. Agnostics hold the question cannot be settled. Humanists generally argue that a moral life needs no divine grounding, and some add that the Jewish prophetic emphasis on justice is admirable precisely where it is least theological.

Examinable throughout Paper 1. Nothing here earns a mark on Paper 2.

Evaluation

The hinge: Whether 'one' in the Shema is a number or a description of what kind of thing God is. Almost every comparison with other religions turns on which reading is used.

Defensible conclusions

• The Shema's oneness is a substantive claim rather than a count, and taking it that way is what makes the difference from Trinitarian Christianity real rather than verbal.
• Holding justice and holiness together is the most demanding part of the Jewish account, because it exposes the tradition to the problem of suffering in its sharpest form.
• Monotheism can be defended as coherent without being proved, and Judaism's own approach — relationship expressed through commandment rather than proof — reflects that.

Not defensible

• Describing the ultimate reality in Judaism as heaven — the examiners record this exact error, and heaven is not what is worshipped.
• Treating Jewish and Christian belief about God as identical; the oneness of the Shema is where they part.

Exam use

• Identify · 3 marks — Three Jewish beliefs about the nature of God. Short phrases only.
• Outline · 4 marks — Two beliefs developed. 'Jews believe God is one (1) — indivisible and without parts, which is why there are no images of God in a synagogue (1).'
• Explain · 6 marks — Explain Jewish beliefs about the nature of the Almighty: one, creator, holy, just — and what each means for practice.
• Evaluate · 12 marks — 'There is only one God.' The Shema is the strongest statement available, and the honest counter is Hinduism's Brahman-through-many-forms rather than crude polytheism.

Common mistakes

• Saying the ultimate reality is heaven, which the examiners name.
• Treating 'one' as merely a number, which loses the whole force of echad.
• Assuming Jewish belief about God is the same as Christian belief with a chapter removed.

“The ultimate reality is heaven — the place believers go after they die.” — Ultimate reality is what is most fundamentally real — God, Brahman, Nirvana. Heaven is a destination within a religion's picture of the afterlife, not the ground of everything.

Write instead: Ultimate reality is what a religion holds to be finally real and the source of everything else: God for Christians, Muslims, Jews and Sikhs; Brahman for many Hindus; and for many Buddhists, no creator God at all. Some Buddhists do speak of Nirvana or Buddha-nature as an ultimate reality; others hold that the question is not useful. Both are creditable if attributed. (Named in the 2025 examiner report for Paper 1.)

“Judaism is the Old Testament part of Christianity.” — Judaism is a living religion with its own scriptures, its own two-thousand-year tradition of rabbinic interpretation, and its own account of what God requires. The Tanakh is not the Christian Old Testament in either arrangement or authority.

Write instead: The Tanakh has three divisions — Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim — and is read alongside the Talmud and rabbinic tradition. Jewish teaching about the afterlife, salvation and law is developed on its own terms. The scriptures overlap substantially, and the differences in ordering, canon and interpretation are real. Naming the Tanakh's structure is directly examinable at Paper 2 1.2.

Grade 9 insight

The Shema does not begin 'God is one'. It begins 'Hear, O Israel' — it is addressed to a people and it is an instruction to listen. A Level 4 answer draws out what that does: the central statement of Jewish belief is framed as a summons rather than as a proposition, which fits a religion whose primary category is covenant rather than creed. It is why Judaism has commandments where other traditions have doctrines, and why a Jew's belief is demonstrated by what they do.

Carry on through Judaism

• Previous unit: 1.4 · Free will, determinism and predestination
• Next unit: 1.6 · Belief, uncertainty and unbelief
• Ultimate reality in the other religions: Buddhism · Christianity · Hinduism · Islam · Sikhism
• All of Judaism · Incandio Religious Studies · The 4RS1 specification