Rabbi in the context of "Synagogues"

Jesus (c. 6 to 4 BC – AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader in the Roman province of Judaea. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most Christians consider Jesus to be the incarnation of God the Son and awaited messiah, or Christ, a descendant from the Davidic line that is prophesied in the Old Testament. Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically. Accounts of Jesus's life are contained in the Gospels, especially the four canonical Gospels in the New Testament. Since the Enlightenment, academic research has yielded various views on the historical reliability of the Gospels and how closely they reflect the historical Jesus.

According to Christian tradition, as preserved in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus was circumcised at eight days old, was baptized by John the Baptist as a young adult, and after 40 days and nights of fasting in the wilderness, began his own ministry. He was an itinerant teacher who interpreted the law of God with divine authority and was often referred to as "rabbi". Jesus often debated with his fellow Jews on how to best follow God, engaged in healings, taught in parables, and gathered followers, among whom 12 were appointed as his apostles. He was arrested in Jerusalem and tried by the Jewish authorities, handed over to the Roman government, and crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judaea. After his death, his followers became convinced that he rose from the dead, and following his ascension, the community they formed eventually became the early Christian Church that expanded as a worldwide movement.

Controversy (UK: /kənˈtrɒvərsi/, US: /ˈkɒntrəvɜːrsi/) is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin controversia, as a composite of controversus – "turned in an opposite direction", and also means an exercise in rhetoric practiced in Rome.

Rabbinic Judaism (Hebrew: יהדות רבנית, romanized: Yahadut Rabanit), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, Rabbanite Judaism, or Talmudic Judaism, is rooted in the many forms of Judaism that coexisted and together formed Second Temple Judaism in the land of Israel, giving birth to classical rabbinic Judaism, which flourished from the 1st century CE to the final redaction of the Talmud in c. 600. Mainly developing after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), it eventually became the normative form of Judaism.

Rabbinic Judaism has been an orthodox form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian Talmud. It has its roots in the Pharisaic school of Second Temple Judaism and is based on the claim that Moses at Mount Sinai received both the Written Torah (Torah she-be-Khetav) and the Oral Torah (Torah she-be-al Peh) from God. The Oral Torah explains the Written Torah, and the rabbis claimed that it was they who possessed this memorized and orally transmitted part of the divine revelation. At first, it was forbidden to write down the Oral Torah, but after the destruction of the Second Temple, it was decided to write it down in the form of the Talmud and other rabbinic texts for the sake of preservation.

Criticism of Christianity has a long history that stretches back to the initial formation of the religion in the Roman Empire. Critics have challenged Christian beliefs and teachings, as well as actions taken in the name of the faith, from the Crusades to modern terrorism. The arguments against Christianity include claims that it is a faith of violence, corruption, superstition, polytheism, homophobia, bigotry, pontification, abuses of women's rights, and sectarianism.

In the early years of Christianity, the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry emerged as one of the major critics with his book Against the Christians, along with other writers like Celsus and Julian. Porphyry argued that Christianity was based on false prophecies that had not yet materialized. Following the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, dissenting religious voices were gradually suppressed by both governmental and ecclesiastical authorities. Christianity has faced significant theological criticism from thinkers of other Abrahamic religions, particularly including Judaism and Islam. Notably, Maimonides, the renowned rabbi, Jewish philosopher, and Torah scholar of the 12th century, argued that Christian practices and doctrines constituted idolatry and deviated from the strict monotheism (shituf) of Jewish and Muslim theologies. Similarly, Islamic scholars have critiqued Christian beliefs about the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, viewing these concepts as incompatible with the concept of monotheism. These critiques reflect deep theological disagreements rooted in their shared scriptural traditions and divergent doctrinal interpretations. A millennium later, the Protestant Reformation led to a fundamental split in European Christianity and rekindled critical voices about the Christian faith, both internally and externally. In the 18th century, deist philosophers such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were critical of Christianity as a revealed religion. With the Age of Enlightenment, Christianity was criticized by major thinkers and philosophers, such as David Hume, Thomas Paine, and the Baron d'Holbach. The central theme of these critiques sought to negate the historical accuracy of the Christian Bible and focused on the perceived corruption of Christian religious authorities. Other thinkers, like Immanuel Kant, offered critiques of traditional arguments for the existence of God, while professing to defend Christian theology on novel grounds.

A synagogue, or synagog also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It serves as a house of prayer (with a main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. Synagogues often also contain study rooms, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and spaces for community gatherings. They frequently display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or exhibits about the synagogue itself.

Synagogues are buildings used for Jewish prayer, study, assembly, and reading of the Torah. The Torah (Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses) is traditionally read in its entirety over a period of a year in weekly portions during services, or in some synagogues on a triennial cycle. However, the edifice of a synagogue as such is not essential for holding Jewish worship. Halakha (Jewish law from the Mishnah – the "Oral Torah") states that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever a minyan, a group of at least 10 Jewish adult men, is assembled, often (but not necessarily) led by a rabbi. This minyan is the essence of Jewish communal worship, which can also be conducted alone or with fewer than ten people, but that excludes certain prayers as well as communal Torah reading. In terms of its specific ritual and liturgical functions, the synagogue does not replace the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem.

Religious activities generally need some infrastructure to be conducted. For this reason, there generally exist religion-supporting organizations, which are some form of organization that manages:

• the upkeep of places of worship, such as mosques, churches, temples, synagogues, chapels and other buildings or meeting places.
• the payment of salaries to religious leaders, such as Roman Catholic priests, Hindu priests, Protestant ministers, imams and rabbis.

In addition, such organizations usually have other responsibilities, such as the formation, nomination or appointment of religious leaders, the establishment of a corpus of doctrine, the disciplining of leaders and followers with respect to religious law, and the determination of qualification for membership.

Shalom Koboshvili (1876 – 1941) was a Georgian artist who specialised in drawings and paintings of Jewish life in Georgia. Born to a poor family of Jews in Akhaltsikhe, Koboshvili was originally intended for the Rabbinate, but quit religious training at an early age. His interest in art was discouraged by his family, and he was originally apprenticed as a printer. All his knowledge of art was effectively self-taught. After a varied career (in which around 1910 he is said to have met with the artist Niko Pirosmani) he eventually became in 1937 a watchman at the newly established Jewish Historic-Ethnographic Museum in Tbilisi. His work there apparently inspired him to devote himself to painting and all his surviving work dates from the period 1937–1941, the year of his death.

Koboshvili's work, which is all in a competent but naive style, is entirely devoted to scenes of Jewish life; sometimes painted in oils, sometimes in water colours on paper. There are scenes relating to Jewish marriages, to Jewish festivals (including Sukkot and Yom Kippur), and to scenes of Jewish life in Georgian villages and on Jewish kolkhozes.