Judaism
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99 free Judaism trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Judaism is the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, a religion, a people and a legal tradition at once, and its calendar, texts and rituals have shaped Christianity and Islam as well as half the idioms in English. A single year moves from the shofar blasts of Rosh Hashanah through the fast of Yom Kippur, the lights of Hanukkah, the noise of Purim and the Seder table of Passover. These 99 questions cover the landmarks and the details behind them: the Torah and the two Talmuds, the 613 commandments and the 24 books of the Tanakh, Maimonides and his fourteen-volume law code, the Zohar and Isaac Luria, Joseph Karo's Shulchan Aruch, and the differences between Orthodox, Hasidic and Reform Judaism. There are questions on the Western Wall, the Arch of Titus, the Sarajevo Haggadah, Yiddish and its Nobel laureate, kosher fish and the six-hour wait between meat and dairy. The easy tier sticks to festivals everyone has heard of; the hard tier asks which forefather the Zohar welcomes on the last day of Sukkot. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which book opens the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses?
Genesis
Genesis is read again each Simchat Torah the moment the final reading of the Pentateuch ends, so the yearly cycle never stops.
Q 02On which day of the week does Shabbat begin at sunset?
Friday
Friday evening: candles are usually lit 18 minutes before sunset, a custom called 'adding to Shabbat'.
Q 03On a Hanukkah menorah, what is the extra candle used to light the other eight called?
Shamash
Shamash means 'attendant', and the lights grow by one each night because the House of Hillel's order won out over the House of Shammai's.
Q 04Which holiday celebrates Queen Esther saving the Jews from the vizier Haman?
Purim
Purim takes its name from pur, the lot Haman cast to pick the day of his planned massacre.
Q 05What is the common English translation of Yom Kippur?
Day of Atonement
Day of Atonement: it was the one day the High Priest could enter the Temple's Holy of Holies.
Q 06What does the name Rosh Hashanah literally mean?
Head of the year
Head of the year, yet it falls on the first of Tishrei, the seventh month, because the Bible also names a spring month, Nisan, as the first.
Q 07What is the Hebrew term for the leavened food forbidden during Passover?
Chametz
Chametz is banned because the Israelites left Egypt in such haste that their dough had no time to rise.
Q 08Tradition matches the prohibitions among the 613 commandments to the days of what?
The solar year
The solar year's 365 days match the prohibitions, yet no one today can keep all 613, since many could be performed only at the Temple, which no longer stands.
Q 09In Orthodox practice, a Jewish girl comes of age at 12 and becomes what?
Bat mitzvah
Bat mitzvah girls in Orthodox synagogues usually don't read from the Torah as boys do, though in Reform synagogues girls read from it just like boys.
Q 10Which festival falls fifty days after Passover and was called Pentecost by Greek-speaking Jews?
Shavuot
Shavuot recalls the Ten Commandments at Sinai, so on its first day they are read aloud in synagogue.
Q 11A shofar is typically made from the horn of which animal?
Ram
Ram's horn recalls the ram Abraham sacrificed in place of Isaac, though Yemenite Jews blow the long horn of a kudu instead.
Q 12By biblical rule, the Temple menorah's lamps could burn only which fuel?
Olive oil
Olive oil was the only fuel allowed, which is why the Hanukkah miracle turns on a single sealed jar of pure oil.
Q 13Which Roman monument depicts the Temple menorah being carried off as spoils?
Arch of Titus
Arch of Titus shows the menorah in Rome's victory parade, and that relief became the model for the State of Israel's emblem.
Q 21Which biblical book is read in synagogue on Tisha B'Av?
Lamentations
Lamentations is read, followed by kinnot, dirges that over the centuries came to mourn later calamities such as the Holocaust.
Q 22Jews celebrate Esther's triumph over Haman on the 14th day of which Hebrew month?
Adar
Adar hosts it, but cities walled since Joshua's time celebrate a day later, because the fighting in Shushan went on an extra day.
Q 23Besides the Babylonian Talmud, what is the other, earlier Talmud called?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is only its name: it was compiled in Galilee, roughly a century before the longer and more authoritative Babylonian Talmud.
Q 14Which city's Jewish community first carried the Star of David on its banner, launching its use as a Jewish emblem?
Prague
Prague's lead spread to other communities, and Zionists later adopted the star as a secular emblem, putting it at the centre of Israel's flag.
Q 15Geometrically, what shape is the Star of David?
Hexagram
Hexagram: the same six-pointed shape was long called the Seal of Solomon and was used by non-Jews as well as Jews.
Q 16A mezuzah is fixed to which part of a Jewish home?
Doorposts
Doorposts of every room except bathrooms get one, and many Jews touch it and kiss their fingertips as they pass.
Q 17The Mourner's Kaddish, said for 11 months after a parent's death, may be recited only in the presence of what?
A minyan
A minyan, a quorum of ten adult Jews, must answer 'Amen' at set points, so a mourner cannot say it alone.
Q 18Which medieval scholar wrote the Mishneh Torah and served as a court physician in Saladin's Egypt?
Maimonides
Maimonides was born in Córdoba and died in Egypt, but he is said to have been buried in Tiberias, as he had wished.
Q 19Which ruler is believed to have begun the Western Wall's lowest, largest stone courses?
Herod the Great
Herod the Great raised it as a retaining wall for his enlarged Temple Mount platform, so it was never part of the Temple itself.
Q 20Tisha B'Av mourns both Temples; which king destroyed the first one?
Nebuchadnezzar II
Nebuchadnezzar II razed it and carried the Jews off into exile in Babylon, and tradition says the Second Temple fell on the same date.
Q 24Who compiled the Mishnah in its current form in the early third century?
Judah ha-Nasi
Judah ha-Nasi gathered the oral law into one code because Jewish communities were scattering and the old traditions risked being forgotten.
Q 25The Hebrew Bible's 24 books fall into three parts; what acronym names the whole collection?
Tanakh
Tanakh's books were all taken into Christianity's Old Testament in a new order, and Catholic Bibles include several more.
Q 26Sephardic Jews are associated with the historic Jewish communities of which region?
Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula: Sepharad, a place named in the Bible, came to mean Iberia, and that is how the Sephardim got their name.
Q 27Ashkenazi Jewish communities consolidated in the 10th century in which region?
Rhineland
Rhineland communities grew partly from Jews who moved north from Italy, and its towns Speyer, Worms and Mainz became the cradle of Ashkenazi Judaism.
Q 28Yiddish developed as a vernacular based on which language?
High German
High German, written in Hebrew letters; the Holocaust destroyed most of the communities that spoke it every day, and its use collapsed.
Q 29Which Yiddish-language writer received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978?
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer became famous in English through Saul Bellow's 1953 translation of his story 'Gimpel the Fool'.
Q 30Who first publicized the Zohar in the 13th century?
Moses de León
Moses de León said he had copied it from an ancient work by Shimon bar Yochai, but modern scholars believe he wrote it himself.