What is the difference between Judaism and Baha'i?

Answer 1

They are two different religions, both part of the Abrahamic tradition but separated by about 3000 years. The Jewish scholars and rabbis and artists have been busy for 3000 years, so that Judaism today is a rich cultural treasure. Its religious texts have commentaries and commentaries on the commentaries to the 7th degree. The Bahai Faith is a very young religion, just 160 years old. It has copious scriptures, but many are not yet translated to European languages, and only a few have commentaries, which are tentative first attempts.

The Bahai community is even more widely spread over the world than Judaism, including a great variety of different cultures, but there is a lot of travel and communication today (not the case in the centuries when Judaism was developing), so one cannot speak of an Iranian Bahai Faith and an American Bahai Faith (for example) in the way that one differentiated between eastern and western traditions in Judaism.

Bahai is an open religion, seeking converts and generally speaking, accepting whoever wants to join. It has no Rabbis: there are scholars, but they have no authority, and there are elected councils that govern local Bahai communities, but they have no authorization to say what the Bahai scriptures and teachings mean. Women participate equally, except (at least for now) at the international level, where the Universal House of Justice has nine elected male members.

Bahais accept Jesus and use the New Testament as scripture, and also accept Muhammad and use the Quran, in addition to their own scriptures, which are the works written by Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha, and in some cases authenticated reports of Abdu'l-Baha's spoken words.

Bahai is quite explicitly modern, speaking of modernity as a new age that needs new religious and social teachings, such as the equality of mean and women, universal education, the abolition of the clergy, the need for a mechanism of world government to guarantee the peace and ensure free trade and communication.

The virtues and core principles of the two religions are very much the same: both praise honesty and abhor lying, for example, both teach that there is one God who sends guidance to humanity.