Judaism is not an evangelical religion. There is nothing in Judaism which commands jews to spread their religion, or monotheism. Jew are specifically enjoined from proselytizing . I've been Jewish all my life, and this is a novel, and I assume christian, view of judaism.
Well then why don't you tell me what the Covenant is? Quite a few members of my family were/are Jewish and I've been told that the Covenant was an agreement between God and the Jews: he agreed to lead them out of Egypt and they agreed to spread his word throughout the world. They were the
chosen people: chosen by God to be his messengers. They failed to uphold the agreement and he has been punishing them ever since.
God had to send down two more prophets to make sure the job was done right. I suppose three if you count Haile Selassie/Ras Tafari Makonnen, since Rastafarianism is clearly also an Abrahamic religion.
Well hell, four. There's also Joseph Smith.
Jews had to live within foreign cultures, so they learned to keep their religious feelings to themselves, so as not to offend anyone. Christians for the most part lived in Christendom, so speaking out wasn't a problem. Jews didn't have the luxury to promote Judaism.
The first Christians lived in the Roman Empire, which was not yet "Christendom," and they were not well treated, and in fact often persecuted severely. Yet they zealously proselytized their new religion. Emperor Constantine converted (for reasons unclear to me) in the 4th century, and eventually Christianity was established as the state religion.
So the first step toward the global dominance of Christianity occurred at a time when "speaking out" was indeed a very big problem.
In reality what is the difference between Judaism ( Reform ) and Christianity
There are a hundred answers to that question. One I find useful is that Christianity is essentially a religion of doctrines, whereas Judaism is essentially a religion of laws. In order to be a Christian you have to believe in the Trinity, for example, and if you sin you can be forgiven. But (especially in the Reform congregation) you can be an atheist and still be counted as a Jew so long as you follow the Law. Another key difference is that Christianity, while stressing the importance of good deeds on Earth, has a strong focus on Heaven and a Christian's priority is to live a life that will take him there (this is similar to Islam, although Islam has an even stronger focus on Heaven, which is the fatal flaw that allows suicide bombers to believe they are doing God's work because the victims will all be sorted out by God after they die so no harm is actually done)--whereas Jews focus almost exclusively on mortal life. Christians worry about being judged by God. Jews don't believe they will have an afterlife immediately upon dying, but that God will reanimate all the corpses at some distant future time, so they worry more about being judged by their fellow man, especially by their family and business colleagues after they die.
I didn't know it was possible to "opt in" on being one of the "chosen" people.
It is possible to convert to Judaism, it's just not encouraged. A man must be circumcised and take enough training to be able to successfully have a bar mitzvah. Not many men do it. It's somewhat easier for a woman, and as I said earlier, since "being a Jew" is only passed down matrilineally, the parents of a Jewish man who marries a Gentile woman often exert great pressure on her to convert, so that their grandchildren will be Jewish.
If you convert to Judaism, and you mean it sincerely, you are telling God that from this day forward you want him to include you in his "Chosen People" and visit the same misfortunes on you that he deals out to every other Jew on a daily basis, as their punishment for failing to uphold the Covenant.
But if you're a woman it goes far beyond this. You are telling God that you want him to treat
your children the same way, and
their children, for all eternity.
