askchapo

I think that Judaism is a particularly heterogeneous religion because it largely doesn't maintain a strict orthodoxy in the same way that a religion like Christianity or Islam does/attempts to do (e.g. how these different religions deal with heretical beliefs) so I'd guess that it's actually very difficult to describe internally because takes can be so varied that it makes it hard to generalise.

That's not to say that historically it didn't or that there aren't some sects that strictly maintain an orthodoxy, just that Judaism as a political institution is largely a feature of history and not the modern day (Pissrael excluded) and so it doesn't maintain orthodoxy like Catholicism does, for example.

Of course you can point to an example of sects like Alevis, which the majority of Muslims denounce as heretical, so this comment isn't really intended as anything more than broad brushstrokes - the general character of Judaism is closer to, say, Hinduism or Baha'ism with regard to heterogeneity and orthodoxy than it is to, say, Islam or Druze (although arguably Druze is a heretical sect of Islam but that's a massive discussion in itself...)

Judaism, partly due to repression and partly due to how it is interpreted and practiced (and the stuff mentioned above), often had people who were more culturally Jewish or who were Jewish but only for Hanukkah and Passover and so it wasn't uncommon for these Jews to be amenable to communism or who were openly communist through history. Whether you can attribute that to Judaism itself or to the fact that people strayed from strict observance of Judaism is a matter for debate however.

Hopefully someone who knows Judaism from the inside will chime in to contribute their take.