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4. Who has faith?
Everybody is born with faith. Babies are born with faith: faith that his mother will nurture him and provide what he requires. Faith is a natural part of each person. A person with faith follows and obeys the commandments, even if he doesn't (fully) understand them.
5. Is it possible to say that one person has more faith than another person? Are there any visible signs of this?
Faith needs to be nurtured and cultivated so that a person's beliefs transcend to a deeper and innate level.
There are many levels of faith, from superficial to deep. A person with a superficial level of faith can act in contradiction to his beliefs. A person's faith may be separate from his attitude and actions. The Babylonian Talmud describes how a thief also believes in God: on the brink of his forced entry, as he is about to risk his life and the life of his victim, he cries out in all sincerity, "God help me!". The thief has faith that there is a God to hear his cries, but he doesn't realise that while God might be able to provide for him, he is breaking God's will by stealing from others. For faith to positively influence him, he needs to nurture it until it permeates into his whole being.
This also explains why people can appear to be strong believers of a particular faith to outsiders, but their daily actions are in contradiction to this view.
6. Which of the following people is more religious and why?
a. Person A carries out a lot of religious actions (prayer, visits to religious places, etc.) but does not follow the religion's principles in his daily life.
b. Person B follows the religion's principles in his daily life but does not carry out many (or any) religious actions.
The Jewish religion is all about putting belief into action. There are two types of actions: between man and God (the Creator); and between man and his fellow human beings. For a person to be able to relate to the Creator, he must first excel in the second type of action.
This is because we live in a world of action. A person can say that he will support the poor and needy, but if this isn't followed by action then the poor will starve to death. In other words, action is required to achieve something and good thoughts and prayers are not considered to be an action.
Judaism believes that if a person knows that he has to act and has the required knowledge from study and prayer, but nevertheless acts in the opposite way, then it is worse than a person who misbehaves because of a lack of knowledge. This is because the knowledgeable person knows the 'rules' and can distinguish between good and bad, yet still continues in his/her negative actions.
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