Judaism

Upon finally watching the vhs on Judaism, there was much that I found very interesting and different than what I imagined. First off, Judaism is more of a lifestyle than it is just a religion. In this I mean, Judaism involves more than just coming to worship; it involves building a family, doing things as a community, and helping the people around you out. In building a family, since God told Adam and Eve to procreate, Jews find it important to have kids in the first ten years of marriage. If they do not have kids by that time, they are allowed to have another marriage. This is interesting because no other religion encourages having kids; the bottom line is that Jews must have children.

Another important thing that the movie showed me was how much the Jewish culture has succumb to other cultures. Jews for nineteen centuries had no place that was center to their religion. This was after the second Temple of Solomon was destroyed, and before they were able to gain land in Israel. For centuries, Jews evolved their religion to incorporate the new places of where they were having to live. This is the main reason why the synagogue came into being. The synagogue was created to have a place where people would come to worship in a local setting since the temple was far away, and then the temple was destroyed. It is unique that for many years the priests required at least ten men to worship in the synagogue as that number was needed for the worship to be proper.

I said the Jews have succumb to other cultures because of the number of Jews in the world today. There are an estimated 12 million Jews in the world with 6 million in the United States and 4 million in Israell. This is quite surprising as Judaism has been around longer than Christianity, and I would expect that there would be a decent number of Jews as the religion has spread world wide. Yet, the movie explained the many reasons why this number is so low. The Jewish people have had much suffering over the years being driven from the Temple of Solomon twice and losing their holy land. Also after the second time, they were not able to regain their land for hundred of years. Also, we see that the Jews suffered incredibly during the Holocaust. This drove down much of the Jewish population in Europe and is a good reason why there are many Jews in the United States. The Jews like the United States because of its freedom of religion, but even there, their religion has changed much over the years to succumb to this new place of being.

I also found it very interesting some of the rules that Jews must follow. In their religion, they do not only have the ten commandments given to Moses, but they have 613 commandments that they must follow. These commandments range from not taking something that belongs to someone else to the way that animals must be slaughtered. It is also interesting that Jews are not allowed to drink milk with any meat. Also, the Jews must celebrate three main festivals which include: Passover, Feast of Weeks, and Feast of Tabernacles. Passover celebrates the Israelites obtaining their freedom from Pharaoh, and the Feast of Weeks honors the giving of the Torah to Moses. However, they also celebrate the feast of tabernacles which commemorates the 40 years the Israelites were wandering in the desert. However, Chanukah is not one of the three main Jewish festivals. Chanukah has grown to be quite large, but mainly this is because Christmas is celebrated at the same time of year. This then gives Jews something to celebrate, since most Jews are surrounded by Christians sprawled out around the world.

I found the Jewish culture very interesting, and it struck me as much different than I imagined. They are very family centered people, and they are not a violent race by any means. This is shown through all the suffering other people have caused on them over the years for their beliefs. The number of Jews also surprised me since there are tens of millions of Christians around the world, and Judaism is a religion that has been around longer than Christianity.