Practice of Judaism

Practice of Judaism

Growing up on the “east side” of Cleveland Ohio I was exposed throughout my entire life mainly to two religious practices Christianity and Judaism. The grade school in which I attended was nearly split down the middle in that half of the families were families that were either Jewish or Christian. I was raised as a Christian but before I knew it I was attending just as many Jewish services as over thirty students in my middle school class alone had their bar or bat mitzvah. Not only did I attend those services in support of my friends and their families but I also was exposed to Friday night dinners where they would celebrate the Sabbath with their families and over time I learned some of the prayers mainly the ones over the bread and wine before the meal and observed some of the Holiday traditions. Looking back I never really drew any real conclusions or looked at the practices that I took place in, but rather just went threw the motions and tried to be as respectful as possible to my friends and their families. So when we received the assignment I thought it would be a great idea to finally look back in a more critical way to the traditions and practices that I participated in growing up.

When going into the research or the observation for this assignment I drew a few conclusions based on what I thought I knew from my time growing up with respect toe the Jewish traditions. One of the assumptions that I went into this observation with is that the Rabbi was essential to the running of the religious ceremony. I knew that I would have a hard time understanding fully what was going on because of the language barrier but I knew that when I asked some questions to my friends as well as did a little more research on my own I would be able to figure out what was going on. I believed that going in to the observation there would be elements that were similar to a mass in the Christian tradition while not identical they would represent the...