To Life
Everyone knows that in order to truly appreciate something sometimes you have to do without. I think that this can be related to my Catholic faith and studying about the Jewish faith. After reading the book, "To Life", I value my faith that I have much more. It has also helped me to appreciate the Jewish faith. Lastly, it has enlightened my mind with appreciation for the Jewish faith and how it has been a building block for our faith.
First of all, the Jewish people have a strong belief in community. On page ten it is quoted, "people before we had a religion." To the Jews this is a very important part of their religion. By following the traditions of their ancestors (Moses, Isaac, Jacob) they believe that they will fulfill their deeds as a Jew. One specific way in which they can fulfill the Jewish tradition is by obeying the Torah. The Torah is the Law or the first five books written by Moses. It is the story of Judaism and that is where most of the history of Judaism comes from. As for the Christians they believe in what they call and "idea-the incarnation of God in Jesus, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as a way of redeeming man from sins." As a Christian I know that our religion comes from roots of Judaism. The Jews just haven't come to understand that Jesus is the Messiah.
Secondly, some of the Jewish beliefs that Harold S. Kushner reveals in the book, "To Life" are quite strict and can be a bit of a turnoff to many non-Jews.
The Jews believe that you don't have to be in the synagogue to worship. To the Jews, "everything we do can be transformed into a Sinai experience" and the "search for holiness is not confined to a synagogue." These are the quotes that suggest that Jews believe in prayers being...
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...tself. First of all, I am a very strong Catholic who loves the Catholic faith. I am so happy I was baptized in the Catholic Church. Reading about the Jewish faith allowed me to understand what they believe better and it also increased my knowledge of the Catholic Church. I know that I will need to know this information sometime in life in order to understand different people and their beliefs! To mean the last chapter was the most disappointing because it seemed to slam all of us Catholics and non-Jews. It seemed that Kushner wanted to tell us how to live our lives and practice our religion. I learned that it is not good to push ones religion upon another too much because then it can be disturbing! Therefore, I am going to do my best at accepting others beliefs, but at the same time never forgetting that I have such a special relationship with God…I have Jesus!
The Essential Features in an Orthodox Synagogue Recall, select, organize and deploy knowledge of Jewish belief and sources of authority, practice and organisation. The main function of the Jewish synagogue is worship, with the emphasis on prayer and reading. For Jews the synagogue is not just a building the word synagogue also refers to the community or congregation. The main features of all synagogues, especially the symbols, are designed to help people to worship God. The layout of the building is rectangular, with seats arranged on three sides.
The decision of the Jews was to follow Jewish beliefs and customs. Jewish Christians insisted that salvation was a free gift of God’s grace acquired through trusting in Jesus Christ.
After reading a few of the chapters in "Psychology Through the Eyes of Faith", I feel as if I have learned more in one sitting than many in years of my life. The chapters were not life altering, but simply stated things that I have overlooked. The topics that affected me most were on living with the mysteries of faith, benefits of true rest, and the emotion of happiness. Yes, they are really in no way related, but each of these topics impacted me in a different way, and made me think about what was being presented.
Hertzberg, Arthur. (1973). The Jews of the United States. New York: Quadrangle/ The New York Times Book Co.
It was especially hard for the Jews to fit in to a Christian society. Jews do not share the Christian belief that Jesus is the Son of God. Because of this belief they were viewed as outcasts in most Christian societies. Most Christians taught that the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ. However, we know now that Jesus was executed by the Roman government. The Romans viewed Jesus as a political thread to their rule.
...ands up for what is right. I feel that I can also take this opportunity to start over with my faith and see Christianity through a whole new viewpoint. I want to look back at my faith’s history and the Bible for guidance in redeveloping my faith to find where God and Jesus are truly leading me. Bonhoeffer showed me that believing in God is not merely just attending church, praying, and singing with the worship service. Being a disciple of God is so much more. It takes knowledge, openness, acceptance, and the ability to learn from my own mistakes. The main and full message that I took away from Dietrich Bonhoeffer is that I need to trust God fully and give all of myself to him whole-heartedly. Bonhoeffer himself said “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God” and that is exactly what I am waiting for. (“Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes”, n.d.)
One day in grade five, I decided to find myself. Most people are not "lost" when they are eleven years old, but in my own naïve, inexperienced world, I needed a change. My teacher was the indirect cause of this awakening. She was Jewish and opened our closed WASP-y minds to a whole new world of Judaism. We explored the Jewish holidays, learned about the Holocaust, and watched Fiddler on the Roof. This brief yet fascinating view into the world of another religion captured my attention and compelled me to investigate further. I hungrily searched for books on Judaism and bombarded my teacher and my two classmates who were half-Jewish with questions. I decided, after careful (or so I thought) deliberations, that I wanted to convert to Judaism. I did not (and still do not) know why Judaism intrigued me so. Perhaps their high degree of suffering as a people seemed romantic to me. On the other hand, maybe it had to do with the fact that my religion (as my more Roman friends are quick to point out) does not seem to have any clear and decisive beliefs. It could have been the fact that Jews do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God and are still waiting for the Messiah to appear, which seemed to be a good reason as to why there was so much wrong with the world. Whatever it was, it drew me in and launched me into a world of discovery and discouragement.
While Christianity places emphasis on focusing on the New Covenant as told through Jesus Christ, Judaism places its emphasis on right conduct that is recorded in the Torah and Talmud. Christians believe in individual salvation from sin through repentance and receiving Jesus Christ as their God and Savior through faith. Jews believe in individual and collective participation with God through tradition, rituals, prayers and ethical actions. Christianity believes in a triune God, one person of whom became human, whereas Judaism emphasizes the oneness of God and rejects the Christian concept of God in human form. Judaism and Christianity share the belief that there is One, True God, who is the only one worthy to be worshipped. Both Judaism and Christianity believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for Jews the God of the Tanaka and for Christians the God of the Old Testament, the creator of the universe. In both religions, offenses against the will of God are called sin. These sins can be thoughts, words, or
Judaism and Christianity developed on the basis obeying God, on adherence to his rules and intentions and their faithful fulfillment. Since the fulfillment of God’s will is a duty of a Jewish or Christian person, both religions fall into the rule-deontological category.
Christianity is mainly founded on the life, death, teachings, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christianity was developed from Judaism during the 1st century, it has several different branches and forms which accompany different beliefs and practices. Christianity
Although both religions believe in monotheism, Judaism is based on an absolute deity called Yahweh. The beginning of the Jewish religion and the creation of the world is told throughout the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible. And the Jewish teachings are known as the Torah. However, the five books of Moses are taught to be the most sacred books of all the scriptures. Just like Muslims, Jews believe that there was prophets that God sent to spread his word, but they do not stand on the belief that just one prophet heard revelations. They belief that all the prophets heard them and there teachings can be found in the Bible. The Jews feel that history begins the same way as the Muslims with the creation of the world by God, but after this they tend to veer off from the Islamic beliefs. They believe that God sent “patria...
Judaism and the Greco-Roman world had significant influences in early Christian communities. Each notably impacted the ways these communities defined themselves and related to the greater Greco-Roman culture in the earliest era of Christianity. As many authors and audiences in the New Testament were Jewish and lived in the Greco-Roman world, the connections between these communities and the earliest stages of Christianity are diverse and sometimes conflicting. The earliest Christian communities defined their identities in relation to Judaism and the larger Greco-Roman context in many and conflicting models, some of which include the relationship between Hebrew scriptures and the community, the inclusion of Gentiles based on faith, and accommodation
Judaism does not accept the thought of original sin, the idea that people are bad from birth and cannot remove sin by themselves. An act of grace provided by the sacrificial death of Jesus as resentment for all of humanity's sins. For Christians, there are no other forms of salvation other than through Jesus.
Instead of one watching this film and becoming anti-sematic towards Jewish people, they may become more understanding of the Jewish peoples beliefs and values, and be
When a woman gets pregnant, she and her partner make a serious decision whether they should give birth to the unborn child or abort it. However, sometimes every couple can have a different outlook about giving birth or aborting because every male and female has his or her ways of thinking. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” the author, Ernest Hemingway tells a story of an American man and his girlfriend, Jig, who have a disagreement in the train station on the subject of whether to keep the unborn child or to abort. However, the author uses binary opposition of life and death to portray the polemic argument a couple encounters regarding abortion. As a symbol for the binary opposition of life and death, he represents the couple’s expressions, feelings, and the description of nature.