9/28/11

Today is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Although at home I go to temple on this day, I am not today. I don't go to temple all the time at home but always for the Jewish Holidays. When I was in middle school my friends and I didn't really sit around in service and such. We would get too antsy. We would end up going to the child daycare and hang out with our camp counselors and friends. Now a days we can sit though services for longer, but we still end up going down to day care sometimes or sitting outside. Our rabbi is interesting and tells good stories always so we make sure to be in the service for his stories. We also try to stay in service for the Torah readings because it is disrespectful if you leave during them. I'm sure I could find services here but it isn't the same with out my friends. Judaism for me is a huge social aspect and sometimes the religious stuff can be interesting I go for the community I have there.

9/27/11

In the BCC news it said that Israel approves, 1,100 settler homes in Gilo, Jerusalem. This caught my attention because settlements are a huge deal in Israel. The reason the government has settlements is so Israelis can live in certain areas in Israel and block off Palestinians from being able to come into the city and get around Israel easily. Israelis are given settlement houses for very cheap because the government really wants people to live there. When I was in Israel I was shown a map of the settlements. It cuts of Palestinians from all the majors parts of Israel and the water and land space. Air, land and water are a huge issue in Israel. That is mostly what they are fighting for. They want the most land, air and water space so they can have control. I do not think what Israel is doing is right. They need to find a way to share the resources because these are resources people need to survive. The conflict is much more complicated then this and there so many layers and problems within the conflict I cannot go over them all.

9/26/11

I decided to go back to the article Professor Valeta showed in class today because it caught my interest. At first thought, it is weird to be religious and not believe in God. That is not usually the case, but when I think about the idea more it makes sense. People can be religious and not believe in God. I believe there are many ways to be religious and not have to believe in a God. This article was also cool to me because it was based in Berkeley, California, my home town and also the guy Maxim Schrogin is from my temple. It is shocking that a smallish town and even my temple out of many in Berkeley was mentioned. I think there is a huge aspect of community that has to do with religion, you shouldn't have to be forced to believe in God. There are many other ways to approach religion.

9/20/11

I read an article in J-Weekly that talks about a museum in Oakland canceling an exhibit that had drawings from children in the Gaza Strip. Huge controversy rose about about this because people thought that these pictures were not suitable for children to see. There was also concern about the pictures not even being drawn by children, because things were written in English and there were pictures of Jewish soldiers with Jewish stars on them. I don't find the star thing odd but English writing from children in Gaza is weird. I think that this exhibit should have been shown anyways. It is really important for people to know what is happening in Gaza. It is the most densely populated place in the world right now and crazy and bad things are happening there.

9/19/11

I found an article in the J Weekly. The J Weekly is a Jewish newspaper that is based in San Francisco and the Bay Area. This newspaper has a lot of good articles about things happening in the Jewish communities in S.F and the Bay Area. It also has news about Israel. It is a really great newspaper that is local for me and I know some people who write for it. I found an article about Midrasha, a program I did from 8th grade to 12th grade. There are many articles on J website about Midrasha but the one I found was a bit old. It was from 1998. I read the article and found that most all of it still rang true for today. It talks about Midrasha being the "cool" thing to do. It goes on to talk about having a Jewish community there that most students don't get in their secular high school. I'm so glad to see that all these years have passes and Midrasha is still going on strong. I thought it was a great place where my friends and I could talk about Jewish things that we couldn't really talk about at school. The teachers were amazing and so informative as well as good friends and it was always a fun place to hang out.

9/19/11

I found an article online that brought up Judaism being a religion or a culture. I have always found this a difficult thing to explain. Although yes Judaism has a lot of religious aspects there are also many cultural aspects of it too. People can feel and be Jewish and not practice the religion. In the article "Is Judaism a Religion or a Culture?" by Leora Batnitzky she talks about many Jews in America consider them self as secular Jews and how it has doubled. It can be often hard to explain to people who aren't Jewish how you can be Jewish without the religion. There is this huge cultural aspect for some people and a big community of Jews who feel the same. Where culture is all they are really needing to get out of Judaism. I think this will always be a conflicting feeling with Jews, whether Judaism is a religion or a culture. To some it may be both and to others just one.

9/14/11

Today in class we watched a movie about a women who was an anthropologist. She was going to study about Judaism and then she was told she had lung cancer. From there she decided to study the Orthodox Jews. They kindly invited her into their community and wanted to help her with her sickness. Even though this movie was a bit old, it was interesting to see how the Orthodox Jews live their life. I did not know that Orthodox women had to cover their hair, as well as a couple other things some of the ladies mentioned. I found it really interesting that people came back and chose to live the Orthodox life style. I have never had a feeling of something really calling to me, and it was amazing that these ladies were so called to Orthodoxy. It seems so extreme but they seemed to really enjoy their lifestyle. It is very impressive that they can do it, but also then again if you fall into a routine in life, things will come easy. These Orthodox Jews seemed so happy with their lifestyle and it must be really fulling, just for us outsiders it is hard to understand why people go to such extreme measures to live their life.

9/13/11

I found an article online called "The Status of Women in the Bible." In this article they talk about the status of women in the bible and the how some people view it. Some think that the bible was very progressive for its time, while others say it was written by man and therefor perpetuated a patriarchal society. They also quote the line, "God created the human in His image. He created it in the image of God; He created them male and female" (Genesis 1:27). Like we talked about in recitation, this passage says that men and women were create equally under the image of God. I don't think that there are many other examples of women being considered equal to men, but I don't know the bible well at all. But from what it seems like women are pushed down and treated as lower figures. 

 

9/12/11

It was nice that the lady from the temple Harhashem came to speak with us today. She talked about Reform Judaism and I thought she did a pretty good job explaining it. I grew up going to a reform temple and everything she said mostly rang true to me. I really believe in the reform movement because like the lady said, they are very accepting of everyone. I think this is a good way to practice your religion. No one should be excluded or hated because of how they are. I wish that the professor would bring in other speakers, ones from more aspects of the religion. It would be nice if he brought in a Orthodox person and a conservative person, so we could compare and talk about all the aspects of Judaism.

9/8/11

Today we talked in class about interpretations and how text has different interpretations. It makes total sense. That is why there are so many different views and ideas people can get out of the bible. And because there are so many ways to see the text people can get confused or think that they are correct over someone else. Also, these texts were written so long ago and in many different times the interpretations are varried. This all can cause conflict or make people feel like their interpretations is wrong or they are not included in the commuinty. Maybe the bible doesn't say anything or mean anything about homosexuality being wrong or some constraversal topic and people are just interprating the text in that way.

9/7/11

Today in class we talked about the Hebrew Bible. It was interesting how certain stories are said to be more important and some less important. With the many different writers and versions of the Hebrew Bible you see the conflicts or the differences between them. Somethings at the time may have been more important then others or some stories may have not even been told to the scribes of that version of the Hebrew Bible. It is hard to say what is real and what is not or what version is true, because there is no way to really tell and these events happened so long ago.

9/6/11

In the article "Christian Group Criticized for Ousting Gay Member" (http://www.crosswalk.com/news/christian-group-criticized-for-ousting-gay-member.html) a Christian choir group kicked out a member for being gay. It is good to see people standing up for this guy and make a big deal of it. The universities policies to me were a bit odd and contradicting. I hope they figure something out and that member can be in the group if he wants. But he may not want to now because people are discriminating against him.