Judaism is a religion I knew absolutely nothing about before reading for this assignment. I am still trying to grasp everything and this was a little more complicated to understand then Islam. I did find many things interesting considering the only information I knew, was of the Jews and the Holocaust. This helped me to understand what a Jew was and the religion of Judaism. Judaism contains the idea that there is one belief, and that belief is that of one God, one ultimate creator of all things. From Huston Smith’s Book The World’s Religions, I gathered that Judaism is about praising one creator. The creator they worship is God and they give him full respect and responsibility for everything. I really like the point he makes about how we all derive from someone else. He talks of us being a product of our parents and our parents from their parents. This line of generations would go back for decades but eventually someone (God) had to create a human(s) to get the grandparents and parents. This illustrates that there is one original creator. With this point, Smith brought up the question of God creating the whole universe…this was really turning in my head. From previous schooling, I have been informed about the big bang theory and this “theory” explains that the universe was created by a collision of stars and gases. One of the hardest things for me to do in this class is going to be to separate the science, or the proof, from the accepted religious beliefs of that faith.
The aspect of the reading I found most interesting was when Smith presented the information he said about stripping everything down to the smallest element in the hallowing life of Judaism. The explanation of taking a larger great thing and breaking it down to its smallest piece to really see the meaning of God, is something we don’t think of but has immense value. In most cases the larger effects need the smaller pieces in order to maintain. The people that believe in Judaism must have a greater appreciation for nature and all objects created; even I take advantage of the smaller things that mean so much. It fascinated me more when I found out they had a name, which is piety, for this idea of a way of living. They do this to keep everything preserved and meaningful for Gods arrival back. Logically this made a great deal of sense to me. I also found it interesting that they don’t necessarily pray before eating but there’s an understanding of everything being holy and you live by this. For example Huston Smith talks about how people should eat and drink, and prepare their tables for the Lord, saying you’re already doing everything in reflection of the Lord.
The last thing in the book that stood out was in the beginning of the chapter. It was said that the Jews were the chosen people from God and then later in the chapter it talks about how it’s “one of the wonders of history” that Judaism survived. It made me wonder if all the groups talked about in the book only tried to seclude the Jews because the reference of them being the chosen people had once been made.
Judaism has many interesting view points and has a depth I would need more information to fully understand. The aspect I loved the most was how they are always doing things with intentions of the Lord. As a Christian I am constantly unsecure that God won’t be listening to me if I only talk to him when he’s desperately needed. The Torah was the most confusing thing. I gather it is their form of a Bible or the use the Bible in addition to the Torah. Judaism to me sounded like a loving, respecting, caring, and holy religion. I most certainly will be looking further into Judaism and totally changed the view I had previously to the reading.