Religious Learning Experience

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For one to sit in class for hours and learn about different religions may open one’s mind to the variety of ideas that other religions teach and practice. They may grasp the general concept of the religion and be able to inform others on the beliefs that they hold, but there is still a large grey area of a religion that cannot be taught in a class. With all things in life, experience is the best technique for learning. Through experience one witnesses an emotional and sensual aspect of a religion giving them a whole different outlook. In class it is easy for one to simply ignore the teacher or be stubborn in accepting other religious rituals, whereas when one goes to a service they are encouraged to participate. For the most part of my life, …show more content…

Given that Judaism is a different religion than my own I thought the service was going to be very different than a mass. What I soon came to realize while participating in the Jewish service was that it has a lot of similarities to a mass when evaluated closely. Some obvious similarities are the Rabbis are like the priests in mass and the podium is like the altar as all attention is turned to it. The pews set up are also like the pews in a church, with the siddur resembling the liturgical book, as they both have the readings and songs so one could follow along. Although I couldn’t understand the actual content of what they were saying it seemed to have a similar format to that of a mass. It interchanged between prayers, songs, and readings as we stood for some things and sat for others. I later asked my Jewish friend what many of the prayers meant, however he too didn’t know a lot of what was said, so his parents helped me. From what was said in the service the prayers were for things like the ill and the sick, or the recently deceased, which is also prayed for in a Christian church. After a more critical analysis of the service, I made a correlation between the most pivotal moments of a Jewish service and mass. The opening of the Ark and the reading of the scriptures is like the presentation of the eucharist. Both are the essential and most important part of the service and we are called to stand to respect them. The surprising part of the visit was that most of what I experienced was easily relatable to my own

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