We have started to study monotheistic religions in class. This week we learned about Judaism. We looked at an overview of Judaism, the rules of kosher, and the Ten Commandments found in Exodus.

In the overview of Judaism, it was interesting that monotheism starts with Abraham’s covenant with God. God promised that if Abraham and his descendants would always serve and worship God, God would forever protect Abraham and his descendants. I wonder how that must have felt for Abraham to make a covenant with God. I imagine that it made him nervous and afraid, but also humbled and grateful that God chose him to be the father of God’s people. We learned about how the first five books of the Bible are collectively called the Torah. The story of Abraham is in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The totality of Hebrew scriptures are called the TaNaKh.

In the rules of kosher, we looked at some of the general rules for preparing and eating food. Some of the rules include not eating dairy with meat, not eating pork, and not letting utensils that have been used with non-kosher food be used with kosher food. Sometimes I see food labeled as kosher, and now I have a better understanding of what that means. We talked about how these are rules that not everyone is obligated to follow. These rules are for Jewish as part of their religion, and they do not necessarily affect how other groups of people prepare and eat their food.

Moses and the Ten Commandments show how God created rules for his people to follow. God chose Moses to lead the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. Then, Moses goes onto Mount Sinai, and God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. They are the code for God’s people to live by, and they are important because they are rules that come straight from God.

Before this week, I did not know too much about Judaism. I had heard about how Jews were exiled from their homeland, but I did not know when that was or who exiled them. Now I know that the exile that had the greatest impact was done by the Romans in the year 135 C.E., and it spread Jewish people around the world. Also, it was new information to me that the country Israel has not been established for as long as I thought. Jewish people only started living there again in the late 1940s.

At the end of the week, we looked at the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. I knew the two religions were connected by Jesus, but I had not thought about it much before. Christians incorporate the TaNaKh into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament. We talked about how Jesus was Jewish, so Christianity comes out of Judaism. (This is similar to how Buddhism comes out of Hinduism because Siddhartha was Hindu.) We used that as our transition into Christianity, and I am looking forward to learning more about Christianity next week!