Judaism, customs and beliefs

Judaism, customs and beliefs

The word Judaism refers to the religion or belief, and culture of the Jewish people. It is the oldest of the three monotheistic religions. The main feature of the Jewish faith is the belief in an omniscient, omnipotent and provident, that would have created the universe and chose the Jewish people to reveal the law contained in the commandments and ritual prescriptions of the third and fourth books of the Torah .

Another feature of Judaism, which differentiates it from the other monotheistic religions, is that it is considered not only as a religion but also as a tradition and a culture.

The Jewish identity does not depend primarily on the acceptance of beliefs in a certain way of life. There are two versions about who belong to the Jewish religion. First, the Orthodox Judaism which holds that Jewish law (halacha) states that one that is born of a Jewish mother, or has made a conversion process before led by a rabbi in a Jewish community and finally in a rabbinical court, that is Jewish by definition according to the Orthodox judaism. Second, Conservative Judaism stands the same points, with the particularity that the conversion processes are performed by the orthodoxy.

The most important holidays in the Jewish religion are the Bar mitzvah and Hannukah. The bar mitzvah is celebrated when the young Jew turns thirteen years old and a day, who from that day is responsible for the rules that a Jew must fulfill as it is written in the Treaty of Principles. A young jew before his bar mitzvah must be prepared with a rabbi who teaches him how to read the Torah and all the required prayings. It is said that the Bar Mitzvah is very similar to the "first communion" as it done at the same age, and has a meaning to get completely in the religion, in Judaism it is to prepare the young jew for the role of a man in Jewish life, and they think that at that agehe is a man already , and the first communion, as the name implies, is to receive the first Communion.

At that age the young Jew must dominate the Hebrew, the prayings, and be ready to assume the responsibilities of a home, because this young man will soon become a father. At the bar mitzvah he first reads the Torah and is placed the tefillin for the first time and to get married he must have done the bar mitzvah. The tefilin consists of two small leather boxes attached to leather straps. Each of the two boxes contain four sections of the Torah written on parchment. They used to pray. It is one of the most important Jewish precepts. Prayer is an instrument which means that the Jew will always be tied to compliance with God. The young Jew needs to also wear the Tallit which is a sacred mantle of prayer. This four-cornered shawl is a traditional dress that Jews used since ancient times. This is a symbol that helps practitioners for a reminder to stay within the limits of decency, morality, and ethics, and never allowed to forget God's law. After the prayings , and after the words of the father and the rabbi at the ceremony, the celebration begins a party full of food, wine, music and traditional dance. It is usually celebrated in a synagogue or Jewish temple.

The Hanukkah or the Festival of Lights or the Jewish Christmas. It is celebrated for eight days. It commemorates the defeat of the Greeks and retrieval of the Jewish independence at the hands of the Maccabees over the Greeks.

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