Torah

This week’s Torah portion is the first torah portion in the whole torah. It’s very exciting. I probably don’t need to summarize that much because you all are likely very familiar with this portion. God take 6 days to create the universe, night and day, earth and all its inhabitants, and man and woman. These miracles of creation begin the Torah with a sense of optimism and curiosity. What will this new planet be like? What will this Adam and Eve do? What does it mean to be fruitful and multiply? Like I said, there is a lot to be curious about. If you read on in the torah, you will see that a lot of different things happen, good and bad, and a lot of them would have been hard to predict just from reading the first section, the one we are focused…

everyday life. This paper will mainly be focused on the last five commandments and how they affect Jews' everyday lives. These five commandments are concentrated on stopping all acts of violence and crime. The intention of the Ten Commandments is for them to help people identify all sins that may occur, during daily routines. These commandments are located in the Torah, in both the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy (Harrelson 9074). The meanings of the commandments can be interestingly divided…

The Torah, or the Old Testament, is a collection of stories of the Hebrew people. It was a part of their oral tradition for generations, until, per tradition, it was written down by Moses in the 14th Century BCE. The Torah is essentially the foundation of Judaism; it is not just the story of the Hebrews, it is the story of their relationship with God, the divine, ultimate, all-knowing creator of the Universe. To the Hebrews, and by extension the Jews, the Torah is not just their most important…

Shabbat Shalom! This was the introduction that I received when I entered a Jewish synagogue. When entering the synagogue it reminded of entering a typical church, there were pews and at the very front was a large stage. On the stage was a keyboard, a wooden podium with a blue cloth over it. Also there was a wooden ark behind the podium and if you opened up the ark you would see where the Torah was stored. An interesting fact about the placement of the ark is it is facing were Jerusalem is…

On Har Sinai, Every mitzvah Hashem told Moshe, Moshe would explain the mitzvah with details. The Torah was given to all the Jewish people and they would teach it to each other and write them down, and remember the explanation of them, which is now called the Torah Shebichtav and the Torah SheBal Peh. The regular rules were given on Har Sinai. When Moshe was about to die, he told the Jewish people that if anyone forgot anything or needed help with anything they should go to him. Yehoshua talked…

described in the Torah/Tanakh really happened? Why/why not? I think that the events in the Torah truly did happen. One can look at the Torah with a religious point of view; others may view the Torah with a rather historical and more scientific point of view. I do not view the Torah in a religious point of view, rather scientifically and historically. Today there is a lot of evidence proving some of the stories in the Torah to be true. For example, we have potential findings of Noah’s ark and the…

while studying from the Bible enables me to turn to the Torah in…

guidelines are derived from the TANAKH, a combination of “the whole Torah”, prophetic messages and other writings. Adherents of Judaism are greatly influenced by these ethical teachings, as, living in accordance with the Judaic commandments assists in the fulfilling of the covenant between God and His people, leads adherents to a living a good life as defined by Judaism and strengthens the bonds between neighbour and God. To ensure that all adherents are aware of their obligations they are…

The Jewish museum follows a model of three major themes that run throughout Jewish history. One of the themes is tradition and the reinterpretation of traditions. We have seen this in our class when it came to the Rabbinate's & Karaites, the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, and the different Rabbi interpretations or the Torah, Talmud, or Mishnah such as Rabbi Rashi or Rabbi Akiva. Throughout the museum, there were copies of the Torah in different structures such as the scroll made of parchment…

Participating in rituals allows for an understanding of how patterns- whether they are physical objects or a particular body movement- allow for a uniting of members within the cultural setting. In this essay, I look at the use of kippot and talliot in a Jewish synagogue. Drawing on the views of Emile Durkheim concerning the definition of religion, I argue that, for the members of this community, ‘religion’ is about uniting people together and providing them with their social identities, which…