Waking up this morning was a large accomplishment, only running on 4 hours of sleep I managed to get out of bed, shower, eat, and get ready for the day ahead. This day was Judaism day, and during the North American Seminar I signed up as a leader for this day. By doing this I thought I was going to get some special insight on how I think about Judaism. As much as I wanted is to happen, it did not. But what I did discover later today was far more revealing. Today we went to Safed, here there are a mixture of all sects of Judaism. The difference is literally one street apart.
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Walking into each one and around Safed was a great example of showing how Jews all over the world have many different views on the same religion and still live together. The candles were nice too... When we got back to Rayman's after Safed we did an activity where we had to argue over a snack and who should get it and why. This showed how it can be straining for Jews to fight over the same religion just having different points of view about it. This was followed by a quick game of snakes and ladders (because there are more snakes then chutes in Israel). At certain points in the game each of the four groups had to answer a question from the point of view of a different sect of Judaism. We then had a 20 minute break to prepare ourselves for the JC's activity. This activity was much harder then waking up this morning, but extremely revealing and helpful. We were put into groups of four people that we did not know very well. We then had to write 3 good and 3 bad characteristics about each person in the group. Then reveal this to each person. Finding bad characteristics of people you do not know is hard, but it is easy to give them your feed back. After this we were out into groups of 4 people who we were close with. This was where the activity truly came into play. It is much easier to find bad characteristics of people you know, but so much harder to tell this to the person. This is also the same from the opposite side of receiving criticism from some of your closest friends. It is very hard, and even harder to stay there, take it, and then try and realize that they are right, and you must work to tweak or fix this characteristic so that you can become a better person. At this moment, I realized what Judaism meant to me, it was trying to admit to your bad side, seeing that it is a problem and striving to fix it so that you can become a better person. Judaism stresses the importance of mitzvot and ones duty to make themselves a better person. This is Judaism for me and hopefully people strive to become better, whether they be Jewish or not.
Walking into each one and around Safed was a great example of showing how Jews all over the world have many different views on the same religion and still live together. The candles were nice too... When we got back to Rayman's after Safed we did an activity where we had to argue over a snack and who should get it and why. This showed how it can be straining for Jews to fight over the same religion just having different points of view about it. This was followed by a quick game of snakes and ladders (because there are more snakes then chutes in Israel). At certain points in the game each of the four groups had to answer a question from the point of view of a different sect of Judaism. We then had a 20 minute break to prepare ourselves for the JC's activity. This activity was much harder then waking up this morning, but extremely revealing and helpful. We were put into groups of four people that we did not know very well. We then had to write 3 good and 3 bad characteristics about each person in the group. Then reveal this to each person. Finding bad characteristics of people you do not know is hard, but it is easy to give them your feed back. After this we were out into groups of 4 people who we were close with. This was where the activity truly came into play. It is much easier to find bad characteristics of people you know, but so much harder to tell this to the person. This is also the same from the opposite side of receiving criticism from some of your closest friends. It is very hard, and even harder to stay there, take it, and then try and realize that they are right, and you must work to tweak or fix this characteristic so that you can become a better person. At this moment, I realized what Judaism meant to me, it was trying to admit to your bad side, seeing that it is a problem and striving to fix it so that you can become a better person. Judaism stresses the importance of mitzvot and ones duty to make themselves a better person. This is Judaism for me and hopefully people strive to become better, whether they be Jewish or not.