Jewish Study

2006-12-14T16:57:00.000-08:00

Jewish Studies
Before I took this class, I had no idea about Judaism since I grow up in an Asian country in where people generally don’t familiar with it. I very enjoy being in this class since I found that I learned something that I never had before. The topics which explore Judaism in different perspective are very diverse and interesting. I remember we discussed about Jewish identity, movement, genetics, and community…... One thing that I really appreciate is how Professor Cohen encouraged us to see Jews in an objective way. Even in our papers, he reminded us not to assume we knew what everyone thoughts. His attitude and spirit made me feel very comfortable in this class. He taught us not only Jewish culture, but also how to be an objective learner. Judaism can be a culture, race, religion and community. Today, I still don’t know how to explain to my friends that the meaning of Judaism since it is very broad and great. After this class, I hope I have chance to go to Israel to experience the Jewish spirit. Thank you for Professor Cohen and you guys’ comments on my blog.

2006-12-08T07:06:00.000-08:00

In the reading, 'Conclusion: American Judaism at a Crossroads,” Sarna talks about several problems that threaten American Jews. Low birthrate, immigration, conversion and intermarriage cause the decrease in the number of America Jews, but he is very optimistic in the future of American Judaism. Also, he provides the population data in the end, which shows the population of American Jews is increasing steadily. However, Greenberg and Nussbaum Cohen in another reading state that the young Jews are the great 'at risk' group since they grow up in an America culture which strongly affects their Jewish identity. Young American Jews are reclaiming their heritage on their own terms. People concern about how to maintain both the quantity and quality of American Jews. However, I want to separate quantity and quality here because it is hard to measure quality which is not a number. While talking about the quality of Jews, I want to ask how to define a good Jew or bad Jew? Orthodox movement sees homosexual Jews are a sin, but modern Judaism accept them. Therefore, are homosexual Jews bad? It depends on the subject and how you see it.
As the young Jews define themselves by what they want, so the identity of Jew is quite broad. Is it good or bad? Some people say it is good because it reflects the diversity in Jewish culture. However, some people say it is bad because it fades the meaning of traditional Judaism. It depends on how people see it.

2006-12-07T09:23:00.001-08:00

Gentile woman
After reading the article, “Shiksa”, by Christine Benevento, I find I change a little of my idea on Jewish community. This book reveals that gentile women still face hostility in some parts of the Jewish community. While reading this book, I remember another book, “The Flying Camel”, by Loolwa Khazzoom. Both of them are talking about how women suffer from the discrimination at the local Jewish community. When gentile women raise children in the Jewish community, they need to face wrenching conflicts, day-to-day struggles and profound rewards they experience. Jewish families and communities are increasingly faced with the task of how to integrate non-Jews into Jewish celebrations, ritual and worship. Do they allow on the bimah? Is it okay for them to say Shabbat blessings at home? Also, the author details many horror stories of gentile women who married into unwelcoming Jewish families, who nonetheless, decided to join that exclusive club themselves.
After that, I know why some Jews disagree with intermarriage because some of them can’t tolerate non-Jews to participate in their community. I am just curious that if they are worry about the continuity of Judaism, why they don’t welcome non-Jewish into their community. Maybe this book is too offensive to the Jewish community, I feel sorry for these gentile women who never have a chance to became part of Judaism.

2006-12-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

I know why the "Left Behind" is one of the top grossig books because it is really interesting. It talks about rapture which all born-again Christians will be taken from Earth into Heaven by Jesus Christ. There is an Evangelical fervor in these books that warms my heart. Following the characters through their decisions to become Christians and sharing their new-found peace with God is very amazing. I hope and expect that the Evangelical warmth in the books will inspire many readers to rethink about their relationship with God. However, I am just wondering some of their view of God's doctrine. While God is involved in the apparently indiscriminate killing of billions of people around the world in all of the plagues that occur in this series, I can't imagine what this God is. The book suggests that it would be nice if the Jews eventually accepted Christ, but with or without Christ, they are still following the one true God. I gets the distinct impression that there are two ways to heaven -one through Christ, and the other through being born a Jew. Even if people are related to someone who was chosen by God, it does not make them chosen by God. God chooses those who choose him. Muslims are as close to being God's chosen people as are Jews who have not accepted Jesus.

2006-11-28T12:52:00.000-08:00

Messianic Judaism
Messianic Judaism is the name most used by Jewish people, who actually have become Christians when referring to Jews. However, they are still Jewish even though they believe in Jesus. They think Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. As professor Cohen said they were between Christian and Judaism. Sometime, they are not accepted by either one of them and under their pressure to find way to survive. Most Messianic believers refuse to be classified as Christian because Christians reject the Torah and adopted pagan festivals, such as Ester,Christmas, and Halloween. Judaism rejects them because Messianic Judaism aims to convert Jews to Christianity, so it will eliminate Judaism. I feel very interested in this group because they have two different identities which are Judaism and Christian, and they think they can coexist with each other. I understand why both Christian and Judaism reject to accept Messianic Judaism because they try to connect them together, but they have their original doctrines and culture. I am just curious about how they define their identity between Judaism and Christian because they are different from each other. If they don’t belong to either one of them, why do they keep some of Judaims and Christian's doctrines and custom? It is hard to ask people to convert to Messianic Judaism since both Judaism and Christian are two of the biggest religions.

2006-11-23T07:51:00.000-08:00

Intermarriage
I think there is no direct relationship between exogamy and Jewish identity, but exogamy can be a way for non-Jewish people to know what Judaism is. Therefore, intermarriage won't contribute to low Jewish continuity. I agree with Barack Fishman that parents, peer Group, and Jewish education are the keys to Jewishness. In fact, they are closely related to each other. If an intermarried couple educates their children about Judaism and take part Jewish events with them when they are young, children will have stronger sense of being Jew because they are easily affected by what their parents do. In other words, intermarriage won't threat to Judaism if their Jewish parents insist to educate Judaism to them. One of the best ways to educate Judaism and strength the Jewish identity to the children of intermarried is to take them to synagogue and let them get along with Jewish people. Children are not only easily affected by their parents, but also their peers. When they see all of their friends are Jewish, there is a pressure or attraction to them to convert to Jewish. Beside that, a good Jewish education program is very important to maintain Jewish continuity. Keeping Jewish teens in some kind of Jewish schooling has a great implicit. The Jewish education program should start from supplementary school, so it can create a strong Jewish sense in their mind. I can understand that people misunderstand intermarriage will cause shrinkage, but they should be objective to see the larger-scale picture.

2006-11-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

The Flying Camel
The cover of the book, The Flying Camel, by Loolwa Khazzoom, shows a lady who wears hijabs and mask sits on the floor. I originally thought it would be about Muslim women, but I found out it was about Jewish women by the subtitle. While reading the essays in this book, I can feel these women struggle from the culture they live in and the people they get along with. The essays go into much detail about individual lives of women who experienced the discrimination, terrible oppression at the hands of local people. Being a dark Jew in Europe is not that easy because dark Jews have certain things different from the dominant group. These differences can be their names, skin colors, language, clothing and so on. I think one of the reasons that these women couldn’t get into the dominant group comes from these difference. It is like a kind of "Jew to Jew" discrimination, and I feel sorry about the dark Jews because they seem don't know how to define their identity. They have their original standard of being a Jew, but they need to change this standard for the dominant group. That's why the cover's lady wears the hijabs because it makes her look more like the local people. I understand that sometime people need to make some changes because of the environment, but I feel upset for the dominant group who can't accept other groups of people in their society. I am impressed by these stories, and I hope people can understand more about Jewish women's difficulties.

2006-11-11T17:54:00.000-08:00

The Black Jews
The video introduced the black Jews’ daily lives and showed how they practiced their doctrines and their ritual in a wedding ceremony. I quite enjoy watching their wedding ceremony because I felt the black Jews create the black Jewish culture. Even though there were few black Jews participated in this video, I could feel how they enjoyed being black Jews. When they sang in the wedding ceremony, it really reflected the black people’s culture mix in the Judaism. The rabbi said that they believed their ancestries were Jewish, and that made them convert to Judaism. It is a very strong reason for them to insist on their Jewish identity, and I was impressed by what he said. The black Jews made me feel that Jewish community accepts different races of people, and they can develop their culture and ritual. Jews are not just a race even though some people disagree with that, and it can be a religion, culture, or group of people. The black Jews contributes a lot to broaden the meanings of Judaism. They are one of the important parts in the Jewish community. I am just curious about if there is another race of Jews in this community such as Asian Jews or European Jews. It will be amazing to see Judaism develop in different countries with diverse cultures.

2006-11-04T21:54:00.000-08:00

Jewish Studies Programs
While talking about the Jewish studies programs this week, I really didn’t know what should be included and what should not be included in the programs. I think there are very strong connections between each subject. For example, if you want to learn the Jewish culture which maybe related to its tradition. When you study Jewish tradition, you may need to know the history, religion, or people in Israel. I think there are so many subjects that can be included in Jewish studies programs, but I expect the program can let both Jews and non-Jews understand more about Jewish identity.
I am just thinking about if non-Jewish people who have Jewish study Ph.D, can they teach Jewish studies? Some people think that non-Jewish professor don't have Jewish background and culture, so students can't learn the pure Jewish knowledge from them. However, I think we can't judge people’s knowledge from their races. Conversely, some non-Jewish professors understand that they are not Jews, and they spend more time than other Jewish professors to study the cultural, history and tradition. Also, you can see there are so many non-American teachers teach English in different countries, and it means non-Jews can also teach Jewish studies. Maybe some people disagree that Jewish studies is more complicated than English, but I want to say the identity of the professor is not the most important thing to be considered. I think these non-Jewish professors have stronger influence than Jewish professors to introduce Jewish cultural to diverse of people.

2006-10-30T18:50:00.000-08:00

Queer Jew
In today’s movie, I feel sorry about the queer Jew who suffers from his sexual orientation for a long time because he knows homosexual is contradictory to Jews. He has tried to change his sexual preference for his religion, but he failed in the end. From the movie, I feel he is very lonely and tries to hide himself from the public because he feels he is different from others. We saw a rabbi in the movie asked him to change his sexual orientation because it is unacceptable in Jews. However, I just want to know why the rabbi didn’t ask him to change his religion preference. If Judaism doesn’t accept homosexual, this queer Jew can choose other religions which accept homosexual. Actually, the queer Jew has double identities which are Judaism and homosexual. Why does he need to give up his sexual preference instead of his religion preference? I am not scientist, so I don’t know if sexual orientation comes from human nature. But I do know religion is not from human nature, and we are able to choose what we believe or not. Although homosexual is not accepted by most of the religions and public, I am happy to see there are some synagogues such as GLBT which create a place for non-normative sexualities. I don’t agree or disagree with homosexual, but I just think there are no difference between them and us. I won’t judge people base on their sexual orientation because I believe that people’s personalities more important than their sexual orientation. I am touched by the queer Jew who insists on his Jewish identity in the movie.

2006-10-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

Israel equal Jewish
Does Israel equal Jewish? It is hard to answer it, but I think they are closely related to each other because Judaism stems from Israel. Israel is the body of Judaism, and Judaism is the spirit of this land. If American Jews want to understand more about their identities, they should go to Israel to experience its culture, history, religion and people. Therefore, there is a youth trip, Israel Experience, which is for American Jewish to Israel. The purpose of the youth trip is to provide the Israel experience and strength their Jewish identities. The program hopes that when the youth go back home, they will have a stronger sense of Jewish identity. Also, it wants to strengthen their attachment to Israel and relationship with Jewish people. I think this trip is a good opportunity for American Jews to understand who they are because they can’t experience the Jewish culture in America. What they learn about Judaism in America may be different from Israel because of the culture’s difference. America Jews study Judaism with America culture, so the style, meaning and approach to Judaism may be different. Some American Jews think they know what Judaism is should go to the trip because if they don’t taste the real life, culture, religion and spirit in Israel, they don’t know if they really know and like it. I have an experience that I thought I liked something, but I found that I didn’t really like it after I had it. I am just curious if there is some people who finished the trip and found that they didn’t really like Judaism because they found their Judaism are different from the real Judaism in Israel.

2006-10-25T22:51:00.000-07:00

In the Image
After finishing the reading, “In the Image”, I feel that the author, Dara Horn, wants to say the dilemmas of the American Jewish who don’t know how to balance Judaism’s spiritual, religious and identical issues in their lives. It is because the American Jewish mixes their original Jewish culture with American culture, so they don’t know how to judge their identities.
For example, one of the main characters, Leora, tutored her college boyfriend in the traditions and practices of the Jewish faith. Ironically, he abandoned her in the end as he found Leora was insufficiently orthodox. After this, she further doubted about the traditional Jewish. Also, I found very interesting that the meaning of a tefillin is different from the new immigrants and Leora across different space and time. When the new immigrants arrived at the Port of New York after a horrendous voyage, they saw the Statue of Liberty and throw their tefillin into the ocean. It means they choose other religions or reject their original identities. However, almost a century later, Leora got this tefillin which made her rethink about Judaism. I think this part is quite meaningful because people always don’t treasure or care about what they used to have. Several characters in the novel tried to change their identities by embracing other religions or rejecting their identities. I think some of them brought disaster upon themselves because I don’t know why it is necessary to change their identities. Perhaps they come to a new place and get along with new people and new culture; they should not reject their identities. I mean they can learn new things, culture and knowledge, but they should not forget their original identities.

2006-10-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

Jews Film
The purpose of the film festival is to strength the Jewish history, identity and culture in the community. It encourages individual filmmaker to work with Jewish themes, so people can understand more about Jewish.
The Hebrew Hammer is a really interesting film which brings out the issue of Jewish stereotype in our society. In the movie, the director used so many techniques to draw the audiences’ attention. He compared the difference between a Jewish child and his peers during Christmas. The child only got a dreidel while his peers got pricey presents. In addition, he was not welcomed by the public because of his Jewish identity. The content seems very sad for this kid, but the feeling is very comic because these situations were too exaggerated, and we all knew it won't happen in our lives.
Overall, most of us quite enjoyed this movie because it was interesting and brought out the issue of Jewish stereotype. The director who used a funny way to bring out an embarrassing issue made most of us feel comfortable while talking about Jewish stereotype. Actually, people know stereotype and discrimination exist in the community, but they try to avoid these kinds of issues because they feel embarrassing and uncomfortable. They don’t know if they talk about that will hurt others since different people have different reactions toward the same thing. That's why the director used a comic way to express the stereotype because he wanted to eliminate audiences' uncomfortable.
So far, we have discussed how mass media help to strengthen the Jewish identity. We have discussed music, internet, theater and movie, and I find people feel interested in movie more than others. I think one of the reasons is that movie can create real pictures with sounds and feelings in it, so people can be easily touched by a movie.

2006-10-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Matisyahu, Youth

From the cover of this CD, Matishyahu stands in front of a door and stretches his hands. When I firstly looked at this picture, I felt he wanted to express something behind the door to us. The picture is very simple, but it is enough to make me think about what behinds to him and his music.

I will say this CD is so amazing, and it is out of my expectation. His music is very different from the traditional music because I found rap, guitar solos and a little rock in this CD. Even though there are so many pop music elements in his music, this CD also includes religious lyrics within a musical style derived from hip-hop. I know Matisyahu was brought up a Reconstuctions Jew, and eventually turned to Orthodox Judaism. Perhaps his diverse background makes his music very special. I found I not only listen to a religious music, but also enjoy in his music world.

One of his songs, “Youth”, is very meaningful for me. The meaning of this song is how youth choose their futures. The lyrics stated that some of the youth do that; some of them can do other things. It depends on their decisions. I feel very free and relaxed while listening to this sound because I feel life is not that easy. Sometime, you can't choose what you want to do, but this song encourage youth that they can control their future in their hands.

I think this song expresses Matishyahu a little bit because he chose to turn to Orthodox Judaism, and he chose his rock and pop music style to express what he wants. Maybe some Jews dislike his style; he doesn’t care about that and do what he wants to do.

2006-10-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

Jews Magazine issues
What is the purpose of publishing a magazine? How to jude a good magazine? I don't always read magazine, so I don't know how to judge if it is a good magazine which can satisfy its audiences. This week, we read several Jews magazines in class, and I found there are some differences in both the content and style in these magazines even thought they have the same purpose-educate young Jews.

New Voices is written by and for college students, and its style is simpler and straighter forward. Most of us don't have any negative comment on that. I want to talk more abut another magazine, HEEB. Some of us dislike it because they think the articles in this magazine are dumb and not really related to Jews issues. They think it is a joke and quite offensive. In some degrees, I agree with them. However, I remember that there was a picture which showed a strong guy looked like Jesus wore nothing but a tallit loin cloth on the front page. Be honest, when I first looked at this picture, I wanted to read it because of its picture which is very colorful and attractive. Even though I found that some of the articles are not that interesting and persuasive, I enjoy reading it because of its layout and photographs. When I first read this magazine, I didn't expect I would learn a lot of Jews from that because I know it is a magazine, not a text book about Jews studies. Overall, I don't oppose to this magazine because it at least can motivate me to read it. Do you think non-Jews will try to read a Jews magazine? I think HEEB can attract some non-Jews to read it because its layout, photographs and style are not limited on Jews only.

I just feel interested that even though we learn the same thing about Jews in class, we also have different opinions on a Jews magazine. Different Jews readers have different expectations on a Jews magazine. I think that's why there are different groups exist in Jews, and each of these Jews groups has different ideas about Jews.

2006-10-03T15:44:00.000-07:00

New Voice magazine
New Voice is a very interesting magazine because the contents which include Jews’ educational, cultural, political, and social issues are very diverse. Because of its various contents, every one can find what they like in this magazine. I like the style of this magazine which is written by and for college students, so I feel its issues are very close to me. I agree with some of the authors’ opinions which are very enlightened and should be discussed.
I especially like the article, “Limited by Money, Precedent”, because it makes me think about money and interest. The writer mentioned that, “Perhaps the greatest obstacle to expanding the Jewish Studies program is the financial constraint. As a small department, Jewish Studies cannot rely on their university budget for most of its projects.” I understand what the author wants to say. He felt helpless for the slow development of Jews studies program because of lack of financial support. At the beginning of this article, it mentioned that a student who originally majored in Jewish Studies changed his mind at the end because the university didn’t offer the history of Diaspora. The university didn’t have enough resource to hire professors to teach some Jewish course such as Sephardic and Oriental Jewish culture.
I am just curious about the conflict between interest and money. I guess most of the people majoring in Jewish Studies are interested in this subject. If you are really interested in something, you won’t care about how much you can get from that. Therefore, I think a Jewish Studies professor won’t mind if he/she gets pay from teaching Jewish Studies because they enjoy this subject. Therefore, I guess my Jewish Studies professor won’t mind if he gets pay or not from teaching us. I am just kidding; please don’t keep in mind about that. Perhaps it is just an idea situation; interest and money come together all the time.

2006-09-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

Fundraising Issue
This week's topics are very interesting. The first one we discussed in class was how the UJA-Federation raises money to help the Jews. The Federation is like a community which supports Jewish service organizations and helps for recent immigrants, relocation of Jewish populations to Israel. The Federation holds a good reputation because of its organized fundraising policies. The UJA-Federation divides its donors by different categories such as women, men, young people and different areas, so that they can effectively collect each group's money. Also, in the UJA dinners,"each guests pledge is read aloud, honoring the generous and humiliating the stingy.” We had different opinions about this approach. Some of us said it was disgusted, but some of us supported that. I don't know if this approach is good or not, but I just wondered why people focused on the way the raising money rather than how they use this money. There are so many charities use different ways to raise money in the society, but most of us don't care about how they raise money. However, while talking about Jews' fundraising, why do we have these different opinions? Does it mean that Jews is different from other groups? Therefore, Jews have to doing something or not to do something to maintain its identity. Perhaps it is a Jews class; we should concern more about the Jews' behaviors, but my point is Jews and other groups are equal in our society. I just don't understand why people have stronger reactions while talking about the Jews' fundraising. If the same fundraising approach is used in other communities, people seem not really care about that.

2006-09-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

Chabad Lubavitch

Chabad Lubavitch is one of the largest branches of Hasidic Judaism and their goal is to reach every Jew in the world. They like use song, dance, and drink to attain religious ecstasy. Chabad stresses on wisdom, understanding and knowledge. In the class, we watched the video which showed how the Chabad used song and dance to achieve their religion. I can see their wisdoms and passion in the video because music and dance is a very effective tool to convey messages. Even if you are from different countries, people can go together for music and dance.
In the Fishkoff article, I found that Chabad refuses to recognize non-orthodox Jewish such as Conservative and Reform movement. I don’t know whether it is good or not, but I think both the Conservative and Reform movements contributed a lot for the Jews. In addition, the article also mentioned that “Chabad-Lubavitch stresses an ancient Torah concept, namely all that Jews are responsible for one other…… (20)”. Therefore, Conservative, Reform and Orthodox Jews should be linked together.
Another thing that helps Chabad’s growth is the shlichim, in which young men and women were willing to leave their home and move to Shanghail or Zaire for running Chabad operations. It is unbelievable that people could sacrifice their lives to do that. Chabad’s outreach is so successful because of the Shanghail and the way they convey to others.

2006-09-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

The whole idea of the article, “What is Love?”, is to discourage intermarry if you are a Jew who wants to preserve Jewish history , traditions or spirituality. It said that intermarry will cause your descendants to turn away from their religion and worship other “gods.” In order to preserve their religion and identity, Jews have to date Jews only. However, I don't think it is totally correct.
If intermarry will cause our descendants to worship other gods, why can’t intermarry causes non-Jew’s descendants to worship Judaism? Therefore, I think intermarry is not the reasoning that cause to lose members. In fact, intermarry can let non-Jews know more about Judaism through their spouses.
In the article by Sarna, he pointed out that the potential problem of Orthodox Jews not only has had trouble in retaining the members, but also several internal problems such as leadership crisis, brain drain, the issue of modernity and so on. I think if Orthodox Jews don’t fix these problems first, it is hard to continue their movement. You can see there are several subgroups in the Orthodox Jews, and these groups maintain significant social differences, and differences in understanding Halakha, due to their varying "attitudes" to various issues. In the positive side, Orthodox Jews is very diversed, which can accept different opinions and culture. However, diversity is also their weak side. Since these subgroups have different custom and understandings of Orthodox Jews, they don't interact with each other. At the end, even if the population the Orthodox Jews is large, their power and movement is very limited. Therefore, Orhtodox Jews have to fix their internal problems rather than focus on the intermarry which is just a piece of cake.

2006-09-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

The Conservative Judaism
The Conservative Judaism adapted to modern society while maintaining stronger traditional Jewish beliefs and practices. They keep some requirement of the Jewish law, or Torah, but accept some of the modern law. They are between the Reform Judaism and Orthodox Judaism, and there are seven core values in the Conservative Judaism:
1st The Centrality of Modern Israel.
2nd Hebrew: The Irreplaceable Language of Jewish Expression
3rd Devotion to the Ideal of Klal Yisrael.
4th The Defining Role of Torah in the Reshaping of Judaism
5th The Study of Torah.
6th The Governance of Jewish Life by Halakha.
7th Belief in God.

One of the differences between the Conservative Judaism and the Reformed Judaism is that the prior one has some behavioral expectations such as participating in Conservative synagogue’s activities, studying Conservative Jew at least one hour per week and so on. Actually, there are eight behavioral expectations on Conservative Judaism, and these expectations obviously want to maintain the traditional Jewish beliefs. However, the Reform Judaism doesn’t have these expectations. They have more freedoms on their behaviors and more open mind. It is true that both of the Reform and Conservative Judaism adapted to modern society and maintained traditional Jewish beliefs, but Conservative Judaism choose a tougher way.

I think the behavioral expectation for the Conservative Judaism has its advantages and disadvantages. First of all, it is a kind of self-control or self-practices. Though these practices, Conservative Jews can learn more about the history and meanings of their religion. Also, these expectations can unite a religion and strengthen its power since all the members share the same value and attitudes toward their God. However, these expectations may be meaningless if people don’t enjoy practicing the activities. For example, if a Jew participates in a synagogue’s activity because of the peer influence, then he/she won’t learn anything about their religion form that. Furthermore, participating in these activities makes him/her feel troublesome and annoying.

2006-09-07T05:53:00.000-07:00

The Reform Judaism
The idea of Reform Judaism is to introduce innovation and preserve tradition to the Jews. They accept the diversity of the modern culture such as different race of people can be Jews. Pittsburgh Platform, Centenary Platform, and Centenary Perspective contributed a lot for the movement of Reform Judaism. These platforms widened the definition of Reform Jew and affirmed the root of Judaism. There are several things that differentiate Reform Jew from other streams of Judaism in North America. The first one is Reform Jews is part of Judaism not the exclusion. Then, they committed the equity of women in Jewish life. The last one is the acceptation of gays and lesbians in synagogue life. On the other hand, they firmly remained the Jewish tradition-God, Torah, and Israel. They believe that God creates human beings and people respond to God daily. They affirm that Torah is the foundation of Jewish life, and people should study Hebrew, the language of Torah and Jewish liturgy. Studying Hebrew helps people to build up the relationship with God’s creation, so it is an ethical mandates. Israel is an important place for Reform Judaism who promotes and practices Progressive Judaism here. They make synagogues here to support individual to study Judaism because they think Israel is a place for every people who want to convert to or study Judaism. Encouraging Reform Judaism to immigrate Israel, they hope people can go together to share the sprit of God.

The Reform Judaism creates a new image for the public. It is an open mind and diverse religion. I am impressed by some of their movements such as the acceptation of gays and lesbians in the synagogue. Some of the religions won’t accept homosexual in these modern century, but the Reform Judaism can accept homosexual in their synagogue. Also, the role of female becomes more important and respected is another thing that surprises me. After these reading, I have to change my mind on the Reform Judaism.