Religion in the Home

This semester I am taking a class called Religion in the Home.  I didn't actually need to take it, but I needed another class to fill up credits and decided I should take something related to my major (Family Life), so I chose this one.  I am very glad I did.  Not only is it fascinating in and of itself, it really brings to life other religions and has increased my respect for them many times over.  This class consists of 3 units--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  The focus is to study how families in these major religions bring their beliefs into the home.  We just finished studying Judaism last week, and I must say I learned a lot in just a few weeks.  I must admit, I used to see Judaism as being just ridiculously obsessed with rules and such, especially regarding Shabbat (the Sabbath) and Kashrut (dietary laws).  And I guess I'll admit that I still see it that way to some extent, but I also better understand and respect people who faithfully follow all of those rules.  Our textbook, How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household by Blu Greenberg, is very effective in communicating the author's feelings and attitudes toward her religion, which are quite positive.  In the very first chapter, she describes Shabbat this way,

Time. Jews have an amazing way with time. We create islands of time. Rope it off. Isolate it. Put it on another plane. In doing so, we create within that time a special aura around our everyday existence.... You would not think of time as having texture, yet in a traditional Jewish household it becomes almost palpable. On Shabbat, I can almost feel the difference in the air I breathe, in the way the incandescent lamps give off light in my living room, in the way the children's skins glow, or the way the trees sway. Immediately after I light my candles, it is as if I flicked a switch that turned Shabbat on in the world.... (25)

Referring to the practice of tearing toilet paper before Shabbat since you are not allowed to once it begins, as that would be considered work, she explains,

Preparing paper in advance seems so remote from holy time. The objective outsider might say: "This is pure legalism and highly ridiculous besides; there's no work involved in tearing a piece of perforated toilet paper on the Sabbath." To which an insider might respond, "Look how clever the Rabbis were: even in as mundane a place as a bathroom, one is reminded of the uniqueness of the day." (40)

Speaking of the Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut), she says,

The truth? For 99.9 percent of my life, the thought [of eating non-kosher] simply never crosses my mind. I was born into a kosher home, have lived that way all of my life, and have never really felt deprived. I have shopped, cooked, and eaten according to the laws of my faith--and I do so out of love and not a sense of oppression.... To be sure, there have been a dozen times in my life when I've had a passion to eat something I wasn't permitted to have.... 

And yet, I like keeping/being kosher, for as I've said earlier, it is not only a way of eating, it is a way of life. Kashrut is like a portable faith, perhaps more so for a woman than for a man who has tangible religious paraphernalia to remind himself and others who he is. An Orthodox Jewish woman, having no such visible symbols as kepah and tzitzit, tallit and tefillin, feels a heightened sense of Jewish awareness as she goes about her worldly business, all the while carrying with her this elaborate and very special discipline. Strange, but walking past a hot-dog stand or reading labels in the supermarket aisles...makes me feel--Jewish! (118)

I feel like I should put some sort of wrap-up here, but I don't really think in words so I can't quite get my thoughts out.  I'm hoping you get my point from the quotes that I included above, because I think they say it quite well.  Basically, I have learned that people of other religions really aren't that different from me.  I knew that at a superficial level before, but taking this class has really brought it to life for me.