Thursday, October 29, 2009

JUDAISM

Judaism
(Approx.) The eighth most popular, practiced, religion in the world. With about 13.3 million people following this religion to this day.

Foundation
In c. 1300 B.C. Abraham founded the religion of Judaism in Mesopotamia. (Above is Davids Star and a Hanukkahs Menorah)

Number of Disciples & Locations in the World
About 0.22% of the world today are Jews. And the majority of them are located in Israel, Europe and the U.S.A.

Holy Readings/Religious Texts
Their holy readings and religious texts consist of the Torah, the Tanakh and the Old Testament from the Bible.

Religious Celebrations/ Holidays
The major holidays of Judaism is Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Sukkot (the festival of Booths), Hanukkah, Tu B'Shevat (the New Year for Trees) and the Pesach Passover.

Religious Customs
The Jewish rituals are birth ceremonies, circumcision for the boys, on their eighth day of life, marriage ceremonies and death mourning.
(Above is the Jewish symbol Davids Star)
Special Religious Dress
Jews normally wear quite normal clothes (pants, and a t-shirt), but for certain religious ceremonies they wear things like a prayer shawl, white robes, a kipa (clothing you must wear to enter a synagogue), and a garb (traditional Jewish wear).

Highest Positions
In Jewish culture they answer to the president, the council, and the rabbi.

Beliefs
Jews are a part of a monotheism belief, which means that they believe in one God of whom they worship. Christianity, the worlds most popular religion, was actually developed from Judaism. The difference is that Christians believe that Jesus Christ (0 B.C.- 33B.C.) was (and is) the Messiah, but Jews believe the messiah is still yet to come.

Friday, October 2, 2009

How could my community be more friendly?

I think my community is not very friendly at all. And I think that we should all be friends and not have any problems with each other at all. But it doesn't work that way, so I'll have to do some work. So what I was thinking was that I could invite my entire neighborhood over for a cook out. And even though some people come for the free food they' ll be making friends (or enemies) and not even know it. And by the use of free food I can force people to talk and converse with one another. Even if they don't talk and it's just a big blow out of food with no conversation they might even see someone they never even knew were neighbors with them. Next I could have everyone say there name, so that when some one's taking a walk and see' s someone they remember they could maybe say like "Hey Joe ." and then, "Hows it going Larry." and there's friendship for you. Spreading throughout the community.