Judaism Religion

I decided that I wanted my paper to focus on a Jewish religion (Judaism). I decided to do this because I do have a lot of Jewish friends and I have always wanted to take a closer look into that religious culture, especially from the perspective of my Catholic values. I took a lot of time to decide which religious service and location to attend and I ultimately decide don Temple Solel which is located in Bowie, MD. I chose this location because I called and initially spoke with a representative and they made me feel the most welcome, coming in and observing services as someone not of Jewish decent.
Before this attending this service, I think I had quite a few misconceptions about the Jewish religion. The first one was that there was just
This is in fact false. There are quite a few such as Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. To briefly break down the different types, Reform Judaism means that the thoughts and views of this particular movement focuses on the views and practices based from North American and United Kingdom. It focuses on the more modernized traditions and making them more compatible with the surrounding cultures. Conservative Judaism is a modern stream that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the early to mid-19th century. However, it only took form in the United States in 1900. Finally, Orthodox Judaism is the most traditional form of Judaism. It adheres and follows the traditional interpretation of laws and ethics directly from the Torah. What I found interesting about these three is that in the United States alone, only about 15% of people are traditional Orthodox Jews. I was expected to attend this service and it be the traditional service that I have always thought Judaism to be. However, it was much more laid back, so to say, which made me do a little more research about the exact type of Temple this place was. Turns out, this particular temple was a Reform Jewish Temple. Throughout my own religious culture as a Catholic, I was always told that in the Judaism religion, the Jews do not believe that there is a Messiah. I always found this particularly interesting because even though there are
The things I went in thinking are things that I learned within my own religion growing up or just what I have seen on TV. I never really took the time to study Judaism and really learn the truth about it. But by going to a worship at this temple, I have learned so many new things about Judaism and I am able to walk away from it being a much better religious person overall. If this is something that I have experience or if these are misconceptions I have previously had, that certainly means that other people probably have the same misconceptions. While I don’t think it is 100% right to necessarily have these misconceptions about other religions that we haven’t taken the time to try and understand, I do believe it is more common than most people think. I have friends who are Baptist who firmly believe that most Catholics are uptight and follow the rules as tightly as possibly, which just isn’t true in my opinion. At the end of the day, this is common and will remain common because we as a society do not take the time to learn and understand different religions and cultures. And until we do this, I think misconceptions will only get worse. Moving forward, I do believe there are things that can be done to minimize the misconceptions about different religions. I think one of the biggest things is a push for religion to be mandatory in schools. A lot of