Personal Narrative: My Comparative Religions

When a person is born, they are usually subjected to one religion and most of the time they remain in that one religion their entire life, never experiencing another religion and only imagining what it is like. For my final project for my Comparative Religions class I was able to visit two houses of worship for two religions that were not my own and it really changed my whole view on religion as a whole. I experienced new forms of worship, ideas of the afterlife, and how much religion can really bring a whole community together. I chose to visit a Jewish synagogue and a Baptist church. I am a Catholic so both of these experiences were very different. I am very grateful I was able to be able to experience such a new outlook on religion as a
I almost drove right past the place because it looked like most of the other buildings. When I got inside everyone was grouped in the lobby area all talking to each other. This is where I met my docent, Harve Bubalow. A docent is a knowledgeable person of the Jewish religion who guides visitors and shows them around the synagogue and shows them other things about the service and worship. The interior of the synagogue was a very relaxed and comfortable setting. There was a type of shop set up in the synagogue and there were several large meeting rooms. The main worship center was located in the middle of the synagogue. It had several rows of comfortable padded chairs and as I learned the rows are set up and have a certain tilt to them in order to put the Torah as the center of attention. The Torah has the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. As we got in and got settled I looked around the worship room and I noticed several things that seemed important to the Jewish religion. I noticed the Ark, which contains the Torah. It is called the Ark because when Moses received the Ten Commandments he built a container for it called the Ark. Next to the Ark there was a flame that I learned was always burning, an eternal
For starters, everything was sung or chanted, and most of it was sung or chanted in Hebrew, because the Torah was written in Hebrew. Even the readings from the Torah were chanted. In Catholicism, there are certain songs that everyone in attendance will sing, and there is no Bible reading in Latin, even though the Bible was written in Latin. Next, I noticed how the books for people attending the service to use to keep pace with what was going on, was read from right to left. My docent told me that this was because all pieces of literature written in Hebrew were read from right to left. Something that was similar to the Catholic Church was how in the church the priest will talk for about 30 minutes about a passage from the Bible, this is called the Homily. During the worship service in the synagogue the Rabbi talked about one of the Torah passages and compared it to real life situations to help people understand it and apply it to their own life, just like in the Catholic Church. At about the midpoint of the service they took out the Torah. I noticed how carefully they treated the Torah. It was treated with even more respect than the Bible in Catholicism. It had a cover on it because people are not allowed to touch it because of how much it takes to make just one