We had a couple of great presentations today - Kristen and Megan did a nice job presenting Shavuot and they even brought in one of the main dishes for Shavuot, cheesecake!! Yay!
And then Caitlin and Rachel presented Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.
After the presentations we pointed out some similarities between practices in Judaism and other religions. For example, the most important Christian religious observance is probably Easter, the day marking the Resurrection of Christ, thought by Christians to be the Saviour. Likewise, Yom Kippur is a day marking the importance of the relationship between Jews and God and how better to renew that relationship than by atoning for sins, against God and against other people. This is generally thought to be the most important religious observance of Jews as well.
We started to watch the film, The Pianist. This film won the Palme D'Or at Cannes and many other awards including an Oscar for Adrian Brody's acting, the youngest male Best Actor winner in history. Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish pianist survived the Warsaw Ghetto and this is his story. We cannot hope to study modern Judaism without discussion the Holocaust and its effect on Jews and Judaism and I think this is the best way to do it for this class.
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