Synagogue

In our school, there are leadership classes that every student is required to take: Foundations, Transitions, and Scholar. In Scholar we basically pick what we're going to study and study it. As a class we decide a subject that we want to learn about. We find out the books that would be good to read for that subject, the field trips that might be informative, and look into bringing people in to talk to us about it.
So a different Scholar class is studying world religion right now, so they decided to go on a field trip to a Jewish Synagogue. All the Scholar classes were invited, so last Thursday I went to a synagogue!
It was very interesting. I learned a lot about the Jewish religion that I had never known.
The lady who was giving us the tour (this cute, short, sweet lady probably in her sixties or seventies) showed us the Torah scrolls that they use to read on Saturdays (their Sabbath, rather than Sunday) at their meetings. They are huge, hand copied scrolls that are really very cool. She told us that the scroll was several thousand dollars. What really blew me away, though, is that she opened a cabinet for us to see and they had seven or eight Torahs inside. Since all of them say the same thing and they cost so much money, I asked why they have so many. She said that most of them were given as gifts to the synagogue. Whoa.
It was a really cool experience, and I learned a lot. But what I liked best about it was that it made me sincerely grateful for my church, where everything has a reason.
I say that because at the synagogue, they had a lot of symbols and traditions that she told us about. When we asked why they used these symbols and traditions, what they meant to the Jewish religion, she told us that most of them didn't know. That Judaism has been around for such a long time that they'd forgotten what everything meant. That kind of bothered me a little. Several of the things (decorative crowns on the Torahs, the minorah) I could find meanings for. But the lady who was giving us the tour didn't seem to even be trying to find meanings for them. To me, at least, it seemed like she was just going through the actions.
It just made me grateful that in our church, everything has a meaning. And I know what those meanings are.

Love you all.
Abbey