Hi folks!
Hope ya'll are enjoying the Judaism Workshop so far.

I'm posting to ask if there is anything about Judaism that you have a question about?
I think this will help make the workshop more constructive so that i can address any questions that you may have.
Feel free to ask anything and i will do my best to answer them.

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Hi Jewscout,

I'm sure you have been asked this before, but what role does the idea of forgiveness play in Judaism?

Peace

Mark

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An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and the whole world will be blind and toothless-M.K. Ghandi

Does Judaism discuss afterlife? And is there a feminine aspect of God in Judaism?

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InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

I am not Jewish but have immense respect for the Jewish people. I have gone to the Synagogue several times in order to gain a deeper understanding from those who understand best. While i was there i noticed that the people performed a strange little bow wherein they dipped their knees and then bent just a little at the waist. This intrigued me so much that i asked them about it and was told that it was written that they should "bend first at the knee and then at the waist" which of course is what they did. But i wonder if that movement didn't start out as being a kneeling movement such as the Islamic people do. I am interested to know how this bow came to be. Also, can you point me to the passages in the Torah that speak on the covering of the head as with a Kippot? Thanks!

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We will meet today,
We will meet again tomorrow,
We will meet at the Source every moment,
We meet each other in all forms of life.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

sorry i've been gone for so long too much going on here.

as to the bending and bowing, it was a time when we fully prostrated ourselves but that evolved, i think partly to seperate our practices from the other cultures around Am Yisrael, into simply bending at the knee. it's often done during the Amidah prayer when we read "Blessed are you..." which in hebrew is "Baruch ata..." the word for "blessed", Baruch comes from the same root as the word for Knee, Berech.

as to the Kippot, they are simply a custom which grew from this region where one would cover their head in show of respect. There's nothing from the Torah about it.

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I'm not Jewscout, but I'll answer the question.

The issue of forgiveness is very important in Judaism both in terms of God forgiving us and us forgiving others. Contrary to popular belief, the Temple, which no longer exists, is not required for forgiveness-- one can go directly to God and ask for God's forgiveness. However, there's at least one exception to that rule.

If we sin against another person, we are obligated to do our best to make up for the damage done and ask for their forgiveness. If we are not willing to do that, then our belief is that no matter how much we may ask God for forgiveness, God is not likely to do so because we refuse to take any action ourselves.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

The afterlife is very much a mystery to us in that there's not much that we can go on. Most orthodox Jews believe there's a heaven, but there's really not much of an attempt to explain it. Many liberal Jews question as to whether there actually is a heaven. Some Jews liberal and orthodox (chasidim) believe in reincarnation since it's mentioned in Kabbalah ("gilgul").

In Judaism, God is not pictured as being masculine or feminine (who's God to have sex with?). The male pronouns are used in Hebrew because of the structure of the language which, much like the Latin languages, the male gender connotes largeness, strength, etc.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

And, according to the RAMBAM (Moshe Maimonides), the kippot are optional. The irony is that it took on greater use in response to the Christian teachings of taking off one's hat in church.

Even though know one knows exactly when or even why the kippa was first used, some believe that it was a replacement for the tallit (prayer shawl) outside of the synagogue, which might have been considered too cumbersome to wear at times.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

but the tallit and the kippah aren't really related to my understanding. the Tallit is there so one can fulfill the mitzvah of Tzitzit which the kippah has nothing to do with.

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Obviously, I don't know if there's any relationship between them, and what I said was only a theory that I did read from a Jewish source that made it clear that they were just hypothesizing, but just don't ask me which one because it was quite a while back. The relationship, if there is one, may be that when one is wearing the tallit and is especially attempting to concentrate, putting the tallit on one's head is commonplace.

It's often difficult to know where certain traditions come from, and I'm afraid the history of the kippa is just one of those.

Shabbat shalom

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein