Nearly my anniversary

Now if my other half read this he might well start scratching his head. I can just see it now - "well, we met in August. I proposed in March. What have I missed?" No, nothing dodgy, my first visit to a synagogue was 29 January 2005. I went with a good friend of mine from law school, and her mother. I remember the date because it was the anniversary of my friend's grandmother's death. That's a yahrzeit in Hebrew. Even those who don't attend shul regularly will go for the yahrzeit of a parent, and as our community is large and people are mortal, there are frequently mourners in the congregation (I'm making a distinction between the anniversary of a death and the shiva mourning period, which is a completely different subject).

I find one of the things that touches me about shul is when we reach the mourner's kaddish (if you click through you have the option to hear this) in the service. This is a prayer which is recited by the children of a deceased parents for eleven months and by the immediate family (after the death of a wife, daughter, sister, son and brother) for thirty days, and on the anniversary of the death of a family member. This prayer requires congregational responses. So, when the section of the service is reached, if you can see or hear someone near you murmuring the prayer, you turn to them to be able to hear better so that you may respond properly and in a timely fashion. This has the effect of creating small knots of people, heads bowed, around someone who is feeling the loss of a loved one particularly keenly at that time.

I saw this happen in shul yesterday, and it got me thinking about comparative religions. The Jewish religion is much more realistic and pragmatic than some others I have known. I used to go out with a Catholic boy, and got into discussions with his mother (a GP) about the theological issues I had with the transubstantiation of the host amongst other things. When at university I studied mediaeval history and the guilt and hopelessness (and consequently subservience of the poor undertrodden masses) engendered by the concept of original sin (wich vary according to which branch of Christianity the locality in question fell under) seemed pretty unhealthy. I like the Jewish idea - we are free and responsible for our own choices. No predestination here, nothing about limbo and people burning in hell before they even choose to do anything.

I have recently read a history of the Jewish people (a stonking read by Raymond Scheindlin) and realised how little I knew about some parts of history. Whilst this might come as no surprise to my erstwhile tutors, I was slightly shocked to find that my courses purporting to cover mediaeval Europe in fact left out completely the fate of the Jews. This book was eye-opening in the extreme - it felt like I was reading the other part of a puzzle that I hadn't realised was there. As Jews were usually kicked around for religious or economic reasons, this was a large part of the puzzle. I did work bits of it out, but usually because there was a hole in an argument, and if the hole was Jewish in shape I inserted a Jew. My odd logic was bizarrely not often far off the mark - and also didn't go nearly far enough, and reading this book certainly helped to fill some other spaces in my knowledge!

Now I need to read a brief history of Islam, and then brush up my knowledge of Lutherans/ Calvinists (no, not that Calvin) and I'll produce a proper report. Suffice it to say I'd not realised and was surprised to read that Islam was far more tolerant of Judaism than Christianity.