Through
observing my own cultural identity it has allowed me to take a look at myself
from a perspective that I had never thought to do. I realized what is important to me and the
things that build me and my personality to make me who I am. It is obvious that one of the things that I
consider very important in my life is my religion, or my “religious identity.’ Religious identity as described in Intercultural Communication in Contexts by
Judith N. Martin and Thomas K. Nakayama, is a sense of belonging to a religious
group. The religious group I identify
with is Christianity or Methodist to be more specific. With this being close to me I felt that it
was necessary for me to expand my knowledge on another religious identity.
Religion
has been the cause of wars and conflict since the beginning of time. We are fortunate to live in a place that
gives you the freedom to practice any religion you choose. In our culture people identify with many
different religions, but in our society most people do identify as Christian. For this reason, I have chosen to expand my
knowledge and find out the history and culture of one of these religions that
is practiced by many in our country.
The
religion I have chosen is Judaism. I
chose Judaism for the fact that it ties into Christianity and also because my
knowledge is extremely limited on the subject.
The Old Testament is collection books that was the original Bible before
the start of the New Testament. The beginning
of Judaism is described in the first 5 books of the Old Testament. It describes how God began his relationship
with the chosen people who were the Jews.
He also chose Abraham to be the father of these chosen people and lead
them according to God’s will.
With
the opportunity of this project to research this subject, I will expand my
knowledge on Judaism as well as the Old Testament of the Bible. I plan to enlighten myself on the history of
Judaism as well as their culture in modern society. My hopes are to be able to apply this project
to my own identity and build on the knowledge I am going to gain.
Below is a link to a you tube video I found that was a great
introduction for my research:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buhBtLWzSUU&feature=related
References:
Martin, J.N., & Nakayam, T.K. (2010). Intercultural
Communication in Contexts (5th Edition ed). New York, NY:
McGraww-Hill.
History of Judaism (n.d.). In BBC Religions.
Retrieved July 1, 2009, from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/history/history_1.shtml
