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Religions

I watch the news every night with Diane Sawyer.  This week they have been having a special where they talking about the Mormon church.  Prior to seeing this segment, I honestly didn't know much about the Mormon church.  My limited knowledge was based on observations made of the Mormon church that is across the street from the entrance to my neighborhood:

(1) They seem to go to church often
(2) They do not appear to go to church on Easter
(3) They drive like bats out of hell when church does let out (based on almost being ran over by several of their members leaving church).  Though I think this is a common trait among all faiths of people getting out of church, as I recall most Sundays my Dad expressing urgency in "beating the Baptists to the Ranch House for lunch!". 

But honestly, this post really has nothing to do with Mormons.  The piece on the news has had me thinking about other religions and what I know about them.  I don't know a ton.  I just found out that Muslims fast and do not even drink water during Ramadan.  I worried about the dog next door daily.  Because my neighbors are Muslim, it was hot outside, and I didn't know if the religious events got translated to pets as well.  But again, I digress.

I came to the conclusion that the religion other than my own that I know the most about is the Jewish faith.  How does a girl who grew up in a small Texas town, where I'm pretty sure no Jewish people have ever lived get to know so much about that religion?  That's the point of this post.  It's really a funny tale...

In law school, I took a class.  Yep, you read that right.  At my public law school, I took a class on Jewish Law.  Our text book was the Old Testament.  We had a few supplemental materials that we read, but primarily we studied the Old Testament, mainly the Torah (which is the first 5 books:  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).  Part of the class involved writing a paper, and it was required that you cite the Talmud as a source, so we had to independently study the Talmud as well.  If your paper was long enough, then it could count as your file paper that you had to write before graduating from law school. 

I had wanted to write about Jewish holidays.  Hello!  It's me, of course I wanted to write about Holidays!  But someone else got that topic, so I wrote about Jewish Dietary Laws.  I can tell you all about keeping Kosher.  I can also tell you that no way could I ever keep Kosher because that would mean no shellfish!  But how funny is it that while classmates are writing file papers on tax laws, I wrote my file paper on Jewish Dietary Law?

The other funny part of this story is that our professor for the class... yeah, he was Mormon.

Comments

Legally Lovely said…
That is so neat that your school offered a class on Jewish law! What a neat course idea.

I'm fairly clueless about other religions too. The only thing I knew about Mormons was that they only dated other Mormons. In high school, there was one Mormon boy and one Mormon girl. Of course, I was totally in love with the Mormon boy, but wouldn't date me; he ended up dating the only Mormon girl. Anyhow, they got married really young a few years ago and seem really happy, so it worked out. haha. And that's the extent of my Mormon knowledge!
Samantha said…
I'll have to check out this series online to refresh my memory on things. That's really interesting that you had a class on Jewish law too!
courtney said…
here's another thing about Mormons....there is a HUGE network of them that are great bloggers! many of the blogs i read (and probably you, too) are Mormon. they are a crafty bunch, i tell ya! :)
JEF said…
Loved this. Don't forget about your little old Jewish friend from West Texas :)
Caroline said…
You should have given Abby and I a copy of your paper on Jewish Dietary Laws. We could have used it in our practice in Dallas. Has she ever told you that story? Comical- and would only happen to us!!

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