Return

So we went to the Jewish synagogue on sabbath. It was close to what I expected. We entered the "foyer" and were directed to put on kippas (the little circular head coverings). before we entered the main room, I noticed the cabinets over to the side. One door was open revealing books. We went over and each got a siddur (book of prayers) and a chumash (first five books of the bible with commentary in hebrew and english). An older gentleman, whom we later learned was named Paul, came over to help us out. I knew where they would be reading in the chumash, but I asked him where we would be reading in the siddur. He eplained that they had a stand displaying the page numbers on the stage.

There were only a handful of people there at first. But slowly the room filled up. The moment the tenth man got there they finished up the prayer they were on and then said the mourners kaddish. I recognized the prayer, but couldn't find it in the book. Paul explained that they waited for the tenth person and then inserted it when he arrived. Paul sat near us and helped us out explaining various things throughout the service.

I knew what was going on most of the time because their service was similar to my dad's messianic congregation in Colorado. I was able to follow along with the Hebrew when they slowed down and everybody sang together. But for the majority of the prayers everybody prayed through at their own pace with the leader occasionally saying a line loudly so that everybody would know where he was.

They read from the torah scroll. That part was very much like at my dad's congregation except these guys were way faster and read through the whole torah portion. At dad's congregation they only read 21 to 40 or so verses.

Then a rabbi preached a sermon. Because they are in the period before Yom Kippur he preached about shuva (repentance). One part stuck out to me. Repentance means to return. When we repent we are returning to our origin which is good. This is totally opposite of the Catholic-Baptist theology that man is totally evil, or the general Christian idea that man starts out bad. But we are created in God's image. That is good. We start out good. Yesterday at work I was thinking about babies and kids (there's a lot of them with their moms at the grocery store) and I think it is true that our origin is goodness, the image of God in us, but as we go through life we mar that image and become more evil.

So on and so forth. What do y'all think?