Today we're dressed up
and we're in a hotel room.
Yeah.
Hi, I'm Grace, this is Kevin, we're the Storys.
We're comparing Kenyan and American culture to see what's different,
but also what's similar.
So in my work as a musician,
I sometimes get to travel and to do different gigs in different places.
So today we are in the northwest corner of New Jersey,
where a Jewish center
has hired me to play the piano for their high holidays.
Yeah. So this is a very special time in the Jewish calendar.
This is the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.
That's what we're celebrating.
Well, tonight, once the sun goes down,
starts the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and then next week will be Yom Kippur.
And that's the high holidays, so...
Grace has asked to sit down with the rabbi
and talk a little bit about Judaism
and what it means to be Jewish here in America and things like that.
Questions that that, you know, you might have, especially Kenyans
probably have, since there aren't a lot of...
I wonder if that light is.... Yeah.
(Laughs) I'm going to shut it off.
Grace, you came with me last time, which was two years ago, to do this.
What was your impression then?
Um, well, I didn't know what was going on, but there's a lot of
music that sounded like hymns to me, you know.
But it was a long service.
Two hours. It reminded me of Easter service back in Nairobi. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Yeah. I guess the services can be long.
I think two years ago, the rabbi kind of overplanned.
I think he... there was a lot he wanted to do.
This year, we're still in Covid times.
The service has been pared down a bit,
and most of the congregation will be tuning in via Zoom.
So people aren't actually going to be in the room
with us necessarily, but there will be some of them.
So so I guess we'll see how it goes.
We have service tonight. We have service tomorrow. And then
for the second morning,
they would normally have a service the second morning.
But because they're zooming, they're just going to have a small
gathering and no music, not me. So, yeah. Say
two, three, go. Action.
All right. Hi, I'm Grace.
Today, I'm not with Kevin. I'm with Rabbi Andy.
And still comparing Kenyan and American cultures
to see what's different, but also what's similar.
So today we're in a synagogue
and I have a few questions for our rabbi here.
And as you know-- I'll just jump into it-- So for me, growing up in Kenya,
I wasn't really exposed to Judaism until I moved to London,
where I lived for nine years.
And then here in New York, you know.
I remember being on the bus in Golders Green
and seeing people dressed differently, something that I've never seen before.
So and we are very honored to have you on our show today.
So in a nutshell, can you explain to us what Judaism is all about?
What is Judaism in one
sentence? Yeah. Judaism.
Well, obviously,
you're probably familiar that Judaism
was the first of the three Abrahamic religions,
meaning out of Judaism came Christianity and then came Islam.
So we would be the, I guess, the parent religion of the other two.
So we share a number of things that way.
But I think if I had to really think what is Judaism in a nutshell?
There are maybe two or three,
say, two big ways of looking at it.
Number one is that we are a religion.
We are a set of practices and beliefs.
You know, like Christianity, like Islam, we are monotheistic.
We pray to one single God.
But then a different way of looking at it,
not that the first part would be untrue, but that Judaism,
I think more than Christianity, we think of ourselves as a people.
We think of ourselves as a worldwide community, as one family.
And so when a Jew
in Kenya is suffering,
the Jew in New York feels the pain.
As a people, we have stuck together
because we are, I think, a miracle people and that we are a tiny portion
of the world and somehow we're still here.
It's been a whole history,
a 3000 year history of challenges that somehow we've overcome,
and some Jews give
thanks to God for bringing us through, miraculously, some other Jews
give thanks to the strength of our communal bond
that we bring ourselves through.
So I guess also a difference between Judaism and Christianity.
Christianity, as I understand it,
requires faith in Jesus Christ,
that if if I can say with all my heart and soul
that I accept Jesus as my Lord and savior, I am a Christian.
Judaism does not have the same kind of requirements. We, it has...
We certainly have beliefs.
But to be a Jew is more about our actions than our beliefs.
It is possible to be a Jew
who maybe doesn't even believe in God. Oh!
If we are, if we feel ourselves part of the people.
Right. Oh, so so, an interesting perspective.
And so for me, being an Anglican, whenever we have
service on Sunday, we are always praying for Israel.
And, you know, and I growing up, I really didn't know
the distinction between Israel as a, you know, the chosen ones.
I think that's what it's referred to.
And Israel as a country.
So I'm always like, what are we praying for?
Israel as a country or the chosen ones?
And also, like we're made to believe that, you know, once you're born again,
accept Jesus, then you are an Israelite, the chosen ones. OK.
And I know now that there's a distinction between that if maybe you wanted
to clarify that.
There are two different ways of looking at being the chosen people. Yeah.
We could say that God chose
the people of Israel for a special mission in this world,
which is to be a light unto nations, to lead by example. Right.
And then there kind of an opposite way of looking at it
rather than thinking of ourselves as the chosen ones,
some people talk about we are the ones who chose.
That we have chosen to take on this particular mission
and to accept God's guidance and that mission. Right.
I will tell you that there are some Jews...
you were talking about denominations of Christianity,
and Judaism, we have denominations, too.
Not nearly the number of denominations you have.
Yeah. There are really, I would say,
four basic denominations.
There is what I am,
which is Reform Jewish, which is,
I would say, a more liberal understanding
of our relationship with tradition
and the legal aspects of what are required
of us, Jewish legal aspects,
and that we, we give more, I guess, credence to autonomy,
just to people making their own decisions guided by tradition.
There is Orthodox Judaism, which
has a very strict adherence
to traditional understandings of how to live a Jewish life.
There is Conservative Judaism,
which, like Orthodox
Judaism, it does accept that we are required
to do certain things in legal Jewish tradition.
But the definition of what that can be
is much wider than it is in Orthodoxy.
And then the fourth one, the newest
of the four major denominations, is called Reconstructionist.
And the reason I bring that up is because in Reconstructionist Judaism,
that denomination
rejects the idea that we are the chosen people. Oh.
The Reconstructionists have a way of practicing Judaism,
where they are very
loyal to tradition, but
they think that the tradition is the peoplehood,
not the God relationship, it is the peoplehood of Judaism
that truly brings us together. And in fact,
Reconstructionist Judaism
has an iffy relationship with God, that,
that God, that some Reconstructionist
congregations take God all out of it
and say we should just follow tradition because it has worked for 3000 years.
That is very interesting. I didn't know that.
Now you know that. Yeah.
And so, you know, attending the service here, this is my second time,
I felt very welcome to the congregation.
And I just wanted to know, like, are there opportunities,
like in Christianity, we're always told to be a disciple,
try and convert people, you know, to Christianity.
Are there are such opportunities and things in
Judaism? Yes, Judaism.
Absolutely. We welcome anyone who wants to be part of us.
But it's different from Christianity
in that we do not seek converts.
We welcome converts if they come to us, but we do not seek them.
And I'm not sure how it works in your church,
but in order to convert into Judaism,
we require study
and we require, depending on exactly who is going to be the rabbi
in charge of the process, but when I do it,
I require the potential converts
to live a full year Jewishly
before before the conversion becomes official,
because we want you to know what you're getting into. Yes. Yeah.
But when we talk about conversion, we don't talk
about someone actually who is becoming Jewish.
We think about it in a sense more mystically.
And we talk about someone who is returning to Judaism
because we say that anyone who becomes part of our people,
clearly they were at Mt.
Sinai when Moses brought down the Ten Commandments and over
the generations have gone a separate way and now they are returning.
Oh, that's interesting.
And so once you become Jewish this way,
then it would be improper in the future for anyone to ask
whether you were a convert or not, that you are a Jew.
That makes sense.
And how long would this conversion take? You...
about a year. OK.
I thought it was like six years.
Oh, no, no, no. It's usually about one year.
And it concludes with a special ceremony. Oh.
Oh, well, so to conclude,
one of my favorite I don't know if it's a ceremony or
things I've seen
Jewish people do are these
bar mitzvah? Bar mitzvah. I saw that in London and I was like, why?
Why don't we have this, this you know, as Christians.
I should be celebrated for turning 16.
It's 13. 13, for turning 13 in that way.
You know, in Judaism, actually, not unlike in Islam,
there is a special coming of age recognition when you are 13,
where you graduate
from being a child of the community to being an adult in the community.
And we know that a 13 year old today is not an adult,
but in religious understanding. Yeah.
I guess the most practical way to think about it is that to have a full
Jewish service, we are required to have what's called a minyan.
Minyan is Hebrew for a group of ten Jews praying together to have a full prayer
service, because we, we recognize
that without community, we are nowhere.
And so after bar mitzvah or for a girl, it's bat mitzvah.
So bar mitzvah means a son of the commandments,
for bat mitzvah, a daughter of the commandments. Hmm.
And then these days,
we are now thinking of all other kinds of ways about it.
For people who are nonbinary, don't don't associate
with one sex or the other.
We've come up with new names as well, because we want to be inclusive
of everyone. But once they have gone through that, they
then are an adult and they are counted as one of those 10
in a prayer service.
And I would say also
bar mitzvah in America anyway.
It has come to be thought of as an event
like where someone gets bar mitzvah-ed, a verb, I guess.
And it's not a verb.
It is-- bar mitzvah actually refers to the person,
not to the verb and not to the process, that I become a bar mitzvah .
I become a son of the commandments.
And if we think about it that way, it takes some of the focus off
where rabbis don't really love that focus has gone
so much to the parties and less to the religious side.
The parties are good, though.
The parties are good. Yeah.
So there you go. Yeah.
I've learned so much about, you know, Judaism.
Things I never knew about, and I hope so many people watching
the channel are going to learn the same.
We've been on a whirlwind.
You may have seen our last episode, which was our trip to...
Atlantic City. Thanks, I feel like I haven't slept.
Yeah. Our trip to Atlantic City, because I had a gig there as well...
very different, very different thing.
So we're on a little bit of trip.
Will be back in New York City soon.
Although you'll be seeing the videos spread out a little more
because we post one video a week at this point.
Well, if you like this video and you want to see more,
be sure to like, comment, subscribe, share this video with all your friends.
And that's it for now.
Goodbye. Kwaheri. Shalom.