synagogue

Today we traveled to Madison WI to visit the Beth Israel Center. I have to admit that when we first drove up I was a little disapointed to see that it looked nothing like the synagogues that you see when watch the movies about Jesus. I thought it looked a little like an ordinary office building and even the inside seemed to resemble a school more than what I expected the synagogue to look like. So when we walked into the actual sanctuary, I wasn't surprised at how simple it was. However, I still found the synagogue to be in it's own way beautiful. Perhaps this was partly due to how familiar looking the sanctuary looked. Even though the space was designed for a different type of worship, I was struck by how similar the layout is to a Catholic church. There was a table in the center of the altar, a podium for which teaching can be delivered to the community, and they even had a light that is never extinguished which reminded me of the sanctuary lamp found in Catholic churches which is always kept lit when hosts are left in the tabernacle.

I also really like the quote in Hebrew written above their altar. A large part of the Jewish identity is their language and I thought that the sight of the language above their heads really serves as a reminder of their community identity and the quote itself, "Know before whom you stand" serves as a reminder of God watching them.

One more thing I found particulaly interesting about the synagogue was the fact that they have a Jewish ibrary actually inside the building. I thought that it was a nice how a community and religion that requires lots of study actually provide the books for their people to study from.

Overall I found visiting the synagogue an interesting experience, yet not at all strange. I think that because of the similarities that the sanctuary and religion had with mine, I didn't find it to be a completely foreign environment.