Religion in Minutes by Marcus Weeks

Author:Marcus Weeks [Weeks, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2017-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

A man blows the ceremonial shofar ram’s horn during Rosh Hashanah

Rites of passage

Like many religions, Judaism marks the important stages of a person’s life with ceremonies and rituals that strengthen his or her ties with the community.

The first of these for male Jews is brit milah, on the eighth day after birth, in which the child is named and circumcized. This is a symbol of God’s covenant with Abraham. There is a less common name-giving ceremony, brit bat, for girls. At the age of 12 or 13, Jewish boys celebrate their coming of age in their bar mitzvah (12-year-old girls may have a similar ceremony), when they are welcomed into the congregation. Jewish weddings are imbued with religious significance; following a ceremony beneath a decorated canopy, the groom stamps on a glass in remembrance of the destruction of the temple and the dispersing of the Jewish people. Funerals, held as soon as possible after death, are invariably burials and not cremations. There are strict rules concerning the preparation of the body, the prayers offered and even the three stages of mourning.

218 JUDAISM

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