Are Catholic services and Jewish services similar or vastly different?
I have never been to a synagogue, and only to a couple of Catholic services. However, from what I’ve seen of Jewish services on TV, they seem strikingly similar to Catholic rituals. Are they?
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Not at all, even superficially.
Well, I guess there is 100% less molestation in Jewish services.
I doubt that @ragingloli. Less than the Catholic church, I’ sure, because they don’t have the sexual hangups that the Catholic church does, but I doubt that it’s never happened.
From the services I’ve attended, they were similar in tone, but different in content—I don’t recall any singing in the synagogue for example. My experience is very limited, so I expect other people would have better insights.
Short answer: It depends.
If you are talking about liberal / progressive / reform Jewish services, you’re talking about much more of a free-form liturgy, mostly in English with a few prayers in Hebrew..
If you’re talking about Orthodox (or god forbid, Ultra-Orthodox) you are talking about a very strict, highly structured worship service mostly in Hebrew.
There is no one prototypical “Jewish service” – to some degree, each synagogue defines its own customs. Probably like most churches.
And @KNOWITALL is correct, there are no shortage of Jewish rabbis who have been arrested for abuse.
@elbanditoroso Reform Judaism is a division of Judiasm that has absolutely nothing to do with political affiliation. You can be a conservative Republican and be a Reform Jew (I know many).
@Dutchess_III In answer to your question, there are similarities, espeically if you go to a Reform synagogue. There is a pulpit, the rabbi leads the service in responsive prayer, there are hymns (in Hebrew and English), and there is a sermon. There is no communion or anything like that.
I wouldn’t expect there to be a communion. It seems like the vestments in both religions are similar. The Pope wears what looks like a yarmulke to me. The Catholic religion is the oldest of all the Christian religions and it was an outcrop of Judaism,with the addition of Jesus. I wonder if that relationship shows even to this day.
@Caravanfan – I was raised as a reform Jew. I know of what I speak.
So, would it be true that the more orthodox you get in either religion, the more closely they seem related?
@elbanditoroso And so am I and so do I. So you would know that liberal/progressive/Reform is not necessarily the same thing. Just as Conservative Judaism means right wing. I know many Reform Jews who are politically conservative and many Conservative synagogues who are involved with social action causes.
@Dutchess_III No, an ultra orthodox Jewish synagogue service looks completely different than a Reform Jewish synagogue service. You would find a Reform service very familiar while an Orthodox sould seem very foreign.
They are so different I can’t even seriously entertain the question.
Catholicism seems very foreign to me too. It’s like they’re tapping into the underworld or something. At my Mom’s funeral, which my sister organized, the priest wandered around in flowing vestments, swinging an incense burner and mumbling to himself in Latin. Then he offered communion and people who weren’t Catholic didn’t know what the hell to do. Should we join in out of respect, or would the Catholics take grave offense? Several family members were kind of upset about it, including me. PS Mom wasn’t even Catholic. She had walked away from the church decades before and never looked back. She switched to Pentecostal type churches. My sister converted to Catholicism when she married her husband. I don’t know what she was thinking. Mom’s service had the warmth of an ice berg. It was so impresional. It was like a fill in blanks with the name kind of service.
That’s really my only experience with a Catholic service and it was uncomfortable. Weird and kind of spooky.
Sorry about that rant!
@Dutchess_III Good point. No, Reform Jewish services aren’t like that. They’re more like a generic Protestant service. Sit down, stand up, sing, read responsively, listen to the organ or guitar or whatever, or choir if it’s a big one, listen to a sermon, etc.
Orthodox are completely different.
Interesting. What kinds of things do they preach?
@Dutchess_III Oh, it totally depends on that week’s Torah portion and what is happening in the world at the time.
I think I would like to attend a Jewish service. I am under the impression they like to teach. I like teachers. I like learning.
The first Christians were Jewish. I just can’t imagine that they entirely shucked thousands of years of their forefather’s religion. It’s kind of like a language. If you dig deep enough you can find the similarities in English and all the other Indo-European languages. Since Catholicisms is the oldest Christian church, and the most unchanged over the centuries, it’s most likely that traces of Judaism would show up there.
LOL!!
“A “condensed” version of Jewish History:
“Big Battle,
We won,
Let’s eat!”
Actually, it goes like this.
“They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.”
:D They sure did, didn’t they! Jesus!
Both services include Isaiah 6:30. In the Catholic mass, the prayer is called the Sanctus. “Holy, holy, holy, lord god of hosts, heaven and earth are full of your glory.” The Jewish version begins with “kodesh, kodesh, kodesh,” which is Hebrew for “holy”; the rest translates more-or-less exactly, except without a mention of heaven.
Also, if you read an English translation of a Jewish prayer called the Kaddish, you’ll see some similarities to the Lord’s Prayer.
There it is. It just awes me.
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