The Waterstraut Waterspout: Religion Week: Israel

Our last stop (sort of) for religion week is Israel.

So, unless you're living under a rock, you know Israel has some serious problems, mainly the fight between Israel and the Palestinian territories over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Israel is an official country recognized by the UN, and as such, that's the country of our focus. However, I'd be remiss if we didn't discuss Palestine. Our big book that we use has one page for Israel, but our little book has a page for each, so the boys got a little more than they bargained for with this country.

Israel, for all of it's problems does have an official US Department of State Travel Warning. Trying to explain the tension to an 11 year old was especially difficult, but basically I just told him both sides think that they are entitled to the land under dispute, because God gave it to them, and it would be an insult to God, and even a sin to give it away. Simplest terms, right?

We talked about the Gaza Strip, a small Palestinian territory about twice the size of D.C. as a deeply impoverished area kept in isolation by the Israeli military, and ruled by Hamas (which the boys know is funded by Iran, thanks to Banned Countries week).

We discussed the 'Iron Dome', a high tech missile system the US helped Israel build to defend themselves against incoming missiles. It can intercept and destroy up to 15 missiles before any damage can be done.

But Israel and Palestine is more than just their issues with each other.

The lowest point on earth is in Israel at the Dead Sea. There is so much salt in the Dead Sea (ten times more than the ocean), so you can float!

Overlooking the Dead Sea is the famous fortress of Harold the Great, Masada

If you want somewhere a little less salty, you can visit the Sea of Galilee, site of that whole Jesus walking on water, and multiplying all those fish and loaves of bread.

A beach on the Gaza Strip holds an interesting world record (from 2011): the most kites flown simultaneously!

Our landmark was the famous Dome of the Rock, a shrine built over a rock that is sacred to both Muslims and Jews. It's the oldest Islamic monument that still stands today.

It also worked well as a wrap up for religion week. The capital of Israel is considered a Holy City by all of those Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

For the Jewish people, they believe someday the Messiah will appear here.

Muslims believe that Muhammad ascended into heaven from here.

And Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead here. (Plus according to Christians, Bethlehem in the Palestine area is the birthplace of Jesus)

The two countries with the largest Jewish populations are Israel and the United States. We're saving the US to hopefully do something really awesome toward the end of the year, and Israel seemed like the natural choice for our country for Judaism (75% of the country practices Judaism).

Since Judaism is the second most practiced religion in the United States, I probably don't have to do much to fill you in.

We talked about the different sects/branches/variants/streams in simple terms: Orthodox (super strict), Reform (pretty liberal), and Conservative (somewhere in between). Reform is the largest variant in the United States, followed by Conservative.

Then we talked about some important celebrations, people, places and some other odds and ends. Again, we're just trying to give a snapshot here.

To my kids who don't practice a religion, Judaism, Christianity and Islam don't seem all that different, so I did my best to recap for them with this basic description:

Christianity was originally a sect of Second Temple Judaism, but the two religions diverged in the first century. The differences between Christianity and Judaism originally centered on whether Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, but eventually became irreconcilable. Major differences between the two faiths include the nature of the Messiah, of atonement and sin, the status of God's commandments to Israel, and perhaps most significantly of the nature of God himself.

Both Judaism and Islamic religion came from the patriarch Abraham, and are therefore considered Abrahamic religions. In both Jewish and Muslim tradition, the Jewish and Arab peoples are descended from the two sons of Abraham—Isaac and Ishmael, respectively. While both religions are monotheistic and share many commonalities, they differ in that Jews do not consider Jesus or Muhammad to be prophet

We moved on to our last activity for religion week. Asa did a pretty good job on his dreidle craft so we could play.

The boys made their postcards. While Peyton and Hayden included both Israel and Palestine in their postcard (Peyton did one on one side, one on the other, while Hayden split his in half), Calib stuck to just Israel.

An argument ensued about if Palestine should have been included (mainly by Calib who was trying to argue the other cards should be disqualified), and we used it as an example that there's no easy solution in this disagreement. It also made a good segway to a discussion about a one state or two state solution.

For dinner we took some help from the Kosher section at Publix. (We have so many jams and jellies I told Asa we need to start having various international PB & J's for lunch to use them up!)