Lara Novack
lah@strauss.udel.edu

It is easy for my to say, I am one half Austrian, one fourth Russian, and one fourth Isreali, but these numbers mean nothing to me. I have been lucky enough to travel abroad to Vienna, to see where my grandparents came from, and I hope to learn more this summer as I travel to Isreal, but I don't actually identify with any of these countries. Instead of spouting off foriegn countries when people ask about my heritage, I tell them about my religion, which is Judiasm.

Judiasm is one of the oldest religions left in the world. There are many ancient customs and traditions that my family tries to keep alive, which I cherish dearly. We do many things in a special manner, including the way in which we eat. To give a brief example, my religion dictates not eating meat and dairy together. This may sound like a strange phenominon to those who are used to eating turkey and cheese, but there are good reasons for this. The first reason is for sanitation, as a long time ago, people ate from wooden dishes, which were very hard to keepclean, as the food's juices wood soak in and cause fungi to grow. To stop this molding process, the jewish people kept two sets of dishes. The other reason is a moral one and much more interesting to me. No moralistic person would drown a calf in it's mother's milk and so we therefore designate an amount of time between eating meat and dairy.

I love to learn about why my religion says to do certain things in specific ways. I intend to pass on these traditions and customs onto the next generation.