“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’ In Genesis 1:28 of the Torah, the book of life which withholds Gods “instructions” on how to live life, we are given our purpose. It is our mission to be a keeper and ruler of the world that God has given us, it is our sole duty to appreciate all that God has created for us. However, right before God gave us this task, it is written, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27). This quote can be interpreted as being that God ruled over everything before man was made. Therefore, since we are created in the image of God, we must carry on the responsibilities which He has instilled in us.
The first law in the Ten Commandments, a set of biblical laws relating to ethics and worship, is “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Again, we see that the meaning of our life is to only worship one God, the God, the Creator of all. Overall, we see a trend in what it is that God is asking us to base our daily actions on. We must embody the laws of the Torah and use that wisdom that our traditions and literatures embed in us as well as into our surroundings in order to create a perfect world that will satisfy Gods liking. The way we carry ourselves everyday exposes who we are as people. If we desecrate God and do not follow his ways, then who are we? We must live to serve God, and follow the ways of the Torah. Our teachings should be passed down to our children, so that they can too know about the miracles that God has given us, and the suffering that He has freed us from. These struggles are what have given us our wisdom and have strengthened our devotion to God. It is important for us to integrate our teachings into our daily lives. It is important to remember the covenant with God that was originally established between God and Abraham. In Genesis 12, God tells Abram to leave the land in which he has lived:
יֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵֽאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִnמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ:
וְאֶֽעֶשְׂךָ֙ לְג֣וֹי גָּד֔וֹל וַֽאֲבָ֣רֶכְךָ֔ וַֽאֲגַדְּלָ֖ה שְׁמֶ֑ךָ וֶֽהְיֵ֖ה בְּרָכָֽה:
And the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you
And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and [you shall] be a blessing.
Here, we see that God is establishing his first covenant with Abram. Once Abram did as he was told, God changed his name from Abram (exalted father) to Abraham meaning father of many. It is our role in this world to honor the covenant that God has created with us: remain loyal to Me, and I will remain loyal to you. We see that this covenant was taken seriously when God saw that the world was bad, and that people were worshiping more than one god, and trying to overpower God, which led him to destroy the world with a flood.
Our role as Jews is to honor the life that we have lived. Jewish people have a tradition of celebrating the dead through a ceremony called a yahrzeit. This practice allows us to praise the life of the deceased person and speak about the deceased so that we can integrate their righteousness into our own lives.
In middle school and high school, I was taught about the importance of the word “aron”, meaning coffin and also the cabinet in which the Torah is kept in a synagogue. The word carries a lot of significance in the Jewish religion. The reason why the same word is used for coffin and this holy cabinet is because a person is said to carry words of the Torah with them forever, even once they are deceased. Like a Torah scroll, we place the deceased in a casket so that the words of the Torah will be with them forever. Like we lower the deceased into the ground in a coffin, we also bury Torah scrolls who are no longer legible or considered “kosher” enough to be in a synagogue. We preserve the holiness of the deceased as much as we do the holy scripture which they have devoted their lives to following and living by.
The meaning of life in Judaism is to fully live by the words of the Torah, to fully devote yourself to God because He is fully devoted to you too and protects you against all harm. A Jewish life is only meaningful if the laws and words of God are fully embedded into your heart and life. We must become our teachings and spread our teachings to our children in order for the words of God to live on in the Jewish community.
My family takes the words of the Torah very seriously. We celebrate all of the holidays, fast on fast days, attend synagogue and keep kosher. My brothers were all bar-mitzvah’d, a ceremony which symbolizes their becoming of men. They all had Brit Milah’s, or circumcisions, something that God commanded all of the Jews to do in order to mark the covenant between Him and Man. God is ours as long as we are His.
Sources:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1:28
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/281636/jewish/Yahrzeit-Memorial-Anniversary.htm
http://www.aish.com/sem/wp/Part_10_Jewish_Family__Responsibility.html
https://reformjudaism.org/lessons-bones
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1912609/jewish/Bar-Mitzvah-101.htm
Questions Answered:
What is the meaning of life according to your religion?
What is your religion’s conception of what human beings are and what our role in the world is?
Give a short history of your religious tradition.