While most religions are separate from individual people’s cultures, Judaism can be both an ethnicity and a belief.

Cantor Evan Rubin, the musical leader of the Congregation Etz Chayim in Toledo, said Judaism is approximately 4,000 years old. Religious Jews believe in the same monotheistic God as Christians, and they believe Abraham and Jacob were servants of God, but they do not believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, or that He is a prophet of God at all.

After the revelation at Mount Sinai, when Moses was handed the 10 Commandments by God, the three sections of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) were written. The first was the Torah, instructions for all Jewish people on how to serve God properly.

“We have lived our lives by that set of rules for over 3,000 years,” Rubin said.

Junior Daniel Lubin, president of Hillel, a Jewish organization on campus, said there is a spectrum of religiosity among Jews, including reform, conservative and orthodox Jews.

“It just depends how strictly you follow the Torah,” he said.

Lubin said conservative Jews typically keep kosher and go to Temple on Shabbat, while orthodox Jews are more strict.

“They don’t do any work on Shabbat, keep kosher [and] everything is blessed,” he said.

Most of the Jewish students who attend Hillel are reform. They carpool to a temple in Sylvania on Shabbat if enough students are interested, but it’s not something they do every week.

“When we get together, we incorporate religious events and social events,” he said. “Most of us … go to Temple on the high holidays.”

Kyle Ingle, the faculty adviser for Hillel, said the holidays are to be celebrated, but also to be holy.

On Yom Kippur, Jews fast for 24 hours.

“They’re not fun holidays. When you think of a holiday, you think of fun, but to us they’re holy days,” Ingle said. “From Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur is a time to reflect.”

In addition to holiday celebrations and social events, Hillel also engages in community service and acts of charity, activities Ingle said are required for Jews.

Ingle said Hillel is meant to serve as an outlet for Jewish life for people, especially since the Jewish population at the University is much smaller than other schools, like Ohio State University.

“We offer a place for Jews of all kinds to get together,” Ingle said. “[Hillel is] here to enrich the lives of Jewish students in college.”

Lubin went to high school in Farmington Hills, Mich., where the Jewish population was so large school was closed for Jewish holidays. He said coming to Bowling Green was a big change.

“Finding other Jewish students was difficult,” he said. “It’s not something to bring up in a first-time conversation with someone.”

Ingle said there are a few hundred Jewish students on campus, and a Hillel event could draw anywhere from a low 50 to a high 200 students.

He said about 25 percent of Jewish students in the United States attend state universities, and depending on the population and location of the school, each campus culture may vary.

Jewish culture across the world has also changed throughout 4,000 years of history. Different groups of Jews settled in different locations in Europe and the Middle East, resulting in various traditions and practices, though a shared religion, among Jews.

“Their cultures became remarkably different,” Ingle said. “It definitely evolved.”

Rubin said the Ashkenazi Jews, who originally hailed from Jewish communities in Germany, eventually settled into Eastern Europe and “Christian country.”

The Sephardic Jews follow the traditions of Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula, but Rubin said many migrated into the Middle East and Africa.

These separate environments resulted in differences in food eaten and mode of dress.

“All of these factors come in and affect what Judaism looks like in 2010,” Rubin said.

Jewish holidays

Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year

Yom Kippur – The Day of Atonement

Sukkot – Commemorates the 40 years Jews spent wandering in the desert

Shemini Atzeret – Eighth day of the Sukkot festival

Simchat Torah – Festival immediately following Sukkot, when the public reading of the Torah is concluded and recommenced

Hanukkah – Eight-day festival celebrating the Maccabees’ recapture of the second Temple

Purim – Holiday to commemorate the Jews’ salvation from Haman’s plot to annihilate them

Passover – Seven-day festival commemorating the Exodus from Egypt

Lag Ba-Omer – Agricultural festival offering sheaves of grain in thanks for Earth’s abundance.

Shavuot – One-day holiday commemorating the Giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai

Tisha B’Av – Day of fasting and mourning commemorating the destruction of the first and second Holy Temples