Reform Jewish services very much have a fixed order of prayer. You don’t understand it yet–that’s OK.
IMO (not to veer this into Great Debates), the reason Jewish services (even Reform) are largely in Hebrew is because Judaism wants you to feel (1) closer to your Lord and (2) able to understand what’s going on. That sounds contradictory, but it’s not. Think of it this way: there are two ways to market an herbal supplement. One way is to get up and start waxing majestic about all the great stuff the drug will do for you. The other way is to do the same thing, and provide copies of the scientific studies which back up your claims. Many (most?) herbal supplements don’t have scientific backing, and don’t want you to know that. Judaism likes to think of itself as the drug that can show you all the studies.
This isn’t directly analogous, of course, but I think you get the idea: we give you the English and the source material, so that (1) you’re more connected to the millions of Jews who pray in the same language around the world and (2) you can go check the translation with an unbiased source and see what you’re praying about, if you really want to. Not that there’s any reason you would do that. But the difference I see here is, to pick on Catholicism as an example, (1) Catholics aren’t connected to each other all over the world through a common language (how many Catholics do you know who know the prayers in Latin?) and (2) if the pastor (sorry if I’m using the wrong terminology) says that a particular passage means something, you just have to take his word for it. I attended mass once, and noticed that there was a huge difference in how the holy text was read: at the Reform temples that I’m used to (particularly in discussion groups outside of services–I highly recommend you start attending some of those kind of events, BTW), followers are encouraged to find their own meaning for each passage; while at mass, followers seem to be encouraged to swallow their pill, that is, take the pastor’s interpretation as the true word. That may be a peculiarity of the mass I attended, but most converted and non-believing Catholics I know seem to agree with me there. YMMV.
BTW, goyim is plural. You’re a goy–you and your friend are goyim.
And congratulations on joining the Jewish faith! May you one day return safely to Jerusalem.
Yes and no. I went to Israel this winter, and most Israelis speak Hebrew, as well as their native language if they’re first-generation, and whatever other language they happen to pick up (usually English because tourism from English-speaking countries runs so high, but Spanish and Russian are becoming common as well). The general population of Hebrew does not speak Yiddish–at least, not in daily conversation.
However, there are Orthodox sects (mostly in Jerusalem) who have a set of beliefs which include the rejection of modern or “new” Hebrew as spoken on a daily basis in Eretz Yisrael. They feel, basically, that modernizing Hebrew is as good as raping it, and that they’d rather use Yiddish to conduct their affairs than to be associated with the serious grievance (to them) upon our Lord that is modern Hebrew. It’s misleading to say that Yiddish is widely used in Israel, because if you’re talking about the general population of Eretz Yisrael, it’s not. (Some probably speak or learn Yiddish to connect themselves to the victims of the Holocaust, as well, as the modern state of Israel rose out of WW2’s ashes.) I suppose you could say it’s roughly analogous to exclusively French-speaking Quebec, but with more religious significance.
I got the impression while I was there that the Israelis find a way around that. Either modern Hebrew has words that get the message across, Israelis are creative, or they use words adapted from Arabic. Israeli Jews actually use a fair bit of slang that’s adapted from Arabic. The only thing I remember is that “sababa”, an Arabic word, is used by Israeli Jews to mean (basically) “cool”, as in “that’s a cool watch”. But you’re right in that Yiddish has more than its fair share of ways to say you hate someone–if you think about it, they had a lot of good reasons to hate some people.
Is it really? I went through the whole bag of documents about making aliyah and don’t recall reading those words. I do recall seeing one word a lot that started with an L and meant “standing army”. Anyway, sounds amusing. Is Cochot Mizuyanim not a term used ‘officially’ by the IDF?
Judaism is indeed like that often, especially during prayer, presumably since you can’t really read “Baruch ata adonai, [bow] eloheinu melech aholam…”
What? I certainly did no such thing in my Reform bar mitzvah. Oy, these goyim!