With this week being Passover, I find myself surprised again by how little most people know about Judaism.

My family has a Passover sedar every year, and we always invite a few Goyem, which is the Yiddish word for non-Jews. It’s always amazing to me how little Goyem know about a religion that is so often talked about on television and in the movies. The ignorance a lot of people have for Judaism was also highlighted recently at Ames High, where prom was inadvertently scheduled on the first night of Passover.

In social studies and religion classes in my schooling, we never spent a lot of time on Judaism because it was assumed everyone already knows everything there is to know about it, but few people know more than that Jews can’t eat pork, wear funny hats sometimes and celebrate Hanukkah.

So I will use my position as a columnist today to educate the ISU community on the religion that Christianity grew out of.

Judaism is the eighth largest religion in the world, according to 1996 statistics from religioustolerance.org, after Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese folk religions, New Asian religions and tribal religions. Adding 50 million more Jews would still leave it in eighth place.

About 2 percent of Americans are Jewish, and less than 1 percent of people around the world are Jews. However, Judaism has a disproportionately large influence on American culture due to the high concentration of Jews in Manhattan and Los Angeles.

I’ll start with the basics of Judaism. Jews believe in one God, whose name is not known to any living person. They believe that the messiah will come to Earth one day, but that Jesus was not that messiah.

There are three branches of Judaism – Orthodox, Conservative and Reform.

Orthodox Judaism is a very sexist religion. Before going to bed every night, men say a prayer that loosely translates to “Thank God I wasn’t born a woman.”

Orthodox girls can’t have a Bat Mitzvah (daughter of the commandments), which is the female version of Bar Mitzvah, the coming-of-age ceremony Jewish kids go through when they’re 12 or 13. Orthodox women can’t be rabbis, and they don’t count as people for a minion, which is the Jewish tradition where you need 10 adult Jews to pray in order for God to hear their prayers. In an Orthodox synagogue (church), females sit apart from the males and sometimes even have to sit in the balcony.

Hassidic Jews (those guys with the funny curls hanging in front of their ears) are an even-more-strict wing of Orthodoxy.

Reform Judaism is the most liberal of the sects. Few Reform Jews are kosher or observe the Sabbath (traditionally, Jews have to do nothing but rest from Friday night through Saturday night). Actually, many Reform Jews are atheists or agnostics who enjoy the culture and Yiddish jokes.

Conservative Judaism is somewhere in between, not as sexist as Orthodoxy but more traditional than Reform. Conservative females can have Bat Mitzvahs, be rabbis and sit with the men in prayer.

Since the Hebrew calendar is lunar (it’s in year 5761 right now), Jewish holidays don’t fall on the same date each year. For example, Hanukkah is usually around Christmas but can fall anywhere from November to January.

Though there are many Jewish holidays, the main ones are Passover and Yom Kippur. You’ll notice I didn’t say Hanukkah – I’ll get to that later.

Passover, which we are currently in the middle of, is the story of the Jew’s exodus from Egypt. The pharaoh wouldn’t let the Jewish slaves leave Egypt, so God sent a series of plagues down on the Egyptians, including a rain of frogs, cattle disease and slaying of the first born. After his own son was killed, the pharaoh relented and said the Jews could be free. But when they left, the Egyptians changed their minds and came after the Jews. So then Moses parted the Red Sea and eventually got the Ten Commandments.

Actually, the whole Torah, which is the main Jewish text, was incorporated by Christians into the Old Testament of their Bible. The Torah was written in Hebrew – with no vowels – so it always amuses me when people “quote” from the Old Testament.

Jews celebrate Passover by having a sedar where they retell the story of Passover and eat foods with varying levels of nastiness – chicken liver, gefilte fish, horseradish on crackers, etc.

Passover is a spring holiday that tends to fall near Easter; in fact, Jesus and his apostles, all Jews, were conducting a sedar at the Last Supper.

Passover lasts for eight days. It ends at sundown Easter Sunday this year. In the Jewish religion, each day begins at sundown and continues until sundown the next day, so holidays all begin in the evenings.

The most important Jewish holiday is Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, where Jews ask God for forgiveness for all their sins and fast for the day. It’s a fall holiday followed by Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year.

And then there’s Hanukkah. Hanukkah is not a major religious holiday. In fact, only the most observant Jews would celebrate it, if not for Christmas. Traditionally, Jewish kids were given bags of coins or other small gifts for Hanukkah. Today, kids get Playstation games, Cabbage Patch dolls or any other usual Christmastime gifts.

The holiday has become highly secular, with a menorah or Hanukkiah (that metal thing that holds seven or nine candles) instead of a Christmas tree and lights; songs like “Dreidyl, Dreidyl, Dreidyl” and “Oh Hanukkah” in place of Christmas carols; and Jewish-star-shaped garlands, streamers and lights to decorate one’s home with in the winter.

Since Hanukkah is not a big deal in the Jewish tradition, I’ll just summarize the story behind the holiday quickly: This Jewish tribe, the Maccabees, beat the much larger Syrian army in battle due to a miracle of God.

In addition to the myth that Hanukkah is Judaism’s main holiday, there are a lot of things the average person doesn’t understand about this religion.

The belief on heaven and hell is mixed in Judaism. Orthodox Jews are more likely to believe in both, while Reform Jews tend to believe only in heaven or else in no afterlife.

One Jewish tradition is keeping kosher. Under this law – which not all Jews follow – pork and shellfish are outlawed and Jews may not mix milk and meat in the same meal. God doesn’t really explain why Jews should do this; it is simply commanded. God’s just like that sometimes.

The symbol that universally signifies Judaism and most often worn as jewelry is the six-pointed Star of David. The origins of this symbol are unclear and debated, but most interpret it to stand for unity and tranquility.

Judaism has a history that goes back thousands of years, yet many of its traditions are still kept today. Though Jews only make up 2 percent of Americans, they have had an enormous impact on U.S. culture, from Einstein and Freud to bagels and circumcision.

Judaism began about 5,000 years ago with Abraham. According to the Torah, he decided it was wrong to worship idols and that there was only one God. Then he beget Isaac, who beget Jacob, and so on and so on.

Jocelyn Marcus is a junior in English from Ames. She is opinion editor of the Daily.