How do offerings shape religions? | Do You Belief? - video Dailymotion

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Why do religious offerings matter? A Taoist and a Jew discuss their unique practices.

Transcript

00:00 Every year during 7 months, if you Google it,

00:02 there's always articles about the mess, the smell,

00:06 the inconvenience that it brings to others.

00:08 Hi, my name is Xiaowei,

00:20 and I represent my family temple, Ji Zhen Gong,

00:23 and I'm also the director of Jing Ying Memorial,

00:25 which houses ancestral pedestals.

00:28 Hi, I'm Morty Miller,

00:30 a member of the Jewish community here in Singapore,

00:33 and the founder of Shalom Point.

00:35 Nice to meet you.

00:36 Nice to meet you.

00:37 So, we're going to talk about religious offerings.

00:39 So, do you see what's happening on the roadside?

00:42 Do you see the food, the joss paper flying?

00:44 Do you have any idea what is it?

00:47 Not really.

00:49 Alright, so for Taoism,

00:51 the religious offerings that we have,

00:54 normally we would just pray with fruits or food,

00:57 and then followed by joss sticks or sweets and candies.

01:01 So, actually in Judaism,

01:04 people think mistakenly we do not have offerings at all,

01:08 but in fact, we used to have until the year 70.

01:12 Okay.

01:13 Until then, the temple, the Jewish temple in Jerusalem stood,

01:18 and we had animal sacrifice.

01:21 Oh, wow.

01:22 For various purposes.

01:24 Okay.

01:25 It's not only giving up and sacrificing,

01:28 but the Hebrew word also means being closer to God

01:31 by sacrificing the animals.

01:35 But this is, in Judaism, a substitution.

01:38 Meaning, I sinned.

01:40 I'm the one who was supposed to be here on the altar.

01:44 Instead of me suffering, the animal is going to go.

01:49 But since the destruction of the temple at the year 70,

01:54 we stopped doing offerings.

01:57 Only the priest in the temple in Jerusalem was allowed to do this.

02:03 But if the temple is destructed, you cannot do this anymore.

02:07 And instead of that, you have to pray.

02:10 That's why we have synagogues.

02:13 Okay.

02:13 We go to synagogue instead of going to the temple and offering the animals.

02:20 So today, prayer is a substitution to offering.

02:24 I realized that in your religion, these come together, right?

02:28 Prayer and offering.

02:30 But for us, it's prayer instead of offering.

02:32 It's a kind of offer.

02:34 It's definitely very different from the Taoist religion.

02:38 For us, the offerings are normally carried out at temples

02:42 or when people pray to ancestors.

02:44 So during the seven months, we actually pray to the wandering spirits.

02:48 So we always have a belief that during the seven months,

02:51 there will be hungry ghosts that will come out and eat all the food.

02:55 You know, when you burn the joss paper, they will come and snatch all the joss paper.

02:58 So that's actually a really big thing.

03:02 Even if people are not very religious,

03:04 in Singapore, in offices or companies, they still believe in carrying out this practice.

03:10 For us, normally the offerings are to God or to the ancestors.

03:15 Meaning family members that have already passed.

03:18 Yeah, then they still want to give offerings to them.

03:21 For the hungry ghost month, when we pray, we pray to what we call

03:25 in Chinese, we call it the Hao Xiong Di, which is the wandering spirit.

03:29 So you see all the items that we put on the floor, right?

03:32 It's just we feel that if we give this to them, then they will protect us.

03:37 You know, or there will be no harm to us.

03:39 Then when we pray to our ancestors, it's also we believe that during this period,

03:42 because there's a lot of wandering spirits,

03:44 then the ancestors will actually visit the home.

03:47 In our belief, we feel that our ancestors are like our god of fortune.

03:52 You know, Chinese, you always pray for wealth,

03:55 you know, pray for wealth and pray for blessing, right?

03:57 Our ancestors are the ones that are actually taking care of us.

04:01 So the only difference is that for some people,

04:04 on seven months, they will just pray to wandering spirits.

04:08 And then for some families, they practice and they have to believe that,

04:11 "Oh, during this period, my ancestors will come back."

04:14 Then I will actually prepare something for them.

04:16 Now I feel that when they come to visit, then they will feel more welcome.

04:21 But actually during the period when to pray and things like that,

04:24 it really depends on the individual.

04:26 There isn't a direct saying that, "Oh, during this period, you must pray.

04:30 If you don't pray, then good things will not come to you."

04:33 You know, we don't believe that there's any good in pressuring people or saying that.

04:38 So it really depends on, you know, how comfortable the individual feels.

04:42 Instead of offering, we have prayer three times a day.

04:46 So if once we used to give our animals, so now we give our heart.

04:53 Okay.

04:54 It's very serious because once, you know, I had the animal,

04:58 we had the animal to take the sin, but now it's me and God.

05:03 We do not say whatever we like.

05:05 You have texts.

05:07 There's a way to approach the king of the world.

05:10 How we dress, what hour of the day, how we open our prayer.

05:15 Then what we say, we praise.

05:18 Then there's petition.

05:20 Then there's thanks.

05:21 So there are different kinds of prayers we say in a certain order, right?

05:26 When I want to do something, I first want to make sure the setting is okay.

05:31 The context is okay.

05:33 That I have everything right.

05:35 And then I can be spontaneous.

05:37 You can do it at home.

05:38 You can do it at home, but it's best to do it in a synagogue.

05:43 We come together as a community and ask God to help us as a community, as a family, as a people.

05:51 And of course, I'm part of that.

05:54 There is a place for an individual, but first we look out to each other for each other.

06:00 Today, we do have other ways of offering and maybe the main one is tithing.

06:07 And this is something that's a commandment.

06:11 People may not realize this.

06:13 People are expected in Judaism to take a tenth of their income and contribute it to charity.

06:21 It's the just thing to do, the right thing to do, because what we have is not really ours.

06:27 It's God's.

06:28 First, I have to look after people who are in my immediate vision, my close circle.

06:34 The poor that belong to your city, come first.

06:38 So if you live in Singapore, in a certain street, in a certain place, first you look out,

06:45 according to Judaism, out of your window and see, does anybody need my help?

06:51 For us, people normally feel like, for example, it's coming to the end of the year.

06:55 I felt like things have been going really good for me.

06:58 I wanted to do good.

07:00 Then they'll actually tell us, you know, they wanted to do something, charity,

07:04 or they want us to host a, you know, an event for the community.

07:08 Then on our temple's behalf of them, we will actually do the pleading.

07:11 Like we actually had the big donation of rice, we will give to different organizations in Singapore.

07:17 Every year during Sabbah month, if you Google it down,

07:21 there's always articles about like the mess, the smell, the inconvenience that it brings to others.

07:27 There's always like this burning cage right, in below the houses.

07:30 They're either all too small, or people actually bring too many things.

07:34 Then there's actually not a proper area that they can burn, so it can create a lot of mess.

07:40 Or for some people that they don't burn as often, they will actually just put it on the ground,

07:45 and just burn it, and then after that, when the wind blows, then it flies everywhere.

07:49 So you can actually see like the government now right,

07:52 they're actually encouraging people to go to temples to burn,

07:56 instead of burning it below their house, which may, you know, disturb, you know, people.

08:03 But I always encourage people when they practice this, to please burn properly, you know,

08:10 because if you just burn it, you know, like that, and you just leave right,

08:14 then people will say that, "Oh, you know, this is Taoist practice."

08:17 So if you want to encourage more people to continue this practice right,

08:21 then of course it's best that, you know, we do it properly,

08:24 but we try to educate and share with people that,

08:26 "Oh, you know, instead of just burning here, maybe you can burn at our temple,

08:30 or we can do this praying service for you, so you don't have to feel the pressure."

08:35 For the younger generation, if let's say they go downstairs to pray with their parents,

08:39 they feel the pressure of many eyes staring at them,

08:43 like, "Oh wait, they're gonna make a mess, you know, they're gonna dirty everything,

08:46 the car, the floors, and all that."

08:49 We definitely have to be considerate.

08:51 You cannot say that, "This is our religion, this is how we do it."

08:54 You know, you just, you don't like, then you go and complain, no?

08:57 Like, that's definitely not the right approach,

09:00 but we can see that some people, they might get a bit more defensive.

09:04 Thank you so much.

09:05 I learned so much about the seventh month, the month of the ghosts,

09:09 and this was so insightful for me.

09:12 So when you share so much, it actually makes me think back about,

09:15 "Oh, you know, what else can I do, you know, for my religion,

09:18 or how to bring the people together?"

09:20 So if you guys have any questions about faith, seven months, spirits, burning,

09:26 you can leave them in the comments down below.

09:29 Bye!

09:29 Bye bye!

09:30 [Music]

09:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]

How do offerings shape religions? | Do You Belief?

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