Judaism within America: a bit of the past and a bit of the now

      Religious ideals have been a core part of human creation since some of the earliest times of man. Mesopotamian cultures have been existing for almost seven thousand years. So suffice to say the existence of America as a nation has barely reached 1.5% of that age. However while it had been created thousands of years ago, it hasn't been practiced in quite a long time, so it's impact on society today isn't as significant as many other religions. However one religion which while hasn't existed as long as the Mesopotamian cultures, that being the Judaism, which is about 5775 years old. I wanted to talk about the topic about how Judaism lives in a modern time in addition to some changes from when Judaism because yesterday my brother got acknowledged as a Jewish adult, through Bar Mitzvah.
      Becoming Bar, Bat or Benai Mitzvah usually means a long boring service followed by a party which usually is three times the length, well worth the service, but what does it mean to become a Jewish adult? While that singles out a huge portion of the population, this question, of course can also be extended to other religious factions. However the question here is very prevalent to events that happened in the recent chapters we were studying in class.
       The definition changed very drastically from which branch of Judaism the respective person is associated with more conservative branches will place emphasis upon the idea of taking up religious studies, whereas more liberal branches will place focus on taking time to try and enact Tikkun Olam, "repairing the world". For our family we do practice the more liberal Judaism, or in this case Reform Judaism, even though I have practically done nothing since my Bar Mitzvah. These others sections of Judaism took form when other massive religious, social events, and political were occurring, such as abolition, the Great Awakenings, and the World Wars.
      As of now in the United States, about two percent of the population is associated with Judaism and in addition to that it's percentage is shrinking as well, not because of people dropping the religion rather, other populations are growing in number while the Jewish one is retaining its size. This is a much greater percentage of the population and raw number of people from when they were first being recorded in censuses around the 19th century where they represented around 0.5 % of the population at that time. At the turn of the World War and consequently the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, many Russian Jews immigrated to the United States, so prior to the Depression, there was a influx of the population upward. Which may correlate to the involvement of personnel that did believe in the faith.
      Connecting to what we were covering in the past unit with regard to participation in the war, the number of Jewish soldiers who participated was two hundred fifty thousand, which when taken from the four million was around six percent of the army mobilized. While this number is small in many respects, the one thing about the involvement which was quite large was the size of the Jewish population, being about three percent, which the soldiers pooled from. Reasons for this can be widely debated but I believe that maybe it was brought about by the ideals which they were raised by. This could be interpreted by one of two ideals; empathy towards Jewish wellbeing in Europe, or the ideal of Tikkun Olam.
     Judaism is not a popular religion, in terms of people who practice it. Looking In my perspective retaining a Jewish identity, a representation of ones' Jewish ideals is to look at what has occurred in the past regarding the various issues with Judaism, and formulating an opinion on it, which for the newly Bar Mitzvot, is an important point where they start achieving independence.