Sights around Baton Rouge, page 4

Religion

Southern Louisiana contains the largest Catholic population in the South, along with the Hispanic populations of Texas and Florida.  Baton Rouge is roughly one-third Catholic.

St. Joseph Cathedral downtown.  Note the bank building and State
Capitol building on either side.

 

The Jewish Community in Baton Rouge is small,
but includes two synagogues, both Reform.

  

Rabbi Barry Weinstein of Congregation B'nai Israel helps out with the
microphone and holds bread crumbs aloft during a picnic and Tashlich
service on the Mississippi levee.  

About Tashlich, from the responsive reading handout: After Rosh Hashanah [the Jewish New Year] services in the synagogue, many people go to a nearby stream or river.  We turn our pockets inside out to empty them of crumbs.  We drop the crumbs into the water and watch them float away.  It is like throwing away the bad things we may have done.  We make ourselves clean for the start of a fresh year.

The Shofar (ram's horn) is sounded.

Casting crumbs onto the water.

 

For more information on the Catholic community, see the book by LSU sociology PhD, Mary Gautier: Bryan T. Froehle and Mary L. Gautier, Catholicism USA: A Portrait of the Catholic Church in the United States (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), or the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge.

For more information on the Jewish community, contact one of the two Baton Rouge synagogues, Beth Shalom or B'nai Israel.

Note to visitors: This page is incomplete.  We hope to finish it someday ... !

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