World Religions through a Jewish Lens
Grade 8, 2017-18
Grade 8, 2017-18
Course Overview and Schedule | Parent Letter
This course is an effort to understand our Judaism more deeply by comparing and contrasting it with other major faith traditions. We will explore Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and atheism, both on their own terms and in the context of Jewish texts, beliefs, and history. We will also discuss the accelerating tension between liberal and fundamentalist strands of all faiths and the consequences of religious tribalism in today’s global and domestic politics.
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After previewing the course overview, we introduced ourselves by sharing some of our own questions about other religions and revealing which religions are represented in each of our families (it turns out we hail from a wide variety of Jewish movements and Christian denominations). This process resulted in a stimulating and free-flowing conversation about a number of interesting subtopics, encompassing history, politics, cults, and more. We also spent a bit of time thinking about different ways to study world religions, reading a few comments from non-Jews about what they'd like Jewish children to understand about their religions, and looking at the 2010 Pew survey on religious knowledge. (Feel free to try out the questions yourself! Here's a fascinating article about the survey results.)
View this session's handout packet.
We began class by discussing these two questions in pairs: (1) What do we consider the foundational elements of the Jewish religion?, and (2) What differentiates Reform Judaism from other types of Judaism we have heard about? After sharing some of our responses, we went over what Rabbi David Lieb considers the five elements to understand about any religion: God and faith, authority and leadership, celebration, salvation, and core values. Much of the rest of class was devoted to describing Judaism through these five elements. We then spent time reading how various non-Orthodox Jewish movements explain their philosophies, according to the websites of their umbrella organizations. Students took vigorous notes in the margins as we read, and many agreed that each description reflected some aspect of their own understanding of Judaism. Unfortunately, the clock ran out before we could process all of our reactions, so we will pick up next week where we left off, and also learn a bit about Orthodox Judaism before launching into our study of Christianity.
View this session's handout packet.
This class was a continuation of last week's study of Judaism and Jewish movements. We reviewed the handout about non-Orthodox movements and shared our thoughts about which aspects of Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Humanistic Judaism resonate with us and how each movement prioritizes elements of Judaism differently. We then discussed the differences between Modern Orthodox and Hasidism, following up with a short video clip from the documentary A Life Apart: Hasidism in America. (The full documentary is available on DVD from the public library.) We concluded by sharing a few of our lingering questions. Throughout today's class, I emphasized that our examination of distinctions between Jewish movements helps us set the context for making distinctions between denominations of other religions, particularly Christianity, which we will begin exploring (finally!) next week.
The entire class period was devoted to sharing what we know, think we know, think we don't know, and want to know about Christianity. We began by reviewing the five elements of religion, as well as quotes from some Christians regarding what they would like Jewish students to understand about their religion. Then we launched into two central questions: What do Christians believe, and what do Christians celebrate? The complete notes from this discussion are here. While a few students were quite confident in their answers, most students were unsure of at least some of what they contributed, and our goal is to use these notes as the starting point for learning more about the basics of Christianity next week. Nevertheless, collectively the class knew quite a bit! One tangential discussion focused on how American Jews (and Muslims, Hindus, etc.) often seem to know more about Christianity than Christians do about other faiths, and we offered explanations for this, notably that any minority group must by necessity learn about the culturally dominant group in order to navigate the culture. (This is also true for Black people with white culture, gay people with straight culture, etc.) This was a dynamic class period that sets up our next discussion quite effectively.
View this session's discussion notes.
We spent this class period going over a handout about the basics of Christianity -- compiled mostly from the Apples and Oranges resource text, along with references to the students' comments and questions from last week. The conversation was dynamic and full of interesting tangents and insightful inquiries. Some major aspects of Christianity that we spent time discussing and struggling with during this class include the trinity, the virgin birth, the distinction between Jesus's teachings and the religion that grew out of them, the absolute authority of the Catholic Pope and restrictions on the personal lives of Catholic clergy, the ritual of baptism, and the concept of original sin. We did not have time for the bottom portion about denominations, so we will get into that next week before beginning our study of Islam.
We are now two weeks behind schedule, but it's been worth it! After reviewing the basics of Christianity for those who were not present last week, we went through the history and practices of a number of Christian denominations: Catholic, a variety of mainline Protestant traditions, evangelical, Mormon, the Black church tradition, and Unitarian Universalist. Different students knew or had heard different things about some of these denominations, so we did our best to be thorough, fair, and rooted in how members of each denomination view themselves. (This applied most pressingly to Mormonism, since some students were familiar with the satirical musical The Book of Mormon, and to evangelicalism, for which the fascinating documentary Jesus Camp on Netflix allows us to step into the shoes of evangelical young people as they build community together.) As always, the contributions and questions from across the classroom were vital to the learning experience. Next week, we will finally shift to learning about Islam.
We began our session on Islam by watching this overview video and then breaking into small discussion groups to brainstorm aspects of Islam that appear similar to Judaism. For the rest of the period, we went through the basics of Islam, paying attention to the five key aspects of any religion: theology, authority, celebrations, salvation, and core values. Along the way, students chimed in with excellent questions and comments. In particular, we spent time discussing the role of Muhammad in Islamic theology, the place of Jewish and Christian prophets in Islam, how Islamic theocracies are organized, the significance of Ramadan, the extent of the third "pillar" about charity, the historical role of Jews in Muslim-majority societies, and misinterpretations of Islam that have led to "Islamist" terrorist groups waging jihad against colonial powers. We also ended up in a fascinating logical-theoretical conversation about heaven and hell, and which deeds might count as good or bad.
Our overview of Hinduism began by discussing the concept of polytheism and imagining how this much-maligned idea might actually help adherents feel more connected to nature and the universe. As we read over the basics of Hinduism, we paused frequently to compare the content to Judaism and the other monotheistic religions. One interesting part of the discussion involved the contrasting identities of various gods (for example, motherhood vs. destruction) and how this demonstrates a concern for balance that appears to be missing from Western thought. We also contrasted Hindu animal reverence with the Jewish creation story, in which mankind is inherently superior to animals. We spent quite a bit of time exploring the idea of reincarnation and karma; the students were eager to find similarities with Christianity's concept of Hell (and religions' incentive structures more generally) and Judaism's call to repair the world. Part of our conversation involved different perspectives on stereotyping and making jokes about religious groups, which was prompted by one student's concern about hearing such a comment about Indians -- a tangent, but a worthwhile one!
We spent this hour sitting around the edge of the sandbox in the preschool playground. For the first few minutes, we sat in silence, concentrating on our breathing and taking in the fresh air and the outdoors. We then each shared something that our parents or other adult relatives have given us to make our lives easier: phones, furniture, school tuition, etc. I read aloud one version of the origin story of the Buddha, Siddhartha Guatama. Siddhartha was born a prince and was pampered by his parents and shielded from the struggles of the world. Only later, in adulthood, did he set out on his famous quest for enlightenment, shedding his material possessions and focusing on transcending life's difficulties through wisdom, meditation, and good works. Much of our session consisted of a free-flowing conversation about this origin story, the religion (or, perhaps more accurately, the way of life) of Buddhism, and how it contrasts with and potentially complements Judaism. We also created an impromptu analogy to Buddhism by analyzing the deep sand hole that one student had gradually dug during the discussion and the necessity of filling the hole before we left the sandbox.
We began class with this challenge: Try making the case for believing there is no god. Students proposed a number of interesting ideas, some of which they saw echoed and expanded upon in a follow-up video compilation of academics, scientists, and comedians explaining their atheism. (Warning: George Carlin does drop a few inappropriate words in the video!) After the video, I invited the class to engage with any of the arguments it presented, leading to an intellectually heavy yet respectful conversation. Many students revealed their own struggles with the concept of God, primarily the timeless question of how a god could let horrible things happen in the world, as well as their attempts to reconcile religious faith with scientific discoveries (in line with Neil deGrasse Tyson's remarks in the video). I emphasized the distinction between agnosticism and atheism and then posed the closing question of whether one can be both Jewish and atheist. This prompted a variety of opinions, ranging from yes to no and in between. Ultimately, it came down to how each student defines Judaism and what they find most important for them in their religion. This will be a central topic of our final class session next week: what our studies of other religions can teach us about our relationship to Judaism.
This week, we covered three "wrap-up" topics, each of which opened up promising mini-conversations within the class. The first was the question of why newer religions have had such a hard time spreading and achieving the same degree of cultural power as, say, Christianity or Islam. The article in The Atlantic is worth reading in full; we referred to a summary list to jump-start the discussion. The value in this topic is the perspective we get when we view religions through a historical lens in addition to a theological one. At one point, a student brought up the same-sex wedding cake case currently before the Supreme Court, which provided a perfect transition to our second topic: the modern divide between progressive religious denominations and conservative or reactionary ones. I presented the theory that Reform Jews potentially have more in common with Episcopalians and Unitarians than with Hasidic Jews, in terms of how we view religion's role in society and in our lives. We also applied this theory to the global conflict between secular modernity and Islamist terror groups. Our final topic encompassed ways our own relationships to Judaism have evolved through our study of other faiths. Most of the students' comments were about valuing what other traditions can teach us and about not making assumptions about other religions and cultures before we understand them. The conversation could have lasted another hour probably, but we had reached the end of our time together for the semester. It was truly an honor for me to work with these young scholars and get to know them!