Teaching Judaism? Do your students know the story of Passover? Or that it’s probably the most practiced Jewish tradition. Vox has a great review of Passover that students might find interesting and readable. Dara Lind, who wrote the Vox story, notes that Passover has become a big deal not just for Jews in general but for secular Jews too. That may make it, Lind says, “the most widely observed Jewish tradition among American Jews today.” The chart also shows that... Read more
Studying Buddhism? Here’s an interesting NPR story (a few year’s old) discussing whether American yoga has strayed too far from its Hindu roots and needs standards. Read more
Here’s a fascinating story students might read about heroism during the Holocaust in the 1940s. Most everyone knows Oskar Schindler, thanks to the book and the movie, Schindler’s List. The German businessman saved over 1100 Jews from certain death in the Nazi concentration camps. Fewer people know the Hollywood mogul, Carl Laemmle, who is credited with saving over 300 Jews during World War II. That is remarkable because Laemmle is probably the only Hollywood mogul to even get involved with... Read more
Watch how the major religions have spread over the last 500 years. According to the The Mail Online, the map comes from a group called Maps of War who now make maps of religion. Read more
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City will open a new exhibition on Monday of Hindu-Buddhist art from the earliest kingdoms of southeast Asia. The exhibit includes over 160 objects and as you can see from the two sculptures here, some are stunning. The kingdoms of southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam) are called “lost kingdoms” because, “identities and sometimes very existence only emerged from the historical shadows in the twentieth century, as a result of pioneering... Read more
Did you know that a 63 year-old Hindu nationalist with a record of stirring up Hindu-Muslim animosity is likely to be India’s next prime minister?` Will tension between Muslims and Hindus increase with his election? Will he whip up Hindu nationalism to such an extreme that non-Hindus feel threatened? Max Fisher answers all these questions in an easy to read essay for Vox called: Everything You Wanted to Know About Narendra Modi’s Rise. You’ll learn, for example, that many Indians... Read more
Jews have a strong heritage in the Middle East and parts of North Africa like Morocco. Two new exhibitions in New York focus on that heritage, according to this interesting article in the New York Times. One exhibition at the Center for Jewish history is called Light and Shadows: The Story of Iranian Jews. (while the exhibit is over, you can view curriculum ideas from the Folwer Museum at UCLA here) The image above was painted on doors in Iran in... Read more
How do the different religions see the Golden Rule? This poster shows you the similarities and differences. And Scarboro Missions has a cool flash site that allows you click on each religion and see its treatment of the Golden Rule. But you do have have flash on your device to view it. Here’s what it looks like when it loads. Read more
Studying Christianity? The BibleGateway is a great resource. You can search the Bible using keywords.and you can also search specific passages like “Genesis 1:1-2:10.” Finally, you can search by topic. Read more
Historian and professor of early Christianity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Bart Ehrman explains in his new book, ” How Jesus Became God.” In this fascinating interview on Fresh Air, Ehrman notes that the Christians were not the first to call someone god. They began doing so at the same time Roman’s began to deify their emperors. And they tried to explain the Trinity as monotheistic by calling it modalism. Ehrman told NPR that “it’s called modalism... Read more
World Religions
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