RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF OLDER ADULTS: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

This article presents a number of historical themes that are relevant to emerging efforts in the religious education of older adults. Drawing on themes in Jewish, Christian, Confucian, and other world religions the author indicates that religious bodies have shown respect for the elderly, especially for their abilities as teachers and counselors. Older adults have pursued learning either by living in close connection with religious communities or in separate institutions under the sponsorship of religious bodies. Religious traditions have urged study and contemplation as suitable activities for their older members. The increased numbers of older adults in religious bodies is a problem that can be turned into educational challenge and opportunity.     

麦地那犹太人与阿拉伯人的历史交往

本文从历史交往和文明交往的角度论述了古代犹太民族和阿拉伯民族的相互关系。从前伊斯兰时代到伊斯兰时代,两大民族两大宗教以麦地那为舞台在矛盾和斗争的同时,一直存在相互学习、相互借鉴、相互影响。在文明交往中,犹太文明和伊斯兰文明比邻而居,相互涵化,伊斯兰文明迅速崛起,由民族宗教发展为世界宗教,形成连接东西、继往开来的阿拉伯—伊斯兰文明。     

REVELATION AS TEACHING‐LEARNING

Revelation is a central category in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions for relating the divine and the human. Each of these religions tends to speak of revelation as something given to them in the past. This essay describes revelation as a present relation of teaching‐learning, one that is universal in scope and finds particular expressions in bodily and communal life. To teach is to show someone how to do something. Teaching is a fundamental act of all human and some nonhuman beings. Some Christian writers, including Clement of Alexandria and Thomas Aquinas, are cited in support of this thesis.     

Compulsory education in religion—the Norwegian case: an empirical evaluation of RE in Norwegian schools,with a focus on human rights

Christian knowledge used to be taught in the Norwegian state school as a compulsory subject for members of Lutheran churches. In 1997 this was replaced by a subject that is compulsory for all pupils, where both Christianity, other religions and secular world views are taught on an equal basis, although more time should be used on Christianity than other views. Some parents took the state to court because they wanted full withdrawal from the subject for their children. Having lost the case, the parents of four pupils then appealed to the UN’s Human Rights Committee, which in November 2004 gave a verdict supporting the parents. This article is based on an evaluation project, asking parents, pupils and teachers about their experiences with the new subject, and also asking parents how they would prefer religions and world views to be taught. We focus on what we regard as the subject’s most central dilemma: how can the school contribute to giving the pupils and society a common cultural basis while at the same time both freedom of religion and parental rights are taken care of?     

Introduction to the Hebrew Edition of Visions of Jewish Education—Medabrim Chazon (Talking Vision) 1

The following is a translation of the introduction to Medabrim Chazon (Jerusalem: Keter, 2006), the Hebrew translation of Visions of Jewish Education, edited by Seymour Fox, Israel Scheffler, and Daniel Marom (Cambridge, 2003).(See the Journal, volume 71, number 1, Levisohn and responses in volume 71, number 2.) Visions of Jewish Education is an effort by leading scholars to improve the quality of Jewish education through attention to its purposes and aims. We, the editors of Medabrim Chazon wrote this introduction for Israeli readers, who encounter in Medabrim Chazon not just a translation of Visions of Jewish Education, but the world of North American Jewish education. While Visions of Jewish Education assumes familiarity with this framework, it is likely to be foreign to the Israeli audience. Indeed, in order to convey some of the problems in translating Visions of Jewish Education for Israeli readers, we have decided to present a literal rendering of the introduction here. North American readers may be surprised to notice, for example, the need to explain the role of synagogues in Jewish education.

This special introduction to the Hebrew translation may also be valuable for North American readers of Visions of Jewish Education. First, it may be illuminating to see how issues of Jewish educational vision unfold in Israel; the introduction brings to light questions of language, identity, and institutional structure that are unique to Jewish education in Israel. At the same time, while Jewish education plays itself out differently in various parts of the Jewish world, the issue of vision is fundamental in each context, and we hope to identify some shared concerns across Jewish communities. Having identified these concerns, we hope it will be possible for the book's audiences from around the world to engage in a conversation. Finally, we believe that we can benefit from looking at our own communities from the vantage point of how we are perceived by different communities within the Jewish world. This can not only enhance the awareness of our very diverse Jewish world but also foster exchange within it.     

Technology: So Pervasive in Jewish Living,So Absent from Jewish Educational Research

The Jewish world, like the world civilization that hosts it, is awash in new technologies. Appropriately, there is a great deal of attention paid to how to improve the Jewish world and Jewish identity through technology. Paradoxically there is a paucity of literature characterizing the relationship of Jews and Judaism to technology. This article examines this relationship through a portrait of a 3-year Covenant-Jewish Education Center of Cleveland project entitled Text Me: Ancient Jewish Wisdom Meets Contemporary Technology. Seven areas of future research are suggested out of the exploration of these two sources.     

Religious Diversity in the Middle East before Christianity

The Middle East is so religiously diverse that the three major religions,Judaism,Christianity and Islam,are intercon nected and each originated within the Middle East.Islam in its many forms is by far the most heavily represented religion in the region though many branches and sects diversify and segment it.In addition to the widely acknowledged religions,smaller,mi nority religions such as Bahá’í,Druze,Yazidi,Mandean,Gnosticism,Yarsanism,Shabakism,Zoroastrianism are also prevalent throughout the Middle East.This article begins with Mideast civilization and attempts at outlining a religious map of the region.Finally,the study concludes that Hellenistic culture,Jewish religion system and Roman polity all had found their way into spread ing the influence of Christianity before Christianity,the missionary religion established itself in the Middle East.     

Creating a safe place: SRE teaching as an act of security and identity formation in government schools in Australia

This study seeks to analyse the components that contribute to Special Religious Education (SRE) classes in government schools in Australia being considered as a ‘safe place’ and the ways in which they facilitate an understanding of the students’ own religious and cultural identity. Our research focuses on one of the small faiths, Judaism, as a case study through observation of the Jewish SRE/SRI classes in the two largest Jewish population centres, Sydney and Melbourne. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 90 participants, and classroom observations were undertaken in both cities. This paper draws on Kymlicka’s concept of the rights of minority groups in a liberal society and discusses the distinction between thin and thick multiculturalism. Our findings show that the Jewish SRE teachers implemented Jackson’s interpretive approach, ensuring that the students’ educational experience is meaningful. As a result, they are able to develop their unique identity capital, which is important in a multifaith society to ensure ‘thick’ multiculturalism. Our argument is that students need to have an understanding of their own particularistic identity, as well as learning to respect other religions.     

WISDOM'S GIFT: GENERATION X AND THE PROBLEM OF PRINT-ORIENTED RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Conventional wisdom has it that a younger generation, raised on a variety of media, eschews reading, a seemingly problematic scenario for religions that hold texts as authoritative. The benefits of literacy are not disputed, yet an alternative to that end is offered. Proverbs offer teachers of a post-literate generation an approach to teaching and learning, speaking and listening which embraces and advocates the conventions of the community while at the same time paying heed to the ambiguity and paradox of knowing the mystery which is God. "Reading" is broadened to include interpreting the world through the lens of the community's common language, a language that at once supports tradition and promotes innovative thought and action. Proverbs suggests that how and when a teacher speaks (and listens) can be formative, and potentially transformative.     

宗教对话与和谐理论的形成和发展

科学的、比较的宗教学研究为宗教间合理解决彼此矛盾、冲突,有效地进行宗教对话,提供了理论前提。开展宗教对话,有利于各宗教文化和平相处,以期达到一种宗教和谐,同时也给民族和平、世界和平提供了一种理论导向。反之,宗教现实问题一再为宗教研究提出了方向和任务,促使宗教研究切实为社会现实服务。这条规律的提出有助于我们有意识地去把握宗教研究方向,切实为宗教和平乃至世界和平做出理论贡献。     

Young minds in motion: interactive pedagogy in non-formal settings

This is an interpretive study of two cases where a group of sixth grade Catholic students were taught about the Jewish people and the Jewish religion. The paper compares the pedagogy used by the students’ classroom teacher with that employed by a Jewish museum educator at the Spertus Museum of Judaica in Chicago, Illinois. The study aims at increasing our understanding of how children, individually and as members of a specific religious group, construct meanings of the religious other and how those schemas become altered as a result of encountering new stimuli and engaging in what Nel Noddings has called ordinary conversation.     

A place for informal learning in teaching about religion: The story of an experienced non-Muslim teacher and her learning about Islam

Teacher learning about religion has remained an under-researched topic in spite of the professional accountability placed on teachers to teach about religion in a constitutionally permissible and pedagogically sound way. Using data collected from interviews, the purpose of this study is to describe and examine how and what an experienced Non-Muslim teacher of the world’s religions learned about Islam in today’s climate of accountability and negative imagery of Islam. The findings of this study suggest that informal learning through independent reading and interaction with a local Muslim community can be a means to enculturate teachers of world religions into ways of learning about Islam.     

A Study of Parent‐Teacher Groups

In some respects this article is redundant. Af ter all, a growing number of Jewish schools, both day schools and supplementary schools, have included Israel in their curricula in a prominent way. We mention Israel in our prayers. We teach the history of the Land of Israel. We recruit teenagers for Israel summer programs. Why then should the Gulf War have any impact on how we portray Israel in our schools? Has this war opened an educa tional window of opportunity? My question is rhetorical and the answer affirmative. Seeing Scud missiles fall live on Tel Aviv via CNN has temporarily transformed the perception of and the relation to the Jewish State. Maybe at long last we have the chance to make a very illusive Jewish symbol into a concrete reality for Jewish students around the world. Let me explain why this is so necessary and how I propose to make it happen.     

Judah L. Magnes and the Hebrew University

The horror of genocide in the twentieth century must be faced and must be told so that students of all races and religions understand the danger facing all peoples when human rights are denied to any one people. The Holocaust is a Jewish tragedy to be sure, but it not only that. It is a human tragedy, one which involves us all, whether directly or indirectly. It was not a phenomenon occurring long ago in a backward and primitive corner of the world. It occurred during the lifetime of millions still living and in a technologically and culturally advanced part of the world. Both the victims and the perpetrators sprang from groups that have contributed massively to the arts and sciences and to the uplifting of the human spirit. And yet, the Holocaust casts an ominous shadow over our civilization, as so it should, and as so it will until the end of time.     

Civic and Citizenship Education in Israel

As distinguished from the formal, political science-oriented citizenship curriculum studied exclusively in secondary schools, civic education-learning develops throughout the young-mature citizen's life in Israel. The analysis of the role and learning of two primary civic myths--'Israel is a Jewish and a democratic state' and 'Israelis are Jews'--demonstrates how this learning takes place through 'formations' of hegemony such as the family, the media, civic militarism as well as through schools' statist and social curricula. Successes of civic education enable the civic myths to be vibrant, gestalt worlds of meaning for Jewish Israelis, and sites of resistance for ultra-orthodox Jewish as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel. On the other hand, as an ethnocracy, democracy in civic Israel is not a meaningful world of value but rather a means to manage political processes. Therefore, the Israel case study is insightful for understanding the limitations of civic and citizenship education that seeks to advance democratic-oriented values such as human rights, liberty, justice, tolerance, civility, coexistence, pluralism and an alternative concept of Israel as a civil society.     

From Day School to High School: An Exploratory Study on Jewish Adolescent Girls’ Identity Development

ABSTRACT

What does it mean to be a Jewish girl today and how do Jewish adolescent girls navigate their identity? The study that I undertook is exploratory and designed to understand how three girls, who are recent day school graduates, experience the process of identity development as they begin high school. While the sample is small, the study reveals new directions for looking at Jewish girls and questions that need to be asked when researching their lives. It concludes with a few suggestions for thinking about how to conduct future research with Jewish girls.     

A Review of: “Jewish Lives,Jewish Learning: Adult Jewish Learning in Theory and Practice by Diane Tickton Schuster (UAHC Press, 2003)”

This articles explores how a group of women in the Former Soviet Union grapple with questions of Jewish identity and Jewish “authenticity” as they participate in adult Jewish learning program that employs methods of feminist pedagogy and transformative learning. The study reflects on areas of dissonance between the transformational learning process and the tenacity of the women's world assumptions that are shaped by background, history, and worldview. While the learning process seems to be prompting these women to seriously and critically reflect on and reframe their self-understanding as learners and as Jews, their limited content-knowledge combined with a tentative sense of personal authority about Jewish life seems to impede their ability to harmonize their learning with a clear sense of what constitutes authentic practice of Judaism.     

Continuity of Higher Hebrew Study and Jewish Home Environment

Observers of American Jewish education are wont to cite the persistent failure of Jewish ed ucators to incorporate the unfolding events of Jewish life and the world at large within the instructional program of the Jewish school. During the Holocaust period, for example, Jewish schools in America blithely ignored the evolving drama in Europe as they contin ued to focus in narrow, irrelevant fashion on their traditional curriculum of Jewish text study.     

Religions constructed as similar or different by teachers of religious education from a citizenship education perspective

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore and theoretically discuss Swedish religious studies (RE) teachers’ understanding of religions as similar and different. In Sweden, RE is a mandatory subject and presents all the world’s major religions to students. Teachers of RE therefore need to relate to the various relations between the religions. A qualitative interview study with Swedish RE teachers (n?=?7) in Swedish secondary schools was performed to determine how they conceptualise religion and present ‘religion’ to their students. The teachers (m?=?3; f?=?4) were chosen from schools with a variety of ethnically homogenous and heterogeneous compositions of students. The teachers’ conceptions of ‘religion’ can be described according to two main categories: as something universal or as something dependent on the cultural context. These two main orientations are described more closely in this paper. The teachers’ conceptions are also discussed from the perspective of possible consequences for educating citizens in the Swedish school system. It is suggested that RE teachers’ conceptions of religions as similar and different facilitate and constrain identification and encounters with others as religious subjects.