A course on trends in Jewish religious, cultural, and social life. The course will study innovative and conservative aspects of thought, ritual, and belief in relation to contemporary life and traditional Jewish values in at least one country other than the United States.

This course will examine the roles of religion and spirituality in education from the perspective liberal democratic society in two paradigm cases, Israel and the United States. It will review similarities and differences in the ways each school system conceives and practices such notions as secular and religious, initiation and indoctrination, diversity and inclusion, and public and private. For example, public schools do not offer religious instruction in the United States, due to the constitutional separation of religion and state, whereas religious schools receive state funding in Israel, as they do in many other countries that require no such separation. The course will also consider critiques of these concepts and practices based on gender, race, class, nationality, language, and the search for meaning, as well as similarities and differences between the impact of religious affiliation and nationalism and the influence of extremism in each educational system.

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Requirements class fulfills