Articles about Judaism

For the staffroom
REToday Logo This article is for paying subscribers

The beginning and the end – Five different views

We asked people from a number of different worldviews to comment on the big issues of the theme of this term’s REtoday, and some treasure emerged. Use these short articles with your 14–19s by all means, but any...
For the staffroom
This article is for paying subscribers

‘Religion: All in the mind?’

Our theme this term is ‘Religion: All in the mind?’ We asked five members of different communities to respond to some questions about this, and their thinking follows. We used these seven questions. a. What does your...
For the classroom 7-14
REToday Logo This article is for paying subscribers

Three stories of animals and religion – and what to do with them

Story is a key way in which religions communicate attitudes, virtues and ideas. So it is unsurprising that the great religions all tell stories with animals in them. Retell and work with these kinds of story in...

For the classroom 11-16
This article is for paying subscribers

Thoughtful planning

Ashley Farrell is in his second year as an RE teacher at Beal High School, East London. He wanted to use ideas from inside a faith in his planning. Here’s how it worked. When planning a new scheme of work in my NQT...
The big picture
This article is for paying subscribers

How is the Jewish faith defended?

Liora is eight. She is a member of the Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue. This is her dad’s prayer shawl, which she is trying out: ‘This is my Dad’s tallit. He wears it when he is praying. I can’t wait until...
Events and resources
This article is for paying subscribers

Resources

Edited by Jane Brooke Age range: adult Pause for Thought Author: Various contributors Foreword by Chris Evans and Vanessa Feltz Editor: Rebecca Shepherd Watkins Publishing, 2016, 176pp, PB, £12.99 ISBN:...
Research
REToday Logo This article is for paying subscribers

Research Update: Darwin’s Jews

Daniel Langton Evolution had been in the air well before Charles Darwin arrived on the scene. European and North American Jews from across the religious spectrum had, like their Christian counterparts, long been familiar...
For the classroom 3-7
This article is for paying subscribers

Exploring religious diversity with 3–7s

Tania ap Siôn invites teachers in the Infants and Early Years to join Aled and Siân as they explore religious diversity within their neighbourhood and among their friends. Early Years and Infants RE needs a range of...
For the staffroom
This article is for paying subscribers

The best that has been thought and said

This issue of REtoday is themed around ‘the best that has been thought and said’. The quote is from Rugby School’s Victorian headmaster Matthew Arnold. It is his description of what the curriculum might consist...

For the classroom 11-16
This article is for paying subscribers

Jewish compassion in action: Triptych on Charity

Karen Van Coevorden, a former RE teacher, works for the Jewish Museum in London. We asked her for an example of the best of the museum’s collection. This one really repays study! There is a PowerPoint sequence on...

For the classroom 7-11
This article is for paying subscribers

A scheme of work on Judaism: what influences the Jewish people?

Rebecca Ostler wanted more thinking in her lessons on Judaism. Here is how she aimed to get it.

For the staffroom
This article is for paying subscribers

Inside a faith

1. Please mention a story from your religion/belief that meant a lot to you as a child, and say why.
2. What story or stories do you think children should know about from the origins of your...

For the staffroom
REToday Logo This article is for paying subscribers

We asked people from different religions and beliefs to tell us what it means to them to ‘sing their own song’

Here are replies from a Buddhist, a Humanist, a Christian, a Jewish person and a Muslim. Read these with your older pupils, and ask them to think of their own answers to the interview questions we used. The questions...

For the staffroom 14-19
This article is for paying subscribers

Faith in science? Faith in God?

This term’s theme is about the nature of faith and about the frontiers and borders between science and religions. We invited people from different religions and beliefs to contribute a personal perspective on the...

On reflection
This article is for paying subscribers

Lesson spinning in RE

How and why a teacher might make use of contemporary popular culture, or popular items that could be classed as a craze, is always potentially controversial. Here Neil McKain satirises the potential use of them as...

For the staffroom
REToday Logo This article is for paying subscribers

Improve your RE subject knowledge

We invited members of different religions to reflect on the values that their worldviews seek to promote. Over these next six pages you will find much to enlighten. As well as contributing to readers’ RE subject...
Reviews
REToday Logo This article is for paying subscribers

Book review – How I Stopped Being a Jew

Shlomo Sand, How I Stopped Being a Jew (Verso 2014), 102pp, hardback £9.99, 9781781686140. Verso Books is Britain’s go-to publisher for writers wishing to challenge the Israeli regime and wider Zionist approaches to...
For the classroom 11-16
REToday Logo This article is for paying subscribers

Teach through song: songs for the secondary classroom

In this article Chris Hancock offers two sets of songs to use for secondary RE. On this page are songs through which you might teach some basic concepts in subject knowledge, and on the next page there are some songs...

For the classroom 11-16
This article is for paying subscribers

Christians singing their own song in Calais’s refugee camp

We wanted to explore the controversy that arose when BBC’s Songs of Praise was broadcast from a makeshift church in the ‘Calais Jungle’ refugee camp last summer.

For the staffroom
REToday Logo This article is for paying subscribers

A solution to the problem of faith schools

 Jonathan Romain The Birmingham schools recently criticised by Ofsted were not faith schools, but the exposure of their failings has caused major question marks to be raised about the role of religion in education....