One can expect to walk into a synagogue to learn about Judaism, but what about Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Islam or Latter-day Saints?
All that and more is currently offered through a class at Temple Emanuel, a Reform synagogue in Kensington, where about 30 members gather monthly to learn about a different faith tradition in depth. Longtime member and trustee Paul Berman is teaching Comparative Religion for Adults this year from Jan. 22 to May 28.
“I have been interested in comparative religion issues, including since when I was a kid,” Berman said.
Now a retired lawyer, he started teaching on the subject after his second son became bar mitzvah, more than 30 years ago.
“I saw it as an opportunity to bring my interest and enthusiasm for comparative religion to post-bar mitzvah kids — eighth graders,” Berman said, describing the experience as “energizing” and “enlightening.”
He starts at the beginning with Temple Judaism around the millennium: the year zero.
“That first question is, how did Christianity emerge? How do the teachings of Jesus turn into the gospel? And that brings me to the founding of the Roman Catholic Church,” Berman said.
After that first lesson in January, Berman and a group of about a dozen students attended Mass at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in south Kensington.
“Then, from there, I think the United States is largely a Protestant nation by virtue of who practices what,” Berman said, adding that February’s class focused on the Protestant Reformation and the emergence of the major branch of Christianity.
His March 26 class covered Islam, from the Genesis story to the religion today. “You can imagine the challenge of doing that in an hour and a half,” Berman said.
On April 23, Berman will delve into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Why?
“One, it’s an American religion. Second, the exodus of the Mormons from upstate New York to Utah has some parallels with the travel from Egypt to Canaan, the ‘Promised Land.’ And the last is, if you drive on the [Capital] Beltway, you can’t avoid it,” he said, referring to the 288-foot temple that towers above I-495.
In fact, Berman is considering another “field trip” to the nearby Washington D.C. Temple & Visitors’ Center.
For the final class, in May, Berman plans to invite a Buddhist priest to speak with his students, as he “just doesn’t know enough” about the faith.
The five religions discussed may seem vastly different on the surface, but Berman notes similarities.
“For me, each of them provides a different path to spirituality, personal wholeness and maybe even personal holiness,” he said, adding that members of different faiths may disagree on what that path looks like.
The synagogue’s Rabbi Adam Rosenwasser spoke to the class’ “robust turnout.” He said three generations of a member family have attended Berman’s comparative religion course: a teenager, their parents and their grandparents.
“There’s been a lot of interest in learning about other religions,” the rabbi said.
Such education is important for the Jewish community, according to Rosenwasser.
“I think especially today, in light of rising antisemitism, we need allies and we need to reach out and build relationships with other communities,” Rosenwasser said. “I think one of the best ways to do that is to have some knowledge about what these other communities are all about. What are the foundational teachings of their faith? How are they different than Judaism? How are they similar? On the interfaith level, it’s really important.”
He and Berman also noted how studying other faiths can help students better understand Judaism. Because Judaism predates Christianity and Islam, Rosenwasser said it’s interesting to see how these latter two faiths “evolve[d] from Judaism.”
“There’s certainly major differences, but there’s also a lot that we have in common,” he added.
When Berman first began this class at Temple Emanuel, he taught eighth graders.
“Many of them [were] starting to think about their spirituality and their relationship, if any, to God: a really important part of their development and emotional development,” Berman said. “My focus was on engendering respect for other faith traditions, and that, it turns out, also engendered in many of the students self-confidence in their own feeling about their particular Judaism.”
As he teaches the same course to adults, Berman found that his more in-depth preparation has “renewed [his] own view and depth of [his] feeling toward Judaism, which was already deep to begin with.”
The Temple Emanuel community is home to many Jews by choice and Jewish-adjacent individuals, so the class’ demographic reflects this, Berman noted.
“I’m hopeful that they will leave the individual classes or the class as a whole with greater thoughtfulness about their own spirituality,” Berman said. “What’s their particular path? They have, in a way, all chosen to be part of the Jewish community.”
