2020 •
Didaktiska reflektioner om judendom, stereotyper och tankefigurer
Authors:
Håkan Bengtsson
Abstract:
This article addresses the issue of teaching Judaism for students in the teacher-trainingprogramme and those training to become clergy in a Swedish milieu. A major challenge in thesecular post-Protestant setting is to pinpoint and challenge the negative presuppositions of Judaismas a religion of legalism, whereas the student’s own assumption is that she or he is neutral. Even ifthe older paradigms of anti-Jewish stereotypes are somewhat distant, there are further patterns ofthought which depict Judaism as a ‘strange’ and ‘legalistic’ (...)
This article addresses the issue of teaching Judaism for students in the teacher-trainingprogramme and those training to become clergy in a Swedish milieu. A major challenge in thesecular post-Protestant setting is to pinpoint and challenge the negative presuppositions of Judaismas a religion of legalism, whereas the student’s own assumption is that she or he is neutral. Even ifthe older paradigms of anti-Jewish stereotypes are somewhat distant, there are further patterns ofthought which depict Judaism as a ‘strange’ and ‘legalistic’ religion. Students in the teacher-trainingprogramme for teaching religion in schools can in class react negatively to concepts like kosherslaughter, circumcision and the Shabbat lift. Even if the explanatory motives vary, there is nonethelessa tendency common to ordination students, relating to a Protestant notion of the Jewish Torah,commonly rendered as ‘Law’ or ‘legalism’. This notion of ‘the Law’ as a means of self-redemptioncan, it is argued in the article, be discerned specially among clergy students reading Pauline textsand theology. This analysis shows that both teacher-training and textbooks need to be updated inaccordance with modern research in order to refute older anti-Jewish patterns of thought. As forthe challenge posed by the simplistic labelling of both Judaism and Islam as religions of law, theimplementation of the teaching guidelines concerning everyday ‘lived religion’ enables and allowsthe teacher to better disclose Judaism, Christianity and Islam as piously organised living faiths ratherthan as being ruled by legalistic principles.
Title in WoS: Didactic reflections on Judaism, stereotypes and thought figures
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