World Religions News

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The post A Moment in Time: “When Losing an Hour Inspires Holiness” appeared first on Jewish Journal.

May the story you share be a reminder that through our fears and uncertainty, alongside the bitterness we experience, redemption awaits.

The post A Bisl Torah — The Story You Need to Tell appeared first on Jewish Journal.

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The post Is Religious Knowledge Receding or Revealed via Tephilllin, Phylacteries? appeared first on Jewish Journal.

Denouncing my invitation, anti-Zionists smashed over 25 plate-glass windows in two nights of vandalism. Their graffiti proclaimed: “Stop your Zionist war propaganda” and “stop zios.”

The post Dutch Mistreat: Anti-Zionists in the Netherlands Tried Disrupting My Zoom Lecture appeared first on Jewish Journal.

(RNS) — The global smash hit “The Chosen,” the speculative biographical series about Jesus and his disciples, has inspired major streaming channels to tap other biblical sources. Moses is getting his close-up on Netflix, while King David has two shows, Prime Video’s “House of David”and Fox Nation’s docudrama “David: King of Israel.”

But historically, some of the most far-reaching Christian cultural touchstones have reimagined biblical themes through allegory. Think C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” or J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” which put biblical teachings about temptation, redemption and sacrifice in a fantasy package.

The success of this approach can be seen in a recent Academy Award nomination for “Forevergreen,” a 12-minute movie from Disney animators that conveys the Christian gospel through allegory.

The film’s textured, almost tactile, animation is combined with a soundtrack that blends folk music with sweeping orchestration to tell a story about unmerited grace — the idea that humans are saved not by their good deeds but by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. But unless you’re looking for it, the Christian message isn’t overt until the closing title card, which quotes John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friend.” 

The film, which is free to view on YouTube, follows an orphaned bear cub and a fatherly evergreen tree, in an idyllic woodland setting. The initial idea for the story was inspired by the 1989 Christian children’s book “The Tale of Three Trees,” a classic that was a staple of Sunday school bookshelves in the ’90s and aughts. That folktale explores how three trees become part of God’s greater purpose as they are refashioned into a manger, a boat and a cross during Jesus’ life on earth.

Nathan Engelhardt, a longtime Disney animator who moonlighted to make the movie, is a Reformed evangelical Christian. He said he was leveled by the book’s story when it fell into his hands. “I wept after reading it, and just seeing how these trees’ dreams were dashed to pieces, but God still used these trees in a unique, particular way,” he said.

When Jeremy Spears, a friend of Engelhardt’s who works as a story artist at Disney, joined the project in 2019 as the movie’s writer and co-director, the filmmakers set out to tell a story of unmerited grace with the same quiet power. Retaining themes from “The Tale of Three Trees,” they invented a new story, relying on two images: a photo of a fallen redwood tree creating a bridge over a chasm, and an image of Jesus’ cross bridging the gap between humanity and God.

When Spears mentioned these images, Engelhardt said he had the same image of the cross bridging the divide sitting on his office desk. “It really felt like God was saying, go make that film,” said Spears.

Spears’ wood carving of a bear became the model for the orphaned cub. “God saved me,” Spears said. “I am that bear in the film, and that I had to let go of the things that were holding me back, and I had to reach up to God, who had already fallen across the divide.”

The movie was made with the contributions of more than 200 volunteers working nights and weekends over more than five years. Inviting friends and colleagues to be part of their passion project, Spears and Engelhardt knew, was a big ask. Each filmmaker has four kids, and work on the film often began only after their children had been put to bed.

 The directors also knew the project’s religious themes might not be for everyone. “We wanted to make sure that people knew that, hey, this does have a spiritual component to it,” said Engelhardt. “We want to make sure that you know how we’re going to be speaking about the film afterwards, and no hard feelings if you want to back out.”

Their transparency was met with enthusiasm. Mike Gortz, director of worldwide marketing for Disney, who promoted the film, is a pastor’s kid and an evangelical Christian. Gortz said it was an “absolute joy” to work on a project where “you can bring your whole self, you can bring your faith, you can bring God into that space.”

Spears and Engelhardt tapped Christian singer-songwriter Josh Garrels and producer and composer Isaac Wardell to be composers.

“Josh Garrels is sort of the soul of the soundtrack. Maybe I’m the architect of it,” quipped Wardell, co-founder of The Porter’s Gate, a worship project that, since 2017, has brought together Christian songwriters, pastors and theologians to write congregational songs on topics such as Advent, work and mental health.

Working from the team’s sketches, Wardell relied on instruments with “earthy textures” — a banjo, an upright bass, a mandolin. The musicians improvised a short musical theme based on their impressions of computer sketches of the film’s characters. Eventually, the soundtrack incorporated whistling, full orchestration and Garrels’ layered vocalizations. The film’s only spoken words are sung by Garrels in the final song.

“Forever my love, forever my life for yours,” Garrels sings. “We will be forevergreen.”

In the polarized climate of the United States, said Wardell, people are forming the Christian imagination by defining “who’s in or who’s out” or “triumphing over our neighbors.” What makes the message of “Forevergreen” timely, he said, is its focus on unconditional love, not human triumph. 

“Nathan and Jeremy … they’re not working in the field of Christian storytelling. They’re working in the field of cultural storytelling,” said Wardell. “It’s so important for us to offer up these visions of Christian faithfulness, where we are forming the imagination to see winning not as being about exerting violence over someone else, but actually about understanding that God has taken violence on our behalf.”

Spears suggested the idea was to tell a story for anyone, not only Christians. “What if we could share our faith, share what the gospel message is,” he said, “but do it in a way that’s hospitable to everybody, that’s something that we can all come around, no matter what walk of life you are, what belief system you have?”

(RNS) — Physical fitness is often seen as a way of improving our health or appearance, or an effort to challenge oneself. But for Nada Mostafa, a 24-year-old Muslim fitness coach based in Toronto, it also serves a higher religious purpose. 

“I help Muslim women understand that when it comes to their health, your body is a gift, what in Islam we call an ‘amanah’ – a blessing we have been entrusted with,” Mostafa said. 

She has built a career in faith-based strength and endurance training. Many of her clients approached her after feeling frustrated with secular fitness environments or trainers who did not understand many religious Muslim women’s commitment to modesty or religious discipline.

Mostafa joins the likes of innovators such as Texas-based Sana Mahmood, co-founder of Jeem Fitness, an Islamic values-based wellness app and virtual training platform. It only employs female trainers, promotes modest attire and does not play music during virtual workouts. 

“Much of what we focus on is helping women feel that movement and spirituality are not competing priorities, but integrated parts of a regulated and intentional life,” Mahmood told RNS in an email.

The merging of faith and fitness has long engaged evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. However, the trend has become more visible and appears to be evolving as new ways of connecting fitness and religion have become accessible through social media. Around the world, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu and Buddhist coaches and influencers are creating their own faith-based platforms for fitness.

While most of the women Mostafa trains are in their 20s to 40s, she’s also coached older people, especially women with the goal of building stamina to complete the Hajj or Umrah, pilgrimages to Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia that require faithful to walk long distances, often amid heat or crowds. Additionally, Muslims who are physically able complete cycles of standing, bowing, sitting and prostrating for prayers five times daily. For those with physical disabilities or in the normal course of aging, it can present challenges, which Mostafa hopes to help with. “I emphasize the importance of functionality and how it relates to our ability to be able to pray,” Mostafa said.

Muslim women in the sports and fitness space, Mostafa said, face “criticism from two sides.” When those who dress modestly and cover their hair enter a gym, often “they’ll either get the Orientalist view that sees them as oppressed because they’re covering up and working out, but then we also get the other view from our own Muslim extremist view saying that Muslim women should be modest and they should not partake in fitness at all,” said Mostafa, whose Instagram page aims to reach Muslim women and clear up misconceptions about the faith and fitness.

Menachem Freeman, a New York City-based wellness coach, runs an Instagram page that incorporates Judaism into his training philosophy for holistic wellness. He grew up in a strictly Orthodox community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and attended yeshiva, a traditional educational institution focused on intensive Torah and Talmud study. With a keen knowledge of Jewish teachings and personal interest in the embodied mindfulness of Chassidut, today the 38-year-old works with a client base of primarily gay men. 

He sees himself as a “traditional and spiritual” Jew, he said, and brings his passion for the intersection of fitness, sexuality and Jewish identity to his Instagram presence, seeing it as a tool to combat both homophobia and antisemitism. And he sees fitness, he said, in parallel with his viewpoint on religious observance.

“I grew up very religious, often with very black-and-white thinking,” he said. “But God is more, is bigger than that, and fitness is similar — growth isn’t ‘all-or-nothing.’ It’s about consistency, not perfection.”

Many of Freeman’s clients carry identity-based trauma, compounded with demanding expectations of physical attractiveness and athleticism in the gay community, he said. Many simply want to feel accepted, which leads them to fitness. “While this is a starting point, I try to help clients find more sustainable goals — to love themselves and find a balance that supports not simply aesthetic goals but also mental health goals, emotional health, work-life balance and spirituality,” Freeman said.

He has a calling to help people that draws from his religion. 

“We have a piece of God in our body — we are a temple for the divine presence in this world,” Freeman said. “It’s important to keep this temple functioning and have the ability to live long so we can play our part to make the world a better place.”

Yaakov Fein, a 33-year-old Jerusalem-based fitness trainer, is known online as @frum.fitness (“frum” is Yiddish to describe observant Jews) and serves a client base of Jewish men. He aims to make fitness spaces that were traditionally not part of an observant lifestyle accessible to religious Jews.

“In the Orthodox world, I think fitness is seen as a vanity thing,” Fein told RNS. “I don’t think people quite realize that physical health has a major impact on your mental health, how you feel, your overall mood. And so I wanted to bring more awareness to that.”

The Muslim and Jewish fitness trainers and online influencers RNS interviewed referred to Scriptures and tradition as emphasizing the importance of caring for one’s body as a gift from God. But fitness coaches from dharma-based faiths gave a different perspective: Physical fitness and wellness are integral to their religion itself. In Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, martial arts, meditation and movement have been practiced as part of their traditions for centuries. 

Karina Skye Kaur, a Brazilian America yoga instructor and Instagram influencer living in Florida, posts about fitness and music as key aspects of the Sikh religion to her almost 29,000 followers. The 45-year-old musician and mother of two also shares reels about her experiences as a convert raising her children Sikhi.

The traditional teachings of Sikhi challenge followers to balance spirituality and compassion, alongside a duty to fight for justice, practice self-defense and protect the vulnerable.

“Fitness is important to us as a family,” she said. “My husband is a firefighter, I practice yoga and martial arts, and with my kids, we go to jiujitsu class and capoeira class. For us as a Brazilian American family, Sikhism is tied together with Brazilian martial arts.”

Sikhi, Kaur said, emphasizes equality among all people, the oneness of God and the promotion of peace. At the same time, because the minority faith has faced persecution since its founding, Kaur said, self-defense is an important part of the Sikh tradition. Last week, Sikhs celebrated Hola Mohalla, which highlights martial arts, courage and resilience.

The rise of Sikh athletes on the world stage also reflects more than demographic change in countries such as Canada or the United Kingdom. The athletes embody how faith and fitness are deeply intertwined in Sikh life – one that draws from tradition and embraces the modern world. Core Sikh principles such as mehnat (hard work), sabar (patience) and seva (service) mirror the mental resilience that elite sports demand.

But in Sikhi, a religion without clergy or hierarchy, fitness is for everyone from any ability level, Kaur said. She told RNS that she sees fitness as a lifestyle that involves being prepared for the duty to protect one’s family.

This sentiment was echoed by other yoga and martial arts practitioners, such as Walter Gjergja, known by the honorific monk title Shi Xing Mi, a 53-year-old Shaolin kung fu master based in Germany. “The biggest challenge is to find the balance between over-skepticism and over-mysticism,” he said, adding that practitioners connect to a bigger tradition while also understanding that martial arts do not demand “dogmatic faith.” 

Yash Moradiya, a 24-year-old Dubai-based yoga instructor and influencer, said that while yoga’s Hindu origins should be respected, its practitioners can be from any faith or culture. Known professionally as Yash Yoga, he began studying in a gurukul, a traditional yoga school, at age 7 and was teaching by the time he was 16.

Moradiya, who boasts over 850,000 followers on Instagram, has trained entrepreneurs, celebrities and members of the Dubai Emirate royal family, he said. He’s taught at massive outdoor fitness festivals in the United Arab Emirates and holds multiple endurance records, including maintaining a forearm scorpion pose for a whopping 29 minutes. But he resists framing yoga as an athletic spectacle alone.

“Yoga is a kind of manual for life,” he said. “Every product comes with instructions, but no one teaches us how to use this life in the best way. Yoga teaches you how to live – not just how to move your body, but how to use your breath, your mind, your energy — so you can become your best version.”

He said that while he personally encourages yoga, any form of fitness discipline is a great way to become one’s better self. “When we balance our energies and our lives, we become better humans,” he said. “And when better humans come together, the entire planet becomes more peaceful.”