ABSTRACT
Religious pluralism is a global reality, and given the effect of worldwide communications on people’s lived experience, it is also a local reality regardless of the actual demographics in any one given area. Religious literacy is needed to discern and analyze, from different perspectives, the variety of issues which Europe currently faces in order to find practical solutions that are consistent with the core democratic principle of fundamental rights. Jewish communities came to terms with the reality of religious pluralism long before there were airplanes and the internet, long before the existence of the nation-state, long before many of the modern religions such as Sikhism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism even existed. While Judaism is a religion, being Jewish does not automatically imply that one is actually religious. Learning about religious holidays, rites and rituals, sharing in multicultural meals, experiencing services of worship of other religious traditions is the easy and most pleasurable part of developing religious literacy.
