New Islamic Directions is a website featuring news, opinion and information. It is the project of Imam Zaid Shakir, a teacher at the Zaytuna Institute. It is published in Hayward, Calif.

The North American Federation of (Reform) Temple Youth sponsors a summer youth program, NFTY in Israel, and the Eisendrath High School exchange program.

Hadassah, the Jewish Zionist women’s organization, sponsors Israel tours mixing education, politics and religion.

Ask Rabbi Mayer Waxman at the Orthodox Union in New York about travel trends, about trips and whether families around the country are planning bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs in Israel.

Mary Roach is the author of Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (W.W. Norton, 2005), in which she investigates claims of life after death and attempts to understand why people believe in reincarnation despite a lack of “proof.”

Christine Wicker is the author of two books on the supernatural and paranormal, Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead and Not in Kansas Anymore: The Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America (both Harper Collins, 2003 and 2005 respectively). She says there is more “magical thinking,” in part, because people are more […]

Lynn Schofield Clark is Associate Professor in Media, Film, and Journalism Studies, and Director of the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media at the University of Denver. She directs the Teens and the New Media@Home Project, which studies how young people use new media technologies. She also is the author of From Angels to […]

William Dinges is a professor of religious studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and an expert on American Catholicism. He says the growing divide between what is “religious” and what is “spiritual” has resulted in spirituality that lends itself easily to supernatural and paranormal phenomena. He is a co-author of Young Adult Catholics: […]