Robert D. Benne is professor emeritus and research associate in the Department of Religion/Philosophy at Roanoke College in Salem, Va. He has written about visions of life through film.

Björn Krondorfer is a professor of religious studies at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He is an expert on Western religious traditions and has particular interests in cultural studies, Holocaust studies and gender studies. He is also an expert on Madonna images in both religion and popular culture.

Erin Runions is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Pomona College in California. She is a specialist in the Hebrew Bible, which she reads from the perspective of cultural studies and gender and sexuality studies. She has written about the connections between scripture and film.

Omer Bartov, Brown University professor of European history, is the author of The “Jew” in Cinema: From the Golem to Don’t Touch My Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 2005). The book looks at how stereotypical portrayals of the “Jew” have informed European, American and Israeli cinema since the 1920s. In fall 2005, 200 students took his class, Modern Genocide […]

John Michalczyk, documentary filmmaker and co-director of film studies at Boston College, is interested in the intersection of politics and religions during conflict. He has filmed documentaries on conflict resolution in Bosnia and Croatia, South Africa, Jerusalem and Northern Ireland; Jews, Christians and the Holocaust; Nazi medicine; Boston’s Jews and Irish; and the dilemma of […]

S. Brent Plate is a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He has written about religion, art and visual culture. Religions, he notes, discuss the creation of the world, and films work on re-creating the world. He’s interested in how film has “come down” off the screen and infiltrated rituals. His […]

Read a Jan. 31, 2013, article from the Jerusalem Post about attitudes about Israel among young Americans.

Read an August 2010 study by the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University about how American Jews feel about Israel.

Read a Feb. 7, 2013, article about Obama’s planned trip to Israel to revive the peace process and continue to build his relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.