What to tell students about Judaism

Students come to the Holocaust Centre to learn about Human Rights, Citizenship, sometimes background to a book of a film they study, Elie Wiesel's Night, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, or Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, and they also want to visit the synagogue. I am very comfortable using our display in the Holocaust Centre talking about the Holocaust, but I am always somewhat uncomfortable taking the synagogue tour. What can you tell students, who may only have a very hazy idea of their own religion and many had perhaps never been inside a church. Telling them that the synagogue is not a church and ask them to note differences often just evokes bewildered silence. If they note anything it may be insignificant things, like 'Who sits in the big chairs' the  chairs of dignitaries or rabbis, what are the numbers on the seats and boxes, and that sort of thing. I have started talking about Judaism being a religion of learning, learning replacing sacrifices as a religious link. I talk about Bar Mitzvah as the only rite of passage that involves learning, not some physical or martial feat. And I talk about the consequences of this tradition of learning, universal literacy, analytical reasoning. Jews are smarter because of their tradition of learning. Assimilationist would say that Jews are like everybody else, they just worship under different roofs. I don't hold with that. Jews are different, and were always perceived as different. The Christian and Islamic world feared Jews because of the power of their knowledge. Jews were always the 'other' the outsider who can be blamed for the wrongs of the world. And Christians attributed the qualities of Judaism to every idea they disapproved of, be it the rigid rule of law, the law of contract, as in the Merchant of Venice, the questioning of received dogma, innovations in art and music, the 'extreme Jewish intellectualism' that Joseph Goebbels took exception to. These are at least the things I would like to talk about, although the reality is that within the constraints of time I can barely touch on some of these topics. I talk about customs and rituals, the food we eat, and how every aspect of our lives form the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep is governed by rituals and living a Jewish life, observing the mitzvot, the commandments is more important than blind faith. I don't know how much of what I say rubs of on students, but without exception, they listen politely, ask questions, so perhaps just being inside a synagogue for the only time in their lives somehow enriches their understanding.