"The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them," said artist Mark Rothko.

Three movie watchers ponder the religious, spiritual, and moral themes in Avatar, Up, The Road, The Hurt Locker and more, just in time for the Academy Awards.

At the center of Judaism, writes Yale University scholar and critic David Gelernter, is "a thread of ecstasy…the whole world, space and time and suffering and all, pulled together by triumphant jubilation."

Set in 1967, the storyline of the Coen brothers' new film centers on Larry Gopnick, a Jewish physics professor in the Midwest who looks to his faith to make sense of his personal and professional tribulations.

Read and watch more of Kim Lawton's interview with religion columnist Cathleen Falsani, author of “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers.”

Contemporary expressions of the ancient art and craft of stained glass provide a way to encounter God and an interpretation of religious faith, says Florida artist Jim Piercey.

Jewish memory is stored and transmitted in the paintings of Mayer Kirshenblatt, who with the help of his daughter Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has preserved his own memories and the collective memories of a Polish Jewish community before World War II.

We have a profile today of the great Irish flutist Sir James Galway, talking about what grounds his performances and his life.

The annual New York Jewish Film Festival showed a selection of films that "ask hard questions about life, culture, identity, and politics," according to Richard Pena, the Film Society of Lincoln Center's program director and a member of the festival's selection committee.

The sound they create is inspired: lush, dramatic, intensely personal. But for The 5 Browns, playing Gershwin or anyone else is more than an exercise in making music. It is their keyboard testimonial.