Rabbi Dan Dorsch / Jewish World blogger

To count the Omer successfully and to appreciate the holiday of Shavuot, we must enter into a different type of mindset that is countercultural to the world in which we live.

There is no greater victory over Adolf Hitler than having Jews in the very heart of Berlin educating, breathing, and living as a part of the cultural landscape, but is creating an exhibition that parallels a zoo the way to achieve this?

A successful presidential trip to Israel ought to remove more roadblocks in the peace process than those set up in Jerusalem for his motorcade.

The future of Jewish-Catholic relations is at a crossroads; its future rests upon the new pope.

Forming a coalition in Israel may induce headaches, but it forces elected officials to engage in a process of soul-searching, to try to understand the electorate's intent. America – which forces people into the neat rubric of a two-party system - could learn a lot from the Israeli model.

For Jews living in the modern world, even for the non-observant, Shabbat and holy days are more than just exercises in nostalgia.

Why isn’t Hanukkah in the Torah? Perhaps because the sages did not condone military prowess divorced from God’s presence.

God’s might was not only evidenced by Hurricane Sandy, but by the human beings who helped each other following the crisis.

Too often Jews forget that transmitting Torah to children is not the primary obligation of teachers, but of parents.

By understanding the function that our bodies play in ritual, we reach a deeper understanding of some of the most complex ideas in our religious tradition.

Ten topics you can expect your rabbis to discuss during this year’s Jewish High Holy Days.

The American Jewish landscape is slowly beginning to look like the current State of Israel: a people with a shared past, slowly diverging from each other into two separate civilizations.

The choice by scientists to refer to a certain subatomic mass as the ‘God Particle’ might have been a metaphorically appropriate one.

When I said Yizkor for my mother this past month, I understood why it should be an 'Adults Only' service.

Judaism teaches us that to be compassionate we must recognize that a loss of a job is never solely about financial security, but about the loss of pride and dignity that help shape a person’s existence.

By spending the time to prepare for Passover properly, each of us comes to understand what it means to truly enjoy freedom in our world.

As Jews, who were once slaves, we must never forget that while we may be free, it is our responsibility to work to bring freedom to our world.

What would happen to the Jewish religious experience if we allowed our youth to shape the religious experience of adults, as opposed to the other way around?

When it comes to Jews having interfaith dialogue with Mormons, we sometimes get a monologue. Recent reports of Mormons posthumously baptizing Holocaust victims are no exception.

When our sages wrote that ‘without sustenance there can be no Torah study,’ they certainly knew what they were on about.

The decision by a Lakewood yeshiva not to observe Thanksgiving as a public holiday only, and therein requesting of bus drivers to work that day, is against the spirit of Jewish law on how we should engage in relationships with non-Jews.

Young Jews, from the Diaspora and Israel alike, need to give their Jewish identities a paintjob, so that the Jewish people can grow stronger together.

While rocking out to popular tunes with a Jewish message is fantastic, some of the more recent Jewish-themed videos are moving beyond the marketing plug, instead worthy for their educational value.

By dropping their children off, and relinquishing the opportunity to learn with their children, Jewish parents cheat themselves of an important Jewish experience.