Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman

Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman: It's inherently challenging for believers and atheists to have productive conversations. Discussing topics such as belief and nonbelief, the potential irrationality of religion, or the limits of scientific knowledge is difficult since each side often ends up more firmly entrenched in their own worldview.

But one bright...

A study has just come out that argues that analytical thinking weakens religious belief, while at the same time, intuitive thinking may strengthen religious feelings.

Though the article comes out in a new issue of Science, this idea has been hypothesized for the last few years. For example,...

Compassion is a deep-seated value in every religious tradition. Judaism teaches that the world stands on Torah, on prayer and on acts of loving kindness. Christians celebrate the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke. And a major reason the Dalai Lama is so honored is because of his Buddhist...

For Jews, the exodus from Egypt is the paradigmatic freedom story for all generations.

In the Book of Exodus, Moses tells the Israelites to "remember this day on which you went out from Egypt, from the house of bondage, how Adonai freed...

As someone who loves both religion and science, I often struggle with how they interact.

Are they in opposition to each other? Do they need to be reconciled? What happens when new scientific knowledge challenges the tenets of my faith?

Part of the difficulty in talking about science and religion...

A friend of mine -- an ardent environmentalist -- just had a baby. She was trying to decide whether she would buy cloth diapers, which would be much friendlier to the earth, or go with disposables. She naturally started with cloth, but within a couple of weeks of washing and...

Generally, our minds have no problem with coming up with lots of ideas -- it's fairly easy for us to think about creating something new. And with perseverance, we can often turn our ideas into reality.

But too frequently, we don't recognize which ideas should have just stayed in our...

Quite often, what makes us happy and what is actually good for us are directly at odds with each other. What worked for us evolutionarily over the millenia frequently becomes counter-productive in our current world. For example, fat was a scarce and valuable resource when Homo sapiens evolved on the...

Think about the most inspiring piece of art you have ever looked at. Or the most powerful book you have ever read. Or the most moving play or movie you've seen.

Now -- why did you find it so beautiful?

There were probably any number of reasons -- it may...

My wife Heather is a fiber artist. She creates quilts, wall-hangings and even three-dimensional structures based on Jewish texts and social justice themes. And for the last two years, she has been going to homeless shelters through New York City to talk to men, women and children, in...

Joshua Foer, who happens to be the brother of the best-selling novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, spent most of 2006 trying to memorize all sorts of things: the exact order of a deck of shuffled playing cards, hundreds of random numbers and as many names as he could to put with...

You may have seen David Brooks' recent article entitled "If It Feels Right," where he talks about "moral individualism" -- how young adults are coming to believe that they have the power to define their own moral code, and why that individualism is such a big problem for...

A three-hour drive into rural Guatemala leads you to Tikal, the largest excavated pre-Colombian site in the Americas. It was a center for the Mayan civilization 1,200 years ago, so, as a lover of history, Tikal was a place I had to go during my honeymoon. And as we hiked...

What does it mean for us to be "conscious"?

Sometimes, it means that we are aware of our surroundings, as opposed to the times when are we blind to what's going on around us.

Sometimes, it means that we are acting intentionally, as opposed to the times when we act...

I recently had a conversation with a neuroscientist, who also happened to be a self-described atheist. He knew I was a rabbi and so, in the middle of the conversation, he very tentatively asked me, "So ... do you believe in evolution?" I think what he was really asking was,...

I once heard a lecture given by Professor Steven Goldman at Lehigh University, and he defined "belief" as something that influences our actions -- whether or not it is objectively true. For example, he says, let's say you believe it is going to rain tomorrow. What will that...

Once again, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are in a divisive argument over the seemingly eternal Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As I read the analysis of Obama's speech, I was most reminded of a recent story on The Onion: "Incomprehensible Shouting Declared U.S. Official Language." In fact,...

Most Americans are clearly rejoicing over the death of Osama bin Laden. And in listening to what people are saying, I think that sense of joy is based on the feeling that "justice has been served." But what kind of "justice" was it? Why did that justice feel so good?...

Recently, blogger Andrew Sullivan put up a post called "The Scientific View of Man." He ended it with an aside, saying, "If I could disbelieve in God, I would," and two days later, one of his readers wrote back: "Funny, I'm the exact opposite; if I could believe...

We always walk a fine line when we try to create our self-image and examine our own actions. We want to stand up for ourselves, but we don't want to become a bully. We want to treat our children as special and unique, but we don't want them to become...