Earlier this week, I received a phone call from the religion editor of the Detroit Free Press. He told me that he was assisting another reporter on a local news story and had a few questions for me. Niraj described the case to me.

In 2009, a young girl reported...

I've always said that the only times Jewish people mention Jesus are when they stub their toe, miss the bus or tell you about their theater tickets to a certain Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera. Two new books will change that. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's "Kosher Jesus" and "The Jewish Annotated...

I've been thinking about death and mourning quite a bit lately. To begin with, the first week of the new year brought with it a rash of deaths here in the Detroit Jewish community. There were a fair share of elderly grandparents who died in their 80s and 90s during...

For Tim Tebow's faithful Christian followers, the Denver Broncos' lopsided playoff loss Saturday night to the New England Patriots might have posed a theological problem. Where was God who had so graciously heeded Tebow's prayers in all of those previous come-from-behind victories this season? Did Tebow pray differently before this...

Each winter the "December Dilemma" becomes a hot topic. This month, it seems like it's hotter than ever with every rabbi, Jewish educator, social worker, intermarried parent, grandparent of interfaith grandchildren, and children of intermarried parents writing about the subject. Perhaps the topic isn't any more popular this year than...

Co-written with Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Our colleague and teacher, Rabbi Steve Greenberg, is an Orthodox rabbi who will go down in history as being the first Orthodox rabbi to officiate a Jewish commitment ceremony and civil marriage for two men. In a recent article in The Jewish Week, Rabbi Greenberg...

Here is my video response to Rick Perry's "Strong" campaign ad in which the presidential candidate maintains that he's not ashamed to be a Christian and then goes on to criticize gays:

I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a Jew. Heck, I'm even a rabbi. But you don't need to be in shul every Shabbos to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military and yet they still can't marry each other legally in most U.S. States.

Our Jewish kids in public school have to watch as their peers celebrate Christmas -- a holiday they don't observe. They have to sit quietly as the Christian students pray in school. That sounds uncomfortable.

As President, I'll fight to end this crazy talk that there's a war on religion. And I'll fight against anyone who discriminates against others based on their sexual orientation.

Intelligence made America strong. It can make her strong again.

I'm Rabbi Jason Miller and I think it's too cold to film a video outside in Michigan in the winter. Who approved this?

Rabbi Jason Miller blogs at Blog.RabbiJason.com and is on

In what could have easily been mistaken for a scene from HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, two brothers sit at a conference room table in Southfield bouncing ideas off each other for mobile applications that could improve Jewish life.

A small collection of iPhones and iPads sits on the table, as...

As a rabbi blogger who writes about sports, I'm always interested in the values that can be learned from watching sports. There are many situations in which the players, coaches, management or fans will do something that leads us to discuss how the situation was values driven.

In Detroit, there...

I was excited last week when the Huffington Post launched its new Detroit section. I clicked the link to take me to the new page dedicated to my hometown and the first article I read seemed to tell me that I wasn't really from Detroit after all. Toby Barlow's

At the end of September following the release of the American hikers who were being held by Iran, reports came out that one of the hikers was Jewish. While the whole world knew that Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer were taken prisoner in Iran and accused of espionage, what most...

What has Oprah Winfrey been doing since ending her long-running afternoon talk show last May? If your only news source was JTA.org (the Jewish world's version of the AP), you might think that she has embraced Judaism on the level of Madonna or Demi Moore.

A misleading title grabbed many...

I posted a simple status update on Facebook this morning, stating "Extremely happy that Gilad Shalit is home in Israel. A captive has been redeemed." One comment to my post summed up the moral dilemma in a concise way: "It is wonderful that Gilad has been released ... but at...

Like every other rabbi around the world, I am currently hard at work on my sermons for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I've always enjoyed writing and public speaking, so this exercise is enjoyable rather than stressful for me. However, finding the right words to inspire the congregation during this...

At no time during my experience in a New York City rabbinical school did I think I would ever be donning full beekeeper regalia and watching as thousands of bees made honey on a farm in Michigan's Amish country. But that is precisely what I found myself doing for the...

FaceGlat, the ultra-Orthodox social networking site, is an attempt to offer Haredi Jews the experience of Facebook without all the immodesty. From the opening page it reminds one of public restrooms with a sign for men to enter through one door and women to enter through their own door. FaceGlat's...

With about a billion users between Facebook and Twitter alone, more topics than Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are being discussed on social media networks today. Religion is certainly one of them.

An article by Jennifer Preston in yesterday's NY Times ("Jesus Daily on Facebook Nurtures Highly Active...

Last week about 20 rabbis from the Los Angeles area participated in a High Holiday sermon writing workshop called "Punching Up Your Holiday Sermons." These pre-Rosh Hashanah sermon workshops for rabbis are nothing new, but this workshop had a twist. It paired the rabbis with Hollywood screenwriters who helped them...

Kippah. Yarmulke. Beanie. Skullcap. You can call it whatever you want, but the Jewish head covering has been in the news and in pop culture a lot lately.

Advertising is all around us. It's become impossible to find an event or location that doesn't have corporate sponsorship attached to it. Product placement has become the norm in movies and TV shows. And it seems like everyone has an endorsement deal these days.

On Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report,"...