Holiday movies are so popular not simply because they are “escapes,” as my research on the relation between religion and cinema argues. Rather, these films offer viewers a glimpse into the world as it is could be.

Thanksgiving presents us with an opportunity to develop one of the healthiest, most life-affirming and convivial of all habits – that of counting and rejoicing in our blessings.

By Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, Jews, Mormons and Christian Scientists had joined the ranks of the chaplain corps. As I write in my book, “Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America,” this significant change inaugurated a century-long project to redefine what counted as American religion.

What is the significance of these holy days for orthodox Jews, secular Jews and perhaps even for non-Jews?

But the kids are clearly leading on climate change – and they’re changing the way we talk about this global challenge, putting ethics at the center of the debate.

As a scholar of American Jewish history, I view Trump’s tweets as invoking one of the most glaring anti-Semitic tropes in the modern West.