Rabbi Jay Michaelson is a contributing columnist for the Forward and for Rolling Stone. He is the author of 10 books, and won the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists award for opinion writing.
Jay MichaelsonContributing Columnist
By Jay Michaelson
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Opinion A Yom Kippur confessional for 2025
After a year marked by pain, division and rancor, perhaps it's time for a new sort of Al-Chet prayer
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Opinion This Rosh Hashanah, give your rabbi a break
Disagreeing about Israel and Gaza is understandable — but can we please stop screaming at one another?
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Opinion Will Judaism after Gaza actually be different from Judaism before Gaza?
The tension between particularism and universalism is fundamental to Jewish tradition
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Opinion American Jews were played — now what?
It is now obvious that antisemitism was never the real reason for the Trump administration’s attacks on universities. What lessons can we learn from this great exploitation?
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Opinion Have we become the ‘ordinary Germans’ now?
How can American Jews stand by while thousands of innocent people are illegally arrested, imprisoned and tortured?
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Opinion Mamdani’s victory is an opportunity for Jews to relearn the art of disagreement
New Yorkers voted for affordability, not criticism of Israel. But American Jews can still learn from this election.
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Opinion Being Jewish in America today feels like walking multiple tightropes at once
After another antisemitic attack, American Jews are right to be unnerved — but not deterred from our values or our resilience
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Opinion We must face reality — the Gaza war is now a war of annihilation
Canceling Israel’s critics won’t change the reality of what is unfolding in Gaza
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Opinion Hamas made a remarkable offer — because Trump laid a remarkable trap
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Special Report This school is fighting antisemitism all wrong. Why is it working?
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Books A bespectacled, Jewish hypochondriac with literary pretensions and a creepy fascination with his stepson’s girlfriend — Guess who?
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Opinion Israel is at an existential pivot point. It never needed to go this far.
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