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 Hey, Curt Schilling, Let Me Tell You About American Jews
In a recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Curt Schilling, the baseball star turned Donald Trump surrogate and possible senatorial candidate, turned the tables on Tapper and said: I would like to ask something as a person who is practicing the Jewish faith and have since you were young, I don’t understand — and this…
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Opinion Blaming ‘the Media’ Boosts Anti-Semitism — and Donald Trump’s Not the Only Culprit
Whether your friends are progressive, conservative, or anywhere in between, I bet they hate “the media.” In the last week alone, I’ve had lefty friends blame “the media” for ignoring protests at a pipeline in North Dakota, right-wing friends blame “the media” for ignoring the emails that WikiLeaks obtained from the Russian despotic regime, and…
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Opinion Who Are the Donald Trumps in Our Midst? (Hint: You Meet Them Every Day)
Like the scapegoat sent to the wilderness on Yom Kippur, so Donald Trump is now, at last, being disowned and disavowed by conservatives and Republicans of all stripes. It’s all a little too convenient. How many more Trumps are out there? How many men who brag about sexually assaulting women, who are serially investigated for…
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Culture When Fox News Went From Chinatown to Boro Park in Search of More Stereotypes
After Jesse Watters’s triumphant trip to New York’s Chinatown, he headed south to Boro Park. Having spent time with people vaguely represented in the foreign policy discussion of the Vice Presidential candidates, he wanted to meet the Jews who have been the subjects of so many tweets by Donald Trump’s supporters. The segment hasn’t yet…
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Opinion The Orthodox Case for Hillary Clinton — and Against Donald Trump
The American Jewish Committee released the first national poll of Jewish voters earlier in September, and the news is good for Hillary Clinton: Jewish voters prefer her to Donald Trump by a 3–1 margin. But who are those Trump supporters? In Florida, a crucial swing state where the Jewish vote could actually tip the state…
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Opinion The Conclusions We Jump to After the New York Explosion
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe we’re over-anxious now, like the travelers who fled JFK when it was all a false alarm. Probably not, but maybe. Maybe it was pranksters, or low-level wannabes. The devices were crude, the locations almost random. Whoever did this, maybe they read about terrorism and wanted to take part themselves. Luckily…
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Opinion Why You Shouldn’t Go To Synagogue On Rosh Hashanah This Year
As the summer ends, Americans get back to business, and for American Jews, there’s no bigger business than the High Holidays at your local synagogue. I have some unconventional advice for you this year: Don’t go. Instead of attending the kitschy mass performances that even your rabbi probably finds uninspiring, choose a different holiday from…
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Opinion From Muslims to Ebola, Conservatives Always Want To Terrify Us About Something
Remember Ebola? It’s widely thought that our national panic over Ebola cost the Democrats the Senate in 2014. Of course, there were many other factors in play. But do you remember how Republican after Republican got on television to condemn President Obama for “not keeping us safe from Ebola”? Where’s Ebola now? Well, banished back…
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