
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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Apartheid. The word is thrown around on the left-wing side of Israel-Palestine politics these days, and often it seems intended to provoke outrage, not reflection. And indeed, that’s exactly what it does on the right. But with the news on August 22 that only 58% of Israelis still support a two-state solution (and that’s counting…
“Loser.” Donald Trump has called many people this word, and synonyms for it, over the course of his many careers. His adolescent name-calling has degraded our political discourse, and even if he fails at his new chosen vocation (as seems increasingly likely), the damage will be hard to reverse. Ironically, Trump himself is the candidate…
To fans, the smartphone-based Pokemon Go is a delicious addiction. To detractors, it’s a dangerous one. Its real significance, though, runs deeper than anyone is saying. Pokemon Go is the most successful “augmented reality” game yet, superimposing Pokemon characters on real-world settings taken from your smartphone’s camera. Rather than players leaving the real world to…
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