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 What Can Jews Do About Police Violence After Shootings — and Dallas?
“Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!” The ground this week is not East of Eden, where Cain slew Abel; it is St. Paul, Minnesota, where Philando Castile was gunned down while reaching for his ID. It is Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Alton Sterling was shot at point-blank range, already immobilized and…
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Opinion Reclaiming a Star-Spangled Progressive Patriotism in the Age of Donald Trump
It’s July 4 weekend, and we’re all watching the fireworks together: my partner and I, and a few hundred strangers. And it occurs to me: What I love about America is not what the loudest America-lovers love. In fact, I have a sense that it’s the opposite. I love the threads of American multiculturalism, the…
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Opinion Is Donald Trump-Style Populism Just Human Nature?
For most liberal American Jews, it has been an article of faith that things are gradually, in fits and starts, getting better. “Progress” is not irreversible, and there are inevitably backlashes to every advance. But in general, the combination of American optimism and secularized Jewish messianism has long held sway in our community. What, then,…
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Opinion Decoding an Anti-Semitic Meme Donald Trump Supporters Took From Anime
In the week since my column on Donald Trump was published, I’ve been avalanched by several hundred anti-Semitic tweets. Pictures of me in a gas chamber, pictures of Trump saying “you’re fired” next to a death camp oven and hundreds of hate tweets calling me a kike, a traitor, a rat and far worse. Others…
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Opinion Is Orlando About Islamist Terrorism, Homophobia, Mental Illness or Guns?
Was the hideous mass shooting at an Orlando, Florida, gay nightclub due to Islamist terrorism, homophobia, mental illness or guns? All of the above — and that is precisely the problem. In the short time since the attack — the 49 victims have only just been identified — politicians and pundits of all stripes have…
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Opinion Donald Trump Is a Candidate for White Supremacists — Not the Jews
I’ll say it plainly: The high-profile Jews supporting Donald Trump make me sick. This is not about Democratic and Republican politics; I’ve certainly never said the same thing about supporters of (any) Bush. It’s about white supremacy. Let’s take “white supremacy” out of the realm of insult. It is an ideology, after all, not simply…
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Culture Why I Fell Out of Love With Kabbalah
This is not a review of the new anthology by Daniel Horwitz, “A Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism Reader”; it’s about something I realized when I saw the book on my editor’s bookshelf — that I’m not in love with Kabbalah anymore. Horwitz’s anthology, part of a series from the Jewish Publication Society, is only somewhat…
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Opinion From Donald Trump to Israel and Europe, Why This Lurch to the Right?
To quote Donald Trump, “What the hell is going on?” The global rise of right-wing populism — in the United States, across Europe and now in Israel — is clearly the leading news story of 2016. Each week, Trump says something outrageous that hasn’t been said by a mainstream politician in half a century. And…
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Opinion As an Israeli political scientist, I resisted thinking this war was a genocide. Here’s what changed my mind
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News In a first, Orthodox rabbinical school ordains an out gay rabbi
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