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 Jewish Law Says About Crumbling Indian Point Nuclear Plant
What does an ox’s propensity for violence have to do with a leaky nuclear reactor? One is an ancient, Jewish example of negligence; the other is a very contemporary one. But the ethical imperative is the same: When there’s an imminent risk of danger to the public, it’s morally wrong to do nothing. Let’s start…
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Opinion After Scalia’s Death, Don’t Let GOP Senators Break Their Sacred Oath
Dozens of Republican senators, many professing religious piety, have stated that they will not discharge their duty set forth in the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which reads, in part, “The president shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint… Judges of the Supreme Court.” Have they…
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Opinion 20 Years After a Bus Bombing, the Inspiration of Two Lives Unlived
My world changed on February 25, 1996. But how it changed a few months later was more important. On February 25, I was just back from a hike in New Haven’s East Rock Park when I got a phone call telling me that Matt Eisenfeld and Sara Duker had been killed in the bombing of…
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Opinion It’s Time for Jews To Pray and Preach About Abortion — Like Christians Do
I want Jews to pray for reproductive justice, and I want rabbis to lead them. On March 2, the eight-person Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, the most significant abortion case in a decade. At issue in the case is whether Texas’s absurd and completely medically unjustified restrictions on…
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Opinion This Anti-BDS Video Is Pure Hilarity — and Accidental Genius
(CORRECTED BELOW) News flash: the BDS movement does not, in fact, urge supporters to shoot Dannon yogurt containers with rifles. That, however, is how it’s depicted in a four-minute video titled “BDS or the Bible.” Social media users are already having a field day with the video — Sarah Schulman dubs it “a cross between…
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Opinion Why Jewish Republicans Should Look Past Marco Rubio — to Michael Bloomberg
What’s a moderate Republican — that is, most Jewish Republicans — to do? With Donald Trump and Ted Cruz ascendant, moderate hopes have flitted from Jeb Bush to Marco Rubio and now to John Kasich. In fact, however, there’s only one hope for moderate Republicans: Bernie Sanders. Let me explain. First, Rubio is no moderate….
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Opinion The Oscars Are Too White — and That’s a Jewish Problem
“The Jews control Hollywood.” It’s one of those anti-Semitic tropes that, we all know, contains a certain grain of truth. “Control,” no — not with that ominous, conspiratorial connotation. But “helped create”? “Disproportionately populate?” Sure. From the founding of California’s motion picture industry (well documented in books like Neal Gabler’s “An Empire of Their Own:…
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Opinion Wishing Your Opponents Dead Is Not Good for Israelis or Palestinians
This column is not about the recent anti-Israel , which partially shut down a reception featuring Israeli LGBT activists. It’s about the ugly, angry way we talk about such things. And as usual, I’m going to call out both the right and the left. As journalists and Internet trolls “discussed” the events at the conference…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
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