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 Trump Is Not Hitler and He’s Not Haman — He’s Ahasuerus
With Purim around the corner, it occurs to me that many people see Donald Trump as Haman, the genocidal villain of the Purim story. That’s not quite right: He’s Ahasuerus, a different kind of danger, and one that’s worth contemplating today. In case you need a refresher, Ahasuerus, in the Book of Esther, is the…
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Opinion Meet the Evangelical Christians Behind Ted Cruz — They’re Super Jewy
Of the remaining Republican presidential hopefuls, Ted Cruz has emerged as the candidate of the Christian right. Yet he is also the candidate of the 1%, with just four people donating over $31 million to his campaign: eccentric billionaire Robert Mercer, longtime friend Toby Neugebauer, and two brothers, Farris and Dan Wilks. The Wilks brothers,…
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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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