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
-
Opinion A Lawsuit Cannot Stop the ‘Facebook Intifada.’ You Might.
A consortium of pro-Israel organizations has filed a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, seeking to force the social media giant to censor “incitement” and stop linking “terrorists” with one another. This is a 20th-century solution to a 21st-century problem, and will not work. Fortunately, there is a better way. There is no question that social media…
-
Opinion Why Is Chabad Helping Christian Extremists?
As readers of this column know, I have long praised Chabad Lubavitch’s spirituality, its outreach tactics and its mystical roots. But over the past several years, Chabad leaders have begun propping up far-right Christian extremists — not mere cultural conservatives, or right-wing politicians, but the extreme fringe that opposes human rights and, in some cases,…
-
Opinion Who Is To Blame for the Bloodshed and Despair in Israel? Everyone.
Just when the Israeli-Palestinian political situation seems like it can’t get any worse, it gets worse. And everyone is to blame. First blame lies with the Palestinian murderers who are stabbing innocent people on the streets of Israel. While these actions are the predictable results of Israeli policies, they are also inexcusable, ghastly and horrible….
-
Opinion Why Ben Carson’s Rant About Gun Control and the Holocaust Is So Dangerous
Many Jews, when they heard Ben Carson’s recent remark that if Jews had owned guns, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened, probably said to themselves (to use the vernacular): “WTF?” Those familiar with Carson’s long history of bizarre, ignorant and just plain weird pronouncements were likely less surprised, but have probably chalked it up to just…
-
Opinion Why Judaism is Most Meaningful in Times of Grief
When life is full of ease, spirituality is like cotton candy: fluffy, airy and unserious. It’s easy to mock the privileged, entitled yuppies in their yoga clothes, or the perpetually processing privileged New Agers at their endless, fruitless seminars. Not to mention the reactionary flocks in churches and synagogues, with their absurd, prescientific beliefs. And…
-
Opinion Why This Hasid Was Right To Flip the Bird to Kapparot Protester
As Forward readers know, I have, on several occasions, criticized ultra-Orthodox/fundamentalist Jewish leaders for abuses of power, toleration of bigotry, failures to protect or educate their own communities, and selective manipulation of secular law to arrogate power to themselves and squelch the rights of others. So, when a photo circulated this week of a Hasidic…
-
Opinion What Is a Jewish Response to Virginia On-Air Gun Killings?
Every time a senseless shooting happens, as it did yet again this week in Roanoke, Virginia, liberals ask the question Bob Dylan posed more than 50 years ago: “How many deaths will it take till he knows/That too many people have died?” The answer, however, to preventing attacks like the one that killed reporter Alison…
-
Opinion Progressive Judaism Won’t Win in My Lifetime. And That’s OK.
In 70 C.E., according to the Talmud, Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai had himself smuggled out of Jerusalem, and petitioned the Roman authorities to establish a center of learning in Yavneh, a small rural village by the coast. At the time, it must have seemed a defeatist move. Jerusalem had not yet been destroyed, though it…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Politics Meet America’s potential first Jewish second family: Josh Shapiro, Lori, and their 4 kids
- 4
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
