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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Culture Richard Linklater’s ‘Boyhood’ Captures the Spirit of the Time
One of the great productive tensions between Jewish tradition and contemporary spirituality is that between time and the timeless. On the one hand, the passage of time is central in Judaism. Some of this time passes in a linear fashion — we age along with life-cycle events , from birth to death — and some…
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Opinion Dan Markel’s Meaningful Life Ends in Senseless Death
There was a time, not too long ago, when what we wanted were explanations. Religion, philosophy, art – these were meant to tell us how things fit together, how they made sense. Even today, many of us — religious, secular, spiritual-but-not-religious — hold to this view. “It was meant to be.” “God works in mysterious…
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Opinion 5 Ways To Turn Down the Social Media Flame
I’d like to say that social media doesn’t matter. Israel and its Palestinian counterparts are pursuing tactics, military and otherwise, and the battle for public opinion is only one among many. Despite what nearly everyone seems to think, what happens on our Facebook and Twitter feeds probably doesn’t matter that much. Except when it does….
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Opinion What Did You Expect?
What did you expect? Did you think that terrorists wouldn’t attack three teenagers hitchhiking on a Palestinian road? Did you think that the Palestinian population isn’t angry enough to create extremist fringes like this? Did you really think that a continued occupation and no hope for independence would not breed some percentage of hard-core, terrorist…
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News Reb Zalman, the Prophet of Both-And
I last spent time with Reb Zalman a month ago, during Shavuot at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center. He looked and felt like all of his 89 years — and he told us as much. As in “The December Project,” his collaboration with Sara Davidson on the late years of life, Reb Zalman was entirely…
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Opinion A Threat to Jews in Hobby Lobby Decision
Much ink will be spilled about the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case. It affects many things: women’s freedom, the rights of religious conservatives, and, potentially, religious exemptions from a variety of civil rights laws and Obamacare. The Court’s bitterly divided 5-4 opinion split on party lines: four conservatives siding with the conservatives,…
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Opinion Why I’m a Liberal — and I Hate the Nanny State
A few months ago I decided to research my genetic history. My partner and I were considering having children, and anyway, I was curious. So I signed up for 23andMe, which offers genetic testing by mail. All I had to do was spit into a vial, and a few weeks later I learned that I…
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News Death of the Jewish Left
For as long as contemporary American Jews can remember, our community has voted liberal, marched radical, and, to varying degrees, found ourselves on the left side of the political spectrum. But for those who favor this state of affairs, recent shifts in Jewish culture and identity offer reason to worry. First, Jewish solidarity with other…
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