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 5 Reasons You Should Talk to BDS Supporters
Getty Images Writing in Tablet Magazine, Liel Liebovitz — or perhaps Tablet’s headline writer — recently asked the apparently rhetorical question “Why Talk About Israel With People Who Want It To Disappear?” Here are five answers. 1. Because many of them and their supporters are Jews. Hillel, the Jewish Museum, Ramaz and other organizations that…
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Opinion Hobby Lobby Discriminates in the Name of Religion With Help from Orthodox Outliers
Next month, the Supreme Court will hear the most important abortion case in decades. Like the recent anti-gay law vetoed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, it turns on the meaning of the term “religious liberty.” The case — actually a consolidation of two similar cases, Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius and Conestoga Wood v. Sebelius —…
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Opinion Will Arizona Go the Anti-Gay Way of Uganda?
Will Arizona become the next Uganda? As we go to press, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is debating whether to sign a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” that will allow discrimination if the discriminator claims a religious justification. It’s been nicknamed the “Turn The Gays Away” bill because it will allow any business — restaurants, nail salons,…
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Opinion Call It Sochifreude
Call it Sochifreude. For the past two years, human rights activists have decried the conditions of the Sochi Olympic games, which wrap up this week, often to deaf ears. They’ve reported accounts of migrant workers being abused, environmental laws being trashed, billions of dollars being embezzled, and, of course, the ban on gay “propaganda” which…
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Opinion Why Woody Allen’s Thing for Younger Women Doesn’t Make Him a Pedophile
Hopefully, Woody Allen Fatigue has now settled in. Every major newspaper in the country has run op-eds on this horrible situation, some by family members themselves. This publication has published four: one demanding that we “stand up for Dylan Farrow,” one likening the pursuit of Allen to a “lynch mob,” and two professing ambivalence about…
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Opinion Why Climate Change Denial Is Biggest Conservative Lie of All
Are conservatives ever right? They were wrong about slavery, wrong about women’s suffrage, wrong about segregation, wrong about gay rights. They were wrong about trickle down economics – it’s never worked and never will, as the ballooning wealth gap proves once again. They were wrong about Iraq (where are those WMD’s, anyway?) and wrong about…
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Culture What’s More American Than Bob Dylan — and Super Bowl Car Ad?
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” people who don’t know much about Bob Dylan have said, in response to his surprising, patriotic Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler. To them, Dylan is still someone he never was: a Sixties icon, a protest singer who would never sell out. “Sad, sad, sad,” moaned one of my Facebook…
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Opinion Why Jews Should Tune In to the Mindfulness Revolution
The current cover of Time magazine features a blissed-out and beautiful blonde, captioned with the text “The Mindful Revolution.” The images are cliché, but the Time cover story is but the latest in a long line of significant — possibly historic — changes in how Americans regard contemplative practice. It recounts the fascinating evolution of…
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Fast Forward It was a historic Jewish night at the Oscars. Why are so many Jews outraged?
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Film & TV Mikey Madison is Jewish — is ‘Anora’?
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Opinion The Germans have a word for what’s happening in Trump’s America
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Opinion Trump’s treasury secretary is about to make a catastrophically bad move on Israel
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Music In 1964, when he was just 23, Bob Dylan wrote the prophetic anthem that encapsulates Trump’s America
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Yiddish World Who was the audience for the rhyming Purim play?
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Fast Forward Adidas just sold off its final Yeezy shoe. Some of the proceeds are going to fight antisemitism.
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Fast Forward Cincinnati rabbi disinvited from rally against neo-Nazis over his support for Israel
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