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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News An Anthem for LGBT Youth
A New Jersey jury recently convicted 20-year-old Dharun Ravi of hate crimes for using a webcam to watch as his college roommate kissed another man. Days after the incident, the subject of the video stream, Tyler Clementi, jumped off the George Washington Bridge. Clementi’s tragic death was one of a recent spate of lesbian, gay,…
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Culture Why Are American Jews So Liberal?
Why are Jews so liberal? Every few years, the question gets asked, often with the unspoken follow-up “… and what can we do to change that?” This year, Republican super PACs are drooling with anticipation. If you think the attacks on Mitt Romney by Sheldon Adelson — I mean Gingrich — I mean a Super-PAC…
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Opinion J Street’s Blind Spot Is Class
I’m not one for political conventions. Good policy is subtle, but effective politics is broad — and I, for one, prefer the former. When friends of mine returned from the AIPAC conference in early March, inspired by (in the words of one of them) “thousands of Jews all united by a love of Israel,” I…
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Culture ‘Tis the Season for New Haggadot
New American Haggadah Edited by Jonathan Safran Foer Translated by Nathan Englander Little, Brown. 160 pages, $29.99 Wellsprings of Freedom: The Renew Our Days Haggadah By Rabbi Ronald Aigen Emet Press, 148 pages, $23 The Koren Ethiopian Haggada: Journey to Freedom Edited by Rabbi Menachem Waldman Translated by Binyamin Shalom Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 200 pages,…
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Opinion An Act of LGBT Censorship in Seattle
Last year, Israeli adult film star and newly-minted right wing activist Michael Lucas used his financial clout to bar an anti-Israel group from meeting at New York’s LGBT Center. I was one of many who protested: LGBT community centers are meant for the entire community, including groups with whom we may disagree. But in case…
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Life Don’t Let Preference Veto Justice
This is the third entry in an ongoing series exploring Jewish feminism. I want to answer the question of “what Jewish feminism means to me” in two ways: First, about how I learn from it both substantively; and second, on a meta level, in terms of how all of us enrich the Jewish conversation through…
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Opinion You Can’t Pray the Gay Away
‘Reparative therapy” for gays and lesbians, which attempts to “change” sexual orientation and is neither reparative nor therapy, is the last gasp of bad theology. It exists to solve a theological crisis. On the one hand, Jews are told that God loves us and that “it is not good… to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) On…
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Culture Jewish Roots of the New Testament
‘It is evil for Christians to try to convert Jews with this dreck. Why don’t you people leave us in peace?” So wrote one Amazon reviewer of the new “Jewish Annotated New Testament” (Oxford University Press, 2011), a magisterial volume of Jewish commentaries, essays and scholarly notes on the second half of the Christian Bible….
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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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