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 Alleged Child Molesting Pastor Wrapped in Torah Scrolls
Apparently oblivious to how offensive this would be to any non-messianic Jew, Atlanta pastor Eddie Long — who privately settled lawsuits with several men who had alleged he molested them as boys, and whose wife recently divorced him for the same reason — allowed himself to be wrapped in a Torah scroll by messianic ‘Jew’…
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Culture Conservatives Have Jewish Values, Too
Jewish conservatives continue to spend significant amounts of effort and money to swing American and Israeli politics to the far right. Most visible is gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson, whose funding of Israeli media affected the 2009 Israeli election and who is now spending a fortune to equate American “support for Israel” with support for Israel’s…
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Culture Fighting Back Against Fundamentalism
How many wake-up calls do we need? The spate of communal misogyny in Israel and the United States, carried out under the pretext of a religious mandate, yet unjustified even by ultra-Orthodox interpretations of Halacha; Haredi America’s wall of silence about sexual abuse; and a variety of other scandals in the Haredi world, such as…
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Culture Why Does the Heckler Get a Veto?
Jewish Book Month has just ended, and I’ve had a wonderful time crisscrossing the country on my book tour. At almost every event, there are people in the audience with tears in their eyes, and parents who come up to tell me how the book I’ve written is enabling them to be closer to their…
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Opinion Pinkwashing Is Not Black and White
Last March, this newspaper published a classic example of pinkwashing, which is the concerted effort by supporters of Israel to tout Israel’s excellent LGBT rights record to win support for Israel in general. In their straightforwardly titled piece, “LGBT Activists Should Know Friends From Foes,” Stuart Applebaum and Benjamin Weinthal stated plainly that activists “should…
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Culture How Gay Rights Teaches Us Torah
Most religious affirmations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been “negative” ones: They argue that Leviticus (and Romans and Corinthians) doesn’t really prohibit homosexuality, or that ancient prohibitions should be set aside in the age of the iPad. But isn’t there a “positive” case, as well — that biblical religious values support the…
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Culture American Jews and Israel: What’s the Confusion?
That there has been a realignment of American Jewish attitudes toward Israel is by now apparent and heavily commented on. In some quarters, this has been seen as an earth-shattering, Judaism-betraying paroxysm of collective self-hatred. Yet in fact it is entirely logical. For years, Jewish moderates like me have held a curious combination of views:…
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Culture Don’t Call the Rabbi, Make Your Own Rituals
When I was in day school, we were taught that one of the differences between Judaism and Christianity was that we Jews needed no intermediary between ourselves and God. Christians had Jesus, of course, but also priests and ministers, and in some cases entire church structures who interpreted God’s word, conveyed prayers and generally acted…
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Film & TV Bonhoeffer biopic tells of a pastor turned would-be Hitler assassin — but is the story true?
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