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 Memento Mori: Jewish Spirituality and the Sanctification of the World
Earth’s crammed with Heaven And every common bush afire with God — Elizabeth Barrett Browning Western religion can, at times, devalue the world. With eyes turned toward heaven, or the afterlife, it can ignore or denigrate the manifest world, criticizing those who love it too much as “pagan” or, in our time, “humanist.” This is…
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Culture What Religious Arguments Are Really About
‘All of a sudden, there was hope in my heart I’d see my father again.” Thus wrote one of America’s most influential religious leaders of the moment when he became religious. It was at his father’s funeral, and the presiding minister had just said that death is not the end, that there is an afterlife….
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Culture Why Is This Night Different? Who’s Asking?
Open-Eyed Heart-Wide Haggadah By Debra Jill Mazer, edited by Shira Leba Batalion, designed by Margo Jennifer Akroyd Double Gemini Press, 62 pages, $32.95 In Every Generation: The JDC Haggadah Commentary by Ari L. Goldman, Foreword by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin Devora Publishing, 96 pages., $24.95 The Kabbalah Haggadah: Pesach Decoded By Yehuda Berg The Kabbalah Centre…
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Culture It’s Complicated
Can you have déjà vu for something you don’t remember? Watching the news about Iran these days, I feel as if it’s 1967 all over again. Once again, a leader of a large Middle Eastern country, a man with ambitions to be the leader of the region, threatens Israel with annihilation. Once again, evidence appears…
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Culture Un-Righteous Indignation
For a columnist, there’s no such thing as a bad reaction. Agreement feels good, of course, but disagreement is better than apathy, and bitter disagreement means, at the very least, that one’s managed to say something. Thus, over the past few months, I’ve relished the opportunity to engage with smart critiques of my opinions on…
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Culture Taking Avatar Seriously
“If you’re an author or Ph.D. candidate who had the foresight to propose a book on the philosophy of ‘Avatar’ before the film was even released in theaters, the past week (and the blogosphere) has been very, very good to you.” — Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times, December 22, 2009 Well, good for me,…
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News The Myth of Authenticity
American Jews of a certain class and culture have the scene engraved in their memories: Woody Allen?s Alvy Singer in ?Annie Hall? at Annie?s goyish parents? house, suddenly seen through their eyes as a Hasid, in a long black coat and peyes. It?s a hilarious moment: Allen imagining how he is seen by non-Jews, giving…
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Opinion ‘Religion Is Actually Spirituality’: An Exchange
Last month, our Jay Michaelson, in a column titled “Religion is Actually Spirituality,” argued that “even the most diehard, hyper-rational, Lithuanian Orthodox, High Reform, or otherwise non- or anti-spiritual religionists perform religious acts because they want to feel a certain way. In other words, religion is a form of spirituality.” Michaelson’s take on the relationship…
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