Rabbi Jay Michaelson is a contributing columnist for the Forward and the writer of Both/And with Jay Michaelson. 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 Shifting From Myth To Function
There was once a prisoner who yearned for freedom. One day, the prophet Mohammed appeared to him, and gave him a set of keys to his cell, saying “Your piety has been rewarded. Allah has set you free.” So the prisoner took the set of keys, mounted them on the wall, and prayed to them…
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Culture Freedom From The Slavery of Passover Seders
Passover is coming again, and with it, the irony of liberation. What irony? That while Passover is the Jewish holiday of freedom, so many of us feel enslaved to it. The cleaning, the prohibitions, the absurd details of kosher dish soap and unkosher salt, and worst of all, the endless drone of the Haggadah, which…
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Culture It’s a Purim World Out There
Purim has always been a weightier holiday than it seems — precisely because it is the lightest. Unbearably light, to paraphrase Kundera: Purim’s message is that there is no anchor, that all is random, that carnival is real and there is nothing you can do about it. Or, to paraphrase the late and beloved Rabbi…
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Culture Environmentalism: Good for the Jews
Last Tu B’Shvat, I argued in these pages that Jewish environmentalism must move past the touchy-feely stage of vague values and toothless pronouncements into an authentically Jewish set of responsibilities and demands. This, I claimed, was what our tradition demanded of us. Well, that discussion continues. In response to that article, I’ve been invited to…
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Culture One Who Speaks Does Not Know
The Best American Spiritual Writing 2008 Edited by Philip Zaleski Houghton Mifflin, 256 pages, $14. Bad spiritual writing is easy. Good spiritual writing is hard. And often for the same reasons. First, to write about spirituality is necessarily to attempt to bridge the gap between private and public. Spiritual experiences, especially as distinct from religious…
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Culture Coming Out: It’s the Jewish Thing to Do At Hanukkah
This month marks the occasions of Christmas and Hanukkah — and the two-year anniversary of the decision by the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards that homosexuality does not violate Jewish law. Although these three events may not seem related at first, I think that each one informs the other in meaningful ways….
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Culture Poets of the Desert and the Sea
The Bad Wife Handbook By Rachel Zucker Wesleyan University Press, 114 pages, $22.95. Practice By Dan Bellm Sixteen Rivers Press, 80 pages, $15. Reviewing books in tandem has a lot to do with timing. Sometimes, two volumes appear with almost identical themes — a natural pairing. Other times, certain books suggest an immediate contrast, again…
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Culture Answers in the Seekers’ Language
For the Love of God and People: A Philosophy of Jewish Law By Elliot Dorff Jewish Publication Society, 296 pages, $35. Why care about Jewish observance? Growing up some years back in the world of Conservative Judaism, I rarely heard an answer to the question. The few explanations that were provided usually presupposed a belief…
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