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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Culture The Unity of Opposites
Learning From the Tanya: Volume Two in the Definitive Commentary On the Moral and Mystical Teachings Of a Classic Work of Kabbalah By Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz Jossey-Bass, 384 pages, $24.95. * * *| We Jews: Why Are We and What Should We Do? By Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz Jossey-Bass, 224 pages, $24.95. * * *| Why…
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News Israel’s ‘Mystical City’ Opens Its Doors to Outsiders
The bus ride from Jerusalem to Tsfat takes three hours… but it can be a long three hours. On my most recent trip to the mystical city — a former backwater that, in the 16th century, became the most important center for Kabbalah in the world — I was stuck in the back of the…
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News Jewish Legislators Build International Network
JERUSALEM — “I’ve been coming to Israel every year since 1983,” said Rep. Gary Ackerman, a New York Democrat, “and every time, people say, ‘You’ve come at an interesting time.’” That was never truer than this year. Ackerman came here last week to take part in the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, a loose association…
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News Israel’s ‘Mystical City’ Opens Its Doors to Outsiders
The bus ride from Jerusalem to Tsfat takes three hours… but it can be a long three hours. On my most recent trip to the mystical city — a former backwater that, in the 16th century, became the most important center for Kabbalah in the world — I was stuck in the back of the…
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News Jewish Legislators Build International Network
JERUSALEM — “I’ve been coming to Israel every year since 1983,” said Rep. Gary Ackerman, a New York Democrat, “and every time, people say, ‘You’ve come at an interesting time.’” That was never truer than this year. Ackerman came here last week to take part in the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, a loose association…
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Culture Holy Feast, Holy Fast
Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah By Joel Hecker Wayne State University Press, 296 pages, $44.95. * * *| Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture By Eliezer Diamond Oxford University Press, 240 pages, $49.95. * * *| To put it mildly, Jews have a complicated relationship…
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News Jewish Paganism: Oxymoron or Innovation?
I was skinny-dipping in the mud springs on the shores of the Dead Sea with Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi, a longhaired renegade kabbalist who runs a commune in the Judean Desert. We were enveloped by the softest, silkiest mud I’ve ever felt — it was like moving through thick cream. Then the rabbi told me to…
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Opinion Disabuse Community of Intolerance
The resignation last week of Rabbi David Kaye from the educational program Panim, after revelations that he had solicited a 13-year-old boy online for sex, elicited the usual expressions of shock from the Jewish community. Of course, we all should be outraged when such immoral conduct is brought to light, but those who follow the…
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