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 Tales of the Masters
God in All Moments: Mystical & Practical Spiritual Wisdom From Hasidic Masters Edited & Translated by Or Rose With Ebn D. Leader Jewish Lights, 163 pages, $16.95. —- Hasidic Tales: Annotated and Explained Translation and Annotation B y Rabbi Rami Shapiro SkyLight Paths, 193 pages, $16.95. —- If you’ve seen “The Chosen,” or just tried…
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Culture Notes on Camp
The buzzword in Jewish circles these days is “continuity”: What turns Jewish children into actively Jewish adults? Sociologists usually point to parents and schools as the two prime agents of socialization. And yet, in the Jewish community, these agents don’t seem to be doing their jobs. A report released last month by the National Study…
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Culture Secrets of the Rebbetzin
I first met Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross, the ageless widow of six Hasidic rabbis, at the fashionable loft of two well-known Brooklyn artists, one of whom was photographing the rebbetzin for an upcoming gallery show in Boston. Hadassah was radiant, an elegant creature in Italian shoes and tailored clothes (“I only wear couture,” she told me…
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News It’s All in the Mix
‘Every day brings something new,” says DJ Handler, the impresario behind Modular Moods, an independent record label whose first releases hit the stores this past April. The 24-year-old Handler — ne Erez Shudnow — lives this credo. In addition to running his own record label, he is a DJ who spins at art installations and…
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News PSALM 151
As Passover recently reminded us, Elijah never dies in the imagination. Because in the Torah, Elijah the prophet ascends full body “in a whirlwind to heaven,” he is able to return in the dreams of Jewish mystics, where he offers special instruction, as well as in folklore and legend, where he appears sometimes as a…
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News It Is Not Good for Man To Be Alone
Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition By Steven Greenberg University of Wisconsin Press, 264 pages, $35. * * *| Queer Theory and the Jewish Question Edited by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz and Ann Pellegrini Columbia University Press, 464 pages, $24.50 * * *| Imagine learning that, because of how you were…
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News Practicing What He Preaches, Reggae Singer Reveals His Soul
Midway through Matisyahu’s set, I realized I was witnessing something new. The show, last Christmas Eve, was packed; it was part of the “Jewltide” festival sponsored by Heeb Magazine and Matisyahu’s label, JDub Records, and, indeed, the Heebsters came out in droves. As the crowd bounced along to reggae, dancehall and ska rhythms, Matisyahu pulled…
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News Revealing Ourselves Through Our Masks
There’s a passage in the Shaarei Zedek, a 14th-century mystical tract, in which the anonymous author recounts a literal ecstasy, an exiting of the soul from the body. What is inside becomes outside, and through the medium of language, the process of the world’s unfolding is re-envisioned beautifully as God looking in the mirror. The…
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