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 Let the world’s greatest expert on haggadot help you choose your haggadah this year
For 14 years now, I’ve reviewed haggadahs for this publication. Often, I find they illuminate developments in the Jewish world, such as growing independence, creativity, fragmentation, and reassessment of ritual and liturgical forms. This year’s crop, though, showed me something about myself. Probably the most significant Haggadah published this year is Marcia Falk’s “Night of…
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Culture How the pandemic freed me from the neurosis-inducing rules of Passover
For my doctoral dissertation, I wrote on a much-misunderstood 18th century heretic named Jacob Frank. Yet I hadn’t really considered the relevance of Frank’s antinomianism – the belief that transgressing the law is a religious or ethical duty – to my own life. Until this year. Though Frank is often associated with transgressive sexuality and…
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Culture Your comprehensive guide to choosing a new haggadah this year
Well, here we are again, still in Egypt. Not really — vaccinations are proceeding apace, and there are good reasons to be hopeful that next year’s Seder will be, if not in Jerusalem, then at least back at Bubbe’s place. We may not be across the Red Sea yet, but we have smeared plenty of…
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Culture Life, death, heartbreak, disillusionment — Dylan’s first album as an old man
Bob Dylan’s Grammy-award-winning comeback album, 1997’s “Time Out of Mind,” is a glorious record of death and rebirth. Death insofar as the album’s songs frequently have themes of mortality and aging (“I been all around the world, boys / Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door”)(“It’s not dark yet, but…
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Culture How to choose a haggadah in the time of coronavirus
One must reach to the darkest chapters of Jewish history to think of a Passover as dark as this one. Across the world, families are in lockdown, living in fear or grief, and coping with profound uncertainty about how long this plague will last. In such a moment, the Passover Seder may or may not…
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Culture The Best New Haggadot And The Best Of All Time
I’ve been tracking the release of new haggadot for the Forward for eleven years now. I’ve reviewed the good, the bad, the overproduced, the underappreciated. (Some of my all-time favorites are listed at the end.) And over the years, it’s been remarkable to observe how the production of haggadot each year reflects the continued vitality…
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Culture Remembering Bernie Glassman — A Zen Mensch
Bernie Glassman, one of the most important American Buddhist teachers, died Sunday November 4 at the age of 79. His life, and his integration of Judaism and Buddhism, now stands as a perfect, imperfect monument to the pursuit of spirituality and social justice. Perhaps fittingly, Glassman passed away just as one of the organizations he…
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Culture Why Han Solo is the most goyish ‘Star Wars’ hero
In Lenny Bruce’s terms, Han Solo always struck me as the most goyish of the “Star Wars” heroes. And in the new film “Solo,” he seems even more so. Recall (or, for a younger generation, come and learn) that for the outlaw comedian Lenny Bruce, Jewishness was a matter of sensibility more than religion or…
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