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 Lars Von Trier’s ‘Nymph()maniac’ Is Uncomfortable But Thought-Provoking
For those still brooding over the Woody Allen scandal, consider those of us who are fans of Lars von Trier. Von Trier is not a 78-year-old comic with a single crime, alleged to have taken place twenty years ago, never proven, and dismissed by law enforcement. He is a complicated, depressed, brilliant, misunderstood, controversial filmmaker…
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Opinion Why Abbas Was Right to Blink
The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Right? That’s the joke anyway — has been for the last fifty years. And it’s what I thought when I first heard that the Abbas government picked now, of all moments, to apply for membership in fifteen UN organizations. Couldn’t they have waited a month,…
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Opinion The Year of Magical Thinking
“That’s the good thing about science: It’s true whether or not you believe in it. That’s why it works.” So said Neil deGrasse Tyson, joining Bill Nye as players in a strange cultural moment: the resurgence of magical thinking. Magical thinking, you’ll recall, refers to the misattribution of causality: The black cat meowed, and then…
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Culture All The 2014 Haggadah Info You’ll Ever Need
Remember 2011? Back then, I breathlessly wrote in these pages about a new Haggadah that was online. And then, last year, a Haggadah app for your ipad. Remember when that was new? This year, for the first time, the majority of new Passover Haggadot are no longer on paper. And yet, oddly enough, I found…
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Culture Why Evangelical Christians Are Right To Be Angry About ‘Noah’
When the Biblical Noah listened to that voice in his head (God?) and built a huge ark to survive a flood, he was taking an expensive risk. Paramount Pictures has taken an equally expensive risk — $125 million, give or take — entrusting auteur Darren Aronofsky to somehow bring together epic and indie styles, Biblical…
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Opinion For a Keystone XL Pipeline Grand Bargain
It’s time for a grand bargain on the Keystone XL pipeline. For years, President Obama has been stuck in between a rock and a tar sand. Environmentalists have made the pipeline, which would connect tar sands in Canada with refineries in the United States, a cause célèbre. To them, it is a defining moment for…
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Opinion Bernie Madoff, Our Convenient Scapegoat
You couldn’t dream up a better villain. Bernie Madoff, the man we all love to hate, is back in the news, opining from his jail cell on matters political, ethical and financial, this time in an interview with Politico magazine. Madoff won’t win many friends with this new interview, and may even gain a few…
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Opinion Only One Way To Change Hillel: Leave
This just keeps happening. Institution after institution cancels, boycotts, bans, and otherwise excludes speakers who don’t toe the right line on Israel. Hillel International is beginning to recognize that it cannot both engage all Jewish students and inculcate a politically defined love of the state of Israel — and is choosing the latter. The Ramaz…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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Fast Forward Meet Lev Kreitman, who brought down Tel Aviv shooter and survived Nova music festival on Oct. 7
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Oct. 7: One Year Later At Oct. 7 memorial ceremonies across Israel, searing grief and political tensions are on full display
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Oct. 7: One Year Later On the eve of this grim anniversary, what we can — and cannot — control
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Fast Forward Antisemitism hits record high in the U.S.; new report shows most-ever incidents in single year
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Culture He founded the Harlem Globetrotters and is the shortest man in the basketball hall of fame. A new book tells his story.
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