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Jay Michaelson (born May 5, 1971[1]) is an American writer, journalist, professor, and rabbi. He is a commentator on CNN,[2] and a columnist for Rolling Stone,[3] and other publications, having been the legal affairs columnist at The Daily Beast[4] for eight years. He is the author of ten books, and won the 2023 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship[5] and the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists Award for Opinion Writing.[6]
Since 2013, Michaelson's journalistic work has focused largely on the Supreme Court,[7] religion,[8] and LGBT issues.[9] Michaelson has won the New York Society for Professional Journalists award for opinion writing three times,[10] most recently in 2023, for his article "There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood. Let a Rabbi Explain Why.[11] In addition to covering the Supreme Court,[12][13] he has written on climate change,[14] antisemitism,[15][16] voter suppression,[17][18] judicial nominations,[19][20] and other subjects, and has been featured on CNN,[21] MSNBC,[22][23] and Meet the Press.[24]
In 2013, Michaelson wrote the first long-form report on the right-wing religious exemptions movement, Redefining Religious Liberty: The Covert Campaign Against Civil Rights.[25] Michaelson's work on this issue gained prominence a year later after the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case[26] and he has written many articles on religious liberty in Reuters,[27] The Washington Post[28] and other publications.
From 2004 to 2017, Michaelson was a columnist and contributing editor to The Forward[29] newspaper. In 2009, his essay entitled "How I'm Losing My Love for Israel" generated substantial controversy in the Jewish world, including responses[30] from Daniel Gordis,[31] and Jonathan Sarna,[32] and prefigured the estrangement of progressive American Jews from the government of Israel. Michaelson was listed in the Forward 50 list of the most influential American Jews in 2009.
Michaelson is an ordained rabbi, and teaches meditation in Buddhist, Jewish, and secular contexts.[33] His books on meditation and spirituality include Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment[34] and Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism.[35] From 2018-22, he was a teacher, editor[36] and podcast host at Ten Percent Happier,[37] a meditation app and podcast network. He is also a teacher of jhāna meditation in the Theravādan Buddhist lineage of Ayya Khema and Michaelson's teacher Leigh Brasington[38] and co-leads Jewish meditation retreats at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center.[39]
Michaelson is a rabbi and openly gay. He was a professional religious LGBTQ activist from 2004 to 2013.[40][41] He was the founder and executive director of Nehirim, an LGBTQ Jewish organization, from 2004 to 2013. His 2009 book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality was an Amazon bestseller and Lambda Literary Award finalist,[42] and Michaelson spoke at over 100 places of worship during the 2009–15 debates about same-sex marriage. Michaelson was called one of the "Most Inspiring LGBT Religious Leaders" in 2011 by The Huffington Post[43] and one of "Our Religious Allies" by the LGBT newspaper The Advocate.[44]
In 2014, Michaelson co-directed a project at The Daily Beast entitled Quorum: Global LGBT Voices, which features TED-style talks by LGBT leaders from the Global South.[45] Other LGBTQ-focused work includes the chapter on Exodus in the Queer Bible Commentary[46] (2022)
Michaelson married Paul Dakin in 2011.[47] They adopted a child when Michaelson was 46.[48]
Michaelson holds a PhD in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he wrote his dissertation on the antinomian heretic Jacob Frank. His 2022 book on Frank, The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth, was published by Oxford University Press and won the National Jewish Book Award for scholarship.[49] He is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and a visiting fellow at the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.[50] He previously held teaching positions at Boston University Law School and Yale University. Michaelson graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1993, and from Yale Law School in 1997.
Michaelson's academic work in religious studies includes "Queering Martin Buber: Harry Hay's Erotic Dialogical" (Shofar, 2018),[51] "Conceptualizing Jewish Antinomianism in the 'Words of the Lord' by Jacob Frank" (Modern Judaism, 2017);[52] "The Repersonalization of God: Monism and Theological Polymorphism in Zoharic and Hasidic Imagination" (Imagining the Jewish God, 2016),[53] "Queer Theology and Social Transformation Twenty Years after Jesus ACTED UP" (Theology and Sexuality, 2015),[54] and "Kabbalah and Queer Theology: Resources and Reservations" (Theology and Sexuality, 2012).[55]
Michaelson was a visiting assistant professor at Boston University Law School in 2007-08 and is the author of several legal-academic articles including "Rethinking Regulatory Reform: Toxics, Politics and Ethics" (Yale Law Journal, 1996),[56] and "On Listening to the Kulturkampf, Or, How America Overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, Even Though Romer v. Evans Didn’t" (Duke Law Journal, 2000).[57] and "Hating the Law for Christian Reasons: The Religious Roots of American Antinomianism"[58] (Jews and the Law, 2014).[59] His 1998 Stanford Environmental Law Journal article[60][61] on geoengineering and climate change, described as "seminal" by Salon[62] was the first legal analysis of geoengineering in legal academic literature.[63]
- God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice[64] (2006)
- Another Word for Sky: Poems[65] (2007)
- Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism[66] (2009)
- God vs. Gay?: The Religious Case for Equality[67] (2011)
- Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment[68][69] (2013)
- The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path[70] (2015)
- Is: Heretical Blessings and Poems (as Yaakov Moshe) [71] (2017)
- Enlightenment by Trial and Error[72] (2019)
- The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth[73] (2022)
- The Secret that is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales (forthcoming 2023)
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