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Jay Michaelson is an award-winning journalist, meditation teacher, podcast host, and author of ten books.

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    • The Secret that is not a Secret:Ten Heretical Tales
      The Heresy of Jacob Frank:From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth
      Enlightenment by Trial and ErrorTen years on the Slippery Slopes of Jewish Spirtuality, Postmodern Buddhism, and Other Mystical Heresies
      The Gate of TearsSadness and the Spiritual Path
      Evolving DharmaMeditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment
      Redefining Religious LibertyThe Covert Campaign Against Civil Rights
      God vs Gay?The Religious Case for Equality
      Everything is GodThe Radical Path of Nondual Judaism
      Another Word for SkyPoems
      God in your BodyKabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice
      isHeretical Jewish Blessings and Poems
      AnthologiesAnthologies featuring Jay Michaelson
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Does Donald Trump Bear Responsibility for Pittsburgh?

CNN's Out Front, with Jake Tapper, discusses the aftermath of the Pittsburgh massacre.

Monday, October 29th, 2018 | Multimedia, Law/Politics/Religion

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Recent Articles

  • Zohran Mamdani: The No-Yes Option

    Oct 31st, 2025 in Forward

  • How to Deal with all this Anger

    Oct 30th, 2025 in Both/And

  • The Real America is Not About Blood and Soil

    Oct 22nd, 2025 in Both/And

  • Honoring Rabbi Arthur Waskow – activist, pioneer and prophet

    Oct 21st, 2025 in Forward

  • How Did We Get Here?

    Oct 14th, 2025 in Both/And

  • more...

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Academic @ emory @harvard
Journalist @cnn @rollingstone @jdforward
Writer Speaker Rabbi Dad
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The first snowfall of the season has fallen where The first snowfall of the season has fallen where I live. This is an excerpt of a longer poem by the much-missed @andreagibson .
Come spend five days in silence with me and my gif Come spend five days in silence with me and my gifted co-teachers this December. You know you need it. I sure do. Use code JAY10 when you register for 10% off. 

BTW this retreat is offered with no program fee -- teachers are paid by donation only. 

@adamah_org
I want to make a plea for longer-term, less reacti I want to make a plea for longer-term, less reactive political discourse. Obviously, it’s hard to resist the Roy Cohn/Steve Bannon tactic of flooding the zone with shit every five minutes. There are outrages everywhere. But this week’s election result could inspire us to keep focus on longer term trends and threats, rather than the outrage of the day (or hour). This is a dark and uncertain time, but it is not a story whose end has been written.

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com
It's like she's describing 2025 instead of 1940. It's like she's describing 2025 instead of 1940. 

#hannaharendt
It is possible to disagree with a candidate about It is possible to disagree with a candidate about Israel/Palestine but still vote for them, because there are so many more important issues, like defending NYC from authoritarianism, enabling working people to live in the city, and offering hope in this dark time.

Read more in @jdforward - forward.com .
There are, of course, many kinds of anger, many ex There are, of course, many kinds of anger, many experiences of it, many ways in which it can help or harm. Some anger is merely irritation or impatience, but the rage I feel in response to that illegal, inaccurate, and hateful USDA notice may be different. Perhaps it is “righteous indignation.” Perhaps it motivates me to take action, donate money, write articles, and vote for candidates who might reduce the amount of hate in our politics, rather than increase it.

But even in the latter case, I often experience anger as corrosive. Here is how 25 years of meditation practice has helped me work with it without tuning out.

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com
I think about this often. #szymborska I think about this often.

#szymborska
Tonight, at @newyorkinsight and online: Working Sk Tonight, at @newyorkinsight and online: Working Skillfully with Queer Rage

Once again, queer communities in America are being attacked, lied about, and scapegoated by a regime driven by religious extremism. When we turn to the teachings of the Dharma, we find conflicting messages about how to work with the rage, fear, and hurt that naturally arises in response. Tonight we’ll explore different approaches to anger, in particular. One school of thought holds that anger is always bad: it is dosa, one of the three poisons that are the root of all negative states. Thus while we do not judge ourselves for feeling anger, we do work to lessen it. However, another school of thought (most recently given voice by Lama Rod Owens and others) holds that anger can be good, generative, and empowering. Rather than choose one of these approaches or try to make them agree with one another, we’ll explore how each of them resonate with our own experience and with the practice of engaged Buddhism in the context of the 21st century polycrisis.

Freely offered, by donation.
Link in bio to register.
I love precisely what JD Vance appears to hate: a I love precisely what JD Vance appears to hate: a multicultural America that continues to wrestle with itself, that has always been stained by racism, but that has an ‘idea’ of transcending it; the America defined by ideals like the rule of law, democracy, and the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Honestly, I can’t believe that this even needs to be said, but apparently it does.

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com
Then as now. Thank you @arthur_waskow_ #arthurw Then as now.

Thank you @arthur_waskow_ 

#arthurwaskow 
#shalomcenter
These protesters were vocal and loud, but they wer These protesters were vocal and loud, but they were obviously not posing any physical threat to the ICE officers or facility. Yet the officers responded with (non-lethal) force, and with contemptuous laughter as well.

How did we get here? How did we arrive at the point where untrained, masked government agents, accountable to no one but the president and his henchmen, pepper spray a priest with impunity? How, in less than a year, has America been so utterly transformed?

I actually want to answer this question, in reverse chronological order.

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com
Arthur Waskow’s legacy — runs deep and wide. H Arthur Waskow’s legacy — runs deep and wide. He helped create Jewish environmentalism; if your synagogue is reducing its carbon footprint, in part it has Reb Arthur to thank (though he would be the first to say that such steps are pointless without collective political action). He and Phyllis Berman transformed Jewish liturgy in ways that rippled out well beyond progressive communities. And broadly speaking, Reb Arthur pioneered the entire notion that social activism and Jewish spirituality — not only Jewish identity and moral teaching, but also Jewish ritual and text and myth — enrich one another.

Read more at @jdforward
I hesitate to offer too much #hope in these times, I hesitate to offer too much #hope in these times, but here's some from #georgeeliot .
Meanwhile, in @jdforward : Even as American Jews Meanwhile, in @jdforward :

Even as American Jews celebrate the long-yearned-for release of Israeli hostages, some in our community are being threatened by the Trump
administration, which has promised to investigate and prosecute nine left-leaning organizations that, it says, have funded or encouraged protests that led to violence. 

Two are Jewish: IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.

Will the Jewish community rally to the defense of two relatively small Jewish-led organizations? I wonder.

Read more at forward.com
Just published: my take on the problematic use of Just published: my take on the problematic use of the term "mysticism" in psychedelic science and law. Now up at canopyforum.org and the link in bio.

--

Despite the frequency of its use, however, the term “mysticism” is too analytically narrow, diagnostically inadequate, and legally misleading when applied to the range of experiences psychedelic users report. The term should be retired in favor of a more capacious, less theologically-specific category such as “Spiritual/Existential/Religious/Theological” (SERT), an acronym proposed by my colleagues at the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality. Here, I will review the analytical shortcomings of the term in understanding religious experience and the variety of altered states of consciousness that arise in therapeutic contexts, and then turn to the legal and political consequences of this confusion.
I really like the fake version of this quote, fals I really like the fake version of this quote, falsely attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and I salute whoever first posted it on Twitter in 2019. But this is the original. 

Here's the fake:

"We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of the state." 

(The last sentence is something Solzhenitsyn said. But he never said the first part. But it is still quite prescient.)

#epsteinfiles #solzhenitsyn #gorokhova
Maybe I’m just a little paranoid. Which honestly Maybe I’m just a little paranoid. Which honestly feels pretty justified, as tanks are rolling into Portland, which is not yet a warzone, and Chicago, which is also not yet a warzone, and children who are not in any way connected to Tren de Aragua, are being ripped out of their beds and thrown naked into ICE vans.

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com
The case against Israel’s actions in Gaza is str The case against Israel’s actions in Gaza is stronger, not weaker, when Israel’s critics speak about antisemitism with moral clarity. I sincerely believe that it helps Palestine when those in solidarity with it condemn antisemitic violence without qualification. As, let’s be honest, many did not in October 2023. I lost friends and allies that month, and I will never forget their silence or equivocation.

More at msnbc.com and the link in bio.
A bit of #flanneryoconnor for #yomkippur . A bit of #flanneryoconnor for #yomkippur .
For the sin of assuming the worst about another’ For the sin of assuming the worst about another’s motivations

And for the sin of not reflecting on our own motivations;

For the sin of allowing our rage, trauma, and pain after October 7 to blind us to the misery, collective punishment, and war crimes in Gaza

And for the sin of allowing the misery, collective punishment, and war crimes in Gaza to blind us to the unspeakable evils of October 7;

For the sin of shunning anti-Zionists and slandering them as antisemites

And for the sin of shunning Zionists, and slandering them as genociders;

Read more at forward.com
@jdforward
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