About Jay Michaelson
Jay Michaelson is a writer, scholar, and actvist whose work focuses on the intersections of religion, spirituality, sexuality, and law.
Writing. Jay is the author of four books, God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality (2011),  Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism (2009), Another Word for Sky: Poems (2007), and God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice (2006) over 200 essays, articles, and works of fiction. He is Associate Editor of Religion Dispatches magazine, a columnist and contributing editor for the Forward, the founding editor of Zeek magazine, and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post,  Tikkun, Hadassah, and Reality Sandwich magazines. He is the editor of Az Yashir Moshe: A Book of Songs and Blessings.  His writing has been anthologized in volumes including Queer Religion (forthcoming 2011), Torah Queeries, Signs of the Apocalypse: Rapture, The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism, and Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice.  Jay won the 2010 award for best feature writing by the New York Society of Professional Journalists (the “Deadline Club”), and has won several Rockower awards for his writing in the Jewish press.
Legal/Academic Work. Jay has been a visiting professor at Boston University Law School (2007-08), and has held teaching positions at Yale University and City College of New York.  His academic articles have been published in the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, Duke Law Journal, Stanford Environmental Law Journal, the Journal of Law in Society, and the Yale Law Journal, as well as in several anthologies. Jay was a clerk to Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a Golieb Fellow in legal history at NYU Law School, a recipient of several prizes and awards for his legal writing and scholarship, and for eight years was founder and general counsel of Wasabi Systems, a venture-funded software company.
Academic Background.  Jay holds a JD from Yale Law School, an MA in Religious Studies from Hebrew University, an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence, and a BA Magna Cum Laude from Columbia, and is currently completing a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought at Hebrew University.
Spiritual Background. As readers know, Jay is proud of his Jewish and Buddhist spiritual practices, and is committed to an earth-based, body-positive spirituality.  In 2008-09, he spent five months on silent meditation retreat in the Theravadan Buddhist tradition, in America and Nepal, and has sat one-, two-, and six-week retreats in that tradition for seven years. In the Jewish tradition, Jay has learned and taught Kabbalah since 1993, completed the Elat Chayyim Jewish Meditation Advanced Training program, spent two years at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, and has been a practicing halachic Jew for three decades.  Jay has declined rabbinic ordination and instead offers his teachings as a lay practitioner of Torah and Dharma.
Teaching. Outside the academy, Jay is a frequent scholar in residence and teacher at institutions including the Human Rights Campaign summer institute, Wexner Institute, Limmud UK, Limmud NY, Wesleyan University, Lehigh University, Drew University, the New York University Hillel, Burning Man, Easton Mountain, and numerous synagogues and community centers. In this work, Jay brings together scholarly rigor with a personal commitment to spiritual practice and personal growth. He is a former assistant principal of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Prozdor School, and has written over twenty curricula on Jewish life and practice.
LGBT Advocacy. Jay is the founding director of Nehirim: GLBT Jewish Culture and Spirituality, a nonprofit organization which builds community for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Jews, partners, and allies. A longtime advocate on behalf of sexual minorities in religious communities, his work in this area has been featured in the New York Times, CNN Religion Blog, and NPR. Jay has spoken to audiences of a wide variety of faith traditions, and has worked closely with the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Empire State Pride Agenda, Easton Mountain, and other LGBT organizations.  He has published numerous articles and books on issues of sexuality and religion.  In his advocacy and teaching, Jay is known for bringing a religious voice to bear on questions of LGBT equality, and for finding common ground between people of differing opinions on the issue.
Other Work. Jay is a co-founder of the Tibet Oral History Project, which records the testimonies of Tibetan victims of the Chinese Occupation.  He also writes widely on issues of environmental protection, particularly climate change; Jay wrote the first scholarly analysis of geoengineering as a climate change strategy, and continues to be involved in efforts to mitigate anthropogenic climate change.  In 2011, he is a candidate for Town Board of Putnam Valley, New York, where he lives.