Voices of Literacy | jaymichaelson.net

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

MENUMENU

Books
- 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
Articles
Multimedia
- Law/Politics/Religion
- Spirituality/Meditation
Speaking
About

Voices of Literacy

Wed, Jun 30

2021

$12
at Literacy Chicago

Online
More Info / Registration

Get the "Both/And" Newsletter

Recent Articles

Toy Guns that Spark and Flesh-colored Christs that Glow in the Dark

Sep 18th, 2026 in Both/And
The cancellation of Macklemore: A Yom Kippur reflection

Sep 15th, 2026 in Forward
I’m Having a Gay Star Trek Day

Sep 8th, 2026 in Both/And
Reflections on Obvious Stupidity

Sep 1st, 2026 in Both/And
Jesse Watters Knows He’s Lying

Aug 27th, 2026 in Both/And
more...

jaymichaelsoninsta

Academic @ emory @harvard
Journalist jaymichaelson.substack.com & @jdforward
Writer Speaker Rabbi Dad
jaymichaelson.net

This week, I'm co-convening a small gathering at H

This week, I'm co-convening a small gathering at Harvard of scholars working in the psychedelic humanities. Already the conversations have been generative and fascinating. On Wednesday, two of those brilliant scholars will be having a public conversation at @harvardlaw -- if you're in the Boston area, please join us. Admission is free and all are welcome.

@harvardundergradpsychedelics @harvardcswr @professornoahfeldman @the.hinternet

Thank you for wisdom #anniedillard

Thank you for wisdom #anniedillard

Like a lot of progressives, I’ve been frustrated t

Like a lot of progressives, I’ve been frustrated that seemingly existential issues — democracy, authoritarianism — are not the drivers of the upcoming election. But this post is about what economic voters get fundamentally right, and why there might be cause for a sliver of hope.

Online now at jaymichaelson.substack.com

What a pleasure to write about #AnneCarson and her

What a pleasure to write about #AnneCarson and her amazing poetry of presence and mystery.

In @jdforward -- forward.com

In the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks.
On the day He was to create justice
God got involved in making a dragonfly
and lost track of time.

It was about two inches long
with turquoise dots all down its back like Lauren Bacall.

Congratulations to the brilliant Anne Carson on wi

Congratulations to the brilliant Anne Carson on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Carson writes so vitally and originally about things that are easy to write badly about: God, desire, gender, meaning. Her prose is poetry and her poetry is prose and both are so wisely chosen and carefully constructed. She is an inspiration to poets, critics, and theologians alike.

This is an excerpt from the long poem "The Truth About God."

#AnneCarson

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com

Digger now appears to be joining the ranks of the

Digger now appears to be joining the ranks of the flops made about climate change.

Yet the failure of the film proves its core point: that it’s impossible to tell the story of global climate disruption. No one wants to hear about it anymore; the actual story is complicated, involving countless players and complicated science; and often, it’s not even a story.

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com

As a rabbi, I feel like I have traditional beliefs

As a rabbi, I feel like I have traditional beliefs projected onto me, and I sometimes wish I could wear a badge letting people know that I don’t hold them. As one of my core teachers, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, used to say to skeptics and agnostics: I don’t believe in the same God you don’t believe in. Or scripture, or pseudo-history, or ethnocentrism.

But I do “believe” in some kind of God. I experience moments of proximity to Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sat-chit-ananda), both in profound peak experiences and in everyday moments of being. I know the experience of the sacred, though it’s hard to put into words, and I love it. I orient my life around and toward it. Sometimes there are peak experiences of mysticism and ego death, other times there are the fireworks of entities and synchronicities, and sometimes ‘only’ the ineffable presence of awareness or the quiet breeze of the sacred in the midst of ordinary life. I also experience a sense of rightness when I see or express compassion, justice, love, truth, and empathy, and a sense of wrongness when I witness cruelty, destruction, hate, ignorance, lies, and the causing of suffering.

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com

#mysticism #underhill #heresy

#mysticism #underhill #heresy

From my vantage point as a rabbi/journalist/psyche

From my vantage point as a rabbi/journalist/psychedelics scholar/meditation teacher, it seems obvious that we are headed for a collective crisis even more massive than the ones we have already experienced. In a sense, AI is to white-collar work what globalization, de-unionization, and technology was to blue-collar work. Twenty years ago, it was the factories that were closing. Now, it’s the law offices cutting back on hiring. What is supposed to happen next?

From that same vantage point, it seems equally obvious that, as a society, there will need to be significant reorientation toward non-economic forms of value. Of course, these exist already: people find meaning in family, religion, culture, creativity, sports, hobbies, and a thousand other interests. It’s not like we’re starting from scratch. But consider how many people in your life (present company included) also derive meaning from work, and what will happen when that is taken away.

Religion, in its broadest possible sense, will almost certainly grow in response. Already, we’ve seen some of this in conservative quarters — converts to Catholicism like JD Vance and Peter Thiel, for example, or even the broad religiosity of Joe Rogan. But Capital-R Religion’s price of admission may be too high for many people: belief in God, conservative ideas about gender and sexuality, and all the myths and stories that seem preposterous if taken literally.

But there is also what I’ve called lower-case-r religion: forms of communal, ethical, and spiritual cohesion that are less about God, dogma, and obligation and more about the sacred in everyday life, rituals that bring us together, and practices that help us to grow ethically and spiritually.

In other words, what a lot of liberal Judaism, at its best, is already about.

Read more at forward.com

One of the reasons right-wing politics has been so

One of the reasons right-wing politics has been so disproportionately successful is that it offers a religion-like system of beliefs, meaning, and community. What progressive alternatives are there? How can progressives fill the "religion-sized hole" in American life without recourse to regressive forms and structures?

I joined @dancoke on his podcast "Religion on the Mind" to talk about how spirituality does and doesn't fill that hole for many people, and whether progressive religion will ever scale to be politically relevant.

Search up "Religion on the Mind" wherever you get your podcasts, or check out the link in bio.

As cheesy as it sounds, for a while I found it har

As cheesy as it sounds, for a while I found it hard to dance while *gestures wildly at all this* was going on. Then I figured something out. So I wrote about it in my Substack, jaymichaelson.substack.com .

For some time now, right-wing Zionists and left-wi

For some time now, right-wing Zionists and left-wing Anti-Zionists have been mirror images of one another, both insisting on a one-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. To be sure, the visions are different: one is of a Jewish-dominated ethnostate with a permanently subjugated non-Jewish minority, the latter either a utopian democratic fantasy or a violent, forced reversal of 1948.

As different as they are in some respects, though, both visions are delusions.

Read more at forward.com

Full moon is in a couple of days, and with it my f

Full moon is in a couple of days, and with it my favorite Jewish holiday, Sukkot. Here's #wallacestevens with a waxing-moon reflection.

This was a hard "hit" to do. I had around thirty s

This was a hard "hit" to do. I had around thirty seconds to both (a) communicate that many American Jews really are afraid of antisemitism right now while also (b) rejecting the claim that Macklemore's statement was antisemitic. Let me know how I did...

Although it is just one relatively minor incident, the Macklemore/Sheeran controversy is a kind of Rorschach test, revealing how people can sincerely perceive the same thing in totally different ways. That doesn't make everyone equally right or wrong -- I believe Kraft was wrong -- but it could help us better understand the "other side."

Two weeks ago, podcaster and philosopher Sean Illi

Two weeks ago, podcaster and philosopher Sean Illing wrote a provocative piece describing politics as “The Dumbest Possible Religion.”

I was inspired to respond at some length, and to answer two of his questions: first, where I get my “alternatives to shallowness,” and second, whether politics is indeed “the dumbest possible religion.”

My response is up now at jaymichaelson.substack.com

This is one of the most important sentences ever w

This is one of the most important sentences ever written about how to understand religion.

#gershomscholem

In the Jewish calendar, this week is dedicated to

In the Jewish calendar, this week is dedicated to reflection, introspection, and review of one’s thoughts and actions.

It is in that spirit that I am reflecting on the decision of billionaire Robert Kraft to ban the rapper @macklemore from performing at his stadium because of a statement he made onstage in support of Palestine — a decision which in turn caused superstar Ed Sheeran to boot Macklemore from his latest tour.

To be sure, this is hardly the most important chapter of the Israel/Palestine story. But it is a valuable prism on how we see differently, hear differently, and talk past one another on moral, political and ultimately spiritual matters of importance. And that has much to do with the themes of the Days of Awe.

Online now at forward.com and the link in bio.

Follow on Instagram

Media Inquiries/ Speaking Engagements:

awalker@apbspeakers.com

Jay-Michaelson-face

Connect

Sign up for the newsletter

©2026 | Website design by Simon Abramson | Upgrades by Springthistle

Search for: