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

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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
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- Spirituality/Meditation
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Recent Articles

Letter to a Trump-Supporting Technologist

Mar 20th, 2025 in Both/And
The Religious Functions of Psychedelics

Mar 14th, 2025 in Both/And
Lucy Pulls the Football Away Again

Feb 27th, 2025 in Both/And
Is Religious Freedom for Liberals, Too?

Feb 27th, 2025 in Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
The Most Important Sentence Donald Trump Has Ever Said

Feb 19th, 2025 in Both/And
more...

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Professor @emory @harvard
Journalist @cnn @rollingstone @jdforward
Psychedelics Scholar Rabbi Writer Dad
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Even when the news is bad, it's good to join @raus

Even when the news is bad, it's good to join @raushenbush and @state_of_belief to talk about "the rule of law and the chaos of MAGA."

Find The State of Belief on your favorite podcast app, or at the link in bio.

Back to quote memes for a bit. #ursulakleguin

Back to quote memes for a bit.

#ursulakleguin

Recently, I was talking with a friend in the tech

Recently, I was talking with a friend in the tech space, who told me that, in his circle, opinions about Trump are completely polarized: either this period is the end of democracy, or it’s the “golden age” (in Trump’s words). There is no in-between.

Since I actually know some of my friend’s pro-Trump friends, I imagined what it would be like to write them a letter. Not to send it – I have no delusions about persuading them – but to see if I could put my perspective into words. Read the result at jaymichaelson.substack.com

This Monday night, I'll be part of a free online f

This Monday night, I'll be part of a free online forum sponsored by @movingtraditions about the legal and physical threats facing trans and queer youth, and how we can help.

(The event is focused on Jewish community but all are warmly welcomed.)

Registration link in bio or at movingtraditions.org.

"The symposium was called Psychedelics and Monothe

"The symposium was called Psychedelics and Monotheistic Religions: Sacramental Practice and Legal Recognition, and responded to the dramatic increase, in recent years, of psychedelic use in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. While indigenous people have been using these compounds for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and while people of all backgrounds have been exploring them for a century, it is a new phenomenon that thousands of people experience and understand their psychedelic use as part of their Christian, Jewish, or Muslim religious practice or identity."

read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com

This Thursday, March 13, I'll be giving a free onl

This Thursday, March 13, I'll be giving a free online talk about corporeality and physicality in the Frankist heresy for the Swedenborg Library.

In the newsletter this week: five helpful words.

In the newsletter this week: five helpful words.

jaymichaelson.substack.com

Over at ARC magazine, I took a look at the recent

Over at ARC magazine, I took a look at the recent lawsuit filed by a group of progressive religious organizations claiming that the new ICE rules (allowing agents to enter churches to make arrests) violate their religious freedom.

Will the conservative court side with principle, or politics?

At arcmag.org and the link in bio.

The numbers tell the story, but humans need actual

The numbers tell the story, but humans need actual stories.

More on this -- jaymichaelson.substack.com

In approximately the year 125, the Roman satirist

In approximately the year 125, the Roman satirist Juvenal wrote that people can be hoodwinked by pānis et circēnsēs — bread and circuses. Give them that, and politicians can get away with almost anything, including screwing the people who put them there.

Probably the word “circus” connotes mere entertainment, but in Juvenal’s time, it was often a particular kind of entertainment: moral entertainment. Christians, slaves, and foreigners battled one another (and various animals) to the death, as Rome asserted its dominance, degrading those it sought to subjugate. No doubt, it made the Roman mob feel better about themselves — after all, they’re not the ones being oppressed — even as their own lives were being degraded by their leaders.

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com

Still the same old game.

Still the same old game.

Israel-Palestine Echo Chambers: Judaism Unbound Ep

Israel-Palestine Echo Chambers: Judaism Unbound Episode 471 - Jay Michaelson

Jay Michaelson, an award-winning journalist, professor, rabbi, and author, joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation exploring centrism and radicalism, misinformation that circulates far and wide on the topic of Israel-Palestine, and how we might strive for a better Jewish collective relationship to this important issue. This episode is the 5th in an ongoing mini-series exploring North American-Jewish discourse about Israel-Palestine.

Found on the internet...

Found on the internet...

We're in Phase One of a constitutional crisis: the

We're in Phase One of a constitutional crisis: the president is doing manifestly illegal, unconstitutional things. In Phase Two, the courts will rule against him. In Phase Three, he will tell them to go to hell.

Read more at jaymichaelson.substack.com

This is the project I've been focused on for the l

This is the project I've been focused on for the last several months: a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary symposium on psychedelic practice in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities.

Having sold out the symposium in person, we've now decided to make it available online, free of charge. Please visit psychedelicsandreligion.info to register and learn more.

Serena's husband (who also founded a popular websi

Serena's husband (who also founded a popular website) has some thoughts about online haters.

Sharing a few thoughts on the modest proposal to f

Sharing a few thoughts on the modest proposal to forcibly exile two million people and commit genocide (as defined in the Genocide Convention).

Ever since Trump came down that escalator in 2015,

Ever since Trump came down that escalator in 2015, progressives and other Democrats have tried, in vain, to describe the crisis he represents. We’ve called him a racist, a demagogue, a liar, a convicted felon, even a rapist. In recent weeks, his regime has been called a constitutional crisis, a threat to democracy, a coup, and, yes, the dawn of fascism.

And yet, however true or false these claims may be, it should go without saying that none of them has “worked” — by which I mean, they have not persuaded a sufficient number of Americans to oppose him.

And they’re not going to start working now.

Continue reading at jaymichaelson.substack.com

Here's some moral clarity.

Here's some moral clarity.

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