Jay Michaelson is an American writer, journalist, professor, and rabbi. He is a visiting scholar at the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality[1] and was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in Spring 2025.[2] Dr. Michaelson is a frequent commentator on CNN,[3] and a contributor to Rolling Stone[4] and other publications, having been the legal affairs columnist at The Daily Beast[5] for eight years. He is the author of ten books, and won the 2023 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship[6] and the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists Award for Opinion Writing.[7]
From 2004 to 2017, Michaelson was a columnist and contributing editor to The Forward[25] newspaper. In 2009, his essay entitled "How I'm Losing My Love for Israel" generated substantial controversy in the Jewish world, including responses[26] from Daniel Gordis,[27] and Jonathan Sarna,[28] 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.
Since 2021, Michaelson's work has focused on the intersection of psychedelics, law, and religion. In March, 2025, he co-organized the first-ever conference on the legal recognition of religious psychedelic use in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities.[31] He has written[32] and spoken[33] widely on the religious significance of psychedelic practice in Judaism. Michaelson is an affiliated researcher of Harvard Law School's Program in Psychedelic Use, Law, and Spiritual Experience.[34]
Michaelson's other academic work in religious studies includes "Queering Martin Buber: Harry Hay's Erotic Dialogical" (Shofar, 2018),[35] "Conceptualizing Jewish Antinomianism in the 'Words of the Lord' by Jacob Frank" (Modern Judaism, 2017);[36] "The Repersonalization of God: Monism and Theological Polymorphism in Zoharic and Hasidic Imagination" (Imagining the Jewish God, 2016),[37] "Queer Theology and Social Transformation Twenty Years after Jesus ACTED UP" (Theology and Sexuality, 2015),[38] and "Kabbalah and Queer Theology: Resources and Reservations" (Theology and Sexuality, 2012).[39]
Michaelson is an ordained rabbi, and teaches meditation in Buddhist, Jewish, and secular contexts.[48] His books on meditation and spirituality include Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment[49] and Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism.[50] From 2018-22, he was a teacher, editor[51] and podcast host at Ten Percent Happier,[52] a meditation app and podcast network. He is also a teacher of jhāna meditation in the TheravādanBuddhist lineage of Ayya Khema and Michaelson's teacher Leigh Brasington[53] and co-leads Jewish meditation retreats at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center.[54]
LGBTQ activism
Michaelson is a rabbi and openly gay. He was a professional religious LGBTQ activist from 2004 to 2013.[55][56] 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,[57] 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[58] and one of "Our Religious Allies" by the LGBT newspaper The Advocate.[59]
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.[60] Other LGBTQ-focused work includes the chapter on Exodus in the Queer Bible Commentary[61] (2022).
Books
God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice[62] (2006)
↑ Daniel Gordis (October 12, 2009). "No Right to Exhaustion". The Forward. Archived from the original on October 17, 2009. Retrieved October 28, 2009.
↑ Jonathan D. Sarna (September 30, 2009). "After Utopia, Loving Israel". The Forward. Archived from the original on October 5, 2009. Retrieved October 28, 2009.
↑ Michaelson, Jay (2017). "Conceptualizing Jewish Antinomianism in the "Words of the Lord" by Jacob Frank". Modern Judaism – A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience. 37 (3): 338–362. doi:10.1093/mj/kjx031.
↑ Michaelson, Jay (2015). "Queer Theology and Social Transformation Twenty Years after Jesus ACTED UP". Theology & Sexuality. 21 (3): 189–197. doi:10.1080/13558358.2015.1222675. S2CID151477639.
↑ Michaelson, Jay (2013). Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment. North Atlantic Books. p.244. ISBN9781583947159.
↑ Raushenbush, Rev Paul Brandeis (October 20, 2011). "Inspiring LGBT Religious Leaders". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on July 5, 2017. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
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