Quick Facts
Biography
Jay Michaelson (born May, 1971) is a writer and teacher in the United States who writes on law, religion, Judaism, and LGBT issues. Michaelson is legal affairs and religion columnist at The Daily Beast and a contributing editor to The Forward, newspaper. Michaelson has twice won the New York Society for Professional Journalists award for opinion writing, most recently in 2014.
Legal and political writing
After graduating Columbia College of Columbia University in 1993, Michaelson graduated Yale Law School in 1997. His 1998 Stanford Environmental Law Journal article on geoengineering and climate change was described as "seminal" by Salon Magazine and he is regarded as an early advocate of the policy. Other legal academic work was published in the Yale Law Journal and Duke Law Journal.
Since 2004, Michaelson's legal and political writing has focused on religion, progressive politics, and LGBT issues. In 2009, his essay entitled "How I'm Losing My Love for Israel" generated substantial controversy in the Jewish world, including responsesfrom Daniel Gordis, and Jonathan Sarna,. His recent work has been featured on MSNBC ("Gays under attack over Ebola") and Meet the Press ("Prayer breakfast dispute"). As a result, Michaelson was listed in the Forward 50 list of the most influential American Jews in 2009.
In 2013, Michaelson wrote a long-form report on the religious exemptions movement, Redefining Religious Liberty: The Covert Campaign Against Civil Rights.. Michaelson's work on this issue gained prominence a year later after the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case. Since then he has appeared on NPR and at the Newseum and written many articles on religious liberty in Reuters, The Washington Post and other publications.
In 2014, Michaelson co-founded a project at The Daily Beast entitled Quorum: Global LGBT Voices, which features TED-style talks by LGBT leaders from the Global South. And in 2015, Michaelson began a series of articles for The Daily Beast on prosecutorial misconduct. He has also written controversial articles on abortion, including one in the Washington Post claiming that Planned Parenthood is "doing God's work."
Religious work
In addition to his political writing, Michaelson is also a rabbi and a teacher of jhana meditation in the Theravadan Buddhist lineage of Ayya Khema and Michaelson's teacher Leigh Brasington. Michaelson has written several books on meditation and contemporary culture. Michaelson holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, and was ordained as a rabbi in 2013.
Michaelson is Jewish and openly gay and often works in the intersecting fields of LGBT people and Jewish traditions. Michaelson was called one of the "Most Inspiring LGBT Religious Leaders" in 2011 by the Huffington Post and one of "Our Religious" Allies by the LGBT newspaper The Advocate. He founded Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture in 2002 and Nehirim, an LGBT Jewish organization, in 2004. His 2009 book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality was an Amazon bestseller, and Michaelson spoke at over 100 places of worship during the debates about same-sex marriage.
Michaelson is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary. He previously held teaching positions at Boston University and Yale University.
Books
The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path (2015)
Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment (2013)
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)
God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice (2006)