Jay's Books
The Secret That is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales: The Secret That is Not a Secret is the first book of fiction by Jay Michaelson, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. A collection of interconnected short stories, it invites you into a hidden world of faith, desire, transgression, and revelation. From a Hasidic woman tormented by her husband’s long beard to a closeted gay man repenting of his sins in the mikva, its inhabitants are torn between the transcendent and the earthly, seen and unseen.
The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth: The Heresy of Jacob Frank is the first monograph length study on the religious philosophy of Jacob Frank (1726-1791), who, in the wake of false messiah Sabbetai Zevi, led the largest mass apostasy in Jewish history. Based on close readings of Frank's late teachings, recorded in 1784 and 1790, this book challenges scholarly presentations of Frank that depict him as a sex-crazed "degenerate," and presents Frank as an original and prescient figure at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, reason and magic, Kabbalah and Western Esotericism.
Frank's worldview combines a skeptical rejection of religious law as ineffectual and repressive with a supernatural, esoteric myth of immortal beings, material magic, and worldly power. With close readings of the theological and narrative passages of Frank's teachings, Michaelson shows how the Frankist sect evolved from its Sabbatean roots and the infamous 1757-59 disputations before the Catholic Church, into a Western Esoteric society based on alchemy, secrecy, and sexual liberation. Sexual ritual, apparently tightly limited and controlled by the sect, was not a libertine bacchanal but an enactment of the messianic reality, a corporealization of what would later become known as spirituality.
While Frank was undoubtedly a manipulative, even abusive leader whose sect mostly disappeared from history, Michaelson suggests that his ideology anticipated themes that would become predominant in the Haskalah, Early Hasidism, and even contemporary 'New Age' Judaism. In an inversion of traditional religious values, Frank's antinomian theology held personal flourishing to be a religious virtue, affirmed only the material, and transferred messianic eros into social, sexual, and political reality.
Enlightenment by Trial and Error: Today, Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is a rabbi, a well-known meditation teacher, and a weekly columnist read by a quarter million readers per month.
But not long ago, Jay was a young spiritual seeker, pursuing mysticism (and even enlightenment) with an open heart and restless intellectual curiosity. Drawn from essays written over a ten-year period of questioning and exploration, this book is a unique record of the spiritual search, from the perspective of someone who made plenty of mistakes along the way.
“There are plenty of ‘spiritual books out there,” Michaelson writes in the book’s introduction. “But when I was starting out, I would have loved a book by someone still searching and figuring stuff out; still highly skeptical of the things people call ‘spiritual’ but equally skeptical of the skeptics; and still questioning everything along the way. So now I’ve written that book.”
Is: Heretical Jewish Blessings and Poems: is is a unique book of heretical spiritual poetry by the award-winning journalist Jay Michaelson, writing here under his Hebrew name, Yaakov Moshe. It aspires to sit on the spiritual bookshelf alongside (or maybe just beneath) Mary Oliver, Gary Snyder, Rumi, and Rilke. It is mystical and profane, personal and universal.
Comprised of four parts — Ayin (the Kabbalistic term for emptiness), Yesh (the Kabbalistic term for form), Blessing, and Wanting — the book is equal parts erotic and spiritual, with nondual ‘pointing instructions’, blessings for unusual occasions, and paeans to vulnerability.
The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path: The only thing that prevents happiness is searching for it. In this unusual book, a collection of eighty-two short, poetic meditations on sadness and the contemplative life, Dr. Michaelson describes in personal and philosophical terms how accepting and even embracing sadness can be a gateway to profound awakening.
Redefining Religious Liberty: The Covert Campaign Against Civil Rights: a report published in March 2013 by Political Research Associates, where Jay Michaelson served as a Religious Liberty Fellow. This report, authored by Michaelson, serves as a primer for all interested in the many intricacies surrounding the religious liberty debates. With fairness and precision, Michaelson documents how arguments for religious liberty have been manipulated to play on the fears and values of both conservatives and progressives, as well as people of faith and secularists.
Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment: Evolving Dharma is a “next generation” dharma book, published by North Atlantic Books in 2013. It tells the story of how American Buddhism evolved into its present forms, and where it might be headed next. It also describes the evolution of one’s personal contemplative path, based on Michaelson’s own years of meditation, including multiple long silent retreats, and his “progress” along various Buddhist paths to awakening. And it discusses how meditation may be integrated into a contemporary life and contemporary politics and philosophy.
Fearless, unorthodox, and irreverent, Michaelson introduces the reader to maverick brainhackers, postmodern Buddhist monks, and cutting-edge neuroscientist, featuring interviews with Richard Davidson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Lama Surya Das, Stephen Batchelor, and other leading figures, it is the authoritative guide to the mindfulness revolution.
God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality: The myth that the Bible forbids homosexuality — the myth of “God versus Gay” — is behind some of the most divisive and painful conflicts of our day. In this courageous and erudite book, Jay Michaelson shows that not only does the Bible not prohibit same-sex intimacy, the vast majority of its teachings support the full equality and dignity of gay and lesbian people, from the first flaw in creation (“It is not good for a person to be alone”) to the ways religious communities grow through conscientious reflection. In short, Michaelson says, religious people should support equality for gays and lesbians not despite their religion — but because of it. This is an important book for anyone who has wrestled with questions of religion and sexuality: parents and pastors, believers and skeptics, the faithful and the skeptical.
Published in 2012, Michaelson’s bestselling book led him to over 100 churches, synagogues, and schools during the campaign for marriage equality and nondiscrimination provisions for LGBTQ people.
Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism: This exploration of the radical, yet ancient, idea that everything and everyone is God will transform how you understand your life and the nature of religion itself. While God is conventionally viewed as an entity separate from us, there are some Jews—Kabbalists, Hasidim, and their modern-day heirs—who assert that God is not separate from us at all. In this nondual view, everyone and everything manifests God. For centuries a closely guarded secret of Kabbalah, nondual Judaism is a radical reorientation of religious life that is increasingly influencing mainstream Judaism today.
Writer and scholar Jay Michaelson presents a wide-ranging and compelling explanation of nondual Judaism: what it is, its traditional and contemporary sources, its historical roots and philosophical significance, how it compares to nondual Buddhism and Hinduism, and how it is lived in practice. He explains what this mystical nondual view means in our daily ego-centered lives, for our communities, and for the future of Judaism.
Another Word for Sky: Poems: Another Word for Sky is the first collection of poetry by Jay Michaelson, author of last year's God in Your Body and chief editor of the literary magazine Zeek. Like the author, the poems run the gamut: from Ashbery-like analytics to raucous queer mystical love poems, Ginsbergesque rants and fantasies to quiet reflections on the passage of time.
God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice: God in Your Body is about embodied spiritual practice: how to experience the deep truths of reality in, and through, your body. God in Your Body integrates the insights of mystical and traditional Judaism, Buddhist and mindfulness meditation practices, and a cosmopolitan, contemporary sensibility.
The book is the first comprehensive treatment of the body in Jewish spiritual practice and an essential guide to the sacred. Jews are sometimes called the “people of the book,” but they are equally the people of the body. Traditional observance of the Sabbath and holidays involves not beliefs but taking and refraining from certain physical actions. Jewish dietary laws are about foods, not sentiments; Jewish ethics is about action, not intention. Even Jewish prayer — built around the kneeling (barchu), listening (shema), and standing (amidah) prayers — is built not upon some abstract soul or spirit, but upon the body. This body-centricity of the Jewish tradition is well known in academic and scholarly circles, but ironically, forgotten in many religious ones.
God in Your Body is essential reading for anyone interested in integrating the body into spiritual practice, and also a valuable resource for scholars interested in Jewish traditions about the body. With meditation practices, physical exercises, visualizations, and sacred text, the book shows how to experience the presence of the Divine in, and through, the body. And it shows how, by cultivating an embodied spiritual practice, it is possible to transform everyday activities — eating, walking, breathing, even going to the bathroom — into moments of deep spiritual realization, uniting sacred and sensual, mystical and mundane.
Az Yashir Moshe: A Book of Songs and Blessings: Az Yashir Moshe is a “bencher,” a book of songs and blessings. Initially edited by Jay Michaelson and published in 2001, a second edition was published in 2009 by Ktav Publications, featuring newer, easier-to-read type face and customization available for weddings and other occasions. Dedicated to the memory of Matt Eisenfeld (SY ’93) and infused with the values of the diverse Yale community, Az Yashir Moshe offers the most complete selection of traditional zmirot, Israeli songs, and niggunim, beautifully designed for readers of all levels of Jewish learning.
In addition, PDFs of Az Yashir Moshe have been made online free of charge, in an effort to make these beautiful works of liturgy and poetry accessible to as many people as possible. To download these PDFs and for more information on Az Yashir Moshe, please visit www.azyashirmoshe.com. To order the bencher for your simcha or other occasion, visit Ktav.