This week, Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson joins Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush for a deep dive into the state of U.S. politics, the role of the rule of law in preserving democracy, and political attacks against institutions of higher education. Together, they explore how faith can play a role in resistance and activism, reflecting on the deep divisions within American society and the responsibility of institutions to defend core values in times of crisis.
Jay speaks about the weaponization of accusations of antisemitism – and how these tactics are being used to attack higher education, ultimately harming the interests of American Jews. He also critiques the rise of the “woke right,” arguing that anti-woke rhetoric has evolved into a new form of censorship, and expresses concerns about the future of LGBTQ+ rights. Above all, he emphasizes the importance of standing in solidarity across lines of difference to protect civil rights in these challenging times.
“[The right isn’t] against censorship. They just wanted to do the censoring. And the same things that people complained about, rightly or wrongly, in the last few years: Oh, you can’t say anything about gender, or you can’t say anything about race, or you have to be careful what you say about this and that, and you have to always be careful because somebody’s going to be offended. That’s exactly the world we’re living in now. It’s just the other side. You can’t say anything that’s too critical of anything that’s on the right…The people who are complaining are now doing the exact same thing that the people who they were complaining about were doing.”
– Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, visiting professor at Harvard Law School and a field scholar at the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality. He is the author of ten books, and a journalist whose work appears on CNN, in Rolling Stone, and in his weekly substack newsletter, Both/And with Jay Michaelson. For twenty years, Jay’s work has focused on the intersections of politics and religion; he worked as a religious LGBTQ activist for ten years, and earlier this month he convened the first-ever conference on the legal recognition of religious psychedelic use by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. He holds a PhD from Hebrew University, a JD from Yale Law School, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination. Jay’s latest book is The Secret That Is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales.
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