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.
[1] Learn more about Jay Michaelson via JayMichaelson.net. Learn more about his most recent book, The Secret That is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales, via this link.
[2] For Michaelson’s previous appearances on Judaism Unbound see Episode 38: Judaism and Evolving Dharma, Episode 197: Religious Heresy, and Episode 340: More Religious Heresy.
[3] For the previous episodes in this unit on North American-Jewish discourse about Israel-Palestine, see Episode 466: Israel-Palestine in American-Jewish Discourse (Dan and Lex), Episode 467: Israel and Palestine on Campus (Susannah Heschel), Episode 468: Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, and/or Episode 469: Israel/Palestine — Discourse Online (Mira Sucharov, Joshua Shanes).
[4] For Michaelson’s 2014 episode about the ADL’s flawed survey on antisemitism (which Lex referenced, and which would mark Jay himself as an antisemite), see “I Am 1 Billionth ‘Anti-Semite,’” published in The Forward. For his breakdown of the events at Yale that were eventually mischaracterized as a “stabbing,” see the 2024 piece “Can American Jews step back from the brink of conspiratorial paranoia?” — also published in the Forward.
[5] Learn more about the organization Resetting the Table, referenced briefly by Jay in this conversation, via www.ResettingTheTable.org.
[6] Lex referenced a survey, which indicated that older Jews believe there is far more antisemitism on college campuses than younger Jews do (including the age cohort that includes college-aged Jews themselves). For that survey, see the Jewish Electorate Institute’s April 2024 National Survey of Jewish Voters (and see below for a visual of the relevant question from that survey).
