How can you be gay and Jewish?

[King_David]

1. Jay Michaelson

http://www.jaymichaelson.net/

Jay Michaelson is the author of four books and two hundred articles on the intersections of religion, spirituality, sexuality, and law. His most recent book, God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality (Beacon), was an Amazon.com bestseller and has been nominated for a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Jay is a contributing editor to the Forward newspaper, associate editor of Religion Dispatches magazine, and the founding editor of Zeek magazine, and his work has appeared in Salon, Newsweek, Tikkun, The Huffington Post, and other publications. His other books include Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism and Another Word for Sky: Poems.

Jay is also the founder of Nehirim, a national community of LGBT Jews, partners, and allies, which has been recognized by the Slingshot Fund as one of the fifty most innovative Jewish nonprofits in the US. Jay’s advocacy on behalf of sexual minorities in religious communities has been featured on CNN, NPR, and in the New York Times.

In 2009, Jay was included on the Forward 50 list of influential American Jews, and in 2010 he won the New York Society of Professional Journalists’ award for opinion writing. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School and will soon be completing his Ph.D in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds an M.A. in religion. Jay has held teaching positions at Boston University Law School, City College of New York, and Yale University.