Jay Michaelson

Two very different films about what happens after we die are in the theaters right now: Clint Eastwood’s gentle Hereafter and Gaspar Noe’s raw, hallucinatory Enter the Void. While covering the same cosmological territory, the films couldn’t be more different, stylistically, thematically, and religiously.

Yom Kippur is a curious holiday. Widely known, among Jews and non-Jews alike, it is one of the few Jewish holidays also widely observed among the non-observant—probably out of guilt, but possibly out of a vague sense that this is an important day, and fasting is an important thing to…

There was a fair amount of surprise when ADL went on record opposing the construction of a progressive, moderate, multifaith dialogue-oriented Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan. Wait a minute, my (non-Jewish) boyfriend asked me, did they drop a letter from their name? Are they the Defamation League now?