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Book description

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.

Jay Michaelson

Jay Michaelson

Author Bio

Jay Michaelson is a scholar and activist who has written extensively on spirituality, Judaism, sexuality, and law. He is the author of God in Your Body and the founding editor of the award-winning publication Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. He is a columnist for The Forward, the Huffington Post, and Tikkun. He holds a JD from Yale University and is completing his PhD in Jewish thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Praise for the book

Spirituality & Health

“One of the most widely read Jewish writers of his generation. . . . Michaelson's deeply contemplative, thoughtful book will open the doors of the heart and mind to the possibility that what we have come to take for the 'self' is just a way to label the way things look from a certain angle.”

Jewish Week

“[Michaelson] writes with clarity, passion, and a poetic sensibility.”

Forward

“Jay Michaelson’s captivating post-secular musings present for the generation of the new Jewish culture a vision of expanded religious possibilities.”

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

coauthor of Jewish with Feeling

“Stripping away the barnacles of outdated concepts, Jay Michaelson aligns the best nondual thinking in Judaism with the best nondual thinking in other profound systems. Everything Is God is a timely and necessary contribution.”

Rabbi Jill Hammer

author of The Jewish Book of Days

“Jay Michaelson has written a poetic, detailed, and radical book expressing a Jewish language of oneness: not the oneness of a bearded man in the sky but the Oneness of a universe not divided against itself. He gives the reader a gift of self-beyond-the-self, a gift that cannot be owned but is well worth having.”

Rabbi David A. Cooper

author of God Is a Verb

“This is an awesome, highly recommended presentation of crucial mystical concepts.”

Rabbi Rami Shapiro

author of The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness

“Fantastic—a book that offers a compelling theology for thinking Jews! Read this book, and buy a copy for your rabbi as well.”

Rabbi Jacob Staub

Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Spirituality, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

“Michaelson patiently explains, again and again, truths that are beyond words. He shares this treasure generously and passionately.”

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

author of Godwrestling: Round 2

“If my mind were not already God’s unstretchable Mind, I’d say the book is a mind-stretcher. And if the book were not already God, beyond even delight, I’d say the book is a delight.”

Jewish Book World

“Compelling. . . . Jolts us from an ego-centered illusion of separateness. The author’s language of oneness is certain to resonate with a younger generation of spiritual seekers.”

Author: Jay Michaelson

Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism

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