Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of six books and a weekly columnist at The Daily Beast and the Forward. In addition to his career as a writer/commentator, Jay is also a leading meditation teacher in Jewish and Buddhist traditions.Jay's newest book is The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path. Others include Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment (North Atlantic); God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality (Beacon), a 2012 Lambda Literary Award finalist and Amazon.com bestseller; and Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism (Shambhala). Jay regularly appears on NPR, MSNBC, Huffington Post Live, and other national media, and was a professional LGBT activist for ten years. He holds a PhD in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a JD from Yale Law School, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination. Currently an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, he has held teaching positions at Yale University, City College, and Boston University Law School.