Michael Lesher. Turning Back: The Personal Journey of a “Born-Again” Jew (Lincoln Square Books, September 2020)
Michael Lesher. Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities (McFarland & Co., 2014)
Michael Lesher and Malky Feig. Miracles: The Extraordinary Life of Frieda Bassman (Feldheim, 2017)
Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher. From Madness to Mutiny: Why Mothers Are Running from the Family Courts—and What Can Be Done about It (Gender, Crime and Law series, Northeastern University Press/University Press of New England, May 2005)
Michael Lesher. Surfaces (The High Window, 2019)
Michael Lesher. Now and Then: Poems for all times (Amazon, 2022)
Abuse-Related Journal Articles/Essays/Chapters
Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher (1999). Legislative Solutions to the Protective Parent Backlash. Family Violence and Sexual Assault Bulletin, 25(2-3): 19-26
Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher (2002). The Silence of the Jewish Media on Sexual Abuse in the Orthodox Jewish Community. In D.S. Claussen (Ed.), Sex, Religion, Media, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (pp. 79-87)
Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher (2006). The Other Side of Child Neglect Charges: What Happens When There Are No Standard Criteria for Charging a Non-Offending Mother With Neglect? Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 15(4)
Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher (2008). A Single-Case Study of Rabbinic Sexual Abuse in the Orthodox Jewish Community. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 17(3-4), pp. 270-289
Michael Lesher (2009). Justice for Child Victims of Incest. Domestic Violence Report, 14(3), pp. 33, 42-48
Michael Lesher (2009). The Fugitive and the Forgotten: Cracking the Cold Case of Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz. In Amy Neustein (Ed.), Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities & Child Sex Scandals, Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press (pp. 126-162)
Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher (2009). A Single-Case Study of Rabbinic Sexual Abuse in the Orthodox Jewish Community. Reprinted in R.A. McMackin, T.M. Keane, and P.M. Kline (Eds.), Understanding the Impact of Clergy Sexual Abuse, London/New York: Routledge (pp. 74-93)
Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher (2009). Justice Interrupted: How Rabbis Can Interfere with the Prosecution of Sex Offenders - and Strategies for How To Stop Them. In Amy Neustein (Ed.), Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities & Child Sex Scandals, Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press (pp. 197-229)
Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher (2009). Evaluating PAS: A Critique of Elizabeth Ellis’s “A Stepwise Approach to Evaluating Children for PAS” Journal of Child Custody, July 2009, 6:322-325
Michael Lesher (2010). Leveling the Landscape: Family Court Auxiliaries and How To Counter Them. In Mo Therese Hannah and Barry Goldstein (Eds.), Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody, Kingston, NJ: Civil Research Institute Press (pp. 16-1 - 16-11)
Michael Lesher (2011). Justice for Child Victims of Incest. Family & Intimate Partner Violence Quarterly, 3(3) (Winter 2011), pp. 245-257 (reprinted from Domestic Violence Report, above)
Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher (2012). What Went Wrong at Ohel Children’s Home - and What Can Be Done About Its Failure to Protect Jewish Children from Abuse? In Ersi Abacı Kalfoğlu and Rehat Faikoglu (Eds.), Sexual Abuse - Breaking the Silence (InTech [open access], March 2012), Chapter 12, pp. 183-200
October 4, 1995 “Mixed Marriage, Mixed Message,” by Michael Lesher. Jewish Community News of Clifton/Passaic
November 17, 1995 “Exile in Orthodoxy,” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week
December 29, 1995 “The Rhetoric About 'Rhetoric,'” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (pg. 7)
February 9, 1996 “Of Bagels and Believers,” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (pg. 22)
April 5, 1996 “When the Apple Falls Far From the Tree,” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (pg. 19)
May 3, 1996 “Defending Judge Duckman,” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (pg. 32)
June 2, 1996 “The Goldstein Syndrome,” by Michael Lesher. Canadian Jewish News
June 28, 1996 “The Rabbi and the Runaway,” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (pg. 24)
July 17, 1996 “Mideast Fundamentalism Can Easily Infect New Jersey, America,” by Michael Lesher. North Jersey Herald & News
August 2, 1996 “Palestine, the Jews and the Olympics,” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (pg. 18)
October 1, 1996 “A Child's at Stake: A Custody Fight Becomes a Political Nightmare,” by Adam Fifield and Michael Lesher. Village Voice (pp. 10, 12-13)
October 4, 1996 “Face Facts: Jerusalem Is Divided,” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (pg. 28)
November 1, 1996 “Speaking with Their Silence: A Troubling Child Sex Abuse Case in Orthodox Community Raises the Question, Where Are Our Leaders?” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (pg. 28)
January 31, 1997 “Proudly Orthodox - and Gay,” by Michael Lesher. Forward (pg. 7)
January 16, 1998 “An Orthodoxy Afraid of Unraveling,” by Michael Lesher. Forward (pg. 7)
1998 “Cheapening a Sacred Vocabulary,” by Michael Lesher. Forward
November 13, 1998 “Two Weddings and a Boycott,” by Michael Lesher. Forward (pg. 23)
May 30, 2002 “Does the Jewish Community Sacrifice Victims of Sexual Abuse?” by Amy Neustein and Michael Lesher. Jewish Exponent (pg. 37)
June 21, 2004 “Courts See Moms as Guilty till Proven Innocent,” by Michael Lesher and Amy Neustein. New York Daily News (pg. 39)
December 7, 2007 “Learning Our Lesson,” by Michael Lesher and Amy Neustein. The Jewish Press (pp. 5, 97) (letter to the editor urging “a new rabbinic approach to child sexual abuse” in light of the Mondrowitz case)
March 26, 2008 “Governor David Paterson: A champion of women and children,” by Michael Lesher and Amy Neustein. Amsterdam News (pg. 13) (column describing David Paterson’s record with the issue of family court reform in cases of child sexual abuse)
January 2009 “The Disposable Jew: Reflections on Child Sexual Abuse and Religious Culture,” by Michael Lesher. (Published on-line because no Jewish journals or book publishers considered it “suitable” for publication; readers may judge the reason for themselves)
July 31, 2011 “Orthodox Cops: Separate and Unequal,” by Michael Lesher. New York Post (pp. 21-22) (leading featured op-ed column criticizing the funding, by New York City, of Orthodox Jewish “patrols” that withhold from police evidence of crimes committed by Jews)
August 12, 2011 “Who Guards the Guards?,” by Michael Lesher. The Brooklyn Paper (another featured op-ed column criticizing government funding of Orthodox Jewish “patrols”)
August 12, 2011 “Who Guards the Guards?,” by Michael Lesher. Courier Life’s Brooklyn Daily (reprint of the above)
November 27, 2011 “Breaking the Silence: The Brooklyn DA arrested an astounding 89 Orthodox men on charges of child sex abuse -- forcing open a community that sometimes covers up such crimes,” by Michael Lesher. New York Post (p. 29) (another leading featured op-ed column, addressing recent news of child sex abuse arrests in Brooklyn’s Jewish communities)
December 11, 2011 “Fight against intimidation must rage on,” by Michael Lesher. New York Post (p. 7) (yet another op-ed column, framing news of new child sex abuse prosecutions in Brooklyn, together with the D.A.’s admission that many victims are pressured not to report; Lesher urges the D.A. to address “the very real problems of rabbinic and institutional intimidation” faced by Orthodox victims)
April 30, 2012 “Brooklyn DA plays sex-abuse politics,” by Michael Lesher. New York Post (p. 23) (Lesher calls the D.A.’s preferential secrecy policy for Orthodox Jewish sex criminals “a cynical insult to the victims his office is pledged to support” and blames it on “Orthodox influence on [the] office”)
October 23, 2014 “Occupy the Synagogue,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (Lesher writes that for religious Jews concerned about justice for Palestine, “it isn’t enough...to criticize the Israeli government. As long as Jewish leaders join in the chorus of Israeli propaganda, we have to speak out against them, too and we have to challenge the religious ideology that has made that unholy alliance possible”)
November 1, 2014 “Freeing Rape Victims From Fundamentalism -- In New York?” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (we must reject “the convenient double standard that condemns the role of Islam in repressing sex abuse victims, but ignores the same sort of cover-ups when they occur in [our] own cities or neighborhoods and are promoted by a less demonized clergy”)
November 12, 2014 “Al-Aqsa to Religious Jews: Which Side Are You On?” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (“If the Jewish State is gearing up for holy war, where are Jewish voices denouncing this ugly strategy for what it is?”)
December 5, 2014 “Why are Orthodox rabbis edging into Israel’s apartheid politics?” by Michael Lesher. Electronic Intifada (Lesher asks the Orthodox rabbinate: “As state-sponsored terror flows through Jerusalem, are you going to speak out on behalf of all victims, or will we continue to hear little but party-line fanaticism and bigotry against Palestinians?”)
January 26, 2015 “Je Suis Hypocrite,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (“The Paris rally, with all its fustian, its solemn posturing and vague fear-mongering, was to Jewish morality what Stalin’s show trials were to justice”)
April 17, 2015 “Why was Palestinian suffering forgotten on Holocaust Remembrance Day?” by Michael Lesher. Electronic Intifada (Lesher critiques the manipulation of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day for propagandistic purposes)
April 17, 2015 “Why was Palestinian suffering forgotten on Holocaust Remembrance Day?” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (a reprint of the previous article; Lesher writes “I cannot remain silent while Jewish elites turn the lessons of the Nazi genocide upside down incidentally using the very methods the Nazis used to convert Germany into a killing machine”)
May 9, 2015 “Israel’s Settler-Colonialist Culture,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (analyzing Israeli coverage of the “surrogate parenting” business in Nepal in the wake of a deadly earthquake and what it reveals about a chauvinistic culture)
May 18, 2015 “‘Jerusalem Day’ and the sacralization of propaganda,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (critiquing the use of religious tropes to whitewash Israel’s occupation)
June 12, 2015 “Why haredi Jews should resist military service,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (Lesher writes of the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate: “By seeing the IDF as one vast sexual temptation, it has managed to blind itself to the very real evils to which that army is now dedicated”)
July 11, 2015 “Et Tu, Michael Oren?” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (Lesher argues that there is “poetic justice” in the way Israel’s former ambassador “is now smearing many of his Jewish-American former friends with a dose of their own medicine”)
July 13, 2015 “Et tu, Michael Oren?” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (another publication of the previous article)
October 15, 2015 “The enablers of Israeli terrorism,” by Michael Lesher. Electronic Intifada (amid a new wave of Israeli terror, Lesher argues that religious Jews should be outraged as Orthodox rabbis propagandize in support of violence)
October 17, 2015 “The Enablers of Israeli Terrorism,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (reprint of the previous article)
October 19, 2015 “The enablers of Israeli terrorism,” by Michael Lesher. Revolution (another reprint of the same article)
October 23, 2015 “The ‘Jewish Week’ propagandizes for Israeli violence,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (Lesher criticizes an editorial in a major Jewish periodical for “propagandizing for systematic violence, defending international crime, and embracing disinformation as an instrument of justice”)
October 29, 2015 “Denial of Netanyahu’s Holocaust denial,” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher exposes an attempt to rationalize the Holocaust revisionism of Israel’s prime minister as “an effort to rationalize the demonization of Palestinians, and thus to provide cover for the criminal methods Israel is employing in order to secure an already illegal occupation”)
November 10, 2015 “With friends like Israel, who needs enemies?” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher critiques comments by the U.S. Secretary of Defense purporting to explain the “benefit” of the U.S.-Israel relationship)
November 11, 2015 “With friends like Israel, who needs enemies?” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (reprint of the above column)
November 11, 2015 “Grieving for Kristallnacht, past and present,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (Lesher compares the (lack of) reaction of today’s Jews to the cruelties of the occupation with the horrified reaction of the German public to the atrocities of Kristallnacht in 1938, concluding, “Today’s Kristallnacht is proceeding in silence, a silence more damning than the German reaction 77 years ago. Perpetrated by the very people who annually commemorate the evil of similar crimes once committed against them, this Kristallnacht is committed by and for Jews: Jews carry it out, Jews quietly contribute to it, Jews look the other way all the while shouting ‘Never again!’ at the first hint of blame”)
November 14, 2015 “Grieving for Kristallnacht, past and present,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (reprint of the above article)
December 2, 2015 “Murder, ethnic cleansing, religious persecution -- Let’s eat!” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher writes about the darker side of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah)
December 3, 2015 “Ezra Schwartz, the Violence We Mourn, And the Violence We Support,” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (pointing up the double standard applied by mainstream Jewish media to Palestinian and Israeli violence; this column was featured by Jewish Voice for Peace on its Facebook page, December 7)
December 27, 2015 “Samir Kuntar, terror, and the Israeli double standard,” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher writes that coverage of the assassination of Samir Kuntar reveals “a deeply rooted double standard in the way the media have narrated Israel’s war against the Palestinians”)
January 14, 2016 “Swastikas And Silliness: The Fuss At Fieldston,” by Michael Lesher. The Jewish Week (contrasting exaggerated claims of anti-Semitism in Jewish media with the very real dangers faced by Muslims)
January 26, 2016 “Where’s the real Jewish hate site? (Hint: It’s pro-Israel),” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher exposes The Jewish Press as a hate site and underlines the hypocrisy of media critics who accuse blogs critical of Israel of “anti-Semitism” but ignore runaway racism and hate-mongering on pro-Israel sites)
January 30, 2016 “Where’s the real Jewish hate site? (Hint: It’s pro-Israel),” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (reprint of the previous column, underlining media hypocrisy in ignoring the real sources of hate speech in the Israel-Palestine discourse)
February 9, 2016 “To praise the dead -- Or to abuse the living?” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher writes, “[W]hile my religious community closes its eyes to the crimes of Israel’s occupation and to the cover-ups of child abuse that continue to plague its rank and file, I am robbed of the mourning that is my due”)
February 24, 2016 “Don’t condemn Palestinians for resisting the occupation of their land, condemn the occupation itself,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (Lesher addresses officials who condemn the killing of an Israeli soldier: “Stop making victims out of the oppressors. Name the true victims. Call the occupiers by their right names”)
February 26, 2016 “Don’t condemn Palestinians for resisting the occupation of their land, condemn the occupation itself,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (republication of the previous article)
March 7, 2016 “Wailing at the Wall,” by Michael Lesher. Electronic Intifada (Lesher criticizes both sides in the “Women of the Wall” controversy, writing: “Does ‘egalitarian’ worship sanction ethnic cleansing? Do strictly Orthodox religious principles condone theft?”)
March 9, 2016 “Witch-hunting for Israel,” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher writes, “Umberto Eco had it right. When you’ve got a guilty conscience, you need to invent a plot. The guiltier Israel’s conscience, the more witches its apologists will have to find until they finally look at themselves in a mirror”)
March 21, 2016 “Israeli propaganda in the New York Times: Isabel Kershner beautifies the beast,” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (critiquing a puff-piece obituary for a notorious Israeli terrorist, Lesher asks, “Does a crime become a virtue when committed on behalf of ‘our’ people? No doubt a Nazi would think so. A Jew shouldn’t”)
March 28, 2016 “Mall shootings, fear, and the blindness of privilege,” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher examines recent news reports of violence in Columbus, Georgia -- his birthplace -- and compares this with the city’s long history of violence against non-whites)
April 4, 2016 “Mall shootings, fear, and the blindness of privilege,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (reproducing the previous article as the featured piece for April 4, 2016)
April 29, 2016 “Blindness of Privilege,” by Michael Lesher. Z Magazine (again, the previous article reproduced in the monthly issue of Z Magazine)
May 6, 2016 “The Labour Party witch hunt: Will the real fomenters of anti-Semitism please stand up?” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher argues that the “anti-Semitism row” embroiling the United Kingdom’s Labour Party is a fraud that is likely to provoke more anti-Semitism than it uncovers)
May 13, 2016 “What was forgotten on Israel’s Memorial Day (and why I can’t forget it)” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher writes, “While I continue to mourn the slain...I will not join in the ritual erasure of memory that is Israel’s Yom HaZikaron. I will not mock a victimized people by pretending its suffering never happened. I will not insult my God by calling on him to forget crimes committed in my religion’s name”)
May 26, 2016 “It’s Time Orthodox Jews Speak Out Against Shomrim Patrol,” by Michael Lesher. Forward (regarding the “sweet” plea deal offered to members of a Hasidic “patrol” who allegedly beat a young, gay black man, Lesher complains that “the Shomrim patrol system requires large-scale acquiescence to keep it running along its chosen path, and that’s exactly what rank-and-file Orthodox Jews have been giving it for far too long”)
June 5, 2016 “Jerusalem Day and the Misuses of Religion,” by Michael Lesher. Forward (on the anniversary of Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem, Lesher writes, “When today’s Orthodox Jews use religious language to sanctify an event they don’t understand, with consequences they can’t morally justify, they’re not applying tradition they’re betraying it”)
June 24, 2016 “Homophobic violence and the Orthodox double standard,” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (Lesher writes, “We need to speak out, clearly and forcefully, against all hate speech leveled at gays. And we need to be equally clear in our defense of Muslims, the only population in the U.S. facing more popular demonization than gays are”)
July 11, 2016 “When Mourning Is Complicity,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (Lesher writes, “[I]n this crazy world of whitewashed apartheid and politicized mourning...what ought to be a normal emotion becomes an act of complicity”)
July 27, 2016 “Is Israel’s anti-BDS campaign fueling anti-Semitism?” by Michael Lesher. Electronic Intifada (Lesher argues that the “quiet tragedy of Israel’s anti-BDS hysteria” is that it promotes “a future in which the price of being Jewish is acquiescing in international crime and the word ‘anti-Semitism’ will have been given undeserved and dangerous respectability”)
August 1, 2016 “Why Don’t Children’s Rights Count in Ultra-Orthodox Education Debates?” by Michael Lesher. Forward (concerning a new bill that would exempt ultra-Orthodox schools from “core curriculum requirements,” Lesher asks, “How long are we going to talk about the ‘rights’ of religious Jews in language that shows we haven’t even started to think about the rights of our children?”)
August 12, 2016 “BDS Doesn’t Delegitimize Israel, Mr. Prime Minister -- Your Effort To Ban It Does,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (in an open letter to Israel’s Prime Minister, Lesher comments, “The nonviolent anti-occupation campaign can never threaten Israel; it can only improve it. Your government’s attempt to boot its critics out of the country is a horse of a different color”)
September 22, 2016 “A study in hypocrisy,” by Michael Lesher. Electronic Intifada (Lesher comments on the Orthodox rabbinate’s outrage over Sabbath violations in Israel, “[F]or the rabbinate, technical Sabbath observance (voluntary or not) matters; Palestinian human rights do not”)
October 30, 2016 “Surprised by Shavit? We should be surprised at ourselves,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher complains that it took an instance of sexual harassment by Ari Shavit to upset the American Jewish establishment, when years of “Shavit’s apologetics for international crime” had not done it)
November 9, 2016 “It isn’t over: the ghost of the 2016 election will haunt us for a long time,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (wrongly expecting a Clinton victory on Election Night, Lesher warns against believing that the defeat of Donald Trump would vindicate the Democratic Party and the establishment it represents)
December 1, 2016 “Orthodox Leadership Genuflects to Trump,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher criticizes Orthodox Jewish leadership’s post-election embrace of Donald Trump as “moral cowardice”)
December 16, 2016 “Why the Orthodox rabbinate protects sex abusers and the occupation,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher’s analysis relates Orthodox leadership’s willingness to cover up sex abuse by Orthodox Jews to its support for violence against Palestinians)
December 18, 2016 “Why the Orthodox rabbinate protects sex abusers and the occupation,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (republication of the previous column)
December 30, 2016 “Hate speech and hypocrisy: Some Jews will swallow anything, if it comes from Donald Trump,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (detailing the willingness of Jewish pundits to tolerate hate speech, even anti-Semitism, from close associates of President-elect Trump, Lesher writes that “unless the Jewish mainstream...stands up wholeheartedly against the dark cloud descending on Washington, it risks plunging the American Jewish community into moral irrelevance”)
January 2, 2017 “Hate speech and hypocrisy: Some Jews will swallow anything, if it comes from Donald Trump,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (republication of the previous column)
January 11, 2017 “Crime and punishment: Fadi Qunbar, Elor Azaria and Israel’s occupation,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (critiquing the double standards by which mainstream media dehumanize Palestinians who fight occupation, Lesher writes: “Israel could not torture Palestinian children if all Israelis (and Americans, and Jews) remembered those children’s names and faces the same way we remember the names and faces of Israeli victims.... Israel could not kill Palestinians with impunity if those Palestinians were real to us; it could not breed more Azarias if it could not erase all the Fadi Qunbars from public consciousness”)
January 12, 2017 “Crime and punishment: Fadi Qunbar, Elor Azaria and Israel’s occupation,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (republication of the previous column)
January 19, 2017 “The farewell address Obama should have given,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher imagines a farewell address that underscores how President Obama’s broken promises have deepened the problems he claimed he would solve, leading to the current crisis)
February 3, 2017 “Why do they hate us? -- An apology for my enemies,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher responds to personal attacks by writing, “Jettison moral principles unless they further Jewish ethnic supremacy; throw away facts;...say no to justice and yes to apartheid; trade your religion (if youre religious) for a slice of stolen real estate and what have you got to live for, except some dirt that was never yours to begin with? These Zionists are not to be envied; behind their fury, I think I can hear their pain”)
February 4, 2017 “Why do they hate us? An apology for my enemies,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (republication of the previous column)
February 7, 2017 “Why do they hate us? An apology for my enemies,” by Michael Lesher. Free Speech on Israel (another republication of the same column, this time on a United Kingdom site)
February 14, 2017 “The Orthodox Union’s war on women: It’s all about abuse,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher argues that the underlying reason for the Orthodox Union’s decision to ban women rabbis was its reluctance to address abusive practices against women and children within Orthodox communities)
February 21, 2017 “Why ‘love of Jews’ means hate,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher writes, “When ‘love’ becomes another word for ‘hate,’ every act of religious or social solidarity only attaches us more strongly to a world governed by the things hate engenders”)
March 3, 2017 “Rabbi Sacks endorses religious crimes in video against BDS,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (Lesher critiques a piece of popular pro-Israel propaganda authored by a rabbi who has made a career of denouncing religious violence and discrimination, writing of Rabbi Sacks, “You claimed to oppose religious violence, but in fact you gave it carte blanche whenever it enjoyed the support of the Jewish State.... Hypocrisy is too mild a word for this”)
March 10, 2017 “Trump’s pick for Israel ambassador is divisive hardliner, unfit for job,” by Michael Lesher. Newark Star-Ledger (In a guest column as member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Lesher writes, “David Friedman is an extremist ideologue, not a diplomat.... His whole life’s work shows that, far from advancing moderation and peace, he would continue to enable Israel’s occupation, its displacement of Palestinians, and its nearly half-century-old apartheid regime. Such a man should not be our country’s ambassador to Israel. Period”)
March 17, 2017 “What Canadians really think about Israel/Palestine and what major media won’t tell you,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher describes the results of a survey showing that Canadian voters do not share their government’s blind support for Israel: “[T]he Canadian public isn’t being fooled by big Canadian media or by Canadian politicians. Despite all the propaganda...Canadians still know how to call a spade a spade”)
March 18, 2017 “What Canadians really think about Israel/Palestine and what major media won’t tell you,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (republication of the previous column)
April 6, 2017 “Which Way to the Revolution?” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (Lesher critiques Left responses to the Trump presidency: “If we really want to see a better world in 25 years, today is the time to start working for it, many of us no doubt from different corners of experience, but all of us with shared goals to be realized in a different kind of society”)
April 15, 2017 “The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s dark side,” by Michael Lesher. Gilad Atzmon (in this column, originally published on the Times of Israel blogs but deleted by the editors -- without explanation -- hours later, Lesher explores the racism and militarism in the teaching of the extremely influential former leader of the Lubavitch Hasidic sect)
April 28, 2017 “The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s dark side,” by Michael Lesher. Free Speech on Israel (republication of the previous column)
May 23, 2017 “Wall of shame,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (as “Jerusalem Day” begins in Israel, Lesher deplores the sacralization of the seizure of East Jerusalem in 1967, writing of its central symbol, the Western Wall, that “[t]he breathless sentimentality with which Israeli propaganda has invested this bit of stolen architecture is as untraditional as it is vulgar”)
August 29, 2017 “You’re Losing Your Mind and Your Decency, Rabbi -- Not Europe,” by Michael Lesher. Gilad Atzmon (Lesher critiques the anti-Muslim incitment with which the Chief Rabbi of Barcelona responded to tragic events in his city)
September 11, 2017 “Guard my synagogue? No, thank you,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher criticizes the hypocrisy of boosting “security” at American synagogues: “The issue isn’t how to protect our doors. The issue is, or should be, how to end a long and shameful story of complicity in crimes all Jewish communities should have condemned a long time ago”)
September 28, 2017 “I support Palestinian rights, and I’m fed up with the anti-Jewish conspiracy theories,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (complaining of a “a rotten streak of anti-Semitism” slowly opening within activism for Palestinian rights, Lesher writes, “Do not sully my religious tradition by making of it something it isn’t and was never meant to be: an enemy of human rights, Palestinian or otherwise.... I will not be asked to choose between Judaism and justice. If any of you expect me to make that choice expect trouble”)
October 12, 2017 “I support Palestinian rights, and I’m fed up with the anti-Jewish conspiracy theories,” by Michael Lesher. Free Speech on Israel (blog) (republication of the previous article)
December 4, 2017 “For Israeli Orthodox Leadership, Zionism Has Replaced The Torah,” by Michael Lesher. Forward (via Scribe, “The Forward’s Contributor Network”) (Lesher criticizes Orthodox Jewish leadership for allowing Judaism to be eclipsed by a Zionist imposture)
December 14, 2017 “Orthodox Jews Should Mourn Trump’s Jerusalem Declaration -- Not Cheer It On,” by Michael Lesher. Forward (via Scribe, “The Forward’s Contributor Network”) (Lesher condemns Orthodox Jewish leadership over its praise for President Trump’s naming of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital)
March 15, 2018 “The speech Nikki Haley could have given at the AIPAC conference...,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher imagines what an honest address by the United States’ U.N. ambassador to Israel’s propagandists might have sounded like)
April 5, 2018 “7 Things You Need To Know About Israel’s Latest Attack on Gaza,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (Lesher describes the Israeli attack on unarmed demonstrators at the Gaza prison wall, killing 17 people)
April 5, 2018 “Seven things you need to know about Israel’s latest attack on Gaza,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (reprint of the previous article)
April 23, 2018 “This Is Not About Natalie Portman,” by Michael Lesher. Forward (via Scribe, “The Forward’s Contributor Network”) (regarding public excitement about actress Natalie Portman’s refusal to accept a award from Israel’s prime minister, Lesher asks, “What sort of Jewish media, or public intellectuals, would have more to say about one performer’s refusal to be window dressing for Israel’s latest crimes than about the crimes themselves?)
April 26, 2018 “This Is Not About Natalie Portman,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (reprint of the previous article)
September 9, 2018 “Rabbis, Trump told you he’s a maniac -- what are you going to do about it?” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher reports the bizarre conversation between Trump and Orthodox rabbis just before the Jewish New Year and comments, “Sheer self-interest ought to leave you [rabbis] deeply worried over the fact that Trump doesn’t know how his policies are making a desperate region ever more dangerous and, worse, clearly doesn’t care”)
February 20, 2019 “What the mugging of Ilhan Omar teaches us,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (Lesher writes, “While Ilhan Omar learns about the hypocrisy and bigotry of American public figures, we need to learn a lesson as well. We need to understand that the bullying of someone like Omar is intended to distract all of us from the two things that really matter: what Israel is doing, and what we can do to restrain it”)
April 29, 2019 “Why armed guards are the wrong response to synagogue shootings,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher explains his “vehement opposition” to the idea of posting armed guards at Jewish places of worship)
May 23, 2019 “C is for censorship, S is for slander,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher criticizes efforts to suppress a reading from a children’s book about Palestinian life at a New Jersey library)
June 3, 2019 “To the friendly Orthodox rabbi who praises war crimes,” by Michael Lesher. Times of Israel (blogs) (Lesher quotes from an Orthodox rabbi’s email in which the rabbi lauds two young men participating in Israel’s occupation, and writes that “to praise crime as a religious achievement, as your letter does, is to make every reader you influence complicit in the betrayal of a precious religious tradition”)
August 13, 2019 “Sorek Hysterics and ‘Moderate’ Madness,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (Lesher exposes political and media double standards following the killing of an Israeli settler-soldier in the West Bank, and quotes a poem from his newly published collection, Surfaces -- for information about the collection, click here)
August 14, 2019 “Sorek Hysterics and ‘Moderate’ Madness,” by Michael Lesher. American Herald Tribune (republication of the previous article)
January 10, 2020 “About That Hate and Fear March -- Sorry, That ‘No Hate, No Fear’ March Last Sunday,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (Lesher critiques a march ostensibly to protest anti-Semitism: “This was a war rally. Its objectives were to drum up increased hysteria in support of U.S. and Israeli violence abroad, and to bring even more police repression to black and Latino Brooklyn neighborhoods”)
January 28, 2020 “‘These Chains Will Be Broken’ Ramzy Baroud’s book on Palestinian prisoners,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (Lesher, reviewing a new book by Palestinian writer Ramzy Baroud: “Contemporary Palestine comes into sharpest focus inside the prisons Israel has built for those who resist its occupation of their land. As seen through Baroud’s book, these cages tell a double tale: on the one hand, of the ugliness of a society erected on a bedrock of dispossession; on the other, of the raw resolve of Palestinians who, against all odds, refuse to be erased from history”)
May 5, 2020 “COVID-19 and the Left: an Ignored Civil Rights Crisis; a Missed Opportunity,” by Michael Lesher. ZNet (Lesher critiques the startling fondness of left-liberals for state repression in response to the coronavirus)
May 7, 2020 “COVID-19 and the Left: an Ignored Civil Rights Crisis,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (a republication of the preceding article)
May 9, 2020 “COVID-19 and the Left: an Ignored Civil Rights Crisis,” by Michael Lesher. CITIZEN TRUTH (another republication of the same article)
June 18, 2020 “Lies, Damned Lies and COVID19,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher examines the deceptive language used to promote coronavirus hysteria)
July 6, 2020 “Notorious Fourth: Independence Day in the Land of the Captive, the Home of the Cowed,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher describes the bitter irony of “celebrating” American Independence Day while under virtual dictatorial rule -- and the hypocrisy of a liberal media that refuses to notice)
July 18, 2020 “Media Mask-Mania, or COVID19 Groupthink,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher dissects and critiques the mass media campaign to frighten the public into wearing masks)
September 4, 2020 “Suffer, Little Children,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher describes efforts to close American schools for “health” reasons as a form of child abuse)
September 25, 2020 “The Silent Solution: Orthodox Jewish Rabbinate Knuckles Under to Lockdowns,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher exposes and critiques the Orthodox rabbinate’s cynical complicity in the coronavirus coup, while claiming to be motivated by health considerations)
October 24, 2020 “Who was that masked man?” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (an imagined speech by Joe Biden, satirizing both the coronavirus coup and Biden’s own proud role in it, as symbolized by his ever-present black mask)
October 31, 2020 “On Course for a Coup,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher discusses the possibility that the upcoming election will not actually choose the next U.S. president)
November 10, 2020 “Wake Up, Liberals! American Voters Are Smarter Than You Are,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher critiques liberal media for its expressions of sanctimonious dismay at the amount of popular support for Donald Trump in the U.S. elections)
December 7, 2020 “Occupation by COVID: Palestine As a Viral Export, 2020,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (addressing advocates for Palestinian rights, Lesher compares the occupation of Palestine with repressive measures that have recently appeared in Western countries, including the United States)
December 31, 2020 “Even While It Was Happening, It Wasn’t Happening: Was there really such a year as 2020?” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher bids a sardonic farewell to 2020 and to the failure of mainstream media to address the political evils that took place under the pretext of coronavirus regulation)
March 25, 2021 “Old Mortality: How the Corona Coup Tortures the Elderly -- and Everybody Else,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (examining the hypocrisy of “health” measures that torture old people under the pretext of concern for them)
April 6, 2021 “Jab-erwacky (Or, Why Are People So Crazy about Being Guinea Pigs?)” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher dissects the hysteria over obtaining a “COVID jab”)
May 22, 2021 “Israeli Mass Murder and a Jew’s Jewish Question,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher denounces the “avalanche of blended viciousness and self-pity by which ‘religious’ Jewish media insists on its victimhood while celebrating slaughter”)
June 5, 2021 “The Myth of ‘Anti-Semitic Violence,’” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher debunks claims of a recent “wave of anti-Semitic violence” as a result of Palestinian activism, and shows how such claims are used to deflect attention from Israel’s crimes)
July 1, 2021 “Naftali Bennett is a historic Prime Minister. But not for the reasons you expect.” by Michael Lesher. Forward (Lesher responds to the installation of the “religious” Naftali Bennett as Israel’s new Prime Minister by saying that “it took Naftali Bennett and the Religious Zionist movement to trump the notion of the ‘Non-Jewish Jew’ with that of racism posing as religion...: non-Jewish Judaism”)
August 14, 2021 “The shot that was NOT heard ’round the world: Ashli Babbitt, the coronavirus coup, and the silence of the scams,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher critiques mainstream media treatment of the protest at the Capitol on January 6, and the silence regarding the police killing of an unarmed protester at that event)
November 9, 2021 “A War against Humanity,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher describes the creeping effects of coronavirus “health” policy, from a personal perspective, as a slow assault on elements of everyday humanity)
January 22, 2022 “Truth or COVID?” by Michael Lesher. The Last American Vagabond (After arguing that the COVID “coup” is fundamentally an assault on every democratic society, Lesher offers five general reasons why we know that this is so)
January 28, 2022 “Truth or COVID? (or, ‘why we know everything they’re telling us is a lie’),” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (republication of the previous article)
April 9, 2022 “Ukraine: A new battle in the old war of the ‘New Normal,’” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher argues that war hysteria over Ukraine should be seen as an extension of the attacks on liberty that have characterized the “coronavirus coup”)
April 30, 2022 “Palestine, Yes -- Ukraine, No,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (why advocates for Palestinian rights should be wary of war hysteria over Ukraine)
June 19, 2022 “January 6: The show trial, the movie...and Liz Cheney’s dyspepsia,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (an analysis of the public opening of the “January 6” tribunal and the real dangers posed by the committee’s show trial)
October 31, 2022 “The War on Humanity Continues,” by Michael Lesher. Brownstone Institute (Lesher’s first publication for Brownstone Institute reprints the November 2021 article “A War against Humanity” -- detailing the spiritual cost of COVID-related repression -- with an update stressing how little has changed a year later)
January 4, 2023 “Where Have the Voices for Liberty Gone?” by Michael Lesher. Brownstone Institute (upon entering 2023, Lesher explores the history of the COVID coup from the perspective of civil rights: “What is happening involves nothing less than the fundamental reshaping of our body politic, a massive assault on the constitutional system of civil liberties and on the presuppositions undergirding that system”)
January 6, 2023 “Where Have the Voices for Liberty Gone?” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (republication of the previous article)
January 11, 2023 “The Shameful Silence of American Liberal Institutions,” by Michael Lesher. The Defender (Children’s Health Defense News & Views) (republication of the previous article, under the editors’ new title)
May 9, 2023 “They’re Coming To Take You Away,” by Michael Lesher. Brownstone Institute (Lesher writes that “condemning freedom is now so entirely respectable that it’s happening practically everywhere under every possible pretext, almost any day, from just about any left-liberal institution that claims to care about the public good”)
May 10, 2023 “They’re Coming To Take You Away,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (republication of the previous article)
August 28, 2023 “The Real Trouble with the Trump Indictment,” by Michael Lesher. Brownstone Institute (Lesher argues that prosecuting Donald Trump and his attorneys for challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election amounts to criminalizing legal advocacy on behalf of a politically unpopular cause)
August 29, 2023 “‘Let’s Kill All the Lawyers’ -- The REAL Trouble with the Trump Indictment,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (republication of the previous article)
September 25, 2023 “Where Have All the Lanternflies Gone?” by Michael Lesher. Brownstone Institute (Lesher uses the short-lived scare over “bad bugs” to examine the real purpose of fear porn on a variety of subjects, which he calls “a single agenda in search of a pretext”)
September 28, 2023 “Where Have All the Lanternflies Gone?” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (republication of the previous article)
October 19, 2023 “My Reply to the Religious Zionist with ‘Tears in His Eyes’,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (This is Lesher’s response to a “religious Zionist” who demanded that he condemn the actions of fighters from Gaza and “stand with Israel”)
November 10, 2023 “I’m a Jew & I’m NOT a Genocidal Racist Why Do Israel ‘Supporters’ Keep Telling the World that I Am?” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher accuses so-called supporters of Israel of anti-Semitism for arguing that all Jews endorse Israel’s crimes and are offended by critics of them)
December 17, 2023 “Gaza and the End of Orthodox Judaism,” by Michael Lesher. Mondoweiss (In a cri du coeur, Lesher expresses his feelings about the moral degradation of Orthodox Judaism as its adherents overwhelmingly support genocide in Gaza)
February 29, 2024 “The Rabbi’s Tear,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher upbraids his fellow Orthodox Jews for the heartless support of genocide in Gaza that has become commonplace throughout the community and its rabbis)
March 21, 2024 “Gaza: The End of the Jewish Joy Ride?” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher warns that the support of genocide by Jewish “leadership” could bring a privileged chapter in Jewish history to an end; not only that, it is possible that “the wreckage from the fall of the Jewish elite will doom whatever is left of American democracy”)
May 19, 2024 “Screams for Billions -- A Topical Fantasy,” by Michael Lesher. Off-Guardian (Lesher’s satirical demolition of Sheryl Sandberg’s Israel propaganda film called “Screams Before Silence”)
Michael Lesher, Michael Corrado, Stephanie Selice (eds.) (1978) The Discordian Review, The Discordian Society, Spring 1978
Michael Lesher, “Deucalion and the Fat Lady,” Virginia Literary Review, 2(2), Fall 1980 (pp. 28-35)
Michael Lesher, “The Waiting Room,” Virginia Literary Review, Spring 1982
Michael Lesher, “The Satirist,” Scholia Satyrica, Spring 1980 (pp. 29-36)
Michael Lesher, “At the Voice of a Bird,” Cimarron Review, April 1997 (pp. 54-69)
Michael Lesher, “Love Story,” Oasis, October-December 1999 (pp. 9-12)
Michael Lesher, “Night Music,” “For My Corpse,” “Eve’s Prayer,” “Vampire,” Oasis, October-December 2000 (pp. 45-51)
Michael Lesher, “Soul’s Beloved,” “Broadcast News,” “Chopping Trees in North Carolina - Midnight,” Oasis, July-September 2001 (pp. 41-43)
Michael Lesher, “Three Words for the Dead,” Morning Star (United Kingdom), October 1, 2019
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