The Secret That Is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales

by Jay Michaelson

A provocative collection of interconnected tales, bridging the worlds of mysticism and heresy, faith and desire—from the award-winning author of Everything is God and The Heresy of Jacob Frank.



The Secret That Is Not a Ten Heretical Tales invites you into a hidden world of faith, desire, transgression, and revelation. The inhabitants of its interlocking stories are pious and rebellious, mystical and queer, from a Hasidic woman tormented by her husband’s long beard to a closeted gay man repenting of his sins in the mikva. The first book of fiction by Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, The Secret That Is Not a Secret is a remarkable work of mystical fiction.

Genres: Jewish

220 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 5, 2023

About the author

Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of ten books, most recently "The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth." He is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and holds a Ph.D in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Dr. Michaelson is also a regular contributor to New York, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, and other publications. His journalistic work primarily focuses on the Supreme Court, religion, law, and sexuality. And he is a senior editor and podcast host at Ten Percent Happier, a meditation startup.

Reviews

[Eric Maroney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jay Michaelson is an incredibly talented and versatile writer. Last year, he won a Jewish Book Award for his scholarly work on Jacob Frank. Now, we have a collection of short fiction, The Secret That Is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales. All of Michaelson’s books share common features, but there are also dissimilarities. He is that kind of writer, always pushing his subject matter both toward his concerns and away from them.

This collection of short fiction does not disappoint. Here we have ten stories, modeled after the ten emanations of God as depicted in the Kabbalah. The Kabbalah has always flirted with, if not indulged in, heresy, and Michaelson’s tales allow this flirtation and indulgence to become a full-fledged sexual romance.

You can read this collection knowing close to nothing about Kabbalah. Just revel in the mystery and richness of Michaelson’s prose. If you know some, you will know more after reading. If you are an accomplished Kabbalist, you will see old sources poured into new vessels to great effect in this extraordinary collection of stories.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delicious! An absolutely delicious group of ecstatic stories to enlighten the mind and heart.

[menschorama · Rating 4 out of 5]

i found this book very delicious! i was much more into the plots of the stories than the semi dense talmudic parts, but i think upon a reread they’ll stick better. each one of these stories was like a little plum. will be recommending this to the many jewish freaks in my life.

[Lanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what I’ve been waiting for.

This book is something special and profound; I have been longing to read stories written like this forever. Every story rests peacefully within a honest world. Characters yearn for connection with the Divine simultaneously living from their very human selves. Michaelson writes from within the Sacredness.

I really can’t say it enough, I’ve been searching for decades and despaired of never finding a fiction voice that
1) respects (any) tradition for the depth of connection it can offer the sincere seeker. Everything else I’ve seen rails at tradition for having an oppressive nature or uses tradition to oppress in line with its own agenda.
2) approaches sexuality from a perspective that acknowledges its fundamental aspects of consent, respect, and love.
Everything else I’ve seen has been focused of the “liberation” of unconstrained actions stemming straight from desire without (often with negative) regard for the partner or compliance with enculturated norms where the character sneaks some personal validation also without (or with negative) regard for the partner.

And, he combines these two beautiful perspectives in the same stories, in the same characters.

The Secret that is not a Secret is simultaneously free and constrained, sensual and pure, open and hidden. This book is a triumph of the non-dual perspective.

[L Bloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not enough lesbians

[RF Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Piousness in Judaism, although complex and debated through centuries, geographies, and diverging religious movements, might be fairly summarized as the striving to follow both outer norms of Jewish law and to live a Godly inner life in one's heart. However, earning eternal reward or punishment based on behavior and piety in one's life is generally considered the wrong motivation. Faithfulness to Torah and God's commandments provide their own reward. Characters in Jay Michaelson's short story collection The Secret That Is Not a Secret, mostly Jewish Orthodox or Hassidim living in modern New York City or Israel, are sinners and heretics by conservative standards, rasha'im in Hebrew: a housewife plotting secretly to remove her husband's disgusting but holy beard, men having divine gay sex in a ritual mikvah bath, a watchman during nightshifts meditating on forbidden mysticisms to bring furniture to consciousness, a teenage girl finding emotional liberation exposing her body while lost alone in the desert. Ten transgressive stories, each reflecting the underlying theme of the ten emanations of God depicted in the Kabbalah. None of the characters, concepts, or behaviors in Michaelson's stories are irreligious. These are not secular Jews or atheist defying religious practice, they are people who cleave to God; studiers of texts, ancient laws, and folklore in spiritual quests to return to Hashem in day-to-day life. They seek spiritual oneness with opposites, repair of the scattered and broken divine universal sparks, and transcendence to the mystical while also more and more becoming faithful to themselves in the material world: queer, selfish, jealous, mentally ill, rebellious, secretive, horny, sexualized, rasha–all parts of the one divine reality. The spiritual, the material, and sexual are inseparable. In one of Michaelson's stories, a closeted gay man, a pious Chabad, gets a secretive blow job in Central Park. The other man, also raised Chabad, debates, between mouth osculations, that, "Everything is god... no place is devoid of him.... You might think what [we're] doing now is evil but... there's no difference between the side of light and of shadow.... The divine sparks reside even in the most fallen of places."

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fictional works featuring Jewish folklore and mysticism are now considered part of mainstream Jewish culture, as are books that acknowledge queer Jewish culture. This combination works because people see many pathways to being Jewish – ones that might not have been contemplated even 10 years ago. That means that the main characters in “City of Laughter” by Temim Fruchter (Grove Press) and “The Secret That Is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales” by Jay Michaelson are able to manifest their Jewish identities in very different ways.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars - if I knew more about kabbalah, maybe I'd have fully understood every story and it would get the full 5 star rating.