The Secret That Is Not a Secret

"""Michaelson's inventive and daring collection follows lost souls in Israel and New York, desperate for enlightenment. The stories are queer but universal, skeptical but reverent, intellectually rigorous but full of heart--and with sudden, astonishing turns, they reach transcendence. I can't stop thinking about this book!"" --Jonathan Vatner, author of Carnegie Hill ""Sacred and profane, erudite and engaging, queer and questioning, Jay Michaelson's The Secret That Is Not a Secret challenges Jewish traditions and imagines its own sort of transcendence. These remarkable stories cleave to God, the flesh, and what it means to live in a world full of hidden secrets."" --Jonathan Papernick, author of The Ascent of Eli Israel, I Am My Beloveds, and Gallery of the Disappeared Men ""In Jay Michaelson's heartfelt story collection The Secret That Is Not a Secret, characters struggle valiantly and memorably to reconcile the apparent contradictions of the mystical and material realms of existence. Suffused with both probing intellect and deep emotion, these stories invite readers to embark upon a spiritual quest that's refreshingly grounded in the profound realities of our daily lives."" --Aaron Hamburger, author of Hotel Cuba ""Jay Michaelson's parable-esque short stories have a sizable dash of Isaac Bashevis Singer and a substantial dash of the queer modern mystic. Immersed in Jewish tradition and folklore, these stories are both learned and sensually detailed, containing humor, eros, magic, and unexpected heartbreak, and opening unexpected windows to our humanness. From tales of table-golems to anti-queer verses that disappear from the Torah, there's reverence here and liberating irreverence, couched in excellent, engaging prose. One of Michaelson's characters names his personal mystical revelations as a ""re-enchantment of the earth."" This book offers narratives that re-enchant the body and soul."" --Rabbi Jill Hammer, author of Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah ""Fiction has always been the homeland of deceit and desire, how we deceive others and conceal ourselves, how we desire others and are desired. In The Secret That Is Not a Secret, ten stories keyed to the ten Jewish mystical archetypes, Jay Michaelson brings his knowledge of Kabbalah into contemporary tales of desire and concealment. As one character suggests, 'Religion isn't sublimated sex. Sex is sublimated religion.' Michaelson's achievement in these magical stories is to imagine just how that is so."" --Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus and The Missing Jew: Poems 1976-2022"