Jonathan Rosen

Jonathan Rosen is an American author and editor.

Education

Rosen graduated from Yale and began graduate studies working toward a PhD in English at the University of California, Berkeley. He dropped out of graduate school to become a writer.

Career

In 1990 Rosen was hired by Seth Lipsky at The Jewish Daily Forward to create an arts section of the paper's then newly editorially independent English language edition. He held the job for 10 years. As of 2007, he was editorial director of Nextbook.

Rosen's novel Joy Comes in the Morning (2004) features a protagonist, Rabbi Deborah Green, who struggles with the perceptions of women rabbis. This work's inclusion of a woman rabbi is viewed as a significant development in American Jewish writings featuring women rabbis.

In April 2023, Rosen published The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions, a memoir about his friendship with Michael Laudor, a Yale Law School graduate with schizophrenia who killed his fiancée in 1998 during a psychotic episode. The book was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and has received high critical acclaim.

In August 2024, Rosen was hired as an editor at The Free Press.

Personal life

He lives in Manhattan with his wife, a Conservative rabbi, and their daughters.