Feldman Fallout,Editorial Board

There is much that is perplexing about the fallout surrounding the now notorious New York Times Magazine article by Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman.

It will be recalled that Prof. Feldman, claiming he and his non-Jewish fiancée were intentionally cropped out of a photograph taken at a reunion of his Modern Orthodox high school for an alumni newsletter, launched an attack on Orthodoxy and offered his spin on various aspects of Jewish tradition and law, in the process giving voice to many of the calumnies perpetrated by anti-Semites through the ages. (This while asserting his fealty to authentic Judaism.)

As regards Prof. Feldman, what's curious is not just his premise that Jewish religious authority somehow must accept his intermarriage in the name of accommodation to modernity. There's also his interpretation of Judaism - he apparently ended his formal Judaic studies at the high school level - that comes across as so sophomoric. And there's the inconvenient revelation that he knew all along the photo of him and his fiancée was not necessarily kept out of the alumni publication for the reason he alleged in his article, which poisoned the public perception of his alma mater from the outset.

All of these are surely significant. But what is also discomfiting is that a person of Prof. Feldman's stature and upbringing would be so eager to thrust his then-fiancée, now his wife and the mother of his children, into the center of a religious controversy simply to enhance an argument. Would that the good professor had paid greater heed to how the Patriarchs treated their wives.

As for The New York Times Magazine, the word "shameful" comes to mind. Consider what the Times did here. It turns out the magazine's editors knew, as did Professor Feldman, that there was no malice intended in the way the newsletter photograph was cropped.

As Jonathan Mark reported in The Jewish Week, photographer Lenny Eisenberg found it difficult to get the dozens of reunion participants into one frame, so he "ended up taking several shots from one side, then the other, and several people on the far side - not just Feldman and his fiancée - happened to be out of the picture when it finally appeared in the newsletter."

The photographer also told Mr. Mark that the Times paid his travel expenses for a trip to his Boston studio to find the negative. The intention was to use the picture to back up Prof. Feldman's charge that the school discriminated against him because he was engaged to a non-Jewish woman.

"Eisenberg," wrote Mr. Mark, "returned with the photo but the Times opted not to publish it, he said, when it became obvious that there was no cropping but simply an overflowing of reunion participants beyond the camera's range."

But editors at the Times Magazine still ran the article despite knowing that Prof. Feldman's accusation could not stand up to scrutiny.

But perhaps even most disconcerting than the actions of Prof. Feldman and the Times was the reaction to the article in certain Orthodox circles. Some, although certainly not embracing Feldman's modernity/intermarriage pitch, seemed to credit him for raising an important issue.

Thus, Rabbi Hirschi Zarchi of the Harvard Chabad said that while he disapproved of intermarriage and slander against Orthodoxy, "Noah will not only be accepted but lovingly embraced If someone jumps off a bridge and isn't dead and I embrace that person, it doesn't mean I embrace the idea of jumping off bridges. The embrace means that we're family, we're there for you."

While Rabbi Zarchi's comments may be attributed to an otherwise commendable outreach zeal, the comments of the chancellor of Yeshiva University are a different order of business. In an open letter to Prof. Feldman, the esteemed Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm said in pertinent part:

Frankly, your resentment at the removal of your name and photo from the alumni list of your high school and other such petty discourtesies does not elicit much sympathy from me. Tantrums do not move me. I am moved by your resolve to continue your relationship to Judaism. And I value your suggestion that we reexamine our attitude to the social ostracism we have practiced heretofore, We certainly will not accept the violation of the law with equanimity, but we ought to rethink how we can express our displeasure in a manner that will not close the door to teshuva - if indeed the couple wish to take advantage of it. [Emphasis added]

We would never presume to intrude on the efforts of a rebbe to reach out to an errant talmid. But we fail to understand how a religious institution's refusal to publicly acknowledge intermarriage can fairly be characterized as a "petty discourtesy" and why a firm, negative reaction to it is deemed as "clos[ing] the door to teshuva"

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