Jewish Without Being Jewish,Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis

"Wait a minute, Rebbetzin," you might protest, "isn't the title of your article an oxymoron? How can you be Jewish without being Jewish?"

"I agree with you wholeheartedly, but that is the phenomenon to which we have been witness this past week."

In an article published in The New York Times Magazine by Noah Feldman, a Harvard University professor and product of a Modern-Orthodox day school in Brookline, Mass., the writer scored his alma mater for not accepting his marriage to a non-Jewish woman. Now, there is chutzpah and there is chutzpah, and this is a chutzpah that crosses the line!

It is one thing when an individual succumbs to the many enticements of his society or allows his yetzer hara to get the best of him. But it's something else again to flaunt this desecration in everyone's face, and more, to point an accusatory finger at all those who refuse to endorse it...that's colossal chutzpah! And that is exactly what Feldman did. He excoriated his alma mater and the Modern- Orthodox community it represents for refusing to accept or acknowledge his gentile wife.

Feldman, a brilliant scholar, valedictorian of his class at Harvard, Rhodes Scholar and Truman Scholar, received his doctorate at Oxford. He tried to argue his case in a derisive article in The New York Times in which he twisted Jewish Law and cast aspersions on Jewish values. Not only did he misinterpret the laws concerning violating the Sabbath in order to save the life of a non-Jew, but he cited Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, and Baruch Goldstein, who killed Arabs in Hebron, as exemplars of the fanaticism prevalent among Orthodox Jews. All this to justify his betrayal and exact vengeance on the Modern Orthodox day school, which chose to excise his and his gentile wife's faces from a class reunion photograph.

One cannot help but wonder why the graduate of a Jewish day school would wish to flaunt his abandonment of his school's teachings in a secular publication like The New York Times. One need not be a psychiatrist to perceive that Feldman is ridden with Jewish guilt that very often culminates in Jewish self-hate. Alas, we have witnessed such manifestations throughout our history - people who forsook our teachings, our values and became turncoats. Their anger and bitterness was such that they were prepared to burn down their own Jewish houses to justify their stance.

If Feldman were sincere in seeking answers, would it not have been more logical for him to have written letters to the rabbis of his alma mater rather than air his grievances in the Times? Equally curious is that The New York Times, which prides itself on publishing "All the News That's Fit To Print," never misses an opportunity to publish pejorative articles on Orthodox Judaism. Just try sending an article to the Times depicting Judaism in its sanctity and beauty, or try to get the paper to review a book that does the same, and you will encounter rejection -- but if the story is derisive, it will suddenly become newsworthy.

Were you to write a derogatory story on the Muslim faith, however, you can rest assured that it would never be published. It is known throughout the world that any such article would be considered a defamation and would have explosive repercussions. Just consider what happened this past year when a cartoon of Muhammad was published in a Danish newspaper.

There is a simple, well-known saying, which everyone can understand even if he or she does not have the benefit of a Harvard or Oxford education: "You can't have your cake and eat it too." You can't protest that you desire to be part of the Jewish community, that you espouse Jewish values, and at the same time raise non-Jewish children. It just doesn't work. Surely Mr. Feldman is familiar with Torah Law that renders the children of a non-Jewish woman non-Jewish.

What I find most disconcerting, however, is that stories such as these drive yet another nail into Jewish continuity. Soon after Noah Feldman's plaint was published, articles appeared asking for a more welcoming attitude toward those who intermarried. And mind you, these articles were not written by members of the Reform movement - (they embraced intermarriage long ago). Sadly, they came from traditional sources. Hardly what our young people need to hear in an ever-growing climate of intermarriage.

At the inception of our Hineni movement some 40 years ago, I compared intermarriage to a spiritual Holocaust. When I was questioned about having made such a shocking statement, I explained that, in many ways, intermarriage was even more devastating to the Jewish people than a physical Holocaust.

For while my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins - tzaddikim - righteous souls, all perished in the flames along with six-million other holy martyrs, they are alive today in my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who carry on their names and legacy. And this holds true, not only for my personal family, but the entire Jewish People.

Just consider the resurgence of Jewish life that we are witness to today. In cities and communities throughout the world, wherever Jews reside, there are yeshivas, synagogues and batei midrash with odd-sounding names. Once they were shtetlach that were consumed in the flames and are no more, but if just one Jew survived, he rebuilt those yeshivas, synagogues and batei midrash.

And today, miraculously, the voice of Torah is once again heard throughout the world. But tragically, those who disappear in intermarriage do not leave behind even a Kaddish. In their wake, there is total death - a death without a memory or a legacy.

And now, a few words to Noah:

My dear Noah:

You were disturbed when your alumni newspaper did not extend a mazel tov upon your marriage to a non-Jewish woman and the birth of your child. But in all fairness, what mazel tov can there be for the Jewish people when you marry out and bring a child into the world that is not a Jew? There is no mazel tov in the knowledge that there will be no continuity for your seed..... that you will be the last Jew on your family tree. There is no mazel or joy in that. There is no mazel tov for your zeides and bubbies, who sacrificed and were prepared to die so that our people might live.

No, Noah, there is no mazel tov - there is only pain - pain for your family, pain for your people, pain for your G-d.

The Jewish people need you, Noah. May Hashem grant that a miracle occur and you somehow find your way back home to Torah.

Read Comments (1)

Noah Feldman
Date 04:01, 01-16, 08

And now in the latest instance of insanity, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and 92nd Street Y have invited this man to speak on "Anti-Semitism and the Middle East" in February. Imagine? The person who does his best to stoke anti-Semitism is now going to lecture us about it.

This surely is not what Simon Wiesenthal wanted. Please call or email the Simon Wiesenthal Center, rbarard@swcny.com, and the 92nd Street Y, acurran@92y.org. And speak the loudest by not attending. People like Noah Feldman do not speak for the Jewish community.