Responsa

[vettecat]

Several people have forwarded links and responses to the article, so I felt I should respond. (Briefly for the as-yet unbothered: a former classmate of mine wrote a NYT article complaining at length about the fact that the school newsletter hasn't published announcements about his marriage to a non-Jewish woman, and the births of their non-Jewish children. He acknowledges that everyone has been civil to him, but seems to feel that having his news in the bulletin is a sacred right. So to speak.)

Briefly, I think he's being illogical - which is odd coming from someone so intelligent.* (Though intelligent people aren't always socially acute.) He has rejected Orthodoxy and everything it stands for. But he wants the Orthodox community to embrace him and cheer his choices. This is the equivalent of slapping someone in the face, insulting them, and then expecting them to hug you and tell you you're wonderful - and being upset when they don't. You can't have it both ways. If you don't want to follow our laws, fine. That's your right, do as you like. But you can't expect us to celebrate you for it.

That's as cogent as I can be at this hour coming off a 25-hour fast... discussion is welcome, attacks will not be answered.

* Both his parents were Harvard professors (as he now is); the prediction for him in the class yearbook was "Harvard's entire faculty." I do wonder how his parents feel about his current actions... it must be very hard for them.

Comments

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I think they are being exclusive. Just because he has made choices different from theirs they are excluding him. He is still the same person.

I'm not saying they have to cheer his choices or agree with them, but they should accept that he has made them. He was a part of that class and should be treated the same as every other person in that class regardless of whether he has decided to marry a non-Jewish woman and father children who will not be raised Jewish or not.

It is very similar to the gay marriage debate, just because someone chooses to marry a person of the same sex doesn't mean they should be excluded from things they would otherwise have been included in had they married someone of the opposite sex.

Not including him in the picture or announcements when they include everyone else is just snobbery.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

He is still the same person.

But is he the same person? I didn't attend Maimonides, but my understanding is that everyone who attends is expected to be following Orthodox Jewish practice while at the school. By his actions, he is clearly no longer following such practice, so I'm not sure if he would qualify as being the same person he was then.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I think they are being exclusive. Just because he has made choices different from theirs they are excluding him. He is still the same person.

And they are still the same institution, the one that would not allow a child of his current marraige to attend.

You may consider us small minded, but we are consistent.

I would further observe that it is not quite the same as "gay marraige" in that this usually refers to the question of whether the state should withhold the benefit of marraige from folks based on marrying a same sex individual. This is more akin to those religious insitutions that debate whether or not to recognize gay marraige.

There is a curious belief in modern thought that religion should yield to other sensibilities. While I hold firmly with separation of church and state, my belief that individuals have a right to chose must include their right to chose things with which I disagree. I would not stop Catholics from saying the Tridentine Mass because it contains a prayer for the conversion of the Jews. Their right, and as long as they confine it to mere prayer it does me no harm.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Just because he has made choices different from theirs they are excluding him.

There's no obligation for the alumni publication to publish everyone's announcements. I mean, if (for an extreme example) a Maimonides alum were to make lots of money through a shady business deal, the school has no obligation to run a "mazal tov" announcement for their windfall or acknowledge it in any other way.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I would agree with you if it were a public school. But this is a religious parochial school. Their whole reason for existence is to promote and disseminate this particular type of religion. If someone chooses to reject and insult the tenets of that religion, I don't think they should have to cheer him on. Nobody's threatening to kill him or burn down his house, or even spit in the street when he walks by. They just don't choose to advertise and promote his choices. (If a graduate of a Catholic school opened an abortion clinic, would you expect them to happily announce that in their newsletter?)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I think your second paragraph sums it up perfectly.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much, I appreciate your support! It's good to know that it makes sense to someone else, too.

[bug-mama.livejournal.com]

That's interesting that he was a class mate of yours. I had read that article yesterday and didn't connect the dots between you. I understand your point and I think that was the same reasoning I understood from the article about why he was excluded from the newsletter.

Yesterday though it got me thinking about my own high school newsletter. I guess it's a question of what the purpose of a newsletter is. If the purpose of the newsletter is to inform alumni about other alumni then his exclusion seems a bit strange to me. Pretending that he doesn't exist seems like a distortion of reality. While the community may not like the choices he made does his life experiences really threaten the traditions that he has declined to follow? Or is it that because of the choices he made he essentially "ceases to exist" for his classmates?

Remember Elka that I am not a person of faith and I don't belong to a strong cultural group like you if I'm way off base.

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Pretending that he doesn't exist seems like a distortion of reality.

Does your h.s. newsletter report unhappy or shameful events? Like, George Smith, '88, recently graduated from a detox program? Or Elisa Jones, '75, was reported to Anytown Correctional Facility to begin her 10-year-sentence for motor vehicle homicide? Does it announce divorces, or just the re-marriages?

Marrying out is a serious infraction of Jewish law and Jewish social norms, at least from an Orthodox perspective, and for an institution whose purpose is the perpetuation of Jewish tradition, it's a horrendous failure that one of its students married a non-Jew.

I'm a convert, and when I applied for my oldest child to attend kindergarten there just this year, I was told that my being known in the community for over ten years isn't sufficient: I needed to produce the documentation given me by the rabbinical court (bet din) that oversaw my conversion. Whatever you think of the premises behind the policies, they are at least being consistent in their insistence on, if you'll pardon the bald expression, racial purity.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

In this instance, the school bulletin mostly carries articles about what's happening at the school. (Such-and-such a speaker came in, so-and-so won an academic competition, etc.) It's not really an alumni newsletter, there's just usually a sidebar on one page with some announcements about what people are up to.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

As I observed in my own response, Noah is not terribly different from millions of other fellow Americans that share his belief that God should yield to my personal inclinations.

Noah wants to think of himself as Baruch Spinoza, but a more accurate comparison is Pablo Christiani.

[civic-oracle.livejournal.com]

I know that this is an 'in-house' conversation in many respects. I am also aware that, as a gentile, I am lacking in a lot of context, no matter how aware of the modern Orthodox I may be.

Dr. Feldman, whom I know only through the NYT article and this discussion, seems like neither a Spinoza nor a Christiani. I will offer no opinion on the substantive issues. I'll just say that the Christiani comparison comes across as rather over-the-top polemical. I am sure that it comes from an authentic depth of feeling, which I will not question. It says, though, more about the depth of feeling than the reality.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

That's a good observation. I've been told I should read your post (which I'm sure is well-written), but I'll have to do it later when I have more time.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I don't think that Dr. Feldman should be so upset that Maimonides won't print his good news. He is, after all, violating a basic tenet of Orthodox Judaism.

However, I wonder if there are other Maimonides alumni who are married to non-Jews, but it hasn't been detected because the non-Jews they are married to are *white* rather than *Asian*. Dr. Feldman's wife immediately stands out as "not likely to be Jewish" because of her looks. It would seem to me that Maimonides would now need to go verify that every spouse of an alum is halachically Jewish. (For all I know, that's already been done. But I do wonder...)

One of the most obnoxiously Orthodox people on WJ2 is married to a Japanese ger. He has written about how she almost needs to carry her conversion documents with her in some Orthodox communities, because people don't believe that she's actually Jewish.

(For the record, I am halachically Jewish but my dad's a Christian... My mother's marriage to him caused a moderate uproar, but my grandmother later told my mother that she thought my mother got the best husband, out of her three daughters. My aunts both married Jewish men with really awful tempers, to the point of abuse in one case.)

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

However, I wonder if there are other Maimonides alumni who are married to non-Jews, but it hasn't been detected because the non-Jews they are married to are *white* rather than *Asian*. Dr. Feldman's wife immediately stands out as "not likely to be Jewish" because of her looks. It would seem to me that Maimonides would now need to go verify that every spouse of an alum is halachically Jewish. (For all I know, that's already been done. But I do wonder...)

Which, of course, what Noah hoped to insuate. Much of his article is -- as others have pointed out -- a strident attack on Modern Orthodox as a collection of racist religious fundamentalists. the "paradox" of the article is he believes we deceive the world and/or delude ourselves. Thus his discussion of Leberman's "apparent" normalcy while engaging in "bizare" religious rites such as the wearing of leather straps and avoiding certain foods, the insinuation that Orthodox Jewish doctors will not treat non-Jewish patients on Sabbath or somehoe value them less than fellow Jews, and the suggestion that such Orthodox dogma makes every Modern Orthodox Jew a potential Baruch Goldstein.

I cannot help but be reminded of the Rabbinic gloss (midrash) on Haman and Achashvarosh, the king in the Esther story. The Talmud gives this fictional example of Haman's emphasis on how Jewish law works:
"Behold Oh King, how this foreign people disrespect you. If a fly fell into a goblet of wine, they would cast aside the fly and drink the wine. But if Your Majesty touched it, they would refuse to drink it and pour it on the ground."

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I don't think the ethnicity has anything to do with it. My best friend in first grade at Maimonides was black. There have been several students there of varying ethnic groups over the years. If they're Jewish, they're Jewish, and nobody raises any further questions.

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

I know a Jew who professes to be Orthodox and yet continues to break a number of O tenets. He gets a pass because he keeps it hidden somewhat, at least from the local O community.

Who decides who is a righteous Jew? Who has been a perfect Jew their whole life? The thing for me is that your classmate made his decision honestly; he married this non-Jewish woman. Is that somehow less valid than the O-professing Jew who eats treyfe, screws around with married women (so long as they're not Jewish, there's no problem!), and breaks Shabbat? The only difference to me is that one is a public, honest choice, and the other is making hidden, secretive choices. Rather than judge the person who's being publicly honest, I would publish everyone's announcements. That's better than trying to ascertain that each member of your community is following each rule before you publish their announcements. If you stop publishing announcements for those who don't follow each of your community's rules, sooner or later there will be no law-adhering community left.

I admit I'm also not at my best right now, after having a truly crappy day yesterday and now working on getting out of the house for the folk festival we're volunteering at this week. I hope I won't regret posting this comment later, but I wanted to say something.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I understand your frustration. But there's a difference between officially congratulating someone for a specific act which contradicts the teachings of the school, and congratulating someone who may have done other wrong things on an occasion which is unrelated to those acts. If a man horribly murdered someone and bragged about it publicly, would you praise him for his honesty? (I know they're not equivalent. But I don't think doing something publicly makes it praiseworthy.)

[zsero.livejournal.com]

This is an example of a peculiar 20th-century-ism, in which the trait that used to be condemned as the vice of "brazenness" is now praised as the virtue of "openness" or "honesty", while what used to be the virtue of "shame" is now condemned as the vice of "hypocrisy".

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that change darkness into light, and light into darkness; that change bitter into sweet, and sweet into bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20)

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Who decides who is a righteous Jew? Who has been a perfect Jew their whole life?

This isn't about being righteous or perfect. This is about breaking a rule that Feldman would have been taught from Day One was a big one, not only a halacha ben adam l'makom (between you and God) but also ben adam l'chavero (between you and society). Marriage taboos keep a society together: when you break them, you are put out of that society.

Our O. shul does not exclude shabbat-breakers from coming and participating in services, but does quietly exclude them from the shul presidency (meaning they're simply never invited to take that office). This is true of those who are frank about it (they pop out front to smoke) or just implied (they live too far away to walk).

Rather than judge the person who's being publicly honest, I would publish everyone's announcements. That's better than trying to ascertain that each member of your community is following each rule before you publish their announcements.

But it's not a question of whether he has broken any old rule and as a result they're not announcing his celebrations. The point is that the celebrations themselves are the acts that break the rules. Would you say that Maimonides should publish an announcement saying "Ploni Benploni lit a barbecue and cooked pork sausages last Saturday at noon?" From an Orthodox point of view, Maimonides is not refusing to announce Feldman's joys because he's no longer part of the club. It's refusing to announce his sins, regardless of his in-or-out status.

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I think Maimo's alumni newsletter *is* doing the wrong thing, and is being horrible in excluding Noah and his wife.

To make amends, they should publish in large type a correction: Mazel tov to Mr. Noah Feldman '88 (or whatever) for marrying a non-Jewish woman, (insert name). Mazel tov to Mr. Feldman on the births of his three non-Jewish children, (insert names here).

I'm being a little sarcastic here, but it's not like this woman converted by other-than-Orthodox means, which would make this a who-is-a-Jew debate and maybe worth acknowledging and discussing. He married a non-Jew, both a social no-no and a violation of Torah law. Presumably Maimo does not congratulate kohanim on marriage to divorcees either. Presumably they don't mention other shameful things in their newsletter. (ETM, if you were in jail for murdering one of the obnoxious brides in your shop, would they mention this in a "where are they now" column?)

Yikes. I feel like sending Maimo a check and a mazel tov. (But all my money's going to JCDS these days.)

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Glad you agree with the logic. (Don't scare me like that! And don't give me ideas...)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Another interesting response I think you will appreciate:

http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2007/07/30/invitation-to-intermarriage/

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Very well said, and there was a fascinating link in the comments to another article... I might post it.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

The Times has published the letters in response:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05letters-t-1.html

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing! I wouldn't have known to look for them. (They didn't run mine, but several other people said basically the same thing.)

[mom2boaz.livejournal.com]

Sorry for joining the conversation so late. I don't have any new or interesting points of view to add; I think they have all been shared already. I was shocked that he had taken his complaint to the NYT, but was even more surprised this morning when I opened our local Jewish Newspaper (The JTNews) and saw not one, but two articles about this issue! It will be interesting to see how the Seattle community repsonds to this.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I had wondered whether this was being discussed beyond Boston and NY. Very interesting... let me know if you hear anything further.