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

Comments

[donnad]

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]

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]

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

Be careful

[civic_oracle]

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.I know that this issue is tangential to the main discussion. I felt a need to comment, though. You are certainly correct that, as long as a prayer for the conversion of Jews remains only a spoken wish, it poses no immediate threat to you or other Jews

[mabfan]

I think your second paragraph sums it up perfectly.

[vettecat]

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

[bug_mama]

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]

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

[bug_mama]

Then the result is that yes, in fact that you wish to distort reality as a culture. Even if someone is physically at an event, this culture can and will allow the removal of that person from the record of the event. That's fine, its your choice, since lines need to be drawn in order to differentiate between groups. Whether it's color of skin, marrying outside of religion or what color your favorite baseball team is wearing ALL people draw distinctions between "them" and "us". It's the nature of humans to subdivide into groups.

The reason this article was interesting though, is that you have to understand that from an outsider's perspective getting married, having children and a nice career would make it into a newsletter about alumni. Its the gut reaction against, for want of the correct term, apostasy, that I do not understand as someone not part of your group. These events hardly equal addiction or homicide to me.

[lucretia_borgia]

It's not so much a wish to distort reality, as it is to make a blunt statement: this person has done something so bad that we do not want him in our reality. (Airbrushing them out was just rude: he should have been told upfront that he wasn't welcome in the picture. However, I can understand how it came about that they chose the sneaky route: they didn't know he was dating a non-Jew til he showed up, so disinviting him wasn't an option. Once he was there, no one had the balls to tell him off to his face. Likewise, it is spineless of the school to ignore his submissions rather than to send him a note explaining policy.) But as to the basic attitude that out-marrying is a terrible enough thing that it's appropriate to treat the person as though they were dead (traditionally, the parents of an intermarrying Jew have sat shiva), I don't see what's wrong with that

[osewalrus]

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]

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.

[osewalrus]

Yes, I am feeling rather strongly about this. But you are also focusing on the direct subject of the article (they excluded me) rather than the insuinuations of the article ("Modern Orthodoxy is a dangerous religious subgroup that seeks to decieive the public into believing they are mainstream

[civic_oracle]

He does take some rather underhanded swipes, yes. Not being Jewish nor Modern Orthodox, my feelings and ears are less finely tuned to these than yours. Thank you for offering the translations via your filter

[quietann]

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

[osewalrus]

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

[vettecat]

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.

[quietann]

Agreed. I am just wondering if the fact that his wife is Asian raised suspicions that she's not Jewish in the first place. Would someone whose non_Jewish spouse had a Jewish-associated last name be treated the same way?

It's all about "passing" for Jewish.