Feldman Gets Floored (in my opinion) - UPDATED

Noah Feldman, brilliant law professor, was peeved that his Korean wife, who did not convert, was not accepted into his Yeshiva high school class reunion group photo.

It happens.

But Noah, who is at Harvard and maybe has some friends at the New York Times, what Wonkette mistakenly thinks is the 'Jew-York Times', you should pardon me for spreading about a bit of Judeophobia filth from that left-wing, radical blog, wrote a big asrticle about his problem for their Sunday Magazine.

Here are three good letters in reaction:

Beyond serving as a forum for graduates to keep up with one another, a school alumni newsletter is a powerful marketing tool that showcases for potential students the accomplishments of the school’s graduates. For Noah Feldman to expect his Jewish day school to report on news of his marrying outside the Jewish faith is, effectively, asking his school to publish the following promotional ad: “Come spend 12 years steeped in Jewish religious texts and Jewish identity-building, and you, too, may become successful and intermarry.”

Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein

Memphis

I am a Korean-American who converted to Judaism (mikvah included) when I married my Jewish husband. We are active members of our conservative synagogue, and our children go to Jewish day schools. During the 17 years since my conversion, I have been fully accepted into the Jewish community as a Jew, including the ultra-Orthodox community. Judaism dictates that descendants are the religion of the mother. I believe that this tenet is crucial to the survival of the Jewish religion in the ever-increasing numbers of interracial marriages.

Leona Kim Schluger, M.D.

Millwood, N.Y.

Feldman’s article could have inspired discussion of the issue of intermarriage in the modern Orthodox Jewish world, but his presentation precludes such discourse. Like any expert litigator, he has selectively emphasized certain facts to misrepresent the truth. He speaks of Baruch Goldstein at length, ignoring that the overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jews condemned his massacre of Palestinians as morally repugnant. Even Feldman’s portrayal of Joe Lieberman seems like a backhanded jab at modern Orthodoxy. After ostensibly glorifying Lieberman’s “overt normalcy,” why compare his phylacteries to the cilice of Opus Dei? Why encourage people to wonder what kind of backward, medieval man lurks within the senator’s suit?

Jenny Brenner

Efrat, Israel

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and this just in:-

Noah Feldman, who ignited a firestorm of criticism last week with his pointed attack on Modern Orthodoxy in The New York Times Magazine, admitted this week that he learned before publication of his article that he in fact was not intentionally cropped out of his reunion photograph.

In the article, "Orthodox Paradox," Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor, asserts that he was erased from a newsletter's photograph by his former yeshiva, the Maimonides School in Brookline, Mass., because he was standing alongside his non-Jewish girlfriend. The reunion anecdote led off the story in a dramatic way and the image of Feldman and his wife allegedly being stricken from the photo appeared central to his feelings of being left out.

The photographer, Lenny Eisenberg, told The Jewish Week Monday that he had difficulty capturing as many as 60 reunion participants within a single frame. Eisenberg ended up taking several shots from one side, then the other, and several people on the far side -- not just Feldman and his fiancee -- happened to be out of the picture when it finally appeared in the newsletter...

...Eisenberg, who is now based in New York, said the Times "paid my way to go back to [his Boston studio] and find the negative. They wanted to run the [reunion] picture to illustrate" Feldman's claim of being discriminated against because of his relationship with a non-Jew. Eisenberg 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.

Come to think of it, if he had testified on the stand at a trial like this, he would have been held for pejury.

Nice going, Feldman.

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And nice going David Frum.