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Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Things are getting a bit cluttered, so I'll just list the posts I've found interesting (whether I agree or not) on Noah Feldman's Orthodox Paradox, which was an article in the New York Times Magazine discussing his own experiences and thoughts on Modern Orthodoxy:
  • My own take
  • R' Glicksman from YU:
    I am certain that someone characterized as brilliant understands how inappropriate it is to bring a non-Jewish fiancee to an official
    celebration of a yeshiva. The entire raison d'etre of such a school is to produce another generation of Jewish children.
  • R' Gil Student at Hirhurim:
    After thirteen years in yeshiva, you knew very well that by marrying outside of the Jewish faith that you were committing the ultimate slap-in-the-faith to the community in which you were raised. The community in general does not want to completely cut off ties with you. But certainly a smart man like you knows that it can no longer hold you high as an example of one of theirs who succeeded. You didn't.
  • Chana at CuriousJew:
    When you look back on this piece, you will note that it is only a collection of unsupported personal experiences at a particular high school which the author has taken to be universal and characteristic of an entire affiliation, Modern Orthodoxy. He subsequently engages in grand posturing and oscillates between trying to "defend" the poor, uneducated but well-meaning followers of this sect and trying to condemn them.
  • Sarah of Chayyei Sarah:
    As I just said to a fellow alumna who also read the article, "Noah is right. He's right, and he's an a**hole." I say this not because he has "aired dirty laundry" to the non-Jewish world -- he has, but often that has a place -- but because he's a hypocrite in his application of liberalism.
  • R' Shmuly Boteach:
    Worse, the practice is a lie insofar as it propagates the false notion that our Jewishness is measured only in terms of our being a link in a higher chain of existence, and that our Jewish identities have meaning only through our children. This absurd notion would deny they idea of Jewish individualism and how we are Jews in our own right.
  • Jewish Atheist:
    Deciding not to publish the photograph, adding a disclaimer, or even attaching a letter from a Rabbi addressing why intermarriage is unacceptable would have been one thing, but falsifying a photo to pretend that a person doesn't even exist is dishonest and shameful.
  • Jewbiquitous' Annie & Harley (discussion form):
    Annie: You don't send your kids to Jewish day school to make them marry Jews, you send them to day school to teach them Jewish content. By any metric, Noah is a success: he is a well-respected academic, clearly not lost to the Jewish community and knowledgeable about Jewish texts.
    Harley: Does Jewish education begin and end with Jewish texts? Wouldn't many argue that it's also as much about what happens between classes?
  • Harry Maryles at Emes V'Emunah:
    Engaging with modernity does not mean that one must worship at the alter modernity.
  • A comment (#3) posted on Orthomom of a letter by an associate professor at Emory:
    Mr Feldman has made choices that openly repudiate his Orthodox upbringing and the values of the Maimonides School which he attended. The laws of this country grant him the freedom to do so. The Maimonides School has the right to repudiate individuals that repudiate their values. Mr Feldman has no right to compel a school to accept his values.
  • Tzvee:
    Did you call the chairman of the board of the school and talk to him? No mention of that in the article.

    So you don't complain to the leadership of your school. You go to the NY Times Magazine. How nice of you.

    The only paradox here is your behavior.