Intermarriage and the New York Times

Rabbi Benjamin Blech writes:

Readers of the New York Times must have been surprised to learn this past week that modern Orthodox Jews are some of the most extreme religious fanatics. That at least is the impression left by Harvard University Professor Noah Feldman in his Sunday Magazine article "Orthodox Paradox," as he recounts in heart wrenching detail his enforced estrangement from the Jewish community.

Feldman, as he tells us, is a graduate of Maimonides school in Brookline, Massachusetts. Educated in what he refers to as "at once a Lithuanian yeshiva and a New England prep school," the very institution founded by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik in accord with his philosophy of synthesis between secular and Torah studies, Feldman was a fully committed practicing Jew for a number of years after his graduation. Blessed with brilliant academic achievements, he was warmly embraced as a magnificent role model both by his alma mater and the many Jewish organizations with which he was affiliated.

All that changed however when he made one life-altering decision. He chose to marry a non-Jew. With his learned background, he knew that according to Jewish law his children would not be considered Jewish unless his partner converted to Judaism. With full knowledge of these consequences, he nevertheless chose to marry out of the faith rather than perpetuate the Jewish people. And to what he claims is his great surprise and dismay, he no longer found full acceptance by the institutions that educated him.

Feldman shares with the Times readers the — for him — shocking facts that the alumni newspaper refused to offer him wishes of Mazal Tov upon his marriage or the birth of his children. Indeed, an alumni photograph went so far as to excise him and his girlfriend from a group picture — an act that he believes is a personal slight beyond comprehension. In his brief about the horrors of Orthodox separatism, he leads us ultimately to the examples of Yigal Amir, assassin of Prime Minister Rabin, and Baruch Goldstein of Purim massacre notoriety