A Hug Or Snub For Noah Feldman?

Jonathan Mark writes:

The Harvard Law professor says he was ignored by the school’s higher-ups once he intermarried. He understood the halachic-based disapproval, he said in an interview with The Jewish Week. But he contrasted the lack of a familial or social recognition by official school policies with the friendly reactions to his non-Jewish wife and non-Jewish child from almost all of his old classmates, many of whom are every bit as Orthodox as the Maimonides administration that drew a line in the sand at marrying out.

Feldman’s blistering essay supposedly found a continuum of overwhelming Orthodox intolerance to everything from intermarriage to saving non-Jews on Shabbat to the murderous netherworld of Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir. And yet, the welcome that awaits Feldman at the Harvard Chabad and at Maimonides reunions, suggests that there is considerably more tolerance in the community than Feldman led the readers of the Times Magazine to believe.

Despite frequent complaints that intermarrieds have a hard time finding acceptance, the truth is that intermarried Jews are being welcomed, even honored, as never before — even within Orthodoxy. What’s increasingly apparent is how fluid the lines are.