Rabbi Yitzhok Adlerstein (L.A. Orthodoxy Jewry’s premiere spokesman) writes in The Jewish Press:
Ayatollahs in business suits is what Noah Feldman would have the world believe we all are. If the Orthodox were going to leave him out of his alma mater’s reunion picture just because he married out, then Noah Feldman was going to out the Orthodox
His tell-all expose painted a picture, as he saw it, of the inherent primitiveness and backwardness of Orthodoxy. We may look modern, but scratch the surface, and we all harbor beliefs that are inconsistent with the more enlightened values of Harvard Square.
In his New York Times Magazine article, Feldman made a point of highlighting practices and attitudes toward non-Jews that he bargained would – or should – make us uncomfortable. We have always preferred to keep them under wraps, not always quite sure how to explain them to others, or even to ourselves, but quite sure that if others found out about them, they would hold them against us.
In making us face up to them Noah Feldman may have done us a favor. We have dealt with “problematic” texts in roughly the same way for the better part of a millennium. The old way will not work any longer, and the sooner we realize and react appropriately, the better.
