A couple of points about the Times article:

1) The man is a baby. I'm sorry, but no matter how well-educated he is, to start his piece describing his apparent "surprise" that his marriage to a non-Jew was not celebrated by his Orthodox school is really silly. The preaching against intermarriage basically starts at day one in the modern Orthodox community. For such a seemingly smart guy, he sure is playing dumb.

2) Heaven help the teachers and administrators at the Maimonides School. The place is infamous for having children with parents who expect their kids to get into Harvard and will accept nothing less. They end up putting too much pressure on their children and their teachers to make this happen and leave everyone unhappy. They even got what they wanted a few years ago when the school hired a young scholar with a U. of Chicago Ph.D. to be the principal. Guess what? He's insistance that the school keep the Torah standards above the SAT's brought him down. He's now winning great raves at another Yeshiva high school in New York where they are very happy to have him.

3) The writer apparently didn't listen too much in class. Here's a very pathetic quote: "The dietary laws of kashrut are designed to differentiate and distance the observant person from the rest of the world."

Actually, not. Every child of five or above in a Yeshiva knows we don't know the reason for the dietary laws. They are a deliberate mystery. Now the Talmudic restriction against drinking non-Kosher wine was probably meant to distance Jews from non-Jews in some ways, but that is different.

Granted, I married a Jewish woman. But I also went to a high school almost exactly like Maimonides. I don't expect my school or my classmates to celebrate the fact that I less observant now than I was when I was in school. I don't expect them to put the fact that I'll be announcing college football games on AM radio this fall because most of them are on Saturdays. In short, I'm not a great person, but I am a grown up.

Robert is right to cast the spectre of Anti-Semitism over this piece. When an obviously immature malcontent is allowed to air his very personal grievances in a newspaper, it's suspicious in the very least. I wonder if a Muslim woman who went to a Muslim school in Boston would be granted the same favor if she wanted to complain about how her old school wasn't acknowledging her marriage to a Jew. Yeah right

Jake:

Thanks so much for your accurate reading of Feldman's protocols.

Karen had the same reaction you did. She said the article had nothing to with halacha——that's just a fig-leaf——and everything to do with Feldman's bitterness at not being acknowledged by his former classmates.

Of course this is true, but to the hundreds of thousands who read this article it will come across as The Final Word on Jewish Orthodoxy.

And you just wait for the Arab/Muslim world to get hold of this piece and spin it for their propaganda purposes.

Julius Streicher is smiling from hell.

Yes, Feldman is clever. Big deal, we Jews produce clever kids by the dozens. But he is not wise, nor brilliant.

I reserve wise and brilliant for men like Reb Tzadok haKohen Rabinowitz, The Kohen of Lublin, (1823-1900). Author of Pri Tzaddik, Tiferes Zvi, Meishiv Tzaddik and Resesei Layla.

Feldman is like the man watching a baseball game: a ball goes out of the park, hooks left and is foul. Feldman sputters, “It was just foul by an inch, it should still be a homer.

Yes, Noah, but those are the rules of the game. The game you want exists only in your head, designed for, um, little Noah Feldman.

One final point: The New York Times made a big deal out of not printing the Danish cartoons out of "sensitivity to Islam."

Seraphic Secret pointed out at the time that this was a lie; the reason they did not print the cartoons was out of fear of being bombed, of having their heads severed from their bodies.

In short, the "newspaper of record" acted in the role of dhimmis. Exactly as Islam requires.

The New York Times have proven my point by printing this odious attack on Torah Judaism.

For no Jew is going to bomb the offices of the The New York Times, G-d forbid, nor threaten bodily harm, G-d forbid, to any editor or to Noah Feldman. Thus, any sensitivity to religion by the terrorati immediately falls by the wayside.

P.S. Jake, you are a very good person.

Robert,
I went to the linked sites and read the various comments. I also read Mr. Feldman's piece.
And, whereas I share your dislike for the NY Times and their bizarre agenda, I thought Mr. Feldman's piece was dull and insipid.
Basically, he was whining because his former high school didn't accept the life choices he made. Please... who cares?
Would the NY Times publish a piece where I whined about how my non-Jewish best friend from my former hippie days no longer speaks to me because I couldn't make him understand why I couldn't go to his non-Jewish, non-kosher wedding, in a State 1500 hundred miles from me, held on Shabbbos?
As a matter of fact, most of my secular high school has pretty much written me off as someone with very strange and exotic values and as one who has rejected their lifestyles....
Am I entitled space in NY Times to whine?
I somehow think not...
Be well

Moishe:

Karen also thought the Feldman piece was dopey, unfocused and just a childish rant at former classmates for refusing to acknowledge his non Jewish wife and non Jewish kids.

This is all true. However, my point is that Feldman's piece will be cited by secularists, arch liberals and Jew haters as proof of Jewish perfidy.

Hey, you were a hippie? No kidding? Well, at least you get to keep your beard.

Robert:
I took today off from the web as it’s hard to sit on the floor and type at my desk. I hope I have replenished my system enough to write something that makes sense. Maimonides school is what all progressive modern orthodox schools strive to be like. I am told they have a great education, both secular & religious. In his prime I'm sure Mr. Feldman would have criticized this article just like so many of us have. He is so far removed from reality to be upset that the school alumni association did not print the great news that he just had a non Jewish child.
We all measure success differently. Some schools might consider a successful student one who went to Harvard, Oxford, Yale and the Harvard again. Others would consider a successful student one who went to Ner Israel & Mirer Yeshiva. By successful I mean that the school “did a good job preparing this student for the future”
One thing that negates any Jewish academic achievement is intermarriage. The purpose of a Jewish school is to help perpetuate the Jewish people.
In this respect Noah Feldman is a huge and utter failure. He may have more letters behind his name than you or I, but my children will be Jewish .On a positive note, the opportunity for teshuvah does exist. Maybe Noah, the smart man that he is will realize how big a mistake he made. He might not leave his lifestyle but hopefully he will understand why he was not accepted by his former school.

Ari:

Thanks so much for your comment. Naturally we always hope for teshuvah in a Jew who chooses to marry out of the Jewish people. Certainly Noah Feldman understands that his children are not Jewish and in this way he has cut his ties with the Jewish people and Jewish history — irrevocably. It must be extremely painful.

We hope you had a meaningful fast.

The taste of sour grapes and Mr. Feldman's ultimate need for his rebbe's approval reveals the immaturity of this piece. But there is plenty of blame to go around which to my mind is a triple crown - Mr Feldman's, the Maimonides School and the New York Times.

I think the school was quite short sighted in erasing the picture of the future Mrs. Feldman. They alienated Mr. Feldman, and their censorship contradicts the resourcefulness,psychological insight, and compassion of most educators within the Modern Orthodox movement. We are not in the business of erasing history. Their "photo-shopping" is an embarrassment and reminds me of similar attempts on the part of religious revisionists who penciled in yarmulkas on rabbinic figures of the early twentieth century.

Lastly, the New York Times displayed opportunism and blatant discrimination against Judaism in highlighting one individual's beef against his teachers. This is a private issue and many citations were quoted "out of context" to serve the politics of the newspaper and emotional needs of the writer.

Karen:
I agree that the school should not have "fixed" the photo, but I understand why they did.
I am sure we both agree that the announcement of the birth of his children was appropriately omitted.

Here's more regarding Feldman's anti-Orthodox bias:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110007200

But the Greeks are even worse than that. They describe their ghettos as "homogeneity" colonies and themselves, even when they are born here and citizens, as "expatriates." In their services, they pray for the "Greek nation and American people" because they refuse to consider an inhomogeneous country a nation. And they have this evil saint, Cosmus Aitalius, who advocated ethnic cleansing. And do not forget the involvement of Greek shipping in Bringing black slaves to America.