Because of this “insult” he goes ahead and blasts Orthodox Judaism publicly, listing some incredibly sensitive halachas such as saving non-Jewish life on Shabbos, which have nothing to do with intermarriage, implying that his intermarriage was something more than simply a personal choice, but a moral one as well.

I can’t imagine a story so narcissistic, so self-justifying, so insubstantial and irrelevant, that if the Times received it from anyone else, about any other religion, that it would be published on the front page of the Magazine section. Its agenda driven purpose is transparent and it is an embarrassment to Feldman and the Times. I hope both their reputations suffer as a result.

Turns out Noah Feldman knew all along he was not intentionally cropped out of the picture, but chose not to reveal that fact when he wrote the article.

Point well noted. I should have clarified that there “was no Photoshop here”. Advanced digital image manipulation tools didn’t become prominent and widespread at the consumer level until the early 21st century, and it seems a safe assumption that a small alumni newsletter would not have spent the substantial money in the mid-1990s on such a hyperpowered professional tool.

The real giveaway, however, was Feldman’s very assumption that his old school would have taken the time and trouble to adeptly target he and his fiancé for subtle removal from a class photo–and he delivered the distinct impression to readers that the photographer or newsletter had employed some sophisticated airbrushing or digital manipulation tool to subtly excise him and his fiancé from the image while leaving everybody else none the wiser about the erasure. But the good doctor did presumeth too much.

The supposed “exclusion” was nothing but a poorly taken photo and Dr. Feldman’s self-involved presumptions nothing more than that. But since Feldman’s article was meant to be a “memoir of my experience”–an experience that we now know, and he already knew, was built on projections and false assumptions–he apparently felt no need to correct the record and no compunctions about spreading untrue insinuations and baseless umbrage against his old school.

One now wonders why the NY Times, which rejected publication of the ostensibly otherizing photo once its oh-so-blasé reality became known, still permitted Feldman to write falsely about it in his column.

Put them back! They’ve paid their dues.

Just for the record, Photoshop came out in 1990. I was digitally removing objects and people from photos in the early ’90s.

Even more lovely: Feldman admits that he was aware of all this before the article was published. Why, then, didn’t he rewrite his piece to reflect the truth? “This was a memoir of my experience.” Oh, is that how this works? How postmodern of us.

My respect for Mr. Feldman–who sought public sympathy by plastering his attention-seeking psychodrama into a newspaper–and his seemingly pliable sense of propriety and reality, declines further.

Sure is. Kabel es ha emes mimi she omro.

Can we now put Feldman to rest?

a) Spinoza - Jewish community of Amsterdam
b) Sullivan - Catholic Church
c) YCT - YU
d) Feldman - Maimonides

There may be multiple, correct answers.

Part of this tradition, however, is to expect the community to reject you right back. The Midrash tells us that Abraham was thrown into the furnace. Spinoza was excommunicated. Noah Feldman doesn’t get his notices into the alumni bulletin. Guess which of the three whines about it…

* six years and four children.

http://www.forward.com/articles/11270/

Again sticking to the gemara in Ketubot, it is quite debatable whether the host of the party was wrong to expel bar Kamtza–particularly when we consider bar Kamtza’s character as revealed by what he did next.

Bar Kamtza may have been similarly guilty of nefarious antisocial conduct in the recent past, thereby prompting the host to quite understandably wish nothing to do with such a foul character and leaving the scholarly guests simply unable to find a redeeming quality in bar Kamtza that would justify their intervention to prevent the expulsion. (Certainly we can all think of a few foul characters whom we would never invite to a dinner party.) This angle is certainly not meant to be the ‘final word’ on this deceptively simple story, but I suggest that it’s important to consider.

Now moving to the current case–the narcissistic attention seeking of Mr. Feldman–any similarity or non-similarity of Feldman’s underlying character to that of a historical figure in the gemara is irrelevant, and was certainly not the point of my comment.

What is in fact the point is simply to note the similarities in reaction, from the perspective of the ostensibly “slighted” party in two quite distant eras, to a perceived social rejection, exclusion, distancing or non-involvement: public slander against the perceived ‘excluders’ and public swipes against the entire social body they are identified with. I think there is an essential likeness in the fundamental tenor of the two responses.

(Certainly the character from our gemara would not have lacked for arguments that appealed to his listeners’ concepts of self-dignity, free choice, respect and modern values of inclusion and sameness. Indeed his successful appeal to the Roman occupiers was based on precisely that claim: ‘See! I told you so! You’ll never be good enough for those Jews!’)

I assume it’s miniscule even amongst those “off the derech”. Internal Orthodox reflection in wake of Noah Feldman’s article would be only indirect for intermarriage, in that one can understand assimilation in Jewish society at large. The internal reflection would be more directly relevant to Orthodoxy, however, for the other issues discussed.

For example, although I think much of the article was unfair and irresponsible even from a non-Orthodox perspective (e.g., the Baruch Goldstein issue), I found it both poignant and revealing of a way of thinking when Feldman writes, ” I have tried in my own imperfect way to live up to values that the school taught me, expressing my respect and love for the wisdom of the tradition… as a result, I have not felt myself to have rejected my upbringing, even when some others imagine me to have done so by virtue of my marriage”.

I would also add that in a recent series of articles in the Jewish Action, and most recently, in Steve Savitsky’s OU Radio interview titled “Orthodox Judaism 2017″, the question was brought up of practical ways in which Orthodoxy can unite on a public level. Apparently, Noah Feldman did Orthodoxy a favor in forcing a common ground, in the sense that nearly every article or view written or quoted from an Orthodox perspective felt a need to respond to Feldman’s article(including a Rabbi associated with the Left of Orthodoxy, as quoted in the Jewish Week editorial).

If you are making a light joke, ok. But if you are making a serious comparison, I would respectfully ask you to reread the gemara. I think that you are wrong on both ends of the account.
1) Bar Kamzta did nothing wrong; he accepted an invitation from his arch enemy and came to the party.
2) He was publicly humiliated after trying to reason with the host.

In ‘our’ case,
1)Mr. Feldman made a choice to act in a way that he knew was unacceptable to normative orthodox Judaism
2)No one publicly humiliated him; they just didn’t accept that which they found unacceptable.

Kol Tuv

Somebody gets tossed out of a party and decides to swipe back at the host and his friends…. I think we’ve recently heard this old story somewhere.