The blogosphere is rife with commentary on Noah Feldman's New York Times article. In it, he complains about being mildly "unaccepted" by his alma mater, Maimonides school in Boston, after he brought his soon-to-be Korean bride to a class reunion. This rejection took the form of having her (not his) picture cropped out of the class photograph and in not listing his subsequent wedding and birth of his children from this union in the school newspaper. He also found it necessary to air the halachic issue of saving non-Jews on Shabbos, hurting some and frightening many others. The first to weigh-in was Shmuly Boteach. In various forums, he argued for greater acceptance of the intermarried, citing his acquaintance with Feldman when they both were in Oxford. Many others followed with sundry comments.
It is, I think, important to separate distinct issues in the situation. To my mind, they are:
1.Is what Noah Feldman did in going to the Times understandable, or is it regrettable and wicked? What about other players in this (mini) drama - who is behaving nobly and who is not?
2.Should the traditional negative view of the intermarried be modified? Should the intermarreis and their non-Jewish spouses be tolerated, accepted or, if they can boast of other accomplishments, be lauded privately or communally?
3.How should we view intermarriage in the context of a democratic and liberal state? Can the traditional Jewish rejection of intermarriage still be maintained?
Let us first look at the players. Noah Feldman is one of those Jewish wonder-kinds. A valedictorian in Harvard, a Rhodes scholar, studied in Oxford, even "knows Shas and Poskim". He is promoted as one of the greatest legal minds of our time and place, he was commissioned to help write the Iraqi constitution, he may be a Supreme Court Justice or an Attorney General some day. He also wrote a brilliant pro-bono brief opposing the Tenafly Eiruv (he won but fortunately it was overturned on appeal).
It seems to me that this is a man whose great intellectual gifts did him a great disservice. Accustomed to effortless success and adulation, he is like an extremely beautiful woman who never learned to get along if not through her charm, who never recognized that deep within her lies a spiritual universe, who knows nothing of the great expanses of feeling and soul granted by God to those who seek Him. Feldman's writing is peeved, childish and self-absorbed. His concerns are unworthy; his preoccupations are small. He strikes out in anger and frustration. This great mind is ultimately poor, for it knows not how to rule his own animal nature.
Rabbi Boteach - why did you not impact on this lost soul? Why were you not able to implant into this Oxfordian just a little bit of pnimius? You share the responsibility for losing him for the Jewish people. Do not exploit the connection to get articles into prestigious papers. Instead, rue your failure and the failure of us all to prevent the tragi-comedy of the promising Jewish kid falling for a Korean colleague. it is her gain, of course -it's our loss... and shame.
Now, for anotehr issue. How should we treat the intermarried? On a personal level - with sympathy. On the communal level - with disaproval!
Most intermarried Jews know and sense that something is wrong. Many do not realize that the tradition views what they did as a rejection, as a betrayal. Most do not see a difference between other Jews and the non-Jews who they know and do not understand why they should not marry this nice person. Most, however, wish to retain a connection to Yiddishkeit. After intermarrying they often involve themselves in Jewish organizations, ramp up Jewish involvements and feel more Jewish than before. They will also, from a guilty conscience, attempt to impose themselves upon other Jews and in this way gain vindication. They donate, they act, even become presidents of worldwide Jewish organizations. ALternatively, they maight cut all connections with the Jewish community, out of the sense of guilt and rejection.
We must not reject them as people but we must not hide disapproval of what they did. A rabbi who I know handled this in a very delicate way. One of his occasional congregants intermarried. In a subsequent conversation he praised all the good qualities of his wife, even how she sought high and low to enable to have him have a good Yom Tov. The rabbi concluded from this that this woman must somehow be Jewish. He insisted that she is in reality a lost Jewish soul, leaving his congregant with a feeling that intermarriage is wrong but he, and his wife, are still accepted. Better to appear foolish than push away a Jewish soul.
Ad initio we must discourage intermarriage, however. The emphasis should be on the risks that incompatibility in intermarriage brings to a marriage. A very good example of such an argument can be found in the Gutnick Chumash, quoting the Lubavitcher Rebbe in parshas Va"Eschanan (Toras Menachem).
To Noah Feldman- with your learning, you knew, or you should have known that the step you took connected you in this world and the next with "the daughter of a foreign god". The others don't know this but you do. Do not announce you superficiality, your lack of spiritual discernment, your shallowness and smallness for all to see. I do not doubt that you too will one day experience failure and heartbreak. On that day, at that time, remember your people and your God, let the shutters over your heart shutter,let it break, so you can live again. I know, I know, you think that you remember everything. But you can't remember what you never learned. On that day that you return, we will welcome you, and your family, the unfortunate victims of your self-delusion, to join us as brothers, as Jews - for your are a Jew and a Jew will you always remain.
for some Halachic sources see: Maimonides ("Yad," Issure Biah, xii. 1; ShulchanAruk, Eben ha-'Ezer, 16, 1; Chinuchi, cxxvii.).
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