Comments on: Truth And Consequences

By: Cross-Currents » Getting to the Soul of L’Affaire Feldman

Cross-Currents » Getting to the Soul of L’Affaire Feldman — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 13:52:12 +0000

[...] The last two weeks have provided many venues – in print and online – for valuable discussion and thoughtful responses to Professor Noah Feldman’s article in the New York Times Magazine. I was especially gratified to read, for example, the insightful arguments and incisive prose of my teachers and mentors, R. Norman Lamm and R. Shalom Carmy. [...]

By: Noah Feldman, Shalom Carmy and rejewvenator Walk into a Bar « Rejewvenate!

Noah Feldman, Shalom Carmy and rejewvenator Walk into a Bar « Rejewvenate! — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:41:10 +0000

[...] Shalom Carmy and rejewvenator Walk into a Bar August 7, 2007 at 2:41 pm | In Uncategorized | Rabbi Dr. Shalom Carmy’s response to Noah Feldman has been widely praised (and widely anticiapted) perhaps because Carmy is today what Noah Feldman [...]

By: Steve Brizel

Steve Brizel — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 14:35:15 +0000

Yasher Koach on a powerfully logical, coherent and intellectually honest approach to an author who we all know now was not photocropped out of a picture. I agree with Ben Bayit that Feldman should have gone to Israel for at least a year where he would have seen very well that Talmud, Tanach, Halacha and Machshavah of all sorts are not academic subjects but the keys to how a Jew lives his or her life and that RYBS’s understanding of Amalek is still evident in the Arab media, culture, educational systems and most significantly and existentially-in Teheran.

Based upon the responses of R Carmy, R D N Lamm, D A Nadler and individuals such as Ralph Friedman and a dialogue at LookJed, I would suggest that the essay and the responses would make an excellent subject for discussion at MO high schools, regardless of a student’s future after graduation.

I must disagree with my classmate and old chaver Jeff Strashun. Yes, the YU that we graduated from in 1976 is a far better and different religious and secular environment. Yes, there are students on campus who do not even meet the standards set forth in your comment. Yet, YU should compete for Baalei Teshuvah by offering the Mechinah Program as opposed to seeking students who lack a basic committment to halacha.

By: Nachum Lamm

Nachum Lamm — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 13:19:55 +0000

Yeah, but at least they don’t badmouth Jews in the pages of the New York Times.

By: Ben Bayit

Ben Bayit — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:55:01 +0000

Let’s all be honest for a second. Had Feldman not attended Harvard, but rather had chosen to attend Har Etzion for a year and then changed his registration, he would have gone to YU, entered Rabbi Michael Rosensweig’s shiur, signed up for all the requisite intellectual classes with Shalom Carmy, Will Lee, Moshe Bernstein, Mordy Cohen, Louis Feldman et. al, been editor at Hamevaser, been editor of the SOY Tanach journal, received a Wexner fellowship and been feted as the next coming of I don’t know what. But guess what folks – he still might have ended up marrying the shiksa in Yale. None of that would have changed.
Also, I’m not sure that all the students who meet the above description and who did not marry shiksas, and are perhaps even practicing orthodox rabbis are necessarily all that different. “His Majesty the Baby” could be applied to them as well. Much of their “torah” content is spiritually and Jewishly lacking. They are intellectuals that are full of themselves, totally disconnected from reality.

By: Chaim

Chaim — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:10:43 +0000

Feldman did not mention the countless number of Jewish doctors, some orthodox, who use their skills to save the lives of arab terrorists even on Shabbat if they survive a suicide bombing or military attack. No, he picks a theoretical heuristic part of the Talmud, out of context, to defame orthodoxy and satisfy his hurt from being rejected.

We can expect his comments on the failure of the Iraqi delegates to write a proper constitution because the Malaki government did not give him proper respect and recognition since he offered to assist the new government to write a constitution, as if the Iraqi people are waiting to accept the advice of an American Jew who studied Arabic at Oxford.

Rabbi Carmy said it well; "His Majesty the Baby." A smart student, he turned to the dark side and closed the gates behind him thinking that his alma mater would overlook his tresspasses and extoll his intellectual accomplishments. Let us consign him to the compost collection of apikorsim and come to the recognition that his PhD interfered with his education.

By: Nachum

Nachum — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:55:08 +0000

Ben Bayit, I’m agreeing with you. I’m only pointing out that with all due respect, people calling for “introspection” is more often than not thinking only of others, not of themselves. This is especially true when criticizing us right-wing fanatics. “We Orthodox have to examine ourselves” is very often code for “Those fanatics should disappear.”

By: Ben Bayit

Ben Bayit — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 08:51:38 +0000

Nahum – I don’t envision myself as a baal mussar or as a maggid. But if you haven’t realized by now, in addition to exposing communism, one of my favorites pastimes is exposing hypocrisy – irrespective of the practitioner. I am very familiar with the fact that
“There are rabbis and teachers, who sometimes feel that they must show their cleverness at any cost. At times it seems that the less they have to contribute, the more they wish to stand out. Like precocious children impressing the adults, they vie for the attention of their students with forced displays of cleverness and provocation. The point is to come up with something that nobody else would think of saying and to say something shocking and memorable.”
and to the degree it is practiced by members of – what was referred to above as – “the Hamevaser community”. and that even Rabbi Carmy himself might just be guilty of this on occassion – even if only a teeny tiny eensy weensy bit. intimately familiar.

By: Nachum Lamm

Nachum Lamm — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 23:09:09 +0000

“Perhaps they need to study the last paragraph of the above essay until they are sore of it.”

Come, come, Ben Bayit. It’s always *other* people that need correcting.

By: Jeff Strashun

Jeff Strashun — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:26:06 +0000

I have spent far to much time this past week reading the thoughts of some of the best thinkers of our generation debating the virtues of Noah Feldman.But everyone seems to be missing the real issue: what caused Feldman to, for lack of a more p.c. term, TRASH his Torah values, TRASH his yeshiva education, and in short, TRASH Am Yisroel. When I attended YC in the mid 70′s, nary a student would be seen walking on campus without a yarmulke. Eating a treif snack in public was also invisible. Yet, today, as YU expands to bring back more of our lost souls, we cannot deny that these sightings are getting more frequemt, albeit a minority. We may not be able to solve the intermarriage dilemma in a few e-mails but perhaps we should focus our discussion more on why those who were fortunate to enjoy a Torah education in thier youth to now flaunt it and reveal an amazing disrespect to our Gedolim as these youth mature and gain so called secular wisdom. To refer to Rav Mose several timesin the article as simply “Feinstein” is beyond adjectives.How dare he define the debate for us!How dare he tell us how to live a torah based life and interpet halacha for us!Unlike Shmuly Boteach’s generous comments, I do not see Feldman as a Prince but rather as a Pauper. He had it all and he threw it away. Sad to say, he is lost forever. So let us start our quest to save those who can be saved rather than throw a hole filled lifejacket to a sinking man.