Gefilte Fishy

It turns out that lawprof Noah Feldman's story of religious ostracism, which I blogged about earlier, isn't quite how described it in his New York Times Magazine essay. Recall that Feldman had alleged that his Jewish orthodox high school had digitally excised him and his non-Jewish then-girlfriend from a reunion photo, and then declined to print their wedding and birth notices in the alumni newsletter.

Well, the true story is not that Feldman and femme were cropped for heresy, but that the photographer was unable to get all members of the reunion gathering into one photo, despite repeated efforts from various angles. Indeed, Feldman and his bride-to-be were not the only reuners not appearing in the photo that was eventually chosen to be published -- 18 people total were "left behind" -- and this is readily apparent from the photo.

What is worse is that Feldman knew all this even as he wrote the NYTM piece -- or at the latest when the Times got the photograph and wanted to run it along with Feldman's article. The solution that Feldman and the Times came up with when they realized the "incongruity" of Feldman's story? -- don't run the photo!

How did Feldman react to the news that his story had been falsified?

Asked why he didn’t rewrite the story to reflect the newly discovered photo,
Feldman responded: “When I first wrote it I was doing it from memory. When [the
photographer] turned up the contact sheet there was no contradiction at all, as
far as I could tell. They had several photos to choose from and they chose one
that I wasn’t in. There’s no question that one could offer other explanations
for what happened,” other than that it was intentional. “It’s not as if [the
photo] was an outlying event. It fit right in with the other things [refusing to
print his lifecycle notices]. This was a memoir of my experience.”

Now, it is true that the school decided not to run Feldman's wedding notice, and again when the Feldmans -- or "Feldsuk" as the legal gossip blog Above the Law christened the lawprof power couple -- had kids whom they may or may not be raising Jewish (but in any event are not recognized as such halachically because the mother did not convert). Feldman certainly had that story to tell. But were there nothing more to his story, he wouldn't have gotten nearly as much press -- or sympathy -- for his tale of woe.

After all, even those of us who blanche at sectarian infringement on liberal (in the classical sense) values have to simultaneously recognize a fundamental freedom of association. As David Frum puts it, "[w]hile alumni of a Jewish school have every right to turn their back on their tradition if they wish, the school surely has every right not to celebrate this rejection."

Which means that, sure, the school was fully within its right to crop the photo, but the viscerally scornful reaction that such a petty, repulsive act rightfully gets is rather different than the mere sigh at some more benign form of self-segregation. Declining to celebrate by publicly announcing in its own forum Feldman's tradition-breaking acts is different (and less sinister) than erasing a person from the recordbooks a la the vanishing commissar -- especially when Feldman admits the disingenuousness of his published claims.

Read about it all here.