The tells the reader you're referring back to something previously discussed. My girlfriend and I were nowhere to be found."ĮXPERT ANALYSIS: Feldman says "I happened to notice THE photo." New Yorker founding editor Harold Ross went apeshit whenever a writer used the in reference to something mentioned for the first time in the story. July 22 (morning): The NY Times website publishes "Orthodox Paradox," in which Feldman describes attending the Maimonides reunion with Jeannie Suk, with whom he "crowded into a big group photo." Then, “hen the alumni newsletter came around a few months later, I happened to notice the photo. The timeline, and this page in general, will remain a work in progress as we sort all this out. As we do so, we're going to bang out a Feldman Flare-Up timeline below. Who's the victim here? And who's the evildoer to whom we should address our own indignant op-ed? If the article never asserted that Maimonides altered a photo to remove Feldman and Suk, why do so many readers believe it did? Why has the Orthodox Union demanded he be fired for assertions that the New York Times flatly states were never made. None of this tells us, though, whether Feldman or the New York Times made false accusations in Orthodox Paradox. population? No thanks! You can see for yourself that that picture just looked better! A noisy public debate in which we stand on principle and defend a decision that insults and confuses both secular Jews and the general U.S. So it's downright Providential that that picture was also the aesthetic stand-out. SUMMARY JUDGMENT: Of course Maimonides noticed that there was only one pic without Suk and Feldman, and of course they would favor a picture without them. But after seeing the pics, we've got to admit that, yes, the photo without Feldman and Suk also happens to be by far the best one. The "it just happened" explanation sounds preposterous. Suddenly, people ceased lecturing pro-Feldmanites on the sacred imperative to defend communal principles, and commenced huffing about the challenges of group photography and the slander that Modern Orthodox Jews preferred the photo because they disapprove of intermarriage. Who screwed up here?ĮXPERT ANALYSIS: One August 3, photographer Larry Eisenberg says that Feldman and Suk simply "happened not to be" in the published photo. The NY Times responds that both the Orthodox Union and Jewish Week have fudged the truth by denouncing Feldman for claims he never made. No one I know really thinks the selection was random, and of course neither does Maimo deny it if you read closely." Meanwhile, the Orthodox Union says Feldman should be fired as contributing editor to the Times for falsely asserting that he and his then-fiancee Jeannie Suk had been "deliberately cropped out" of the photo. So yesterday, Noah Feldman did Jewcy a good turn and sent us the pics.įeldman tells us: "6 out of 7 included our picture one did not that one was published. At the center of the storm is one question: Did Noah Feldman and the New York Times intentionally mislead readers to believe that Maimonides published a photo from which Feldman and his non-Jewish wife, Jeannie Suk, had been removed? But other than one woefully inadequate thumbnail at Jewish Week, no one has bothered to publish the f'shtinking pictures. " A class picture has touched off a storm in the American Jewish community," says Ha'aretz.
On August 3, the debate gave way to a scandal. Was the article a poignant critique of Modern Orthodoxy, or an infantile rant against the obvious consequences of Feldman's life choices? A sensitive exploration of the contradictions within Modern Orthodoxy, or vulgar mudslinging? For two weeks, the debate raged. Orthodox Paradox was a journalistic Molotov Cocktail delivered to the Jewish community in the July 23rd issue of the New York Times Magazine. But here we are, with everyone all hot and bothered by the innocuous-looking pics that played so central a narrative role in Noah Feldman's " Orthodox Paradox." At the 1998 reunion of Noah Feldman's Maimonides yeshiva class, no one could possibly have imagined that a few group photographs–all wide Jewy smiles and shapeless sorta-Orthodox outfits–would spark a seat-ripping public debate almost a decade later, and a messy media scandal a month after that.
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