The name Noah Feldman suddenly swirled around the country. He had written a lengthy story in the New York Times Sunday Magazine claiming he was edited out of a photo in his high school alumni publication. He believed it was because his fiancé, an Asian-American and non-Jew, was a no-no for his Orthodox Jewish day school.

It subsequently came out in reporting from the New York Jewish Week that perhaps a different photograph was used and his likeliness was not deleted.

Even if it were indeed the case that he was not deleted, for many American Jews it still strikes a chord as a symbol of inclusion. This is certainly not the first time someone’s made a claim of the organized Jewish community not accepting non-Jewish spouses.

I remember when I first returned to Baltimore a decade ago; a prominent Baltimore Jewish leader cornered me. She encouraged me not to allow the JEWISH TIMES to print engagement and wedding announcements for inter-married couples.

How crazy is that? These people wanted to broadcast their simchas to the Jewish community, and this woman wants us to tell them they’re not welcome? Please. The announcements should be used by rabbis for leads on outreach and conversion. Instead some of our “leaders” want these people shunned?

I read another sad story in last week’s New York Times. 

“Chris Schwarz, a freelance photographer who roamed the ancient heartland of Polish Jewry to record remnants of a disappeared people, then opened a museum to celebrate their cultural heritage, died July 29 at his home in Krakow, Poland. He was 59.”

According to the Times, he did a lot to bring Jewish culture back to Poland. Yet he couldn’t be buried in the Jewish cemetery there. The same cemetery that he helped rebuild with his photographs.

“Mr. Schwarz was buried Friday in a municipal cemetery in Krakow. By Jewish tradition, he cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery because his mother is Christian. In a short profile he wrote for his museum, Mr. Schwarz said, ‘‘I am Jewish enough for the camps, but not for the rabbis.”

No wonder some of our young people are walking away from our community. If that’s your experience with the Jewish “leaders”, who would want to be part of a nation that would treat its people like this?

I went to the synagogue of my youth to pick up my nephew after his friend’s Bar Mitzvahs. He was not outside, so I went in to find him as we had not made clear plans regarding the pickup location. The event had finished some time ago and there were groups of people milling about. I went around explaining that I was looking for my nephew to take him home and asking people if they knew my nephew’s whereabouts.

The expressions on the faces of the people there as they looked at me were so familiar from long ago. They were looking at me with disdain. I guessed it was because I was dressed casually, not proper attire had I been attending the event. I had not seen such looks on people since I had attended that synagogue as a child. It shocked me because I expected to be received with helpfulness and perhaps concern.

So glad I was to have walked away when I became an adult. Snobbishness and disdain were part of what I didn’t miss.

Then there was the poor quality of the education there except for a brief few courses in ‘Hillel High School’ with a bright young Rabbi who was a great teacher, and he was only there for a few years. Courses such as “What is God? Does God exist?” and “30 years since - the effect of the Holocaust on Judaism.”

But confirmation class never taught us what confirmation was about, which was how most of my experience at that synagogue was like, i.e. no explanation, no teaching the meaning of what we were doing and why we were doing it. It was empty ritual to me and boring.

My dad would drive me to Sunday School while I was protesting having to go.

“You can do what you want when you are an adult,” he would respond, “but for now you have to go.”

Later he became frum, proselytizing under his breath, and sometimes openly. He told me I could choose when I became an adult and I did. I chose not to be a part of that organized religious community that meant so little to me.

It meant a lot to me. Hurt from bullies, hurt from senselessness.

There was a Hebrew tutor who tutored many students in their homes and was part of the Orthodox community. He was out first teacher before we transferred to Hebrew school at my synagogue. He sexually abused multiple girls in the community, girls that were some of his students. It became known and we stopped using him and went to Hebrew school. I narrowly escaped, having considered him disgusting, but I knew some of his victims. Ten years later, he was still teaching young girls and abusing some of them. Forty years later, he is dead but his victims are still suffering. The “Community” never stopped him from teaching all those years and never offered healing and restitution. He came recommended by the synagogues.

That was some of why I and others walked away.

Fortunately, I also had experienced “Rabbi” Louis Kaplan. In my later years at University of Maryland, School of Medicine, I would pass by his name on the School of Social Work. That had meaning to me. Many values that he taught have been etched into my brain and heart, and that is my connection that goes with me no matter how far I walk away.

Chava Shapiro’s tale rings true to me!  I walked away because of sexual abuse at the hands of my revered Orthodox teacher.  It started at age 8 or 9 and lasted until about 13, when someone else finally outed him to my parents.  This, too, was hushed up and I was blamed for not having the where-with-all to fend him off.  Our rabbi hushed it up, and I was told to “get over it already!”  Forty years later, I am still struggling to find a place in Judaism, the religion I love, that doesn’t revive the old pain…

I walked away from being frum because of the way no one helped me deal with the fact that I am an incest survivor.  When I told one rav, he told me to never tell anyone else.  He basically told me it was my fault.  Who cares if the rapes began when I was five.  He also told me that if told anyone I would never get a good shidduch.