The Boring Galut "Controversies"

I trust you have all read the Noah Feldman controversy. Its basically the story of a successful graduate of Maimonides high school who went on to Harvard law, the CFR, and the New York Times. Recently he wrote a well written, but utterly self-serving article about how since his intermarriage, he has been ostracized from the Orthodox community and that his picture has been airbrushed away from the Alumni newsletter. Throughout the article Noah throws in some jabs at Modern-Orthodoxy to which he has a love/hate relationships. The article was in the NY Times and has since elicited responses (some very good ones) from rabbis, columnists and many many bloggers. I shall not repeat what has been already hashed out.

I would like to point out one thing though: this essay and its resulting hubbub is yet another of the Galut community's obsession with "issues" that don't matter so much. Remember the Brit Milla issue that had the American Jewish world storming? Remember the not-so-kosher-chicken fiasco of Monsey? And now the case of the whining intermarried Harvard-grad! They all seem like big issues when you are in Galut, but when you are in Israel, all these things seem like a joke. Why? Because here we deal with Jewish war and Jewish nation building, we deal with Jewish education, care for Holocaust survivors, Jewish land and the Jewish future. The giant "controversies" of America are nothing more than entertaining spats to be intellectually debated in the ever-shrinking circles of the Galut.

Do us a favor and wake up. We have bigger fish to fry in the greatest Jewish project of all time - the building of Israel. Let the Noah Feldman's whine about Modern-Orthodox mistreatment - but don't give them a bigger platform than they deserve. They are really boring as compared with the very big, very real, and very exciting issues we face here daily.