Issues and Positions

IPA Leadership Development

NYTimes Editors Respond to OU
August 06, 2007
Dear Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb and Nathan Diament,

I'm grateful to you for expressing your concerns about Noah Feldman's essay. I also appreciate your efforts to bring the recent article in the Jewish Week to our attention.

The article in the Jewish Week, however, does not accurately describe the essay we published or our editorial process.

In his essay, Mr. Feldman does not assert, as the Jewish Week claims, that he was "erased" from the photograph or that he and his wife were "stricken from the photo." Nowhere does he say, as you put it in your letter to us, that he was "deliberately cropped out" of the picture. The assertions that you and the Jewish Week attribute to the essay are assertions that are not made in the essay.

In researching the article, we obtained the original contact sheets for the pictures taken by Lenny Eisenberg. The record shows that Eisenberg took five wide-angle photos of the entire crowd at the class reunion. In addition, he took a photo of the crowd from the left side, which includes Mr. Feldman and his wife; and a photo of the crowd from the right side, which does not include Mr. Feldman and his wife. The Maimonides School newsletter chose to publish the photo of the crowd from the right side - the photo that does not include Mr. Feldman and his wife. These facts are entirely consistent with the essay we published, where the author writes that a "group photo" was taken and yet when the alumni newsletter appeared, he and his girlfriend were "nowhere to be found."

Yours,
A. S.
Senior Editor
New York Times Magazine

Email Sign Up

Be an activist
Action Alerts
Be informed
Washington Wire

IPA Blog