He grew up in Cambridge, where his parents met when they attended Harvard in the mid-1960s. For grade school, he attended the Maimonides School in Brookline, which is Orthodox Jewish but coeducational. In high school, Feldman says, "I was the lefty." At Harvard, he says, he feels "middle of the road."

Although Feldman lives in Eliot House, he say his other choice was Adams. "I wanted to live someplace which had an identity--it didn't matter much what identity," he explains.

FELDMAN TAKES great pleasure in defying the investments that others make in his Jewish identity. And it is his awareness of these investments that makes him acutely sensitive to the dangers of group stereotypes, and of the nuances of inter-group conflict.

He does not trust others to define him, and he does not trust group identities as a rule.

"In my gut, I have a real sense of insecurity about group manifestations in general." Feldman says. In other words, he does not like to rely on others to argue his position.

Looking at a number of this year's campus controversies involving Jewish groups, Feldman stakes out a distinctly individual space.

For instance, Feldman finds the concerns raised by many Jews at Harvard over the Leonard Jeffries speech, the Harvard Foundation exchange in The Crimson and the Dunster House "kosher toaster" debacle certainly valid. But he questions the extent to which the debates that emerged were "functional."

"Functional" is one of Feldman's favorite words. He uses it when he wants to make a leap from moral and emotional positions to what he considers practical and defensible ones.

Feldman is not without personal conviction, but rather possesses the very strong sense that dialogue should work, that it should produce results. And if it does not, the content of the conversation needs to change.

Feldman respects moral stands, but chooses, his own strategies very carefully intent on a means that will satisfy long-term ends. "I don't leap up and raise my arms and scream and yell a lot," he explains.

His diplomacy resides in a position of strength, and of visible confidence; he is not easily threatened, and he is very aware of how language structures political issues. When he speaks of controversies, he describes less his own position than that of his interlocutor. He is careful not to characterize dialogues as "debates," or other groups as "opponents."

Feldman worries that too often this year a focus on anti-Semitism, that "Judaism becomes something that exists in response to something else."

"Judaism will become nothing but an annoyance if the only way we interact with it is through anti-Semitism," he says.

THIS SPRING, when Dunster House tutor Noel Ignatiev complained about a toaster over reserved for kosher use in the dining hall, a number of Jewish students suggested that his motivations were anti-Semitic. This argument, however, fits under Feldman's definition of what is not "functional."

"I could have been offended by the toaster oven controversy, but was not," Feldman says. Rather than argue for the kosher toaster oven, Feldman takes on the foundations of Ignatiev's argument.