I've been wanting to penetrate the keen taut mind of Alana Newhouse, Arts & Culture editor of the Forward, for some months now. So I started reading one of her favorite books and am falling in love with it - The Mind Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein. It's about an Orthodox woman's sexual awakening at college.
I wonder what about it speaks so powerfully to Alana the HAFTR (yeshiva) girl? She told me in our interview: "I grew up in a Modern Orthodox home and I went to Orthodox day schools. I went to Hebrew Academy of Five Towns in Rockaways. I'm a Long Island JAP. When I went to Barnard, the whole world opened up for me."
Here's an excerpt of Goldstein's book that spoke to me: "There's been so much serious discussion devoted to the profound question of the vaginal vs. the clitoral orgasm. Why doesn't anyone speak about the mental orgasm? It's what's going on in your head that can make the difference, not which and how many of your nerve endings are being rubbed."
Nothing impure or smutty should be imputed to my writing of this post. My interests here are of the mind. They float on an airy intellectual plane far above the baser interests of lesser mortals in dear Alana.
My intentions, by contrast, are rigorous, professional, journalistic, mathematical, philosophical, and most of all, Jewish. They are imbued with my deep passion for releasing women from the bondage of secularistic feminism and setting them free to become the halakhic princesses they most want to be.
Err, excuse me. I'll be right back. I have to take my meds.
