All Hail the Conquering Havdala Hero

A hearty Yasher Koakh to Rabbi Eytan Kobre for his systematic and dispassionate demolition of Orthodox Feminism in the first issue of Dialogue Magazine.

The essential point that he makes is that the goals, aims, methods and alliances of the OrthoFems place them far outside the parameters of even the most liberal definition of Jewish Orthodoxy. In a certain sense this represents a rather modest proposal as labels of "Branches of Judaism" are a construct of fairly recent provenance, elastic and given to petty semantical parsing for wiggle room. Still, the erudite, thorough and literary polemic does leave the reader with the impression that it is an intolerance of basic Havdalos that fires the OrthoFem imagination. The segue into the sympathy that JOFA has for Orthodox Homosexuals further cements the notion that planned gender conflation and erasing any notion of innate differences between the genders is what the OrthoFems are all about.

My only objection to the magazine is that I did not receive a copy in the mail even though the first issue was rumored to have been sent gratis to a broad mailing list. It seems that I am as much of a non-person in the real world as I am in cyber-space. That said, I have borrowed a copy and am slowly making my way through it. I don't have it in front of me now but I hope to update this post with a throwaway line of Rabbi Kobres that essentially says that an awareness of havdolos and assigned roles is the baseline consciousness required of every Oved HaShem.

בא המבדיל והעמידן על אחת
"Those who cannot tolerate Havdala cannot appreciate Qedusha"