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From: R. Kovacs
Subject: Re: Gender (followup)
Date: 26 Tevet 5785
Dr. Rosenberg raises the question of how gentiles will understand our categories.
I am reminded of something my bubbe Rivka used to say. When my grandfather worried about what the neighbors would think, she would say, "di shkheynim kumen nisht tsu Shabbes." The neighbors are not coming to Shabbos dinner.
The specification describes self-attestation. The gentile users Dr. Rosenberg mentions, researchers, institutional partners, are not attesting to their own identity. They are reading attestations made by others. If the categories are unfamiliar, they can learn. We did not design the ketubah to be legible to gentiles.
There are limits to how much we should reshape our categories for external comfort.
—Yaakov Dovid Kovacs
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