Dear Jochen,
Thankyou very, very much for writing
such an expansive, description-rich letter. 
 
My guess is that Nathaniel,
realizing the depth of your relationship to classical music,
your sophisticated understanding and original turn of mind,
wants to learn what your ideas are about pieces of music
that he is newly encountering as a thoughtful adult,
and hearing analyzed by his teachers. 
 
What is this "religious abstinence" that Rebekah decries in you? 
Is it a matter of not observing religious holidays or
carrying out the rituals of Judaism or Christianity? 
Have you given her a chance to learn of your partnership with God?
 
Is Rebekah headed for medical school, or somewhere else?
 
I'm reading a just-published book by Michael Goldfarb,
former London Bureau Chief for NPR, titled "Emancipation".
It traces the history of European countries'
granting citizenship rights to Jews,
enabling them to emerge from the ghettos physically and intellectually;
how this affected European culture,
scholarship and the arts,
and what it did to Jewish religious life and culture. 
It's a subject I'm keenly interested in and disturbingly ignorant about. 
Already in the first 25 pages I have come across
two names you mentioned in recent email that I knew nothing about:
Lessing and Phaedon. 
(I know you're shocked, but there it is.)
 
In reply to one of your (understandable and sensible) concerns about Feminism, I agree that there will be some women and men who regret that society no longer automatically endorses that women should focus on housekeeping and childrearing while leaving the bread-winning to males.  Yet such relationships will still be possible and will be chosen as their life-model by some.  In fact, choosing this old-fashioned way will help cement and strengthen these relationships, as each partner feels fortunate to have found someone who realizes the value of this, now, uncommon life-style.  And they will feel the exhilaration of re-enacting marriage as it was in the past.
 
Perhaps you're aware that, as American women became more demanding and assertive, numerous American men sought wives from East Asia specifically so they could marry someone who expected to be subservient to her husband in the traditional way.  Matchmaker businesses were set up to provide the brides, and continue to do so.
 
One source of future problems, I expect, is that men can now think of their prospective or current wives as providing income.  "Trophy wives" might soon have a different meaning than 'unusually attractive'.  I guess it's ironic that, in trying to move away from a past in which women and children were the possessions of men, like their cattle, we have urged women to become, like cattle, the producers of an income stream.
 
On the bright side, having a wife and children solely dependent on the man for sustenance and economic well-being, frequently put inordinate pressure on the man.  If he was going through economic hard times, it wasn't primarily his own hardship that haunted him, but the suffering and reproach (even when imagined) of his family.  Moreover when things were on a relatively even keel, if a wife longed for a more oppulent lifestyle, the only avenue to get it was to pressure and manipulate her husband into working harder, seeking a promotion, etc. Feminism should be providing a rememdy here.
 
Thankyou so much for taking me with you on your strolls here and there ( to your houses, the ferry, the subway, the celebrations) so I can learn what life seems like to you.  Ginger Ale.  An excellent choice.
 
Marion