"Dinners with Ruth" and Moses

I am listening to a wonderful audiobook: Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships by Nina Totenberg, the NPR correspondent about her decades long friendship with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I am listening on my phone while I needlepoint in my craft studio.

I love this book with the themes of friendship between women, the power of women in the workforce and the beauty of marriage. I envy these women. "Dinner parties" were common in Washington, D.C. before the pandemic. A dinner party often wasn't massive, two or maybe three couples. People regularly hosted dinner for friends in their homes. I live in the other Washington, land of the Seattle Freeze, where dinner with friends isn't quite so common. I don't think the Seattle Freeze is a snobbiness. Rather, I think Seattle is city of introverts who aren't used to keeping the company of others.

As most Americans know, RBG was a tireless advocate for women's rights. Her main concern was that women be treated equal under the law. Nina's book delivers a fascinating look at the recent history of women's rights. Under the heading of "What the fuck?" was an Air Force policy back in the 1970s that said pregnant women officers were required to get abortions while they served or else they had to resign. I had no idea that such a rule ever existed. The female officer Susan Struck got pregnant, sued the U.S. government, and had her child. Ruth was on the team supporting the mother. The case was about to make it to the Supreme Court but then the U.S. military scrapped the rule, perhaps suspecting they were going to lose. 

Ruth I wonder what Ruth would have said to Moses about the Ten Commandments, specifically "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife." Since this is directed at people who have wives, it is okay then for women to covet someone's husband? I would love to hear her take on it. I wonder if she would have told Moses, "I dissent."