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Late Bat Mitzvahs were the remedy. At first they took place outside the normal congregational context. "It was, talk to a rabbi, rent a hall, have your own experience," says Grant. But gradually, congregational rabbis realized that adult Bat Mitzvah classes drew spiritually curious baby boomers and--as it turned out--were a kind of synagogue superglue. They increased morale, turned a cadre of highly motivated women into fully equipped leaders and eventually attracted men who had somehow forgone Bar Mitzvah in their youth...
...painless gateway drug of cosmetic work--and plastic surgery was being touted in women's magazines and on talk shows. This has been a boon to surgeons, but it has turned plastic surgery into the new Las Vegas: once laced with glamour and vice, now opened up to boring normal people...
...death, but “Taps” has a way of putting things in perspective. Earlier this week, I had “one of those days.” Work was hectic, I had to run a gazillion errands and when my day was finally done, my normal bus route was under construction, so I had to take a bus the opposite direction to catch a train that would take me home. When I finally got to my apartment, I was hot, tired and cranky. I threw my stuff—and myself?...
...easy to see this as a kind of American Christian triumphalism." Says Azzam Tamimi, director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought: "Wherever I go, people say, 'Haven't you heard about American missionaries in Jordan waiting to go into Iraq?' These are educated people; under normal circumstances, the missionaries would not be a big deal, but now people find it very difficult to believe this is not a crusade against Islam on the part of the Bush Administration...
Some of the secrecy may be unnecessary. David English, executive director of a tentmaking assistance agency called Global Opportunities, points out that even in Saudi Arabia, one of the more restrictive Muslim-majority nations, "it has been clarified that if in the normal course of your work people ask about your faith, you're perfectly free to talk about it and explain it. There's a law against conversion--they're still not playing fair--but that much is O.K." Other experts say local leaders will often tolerate informal preaching as the price for Western expertise in other fields. Says...