Word: sabbath
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...40th President raised his right hand and made the ritual pledge to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." The ceremony was private; the Inaugural date required by the Constitution, Jan. 20, fell on a Sunday this year, and Reagan had the political sense not to upstage either the Sabbath or the Super Bowl.* The ceremony was limited to the President and the Vice President and 95 guests: family and friends, the Cabinet, Congressional leaders and the President's closest aides. For the first time ever, news cameras were allowed to record the scene. Later in the day, Reagan arranged...
FOOTNOTE: *James Monroe, the first President-elect faced with a Sabbath Inaugural Day, decided to wait until Monday, leaving the nation technically leaderless for a few hours. Woodrow Wilson took the oath of office on a Sunday in 1917 in a private ceremony but staged a formal Inaugural for public consumption the next day. So did Dwight Eisenhower...
Matters are complicated by the blacks' religious practices, which differ from those of most Jews. They believe in the Torah, the basic Jewish Scriptures, observe the Sabbath and dietary laws, and are circumcised. The Talmud, Jewish law and its interpretation, seems never to have reached them, however, because of their geographic isolation. The issue of whether the Ethiopians are even Jews was not settled in Israel until 1972. That was when Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef decreed that the Falashas are "undoubtedly of the tribe of Dan," the inhabitants of the biblical land of Havileh in what is today...
...powers. They approve all marriages, divorces and adoptions. Their political clout, moreover, grew during the Begin years. In order to win the support of Agudat Yisrael, the religious party that had four sometimes crucial seats in the Knesset, Begin made several concessions. He forbade El Al flights on the Sabbath, losing an estimated $30 million a year, and pushed through a law limiting autopsies, which violate Orthodox beliefs. Begin also agreed to push the highly controversial "Who is a Jew?" legislation, which would amend Israeli law to ensure that the only converts granted citizenship are those who undergo Orthodox rites...
...home front, the next Prime Minister will have to deal with the growing friction between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews. Tensions have arisen over issues ranging from burial practices to bus service on the Sabbath. In Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, a dispute has broken out over whether restaurants and cinemas could be opened on the Sabbath. The "ultraOrthodox" Jews, as they are known in Israel, have repeatedly battled police in their protests against archaeological digs outside Jerusalem's Old City. When a university professor inadvertently drove through one of their neighborhoods in Jerusalem on a Friday night, thus violating...