Word: secularism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Peres adamantly opposes any change in the Law of Return, but the religious parties have a great deal more on their wish lists that troubles Labor. They seek to bring a far greater degree of religious observance to the largely secular state, and they want to ensure their hold on power by resisting any changes in the complex electoral laws that now favor them...
...secular society, many are willing to make that sacrifice, and Judaism must learn to live with it, in the view of many liberal rabbis. "Any way you look at it, intermarriage is an inevitable consequence of an open society," says Eugene Mihaly, vice president of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. "A very high percentage of Jewish young people go to college and at a marriageable age come in contact with non-Jewish students. It's only natural that some of them should fall in love." The best course, he maintains, is to welcome the influx, through marriage, of seekers, some...
...outrage when a young father or mother dies, leaving two kids, or two old people who have spent 50 years together are parted." She is sustained by her belief that "this isn't the end, and parting isn't forever." For those who take a more secular view of death, there are very practical reasons for the hospice philosophy. "We must not lose the chance," she says, "of making good on a great deal of untidiness in our lives, or of making time to pack our bags and say, 'Sorry, goodbye and thank you.' " There are many in the world...
Although the pledge has seeped into the popular imagination as a paean to patriotism, religious groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses, who are forbidden to swear secular oaths, have repeatedly gone to court to keep it from becoming a mandatory ritual. In 1972 a federal appeals court ruled that an upstate New York teacher had a right to refuse to participate in the pledge in her classroom. "Patriotism that is forced is a false patriotism," Judge Irving R. Kaufman wrote, "just as loyalty that is coerced is the very antithesis of loyalty...
...stark contrast to the worldly reformer and sage is the notion of Jesus as a stern prophet who predicted the coming judgment of God. This Jesus, unlike the more secular versions, had a keen sense of his mission and knew that his death would fulfill it. He was clearly influenced by John the Baptist's preaching of repentance and perhaps by the apocalyptic warnings of the Essenes, the Jewish sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls...