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Hasidism is a mystical movement, founded in the mid-18th century by a rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name). His teachings, which emphasized the immediacy of God's presence in everyday life, quickly swept through the shtetls of Eastern Europe. Today there are 200,000 Hasidim in the U.S., divided into about 40 "courts." After several of these communities rebuffed Harris, she turned to the Lubavitchers, named after the Belorussian village adopted as home by their founder. The group, led by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, 83, blends the rational and emotional aspects of religion...
...author ends her project with mixed feelings about the Hasidim. "I'm more attracted to Judaism because of them," she says, but she sees little appeal in their way of life. As someone who believes in God but is also assimilated, remarks Harris, "I did not like the Lubavitchers' rigidity, the absoluteness of right and wrong that they perceived. I consider unsureness to be the proper condition of life." --By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Michael P. Harris/New York
...Missing Person, Father Leo sees action in Las Vegas. Ironically, the gambling town offers him better spiritual opportunities than the Star of the Sea convent, where he is chaplain: "The director of novices described herself as a 'Post-Christian' and at Easter sent out cards showing an Indian god ascending to the clouds with arms waving out of his sides like a centipede's. Some held jobs in town. The original idea had been for the nuns to serve the community in some way, but now they did what they wanted to do. One was a disc jockey...
Welch had his own way with similes: he described people "like bottles walking; their heads as inexpressive as round stoppers. What if some god or giant should bend down and take several of the stoppers out? I thought. Inside there would be black churning depths like bile, or bitter medicine." But it is his wary view of the adult world that lingers. Even a Punch and Judy show has an ominous significance: when Punch "began hitting the baby with hard wooden thuds I felt its skull crack and knew that none of us were safe while grown-ups thought that...
...Target has already been numbered and repeatedly renumbered. God blessed him with an easy Social Security number, something on the order of 007-17-1717,[*] but he is so often commanded to provide his wife's number that he had to memorize 018-22-0930, no easy feat in middle age. The New York Public Library knows the Target as 0000522838, while the Metropolitan Opera Guild thinks he is 212-711-2, Saks Fifth Avenue identifies him as 28 121 309, and Brooks Brothers calls him 296 2743 22. To the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, however...