Word: halakhah
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...among the most powerful men in that country-and indeed in world Judaism. One is the spiritual leader for Israel's Ashkenazic Jews, the other the religious master of the nation's Sephardic Jews.* Each is entrusted with the complex and often controversial task of ruling on Halakhah-Jewish religious law -for his people. In Israel, where rabbinical authorities totally control such matters as marriage and divorce for Jews and influence their behavior in many phases of public life, the rulings are often critical to the very functioning of society. Last week the two elderly incumbents...
...first jump. During the Six-Day War, he made a point of trying to be first wherever he went -to the Wailing Wall, for instance, where he sounded the shofar (the traditional ram's horn). He is also admired as an astute scholar and consummate finder of Halakhah loopholes that more easily accommodate Orthodox observance to a technological world...
Yosef's wide respect results partly from his edifying family life (three of his eleven children are themselves rabbis), mainly from an immense erudition that made him a rabbinical-court judge at the age of 25. He is famous for being able to talk on Halakhah for hours on end, citing obscure Talmudic judgments without any notes at all. Though strictly Orthodox, Yosef can hand down opinions that have a liberalizing effect, as he did recently when he ruled that slacks (previously forbidden) were more modest than miniskirts for Israeli army girls...
...radar on the Sabbath by pointing out the soldier's compelling duty to preserve Israel's security. In a like vein, says Goren,"if it is essential [for an Orthodox policeman] to control traffic on the Sabbath, then the way must be found to do it within Halakhah...
...Issar Yehuda Unterman, 86, as the country's powerful Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi, perhaps some time this year. He is carefully attuned to Jewish law, but at the same time practical, eager to solve such modern problems as how to maintain a Sabbath police force without violating the strictures of Halakhah. Meantime, other branches of religious Judaism are gaining a foothold there. An increasing number of conversions performed by U.S. Conservative rabbis are now recognized by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Conservatives have eight synagogues in Israel, Reform has eight, and even Reconstructionism...