Word: hasidim
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...also laid the cornerstones for several major Hasidic projects in Israel, including a new five-story rabbinical-study center, a new housing project near Tel Aviv, an old people's home. Perhaps his most dramatic operation concerns Tel Aviv's long-embattled public swimming pool, which the Hasidim consider an outrage because it permits mixed bathing. Teitelbaum and his backers are trying to buy the pool from the two collectives that own it, are reported ready to offer $140,000. If the offer is turned down, Teitelbaum will order mass demonstrations by his followers. Says...
...Hasidim, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum. leader of Brooklyn's famed Williamsburg Hasidic community, is "king of all rabbis, holiest of all Jews, greatest benefactor of our generation." Last week, the aging (73), frail, militantly anti-Zionist rabbi was in the Holy Land, rousing new support for his private war against the state of Israel...
...partisans hark back to the Hasidim (pious ones) who flourished in 18th century Poland. But unlike other modern Hasidic sects-which are devoted to a kind of cheerful mysticism and have no objections to Israel-Teitelbaum's followers are fanatically opposed to most aspects of modern life, including military service, voting, movies and TV, mixed gatherings of men and women. They live in self-imposed ghettos, speak only Yiddish since they consider Hebrew sacred and reserved for prayers. Their opposition to Israel rests on two beliefs: 1) only the Messiah can establish a Jewish state, and any human attempt...
Then there was singing, followed by toasts ("L'chayim!"-to life), followed by more singing, and the first of many talks by the Rebbe, during which everyone remained standing. The Rebbe spoke on the four levels on which, according to the Hasidim, the Bible is written: p'shat or literal meaning, d'rush or simple allegory relating to moral teachings, remez or "the hint" of the mystical relation between man and God, and sod, the secret, dealing with esoteric cosmological matters accessible only to students of the cabala...
These mourners of Isaac Friedman were of the Hasidim, a cult of Judaism that had its origin among the Polish Jews in the 18th Century, as a movement of popular protest against the strict ritualism and insistence upon the immutability of the law as propounded by the Talmudists, or orthodox rabbis, whom the Hasidim call the Mitnaggedim, or "opposition." The belief in the miraculous powers of their rabbis, and in the blood-kinship with David of a line of rabbis now represented by Isaac Friedman's 17-year-old son, is essentially mystical and emotional in character. Orthodox Jews...