Word: jewish
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...full house this Sabbath evening at Temple Israel in New Rochelle, N.Y., and Weiss's proud family is in the third pew. In minutes she will be called to the Torah to chant from the sixth chapter of the Book of Numbers, her rite of passage into full Jewish adulthood. One is tempted to say, "Today Elaine Weiss is a woman," except that she has been one a while: she is 62. Nearby sit five other Temple Israel Bat Mitzvah girls (and a Bar Mitzvah boy), ranging from their 30s to their 70s. Today they are...happy...
...branches. In the Reform movement alone, 600 of some 900 congregations offer the necessary 18-or 24-month adult preparatory courses in Hebrew, ritual and Scripture. Both Reform and Conservative movements offer guides to facilitate the adult rite. Such ceremonies, says Jack Wertheimer, provost at the Conservative arm's Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, have not only "generated the spark of transformation within individuals [but] transformed congregational life...
...category of Bar Mitzvah ("son of the commandments") dates to the 2nd century; its formal celebration by Jewish boys goes back 500 years. Bat ("daughter") Mitzvahs, however, arose in the early 1900s and saturated liberal Judaism only in the 1970s. Inevitably, there was a generation of Jewish women who had fought for women's equal ritual participation but had themselves missed out on Bat Mitzvah training. "They got all these rights," says Lisa Grant, a professor of Jewish education at Hebrew Union College in Manhattan, "and realized that [ritually] they couldn't do anything. They felt like frauds...
...Island, N.Y. After serving as a Marine on Guadalcanal, he scored with best sellers set on the front lines of World War II (Battle Cry), the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (Mila 18), Israel (Exodus) and Palestine (The Haj). He also wrote his own epitaph; his tombstone will read: AMERICAN SOLDIER. JEWISH WRITER...
...summer of sex scandals in the heart of Europe - but be careful which heavy-breathing headlines you believe. German papers are full of allegations that Michel Friedman, a prominent Jewish leader, was one of 100 well-known men found to be frequenting Berlin prostitutes. (He has made no comment.) And the French are bewildered by events in Toulouse, where underworld figures have accused several local leaders of taking part in sadomasochistic orgies - and then ordering the execution of at least one witness who was preparing to expose them. In May, convicted serial killer Patrice Alègre confessed...