Word: judaisms
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...decision to clear the Jews of deicide. It also lurks behind the bishops' 1988 guidelines, which, in micromanaging prospective productions, strive so earnestly to help modern auteurs sidestep the Passion plays' excesses. "Presentations ... should [avoid] any implication that Jesus' death was a result of religious antagonism between a stereotyped 'Judaism' and Christian doctrine," they warn. "It is not sufficient for [artists] to respond to responsible criticism simply by appealing to the notion that 'It's in the Bible.' One must account for one's selections...
...Growing up in a family that is half Catholic and half Muslim, I became accustomed to the idea that people can have different religious convictions and still live together in harmony. Even though the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have big differences, they also have many things in common. It is natural to have different beliefs. Many people around the globe are born into religions that they accept as a way of life. Instead of always trying to make others see our point of view, perhaps we should accept that every religion is a path...
...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...
...familiarizing more adults with language and liturgy, the trend helped fuel liberal Judaism's escape from a somewhat arid buy-Israel-bonds communalism into greater ritual and spiritual engagement. A case in point was Reform Judaism's 1999 public recommitment to the use of Hebrew in its services: "You've learned how to pray in Hebrew," says Rabbi Sue Ann Wasserman of Reform's Union of American Hebrew Congregations. "Why shouldn't you use it?" The women's group Hadassah periodically celebrates the ascendant rite with mass Bat Mitzvahs of as many as 122 women...
...obscure the singular journey implicit in every adult Bat Mitzvah, Elaine Weiss's included. Weiss grew up Orthodox. Her brothers were Bar Mitzvahed--she remembers flinging celebratory candy from the women's balcony--but she never even took Hebrew. Feeling "empty" at mostly Hebrew services, she gravitated to Reform Judaism, whose prayer book provides English translations. A son was Bar Mitzvahed at Temple Israel and two daughters Bat Mitzvahed. But something was still wrong. One day Weiss visited the grave of a grandfather who had been a rabbi. She could not read the Hebrew on his headstone...