Word: often
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...They replaced much of the Hebrew liturgy with English. Their platform pledged allegiance to traditional Judaism's moral laws (avoiding the Hebrew word mitzvoth) but dismissed ritual observances such as rules for keeping kosher as "entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state." Visitors to Reform temples were often asked to remove their yarmulkes...
Stupidity is one of my favorite subjects. "It is always amazing," Jean Cocteau wrote, "no matter how often one encounters it." Like sleep, stupidity is a universal, surreal and mysterious phenomenon, a brownout, the mind passing through a tunnel. Sometimes stupidity is hilarious; most of the world's jokes are told by one ethnic group about the stupidity of another ethnic group. In its sinister forms, stupidity turns up as evil's incompetent half brother--evil without supernatural prestige. The "Evil Empire" was, in a more practical sense, the stupid empire; systemic stupidity, not evil or good, brought the Soviet...
John Sayles is a filmmaker at home everywhere in the world--mythical South American countries (Men with Guns), Texas border towns (Lone Star), West Virginia a long time ago (Matewan). But wherever he goes, he finds ordinary people who turn out to have extraordinarily complicated back stories--stories that often have kinks in them that even they are unaware...
...often that a Supreme Court decision prompts an after-school discussion between my fourth-grader and me. But last week the court ruled that schools are obligated to protect students from aggressive sexual harassment, and suddenly my daughter and I were talking jurisprudence. Our interest in the case of Davis v. Monroe County School Board was sparked by the story of the plaintiff, LaShonda Davis, a fifth-grader who was repeatedly groped and propositioned by a boy in her class...
Teachers will often urge a child to solve a problem herself. But while that is a necessary skill on the playground and in the rest of life, serious sexual harassment usually cannot be handled by a child acting alone. If your daughter tells you she is being sexually bullied, first of all believe her. She has already done the hardest thing by coming to you. Go to the school and discuss the matter with your child's teachers and administrators, and follow up in writing...