Word: reformer
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...many predicted, the Republicans--and Oliver--have been helped by the campaign-finance reform enacted last year. Championed chiefly by Democrats, the law bans soft-money donations--unlimited sums given to political parties mostly by corporations--and raises the ceiling on hard-money gifts by individuals. Republicans have a bigger and wealthier donor base, so they have been better at the new, purely hard-money game. The Democrats, with a smaller base, depended on a short list of deep-pocketed donors who wrote large soft-money checks...
...high summer of the adult Bat Mitzvah. The ritual retrofitting is becoming standard in Judaism's Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist 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...
...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...
...role of radio in Asia began to shift in the 1980s, when the first shoots of democratic reform sprouted across the region. When Corazon Aquino led her bloodless revolution to overthrow Marcos in 1986, she was determined to use the airwaves once more. As citizens gathered in the steamy heat of their shacks, they heard then police chief and future President Fidel Ramos boast on the radio that the military had abandoned Marcos to join the people's cause. An exaggeration, to be sure. But the crow of victory prompted thousands to flood the streets and give the people-power...