Word: religion
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...merit common to the members. (As, to some extent, is membership in Harvard College itself; residence in a sparsely populated state distinguishes many a successful applicant from Great Neck peers consigned to the Other Place.) Those chances once included being of the right sex, income bracket, family, race, and religion. Now only one circumstance remains sine qua non. As the luck of being born female is prerequisite to becoming a Cliffie, that of being born male is necessary to becoming a Clubbie...
...they simply shouldn't be here, and Harvard shouldn't have anything to do with them." Jake Stevens '86, a member of the Committee on College Life, puts it less broadly, "The Committee acts under the assumption that no College group may discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation or physical disability," quickly adding that it occasionally grants some exemptions. (I think at once of the physical disability--weight 112 pounds--that excluded me from the football team I yearned to join in my youth...
...Theologically, the tenet of gratitude is seen as the opposite of original sin because it grasps God as the source of all that is good. Mary Paul translates this idea into appreciation: "The staff truly appreciates the people they represent." Both she and Geraldine de-emphasize the role of religion in the center's work. It never seems to be mentioned, and both staff and clients represent all faiths and none. But faith is clearly at the core of the nuns' own lives, though it is a private business with them, and both must be prodded to discuss...
There is one sign of a thaw. Last month Jewish leaders were notified that Eliyahu Essas, the leader of the Jewish religion and culture movement in the Soviet Union, would be allowed to leave the country. Essas, 42, a mathematician, has been waiting for an exit visa for twelve years. Some Jewish leaders are optimistic about an airlift. Says one source close to the negotiations: "The Soviets haven't said when or how many, but they've indicated they'll do it." For Soviet Jews, this could be the first crack in what might be an opening door...
This is the humor of an outraged moralist, a writer who takes his corruption and evil seriously. Much contemporary satire gets by on contrived conspiracies, abstract villainy and stock victims. The Building offers an older and more enduring view of human nature. Its characters get no points for race, religion, origin, social position or physical condition. Sin is apportioned without prejudice. The only salvation is madness or art, which may be the same thing. One tenant lectures to cockroaches; a painter cannot turn off his vision: "If he stops it will continue to come, escaping through his head into...