Word: ritual
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What will he do if a war breaks out on the Sabbath? the comedians asked. The answer is simple: he will break every ritual prohibition he needs to. Jewish law, the comedians and others are learning, not only permits it. Jewish law requires...
They will learn that the rabbis seized upon an otherwise innocuous passage in Leviticus--God instructing the Israelites to observe his commandments and "live by them"--as an injunction not to die by them, and thus a subordination of all ritual to the higher value of preserving life...
This realization undermines the centuries-old myth of Judaism as severe and unforgiving, a slave of Pharisaic ritual, as opposed to the grace and charity of its progeny religion. Lieberman will not dethrone Shylock, still the single most influential Jewish figure in Western culture, for whom the law is pitiless law. But Lieberman's prominence and practice will illuminate the little-appreciated fact that Rabbinic Judaism is an attempt to take a very stark document--the Bible--and, by interpretation and adaptation, make it habitable for fallible human beings...
...other great myth awaiting demystification is that traditional Judaism eschews spirituality in favor of petty, highly detailed ritual. Hence the sport that commentators have had trying to figure out what Vice President Lieberman would do on the Sabbath. Well, he rests on the Sabbath. The rabbis define rest in very specific ways: no traveling, no carrying, no writing, no telephones, no use of electricity...
...Harvard Lampoon, have come in handy for her father. When he appeared on the Tonight Show last February, she coached him on how to answer Jay Leno's inevitable question about the regular pounding the Vice President gets from late-night comedians. "Actually, we have kind of a family ritual," he deadpanned. "We just sit around the dinner table every night around 11:30 and make jokes about you." But Kristin--a favorite with the campaign staff--prefers to stay in the background, running the photocopy machine with the volunteers as her older sister Karenna communes with the Gore campaign...