Word: ritualization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ritual observances are important, says Riskin, not only because they are God-given, but because "they fulfill our transcendental needs. Our lives require an element of poetry. Moments of the past and of the future become part of us." Above all, Rabbi Riskin defends the "divine rhythm" of the Sabbath and the festivals as welcome glimpses of eternity in a maddeningly busy world. He himself is active in causes ranging from prison visits to rallies for Soviet Jews, but the Sabbath is a day that bears no interruption beyond its rituals. As Riskin sees it, "the Sabbath needs structure...
Clashes between Japanese students and police have long had the ritual quality of a classic No play. First would come the students, helmeted and frequently masked with towels. From under a forest of red banners, they would let go a barrage of stones for a salutation. The police, brandishing nightsticks, would retaliate with exploding tear-gas charges. Even in the most impassioned confrontations, however, the actors on both sides rigidly adhered to an unwritten law: no killing...
...writers assume the proportions of brutal historical forces. Significant blows are struck. White buries his weapon in black's brain. Black directs a castrating swipe at white's sexuality. Malamud himself brings the curtain down with the brooding thought that at the moment of ritual bloodletting each felt the anguish of the other...
...climax of the work is the disruption of the Mass. It also involves the spiritual shattering of a young man who begins as a simple guitarist and gradually becomes a priestly celebrant by receiving various sacred vestments-just as the church itself gradually acquired more and more trappings of ritual. Eventually, when he attempts to offer the mob Holy Communion, the symbolic body and blood of Christ, they cry out, "Dona nobis pacem [Give us peace]!" and blame God because man has not abolished war on earth: "Give us peace that we don't keep breaking...
Puff and Pretensions. The expressed notion that religious ritual is empty because the world still behaves as if it were pretty much the devil's province, that because man has failed on earth God has failed too is common enough. According to individual taste, one can greet it with a hosannah, a miserere nobis or a sancta simplicitas. Bernstein, after all, is an artist and entertainer, not a theologian. But even his stagecraft, his taste and his music, despite many delights and flourishes, reflect a basic confusion...