Word: ritualization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When a husband and wife in the market for a new car select the model they like and step into an auto salesman's conference room, a curious form of commercial ritual begins: haggling over the price. An alert salesman senses the moment of truth when prospective buyers wish to be alone to discuss the price, and he discreetly leaves the room. The FBI, in raids on two suburban Baltimore dealerships, has discovered that such private dickering is sometimes not so private. In at least two Maryland dealerships, unsuspecting buyers have talked about their bottom-line position in illegally...
...this night different from all other nights?" a child would ask at the Seder, the ritual meal on the first night of the week-long feast. Why the matzo? Why the bitter herbs? Then, as the family followed the rites set down in the Haggadah (literally, a "telling"), the old story would unfold: the bitter slavery under the Pharaoh and God's scourging of Egypt with plagues until the children of Israel were set free. And always, that last terrible plague, when the wrath of God slew the first-born of every Egyptian but passed over the houses...
This year North America's 1.1 million temple-affiliated Reform Jews have taken a giant step back into tradition. Their rabbinical body, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, has issued a new Haggadah, copiously and dramatically illustrated, that restores the old sense of ritual to the ancient celebration that begins this week. The plagues are back, though with a difference ("Our triumph is diminished by the slaughter of the foe"), and so is the closing wish for reunion in Jerusalem. The revised rite even endorses a search for the hametz, in which pieces of leavened bread are hidden...
...Administration. (Vice President Gerald Ford has made it clear that, should he become President, he would ask Kissinger to stay on.) Whatever private doubts Kissinger may have about Nixon's role in Watergate, he keeps them well hidden in public. Despite his immense prestige, the Secretary carefully preserves the ritual required of a subordinate who takes orders from a Commander in Chief. When in Washington, he consults daily with the President; on the road, he cables back reports and requests for foreign policy guidance when necessary...
...both the tower ritual and the Parsi community itself seem to be on the decline. As high-rise apartments go up around Malabar Hill, it has become easier to catch a glimpse of what was once forbidden to all but the tower attendants-a view of the interior of the towers, where the dead are left as carrion. Visiting one of the new buildings, a horrified Parsi was able to see shrunken corpses stacked in grotesque piles inside one tower. After he complained, a wall was quickly built to screen the tower. But Parsis now realize the shortcomings...