Word: ritualizes
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...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...
...commandments") dates to the 2nd century; its formal celebration by Jewish boys goes back 500 years. Bat ("daughter") Mitzvahs, however, arose in the early 1900s and saturated liberal Judaism only in the 1970s. Inevitably, there was a generation of Jewish women who had fought for women's equal ritual participation but had themselves missed out on Bat Mitzvah training. "They got all these rights," says Lisa Grant, a professor of Jewish education at Hebrew Union College in Manhattan, "and realized that [ritually] they couldn't do anything. They felt like frauds...
...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...
...makes many uneasy. "One can't help remembering that in the 1930s [restricting kosher slaughter] was one of Hitler's first laws, when he wanted to bring the Jewish way of life to a halt," says Michael Kester, head of the National Council of Shechita Boards, which oversees Jewish ritual slaughter...
...aspect." She also stresses that the report - the F.A.W.C.'s second in 17 years to call for an end to slaughter without stunning - has been in the works for four years. Similar exchanges took place in Switzerland last year, when the government proposed lifting its 19th century prohibition on ritual slaughter. Animal-welfare groups opposed the move and got so much public support that the government backed down. Thomas Lyssy, vice-president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, concedes that some opponents were motivated by genuine concern for animals. But he says, "part of it was motivated by anti...