Word: ritually
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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...
...restoration of traditional Passover flavor to the new Haggadah reflects a widespread new interest in ritual practices among Reform Jews (TIME, Nov. 26). But the editor of the new Haggadah, Rabbi Herbert Bronstein of Glencoe, Ill., emphasizes that the restorations are not a return to literalism. The phrase "Next year in Jerusalem," for instance, may be a "present physical longing" for many, but it "speaks also in the mode of our mystics, of the homecoming of all existence...
...profusion of optional readings and songs may confuse those who prefer a follow-by-rote handbook to one that allows many individual variations. For the confused, though, the Haggadah's liturgists promise some help next year: a cassette recommending the best ways to use this rich and innovative ritual...