Word: rituals
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Separate Worship. Like Catholicism, Judaism has traditionally treated women ambiguously. In the home, the Jewish mother is charged with considerable religious responsibility. She must not only preserve the ritual of celebrations but also see to it that her husband studies Halakhah, the body of Jewish religious law. Jewishness itself is determined by whether one is born of a Jewish mother, not of a Jewish father. Ancient Israel boasted seven women prophets, heroines such as Judith and Esther, and a judge, Deborah...
When Chief Justice Earl Warren ran the Supreme Court, he particularly enjoyed an old ritual: the formal welcoming of lawyers newly admitted to practice before the nation's highest tribunal. The lawyers loved Warren's warm remarks, which papered over the fact that admission is a relatively meaningless honor. All it takes is two sponsors, three years' good standing before the highest court of a state, and a $25 fee. Few lawyers actually practice before the Supreme Court, but those who are admitted proudly receive a suitable-for-framing certificate to adorn the office wall...
Warren Burger doubtless shared his predecessor's pleasure in the welcoming ceremony. But last term the ritual grew so popular that it involved 3,965 lawyers and typically consumed half an hour of every four-hour Supreme Court session. Last week the court decided to curb the century-old custom. Though lawyers may still appear personally, they will now be encouraged to apply by mail and receive their admission certificates from the postman, not the Chief Justice. The change will satisfy efficiency experts, but somehow it gives the whole enterprise the feel of a mail-order diploma mill...
...sympathy notes with the oft-told tale of his fiscal success in the brass business. Soon the daughter (Estelle Parsons), banished to Chicago for marrying a Jew, arrives for the funeral and winds up giving Gene a lecture on castrating fathers. After much simplistic agonizing, Gene finally delivers the ritual I-wanted-to-love-you valedictory and breaks out of the old man's brass grip...
America began as a ritual of rebirth-the world's best publicized new beginning. Now the original American Dream is dying by bits and pieces, and that is our panic. Do the new rituals represent fumbling attempts to initiate a second beginning? Is all the writhing and the agony, all the violent self-division, the schizophrenia of an old self dying, a new self being born? Are we witnessing, at last, the erratic rites of America's coming of age? Of its coming to a self-awareness chastened by defeats into being more human? It is too ^soon...