Word: sabbath
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...cause is Jerusalem's four-year-old 420-room Hilton Hotel. The city's chief rabbi, Bezalel Zolty, 57, has yanked the five-star Hilton's certificate of kashruth, or kosher status. Reason: in his view, the hotel was violating the law of the Sabbath. As the agonized Hilton management knows all too well, the lifting of kosher status is a devastating blow in a country that annually receives half a million Jewish tourists, many of them devoutly Orthodox...
...Israeli religious leader had ever before enforced Halakah (Jewish religious law) in Zolty's fashion. Traditionally, a hotel qualified for kosher status if it adhered to Jewish dietary laws. Zolty insisted that hotels should strictly observe Jewish Sabbath law as well. Said he: "If there is no Sabbath observance, there is no kashruth. One can't have faith in one without the other...
Zolty, who was elected last November as Jerusalem's first chief rabbi in recent times, is demanding a hefty slice of faith from the hoteliers. The key aspect of Sabbath observance, so far as he is concerned, is the proscription on the holy day of "creative work." Among other things, creative work can include writing (even signing a hotel bill), turning on a light, and using a telephone. Basing his interpretation of the halakah on Leviticus 19:14 ("Thou shalt not curse the deaf nor put a stumbling block before the blind"), Zolty declared that "a Jew shouldn...
...demands that he presented last August to the 18 local hotels that seek kashruth certificates. Among the demands: use only automated equipment and non-Jewish employees to heat food and wash dishes on Saturdays; abolish Saturday check-out except for emergencies; and program hotel elevators on the Sabbath so that Jewish users will not have to push floor buttons. Zolty also requested the Hilton to eliminate Christmas and New Year's parties and decorations. "In a Jewish hotel, one doesn't hold Christmas parties or any parties for other faiths," he said. "How would it be if Jews...
...shown this U.S. proposal. "This is much better," he says. "I think we're getting somewhere." But Sadat tells Carter he still wants Palestinians to have right to select their own form of government and something must be done about Jerusalem. Carter sees Begin for four hours after the Sabbath ends, meeting until 12:30 a.m., pins down Begin's agreement to buck the settlements issue to the Knesset. "For the first time, we started thinking it might work," says one U.S. official...