Word: seculare
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Yitzhak Shamir is virtually besieged. Infuriated American Jewish leaders have descended on Jerusalem to berate the Prime Minister for promising to meddle with Israel's definition of who is a Jew. Thousands of angry calls and letters flooded his office, and secular Israelis took to the streets to denounce religious coercion. Acknowledged one Shamir aide: "I'd say he's got a bit of a problem on his hands. Blood pressures are soaring...
...chief legal precedent governing religious displays on public property comes from a 1984 Supreme Court case, Lynch v. Donnelly, which ruled that the city of Pawtucket, R.I. could retain a holiday display containing Christmas symbols because it included sufficient room for secular expression...
Peres adamantly opposes any change in the Law of Return, but the religious parties have a great deal more on their wish lists that troubles Labor. They seek to bring a far greater degree of religious observance to the largely secular state, and they want to ensure their hold on power by resisting any changes in the complex electoral laws that now favor them...
...from electing a strong, united government. As Gad Ya'acobi, a Laborite and Minister of Economics and Planning, noted, "We have institutionalized the tyranny of the minority." To put together a slim majority, Shamir will have to accommodate not only the four religious parties but also three extreme-right secular factions whose platforms all advocate annexing the occupied territories...
...secular society, many are willing to make that sacrifice, and Judaism must learn to live with it, in the view of many liberal rabbis. "Any way you look at it, intermarriage is an inevitable consequence of an open society," says Eugene Mihaly, vice president of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. "A very high percentage of Jewish young people go to college and at a marriageable age come in contact with non-Jewish students. It's only natural that some of them should fall in love." The best course, he maintains, is to welcome the influx, through marriage, of seekers, some...