Word: seculare
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...society. Ethnic differences, exacerbated by social inequalities, strain relations between the Ashkenazi Jews of Northern Europe and the Sephardi Jews of the Mediterranean and the Muslim world. Religious quarrels set observant Orthodox Jews against the secular values of less pious Israelis. Lawlessness in general has risen sharply in a nation unused to it, and a small but flourishing Israeli "Mafia" has become an embarrassing new entry in international organized crime. A restive younger generation has shown growing dissatisfaction with the lack of job opportunities, the disruptive effects of compulsory military service, housing shortages and the political process...
Some of Israel's other troubling social problems are simply current manifestations of longstanding tensions, notably the antagonism between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews and the often violent clashes between Orthodox and more secular Jews. The differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim are ancient and real. The original Sephardim were the powerful Jews of Moorish Spain, who were expelled from the country in 1492 and dispersed to North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and Asia. (A smaller, later wave, who had taken temporary refuge in Portugal, later migrated to The Netherlands, Britain and the Americas...
...Nanjing Theological Seminary young men and women sit in freshly repainted classrooms, learning the basics of Protestantism-along with English and some other secular subjects. The seminary reopened in March, with 47 students selected from 500 applicants. It is the first school allowed to train clergy since 1966. That year Mao Tse-tung's Red Guards not only closed the place and arrested the faculty but wrecked the chapel and destroyed four-fifths of the books in the seminary's library...
...sperm. But does a collection of cells constitute a human being? Some biologists believe that fertilization does mark the beginning of humanity, since the fertilized egg is a distinct and unique genetic entity. This belief shores up the antiabortion argument of Catholic bishops as well as those of secular pro-life groups. John T. Noonan, a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, explains the church's theological position this way: "Once conceived, the being was recognized as man because he had man's potential. The criterion for humanity, .thus, was simple and all-embracing...
...depiction of Robert, the radical lecturer in chukka boots, we see Gordon's severest weakness: her drawing of male figures. All her men are foils for her heroines. Incomplete and inconsequential, they serve for Felicitas and Isabel to learn another part of the unvirtuous secular and as love objects for those women who leave the Church. All Gordon's men are childish and petulant, unworthy of love and eventually discarded...