Word: secularity
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...easier to reconcile Israel's Ashkenazim and Sephardim than to bridge the chasm between the country's powerful Orthodox Jews and those who hew to more liberal religious views, or simply to secular values. The state is secular, but in personal matters the strict judgments of the Orthodox Rabbinates rule, a hangover from the years when the British, following Ottoman Empire custom, left such powers in the hands of local religious leaders. Thus marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption-all are under the jurisdiction of the religious, not civil, courts. The 250,000 Orthodox Jews wield a political clout...
...been scrapped because the best site was near an Orthodox community -and its inhabitants abhor Sabbath soccer. A bypass has been built around the Kiryat Zanz district in the northern part of the city to circumvent a longstanding, almost ritual, conflict: violent clashes that erupt almost every Saturday between secular neighborhood bands and militant vigilantes, who are so strictly Orthodox that they do not allow cars to drive on their streets on the Sabbath...
...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...