Word: shearim
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...Shabbes." In Jerusalem each Friday afternoon, as the sun dips behind the old, whitish buildings and the Sabbath begins with the sound of a horn, black-coated men with beards and side curls scurry through the orthodox Jewish district known as Mea Shearim (Hundred Gates) to roll heavy stones across the entrances to the quarter. Thus they make sure that for the next 24 hours-until the first three stars are visible on Saturday night-there will be no profanation of their self-imposed "ghetto" by "heathen" Jews who do not observe the Sabbath. No one smokes or turns...
...move through Mea Shearim (although exceptions are sometimes made for ambulances...
...city like a heavy prayer shawl. The strong orthodox contingent in Jerusalem's city government has seen to it that public transportation is banned from the streets; shops and cinemas are closed. For the unobservant Jews, who make up about half Jerusalem's population outside Mea Shearim, the Sab bath became a day of insufferable tedium...
Last fall some enterprising truck drivers began to run Sabbath excursions for young boys and girls, packing them in for a day of swimming, ice cream, fun and games in the country. But the elders of Mea Shearim began turning up after morning prayers at the truckers' parking lots to yell "Shabbes" (Yiddish for Sabbath) at the holiday makers, often adding such insults as "sons of whores, abominations, unclean creatures." Last month Jerusalem saw a wave of violence, with orthodox Jews stopping cars and roughing up their occupants or beating up those seen smoking publicly on the Sabbath...
...last week, as the Knesset debated the bill, 10,000 Orthodox Jews from the Mea Shearim and from all over Israel converged on Shaarei Hessed Square in the biggest anti-government demonstration in Israel's troubled history. Red-eyed from weeping, they swayed and wailed, prayed, and blew upon the ram's horn, a signal of national distress. Despite their prayers, the conscription bill passed the first Knesset reading...