Word: shem
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Hasidism is a mystical movement, founded in the mid-18th century by a rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name). His teachings, which emphasized the immediacy of God's presence in everyday life, quickly swept through the shtetls of Eastern Europe. Today there are 200,000 Hasidim in the U.S., divided into about 40 "courts." After several of these communities rebuffed Harris, she turned to the Lubavitchers, named after the Belorussian village adopted as home by their founder. The group, led by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, 83, blends the rational and emotional aspects of religion...
...long beard," reads a medieval Irish description. "The second ... beardless and ruddy-complexioned ... the third, black-skinned and heavily bearded." Scholars have suggested that the mix either was intended to underscore Christianity's world-wide ambitions or referred back to an earlier diverse threesome, Noah's sons Shem, Ham and Japheth...
...turns out, much of the fun of The Preservationist lies with Noe's daughters-in-law, who furnish him with a chatty, catty shipboard peanut gallery. His eldest son Sem (usually spelled Shem) is married to unflappable, pragmatic Bera, who gets stuck with a lot of the animal-gathering chores. "The problem with people who think that God will provide," she remarks tartly, "is that they think God will provide." Cham (Ham)--the most skeptical of the sons and the most sympathetic--is paired with mysterious, icy Ilya, a refugee from a northern land who subjects Noe's religious zeal...
...trick Rabbo was playing is based on the fact that the word “Semite” refers to descendents of the biblical figure Shem, the son of Noah. Arabs as well as Jews are supposedly descendants of this figure. There is a difference, though, between the etymology and the definition of a word, and this is a distinction that Rabbo pretended not to recognize. He used this verbal slight of hand to avoid addressing the shameful stain of Palestinian anti-Semitism...