Word: westernness
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...might have been the jet lag, or the Bushmills, or the fact that I don't sing and can't dance, but my cousin's wedding, in an artists' colony in western Galilee, had left me feeling a little disjointed. Like most clean-shaven agnostic half-Jews, I get slightly nervous around Hasidim, perhaps because we can't both be right about life. And though my cousin is of mixed-blood, like me, and was never particularly religious, his wedding guests included real-deal Hasids: Ultra-Orthodox men chanting and praying and rocking back and forth, in their fedora hats...
...Since assuming power last month, the government has embarked on a radical new approach to extremism that favors reconciliation over the military force that was the hallmark of President Pervez Musharraf's strategy for the past several years. Western diplomats have watched from the sidelines with unease. While they encourage reconciliation with low-level militants and tribal leaders, when it comes to al-Qaeda and top-level commanders, "you have got to draw the line," says one. "We have lists of people that are probably irreconcilable...
...cults led by charismatic tyrants. But this is a group with a tangled history many generations deep. Renegade sects have kept polygamy alive by settling far from neighbors in places like the desert canyon lands of Utah and Arizona, the villages of northern Mexico and the alpine valleys of western Canada. They have intermarried and interbred to the point that, in the words of author Jon Krakauer, their "relationships are almost impossible to make sense of without a flowchart." One figure in Krakauer's best-selling history of the sects, Under the Banner of Heaven, was both "sister wife...
...fact, when asked whether Latvia’s geopolitical interests align more with Western Europe or Russia in the post-Putin era, Vike-Freiberga said that “there is not even a question...
...grand palace. It was here that the yogi, T. Krishnamacharya, developed Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga - a comparatively aerobic style whose devotees include the likes of Madonna and Sting, and thousands of hipsters from Tokyo to New York. But it was necessity, rather than the body-toning concerns of Western fashionistas, that shaped Krishnamacharya's style: Most of his students were restless young boys, and he found that the best way to focus their attention for purposes of meditation was to put them through a rigorous regimen of strenuous postures, struck in quick succession to minimize mental distraction. Today, the style appeals...