WEEK IN RELIGION
On Dec. 6, about 100 women gathered to light menorahs at the Western Wall after Israel’s Attorney General’s Office demanded that women be allowed to participate in the annual national ceremony.
However, security guards only let 20 women into the holy site with their menorahs and tried to ban a large communal one. It was only allowed after a female government official used her parliamentary immunity to bring it in. The holy site’s Ultra-Orthodox administrator, Rabbi Rabinovitch, has also banned women from borrowing and reading from the Torah scrolls kept at the site. A lawsuit challenging this ban was filed against Rabbi Rabinovitch on behalf of four female Israeli activists.
SURVEY SAYS
Due to the current conflicts between science and religion, most people assume that a majority of scientists are atheist but a RiceUniversity study found this is not the case. The global study found that more than half of scientists in India, Italy, Taiwan and Turkey stated they were religious. However, researchers also reported that a country’s scientists are generally less religious than that same country’s given general population.
GOOD BOOK?
Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home ’ by Leah Lax
As a young teenager, Lax left her liberal, secular home for life as a Hasidic Jew partially to escape her hoarder-artist mother and mentally ill father. Thirty years, an arranged marriage and seven children later, she realizes she is gay and leaves the Hasidic lifestyle behind.
The fascinating and insightful memoir questions the choices we make and what we teach our children even as it demonstrates the need to face, understand and overcome obstacles to personhood.
— She Writes Press
THE WORD
Hanukkah: Pronounced “hah-nuh-kuh” : The Jewish Festival of Lights. It usually falls in early or mid-December. The eight-day holiday celebrates the Maccabees’ victory over the Syrians in the second century B.C. The Maccabees were a first- and second-century B.C. Jewish family that brought about the restoration of Jewish religious and political life. They also made several unsuccessful attempts to overthrow Roman rule in Judea.
— ReligionStylebook.com
RELIGION AROUND THE WORLD
According to the CIA World Factbook, the religious makeup of Israel is:
Jewish: 75 percent
Muslim: 17.5 percent
Christian:2 percent
Druze: 1.6 percent
Other: 3.9 percent
— More Content Now
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Groups fight for women’s religious rights at Jerusalem’s Western Wall