Western Jewish
Bulletin
Si'ifiiif; Grenlcr Vtiiuaiiii'i-since I'J.iO
Reasons to Celebrate
Special days are marked in Milestones/23
Herzl and Moses    Posiiive Outlook
Historical figures join Vancouver's celebration of Israel's 50th/13
Israel has become a strong nation/27
$1.00 includes GST  MAY 8,1998/12 lYAR 5758
Lighting
birtliday candles
Students at Vancouver's Talmud Torah school watch with interest as one of their peers lights the caxKilee of a cake made in honor of Israel's 50th birthday and that of their school.
Talmud Torah students, past and present, gathered to celebrate these two milestones, no doubt wishing for another 50 years of success for both Israel and their school.
Our town
The immense growth of Vancouver's population has changed the face of the city. While this change is most obvious in the growth of residential neighborhoods around the downtown core, it has also affected housing prices and density in traditionally Jewish neighborhoods around Oakridge. In the second of a two-part series, the Bulletin looks at how high property prices in the city have helped spawn now Jewish communities in the suburbs.
Please see COMMUNITIES on page 8
Closing religious rifts a difficult task
Neeman Committee tries to address issues of Jewisli pluralism and find acceptable solutions
BAILA LAZARUS STAFF REPORTER
In tlie first in a scries on pluralism in the Jewish community, the Bulletin examines tlic conversion issue and tlie work of tlie Neeman Committee.
Last September, a teacher and three students arrived to start the school year at a new nursery in a Jerusalem suburb only to find the building bvamt to a shell.
Witliin the suburb, Mavesseret Zion, tliere had been an ongoing dispute between residents alliliated with tlie Ultra-Ortliodox Shas party and members of tlie Reform congregation, who have been trying to get land on wliich to build a synagogue.
It was believed that the scliool, run by the Reform group, was a casualty in the growing
Community Close-up
conflict in Israel between Orthodox Jews and their CoAsec^^lve and Reform counterparts. \.
The interaction between the more observant and less observant streams of Judaism is not limited to small suburbs. As Orthodox and more secular residents relocate, the religious character of neighborhoods change. Tliough many secular Jews living in Jerusalem, for
example, have . ......
been able to " maintain their ; lifestyle according to tlieir preferences, ; some are now ; being    pros- ^
sured to conform to a more religious way of life. In a recent series on Israel in the Globe and Mail, an apartment dweller said he came downstairs one day to fmd a notice telling him not to desecrate the Sabbath by playing music or watching television.
In addition to these growing tensions of day-to-day life witliin Israel, are the fialladiic (pertaining to religious law) questions
Please see CONVERSION on page 4 t ■
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