Sabbath buses barrel through Israel’s religious-secular rift

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Tel Aviv has taken a major step to cement its status as Israel’s secular mecca, launching public transportation services on the Jewish sabbath and redrawing the lines in the country’s culture wars between religious and secular citizens. The defiant move circumvents the law and upends a decades-long status quo keeping public transit largely off the streets from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday throughout most of the country. “This is a revolution,” said Nitzan Horowitz, the head of the dovish, secular Democratic Union party.