A Christmas Message to a Friend in Israel

Part of what I like abut Israel is actually meeting the crazies ... the cheredi. As with the fundies here, they are .. imo .. suffering from a psychosis.
Isn't it odd that we live in a world where anxiety as a treatable illness, anger is a disorder, alcoholism is a bad disease, but but belief in
a superhuman, demonic dictator, amoral being who kills his only begotten son is considered normal? Well, at least in Israel the crazies are my own.

We had a funny experience one day in Jerusalem. A smallish fellow, peyes and scraggly beard, dressed in medieval black and sweltering clothes with the deepest dark eyes came over to get me to doven with him. I do not mind this, though an atheist, I accept worship as part of tradition. But the guy .. he looked out of place. Turns out he is an Afghani Jew who had "accepted" membership in a cheredi sect. I wonder if there any Ethiopian Jews with dreadlocks (peyes) and fedorahs?

BTW .. do you know the Catholic meaning of NY Day? It is, vu denn, the feat of the holy prepuce! .. they celebrate a bris! Imagine an excavation in Bethlehem. An old synaguogue has been found, dating from the E year (as in CE and BCE). In the synaguougue are found an ossurary within which are the tools of a Mohel and small fragmetn of human skin, dried out over the millenia. ..................................