Uman 2015 Confusion like in a mist, Absent clarity, like the dark airfield in Kiev, Rational mind seems the only operating system Mistrust of the irrational, this past year, Wasteland of spirituality, in the brain dead orthodoxy saturating my community, Cynicism, Agnosticism, Disbelief, Anger, A heart of stone, Arrival. Noise…Pushkena…bustling with suitcase pushing pilgrims, Blaring speakers spewing techno-‐pseudo-‐hassidic musak. Thongs of black hatted Haredim, Low life Israelis, in T shirts and tattoos, Many boys running in between, peyos flying, Cigarette city, smoke clouds, Trash everywhere, Stench of slops and sewage, Smoke infested lungs, where Rows of asthmatic sufferers sit in the clinic hooked up to oxygen and inhalers, Stalls selling kitsch, Toy guns everywhere, Hands waving in circles of dancing pilgrims shouting “Rebbe Nachman!” A cross-‐section of Israeli society, A spattering of westerners, Pretty boys from Brooklyn sporting Breitling watches, And tight jeans, Dazed kipah sruga-‐sporting intellectuals from the Gush looking so out of place Peyos flying everywhere, Uman is as usual. Though this year without the na nachs… And absent the Berland groupies… And Reb Itche Meir who flew in and then left just before Yom Tov (“Rabbeinu is in Jerusalem not here”)
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