>You can be pretty sure the Patriarchs never wore anything of the kind...

Only because they didn't think of it at the time. Any religion that could come up with the concept of earlocks is capable of anything. (Yes, I know that came along much later.) Oh, and thanks for adding the word "ushankar" to my vocabulary. Now I can drop it casually into conversations and impress my friends. I took Russian for a year at university, but for some reason they never taught me that word.

Brunnen-"I don't know anything about Hasidic Judaism, but I'm always ready to learn"G