> >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.)

The earlocks came first, as God decreed in Leviticus... "You shall not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard". That would suggest guys with goatees would have been in biiiig trouble back then. ;)

I think the curly earlocks look totally cool.


> Oh, and thanks for adding the word "ushankar" to my vocabulary.

No problemo. You're welcome.


> 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

Brunnen-G, do you have any idea what the word or phrase "YISH-na-mar" might mean in Russian or Yiddish or a Slavic language? I don't know what it means, but I guess from the emphatic intonation it's a mighty fine swear word.