On Monday there was a table on the corner of 24th St. and Noe in San Francisco. Two young men with yarmulkes were blowing rams horns and selling them at a table.
The men were from the neighborhood Chabad, which recently opened in Noe Valley. Chabad is part of the esoteric traditions of Judaism. The larger category of Chabad is Chassidic. I would guess that there are some common roots with Sufism. In some parts of Chabad there are ecstatic rights of wine, song and dance.
I asked both men what reaction they were getting, standing in the capital of San Francisco Lefty Fundamentalism … one hundred feet from the Global Exchange, a store owned by Medea Benjamin, mother of sandbox anti-Americanism (and long time supporter of Adolph Arafat.) They said: ‘lefties can be nice as individuals on the street. They are fine, decent people, if they aren’t showing off in a group.’