As if Agriprocessors/Rubashkin’s isn’t keeping PETA’s hands full enough, Italian animal activists, citing Pope Benedict’s well-known love of cats, are calling on the pontiff to stop wearing fur in his official ceremonial raiment.
This is eerily reminiscent of a series of incidents earlier this summer in Jerusalem, where legions of Viznitz Hasidim are snatching each other’s streimels–the fur hats that married Hasidic men often wear–and holding them hostage. YNet writes, “In recent weeks, the brawls between the camps have intensified, with both sides snatching each other’s shtreimels. During the peacemaking, each camp returns the other’s goods stolen in the last strife.”
Ironically, all of this fighting and petitioning is happening in the summertime. Not that that means a thing when dealing with religious rituals….
Hasidic
Pronounced: khah-SID-ik, Origin: Hebrew, a stream within ultra-Orthodox Judaism that grew out of an 18th-century mystical revival movement.
