Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me Uman

Since Kels has been putting me to shame in blog post frequency yet again, I figured I had to share a story that is a few weeks old now.

A little while back, Kels, Charis, and I were walking through the market near our home when a van with an interesting picture on the side of a man who looked vaguely like Santa Claus drove by very slowly blasting weird Hebrew techno music.  As we watched confusedly, the driver of the van pulled over and a few young Orthodox Jews, looking like they had spent the prior 48 hours on a pot-smoking binge and dressed in all white rather than the traditional black, hopped out and started dancing wildly in the street.  Instead of seeing the mystified look on my own face reflected on the faces of the other Israelis standing on the street, I saw smiles creep across and in a couple cases people actually joined in the dancing.

It turns out, this was a sect known as the "Na-Nachs," who have a pretty interesting history.  Since we saw the van, we have noticed graffiti throughout the city reflecting the group's rallying cry of sorts:
"נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me Uman," after the famous leader of the sect who hailed from Uman, Ukraine).  So I duly did my research, but obligatory Wikipedia reference pages aren't the point of this post.  The song is.  Kels and I have become obsessed, and not in a good way.  The song is terrible.  But really, really hard to get out of your head.  View at your own peril.