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What big nostrils you have By Avner Bernheimer When I recall the attempt to recruit me into the Emin cult, sometime back in the 1980s, there is one phrase that continues to haunt me: "Big, wide nostrils are a sign of leadership talent." Almost 20 years have passed since then, and I still find myself checking people's nostrils, privately pondering whether they are suited for leadership or whether their nostrils are too small and narrow to meet the challenge. Mind you, this is no easy task. I've discovered that most people tend to talk with their nostrils facing downward, and since I'm fairly tall, I have to bend down or think of all sorts of strange ploys to get them to tilt their heads upward, so I can assess their nostril size. The young man who tried to recruit me into the cult had a big nose and huge nostrils. I met him on a moshav near Ra'anana, where I worked after I got out of the army. I built hothouses, repaired those that were damaged by storms, and picked and sorted flowers. Not one of the most interesting jobs I've ever had, but definitely one of the sexiest. I worked with a group of Arabs from Kafr Qasem, led by Abed, who knew how to drive a tractor and had wide, hairy nostrils, and also two young Jews - a man and a woman - who I later found out were members of Emin and bent on recruiting new members. At my first meeting with them, they failed miserably in their attempt to guess my astrological sign. They went through 10 different signs before they finally guessed Leo, and then insisted that I was "not a typical Leo." Despite this, I agreed to come to their home for a get-acquainted meeting with the cult. Advertisement I recalled my brief encounter with the Emin cult after hearing the reports about the abusive mother from Beit Shemesh, a leader of sorts of a cult of extremist ultra-Orthodox women who wear many layers of black ponchos and veils; and of the abusive mother from Jerusalem, who was influenced by a cult of crazy Bratslav men led by Elior Chen. These are gruesome cautionary tales, exposing the dangers of blindly following self-styled religious leaders who head reactionary cells and think they possess unquestionable authority. The phenomenon of blind obedience and the danger it poses is not confined to religious organizations, of course. It exists in totalitarian regimes, in overly patriotic democracies with a culture of "coalition discipline"; it exists in national military organizations and militias; it exists in work places that program their employees toward "loyalty" and "a sense of family" - until it's your turn to be fired. It exists in families that are ruled by a forceful personality, in academic circles with dogmatic and charismatic lecturers, in various ideological organizations, in New Age, Old Age and Middle Age communes and so on. The danger exists pretty much in every group that forms around a single idea or a certain belief, and that's reason enough for me not to belong to any organizations of this kind - unless I'm the leader, that is. I'm a tolerant person at heart, but there's only one period in life for which I can feel tolerant about the need to be part of a group, and that's the period of adolescence, which lasts up to age 21, give or take. Youths are lost, anxiety-ridden souls who can only be soothed by belonging to some sort of group, even if they're not aware of it. Youthful rebellion is really just a giant fiction. Teenagers are the easiest creatures of all to influence, and there's nothing easier than convincing them, "as individuals," of course, to purchase the latest cellular phone model, to drink Coke "Zero," to light memorial candles for Rabin, to get an eyebrow piercing, to be a fan of a certain soccer team or to volunteer for the Duvdevan army unit. At a more advanced age, blind loyalty to a group or an idea seems pathetic at best, and dangerous only in the worst cases. To that first meeting with the couple from the Emin cult I brought along my good friend Lilach, and we found ourselves sitting on a shabby couch in a little house in Hod Hasharon, staring at a bare wall and trying to see colors or feel energies, in an incense-filled room with wind chimes ringing outside. The man was quite attractive, so we agreed to another meeting, this time in the rented apartment of Anat, the one from the penthouse, who was in Petah Tikva then. Before a wider forum of about 10 of our good, skeptical friends, he laid out his theory about the different types of people, astrological signs, colors and the connection between wide nostrils and leadership, which sparked a wave of jokes that ended up causing him to flee the apartment. The Emin cult did not widen as a result of that meeting, but our nostrils sure did. A big part of my problem with belonging to groups is the strict dress code. Emin didn't have one, though, if I remember correctly, but I ran into trouble with this in the army, where I kept getting complaints about my sloppy appearance, and later on at work place events or conferences sponsored by various companies. In the latter cases, I always found waiting for me on the bed in the hotel a new T-shirt with the company logo, but it never occurred to me to wear these shirts to anywhere but the health club or, in an pinch, as a pajama top. Each time anew, I was surprised to discover at the official dinner that everyone except me had come down to the dining room wearing this shirt. I was the only one who bothered to wear something I'd brought from home. Embarrassed by the different look I'd adopted, I could do nothing but mumble to the personnel director or CEO of the host company that "I didn't wear the shirt because my nostrils are very big." I'm not sure they really caught my meaning, but at least it rendered them speechless, so there were no follow-up questions. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Clear, present danger Survey : 52% of youth believe Israel faces existential threat. Feeling guilty Europe's criticism of Israel is more than just anti-Semitism.

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