Rabbi Crazy and the Prince Philosopher

So I had a good chat with my previously mentioned Tel Aviv hostel crazy, and it turns out he's ALSO from Florida, like the Granada hostel crazy. Is it something in the water? He calls himself Rabbi something, I can never catch exactly what he's saying. We'll just call him Rabbi Crazy. He usually goes out in an old Israeli army uniform and pink sunglasses. He told me he spends his days out on the beach, picking up trash and holding it up to God to show him how the people are misusing his Holy Land. This particular day he also decided to do a little ballet, and a passing man told his son "that right there's a freak." He told the man he shouldn't go around calling people freaks, because you never know what they're capable of. Our conversation:

Me: That sounds like a threat.
RC: It was. I could do terrible things to him with prayer.
Me: Is prayer the way you exact your vengeace? (this man inspires dramatic language)
RC: It's one of two.
Me: What's the other?
RC: I'll tell you tomorrow.
Me: What if I don't see you tomorrow?
RC: You won't, that's why I said that.

Thankfully the crazy gleam in his eye wasn't particularly murderous, or I might have been up all night. Consequently, I did see him in the morning, but I didn't follow up.

Last night I ditched the hostel for a CouchSurfing.com host, a great guy named Ahava. The name means "love" in Hebrew, it's not his given name. He is something of an amateur philosopher. Over a drink he talked at length about the soul, the mind, the body, how the three interact and interact. In his view we're all splinters of God. God was a perfect being who wasn't actually perfect because he was all there was (alpha and omega and all that) and therefore there was nothing to compare him to to confirm he was perfect. As Ahava says "A race with only one car on the track has no winner." So he split himself up into all of our little souls, and we all live out a part of the complete picture, through many lifetimes and bodies and minds. One lifetime we may learn generosity, another we may learn what it is to be needy and depend on the generosity of others. Eventually our souls learn all of these earthly lessons and then transcend to something else.

When we got back to his apartment, he put on Purple Rain for me to watch and everything became clear.