The winner of the “create your own niche” award goes to Yaakov Rosenthal, who’s touring Australian synagogues with his combination of graphology (the study of handwriting) and Kabbalah.
“Most people don’t know when they write they’re actually seeing their soul come out on the piece of paper,” he says. “You can tell a person’s basic personality and how they are going to react in most given situations, if they’re social, talkative, reserved, if there’s a major problem they’re overcompensating for.”
We’re more than a little skeptical. In this day of keyboards and number pads, isn’t handwriting personality testing a bit hoo hoo, even for kabbalists? We haven’t written anything by hand in months and our signature gets more illegible with each passing year—Mr. Rosenthal would probably read us having any number of major problems we’re overcompensating for (crack withdrawal? emotional retardation?) when we’re just…used to typing.