A super-stition

The New York Times has discovered Amuka, the Galilee grave of Yonatan Ben Uziel. Those who pray there are said to find their bashert, or destined love, within a year.
I'm surprised the Times didn't drag up any of the old urban myths associated with the place. A famous one concerns the woman who went to Amuka, took a few photos, and met her husband a year to the day after the visit. After they got engaged, it emerged that he too had visited Amuka on the same day -- and was present in the background of one of her photos.
The larger and more interesting story, however, is contained in this snippet:

"Yoram Bilu, a professor of anthropology and psychology at Hebrew University, said there was a growing veneration of saints in Judaism, paralleling that in Christianity and Islam, as demonstrated by the growing populist reverence for the Talmudic sages whose putative graves are sprinkled throughout Galilee.
"He said forces like the turmoil set off by the Palestinian uprising and disillusionment with once popular movements like socialism had led many ordinary Israelis to latch on to a folk mysticism and New Age spirituality."

The same process has taken place amongst many religious people, whose increasing reliance on and veneration of living rabbis has resulted in an even greater belief in the 'powers' of dead rabbis. And this phenomenon is not just 'New Age spirituality' or something fun and harmless as the Times seems to present it. It is a harmful and dangerous reduction of religion to baseless superstition.