Is there a sane way to type Hebrew with nikud with Emacs 25/Mac?

[Mark H. David]

Emacs 25 just started correctly allowing input and display of Hebrew with 
nikud.  Thank you Emacs 25 developers, and congratulations!

I'm trying to type Yiddish with Emacs 25 on the Mac, which for purposes of this 
discussion essentially means entering Hebrew characters from one of the 
built-in Hebrew keyboards on the Mac.  I do not want to use any kind of custom 
keyboard, since I use a lot of different Macs and use the Hebrew keyboard with 
a lot of different applications, not just Emacs, so I do not want to have to 
customize beyond the built-in keyboard.

This relies heavily on using the Mac keyboard's option key, since that's used 
for typing Hebrew character combinations, which involves inserting Unicode 
characters from the Hebrew range as a sequence of two characters: a base Hebrew 
character plus a diacritic character, known as nikud, the combination of which 
I'm calling here collectively "Hebrew with nikud".  

Here's a reference showing Hebrew keyboard for Mac OS (and other OS's):

http://www.ivritype.com/hebrew/kbd/

Here are the option key assignments on the Mac Hebrew keyboard used for Yiddish:

pasekh: Option+6
komets: Option+7
dogesh: Option+,
khirek: Option+4
sin: Option+A
paseky-tsvey-yudn: Option+H

For example, typing this email in my browser with the Hebrew keyboard 
installed, to type the character combination

שׂ

which is called "Sin", and looks like a normal "Shin" character with a 
"Sin-dot" diacritic in the upper left corner, I switch to the Hebrew keyboard, 
then type 

Option+A

which inserts the base character for the letter shin followed by the diacritic 
sin-dot.

Doing this in emacs is really awkward, at least how I'm doing it.  Maybe 
someone has a better way?

First of all, it's necessary to at some time have changed the variable 

mac-option-modifier

to none.  That let's you use the Option modifier key. But what that does is 
makes you not have a META key.  How can you use Emacs without a meta key?  I 
cannot really see having to use ESC instead of Meta in this day and age.

Second, after you switch the keyboard to Hebrew, and start typing a few 
characters, all the standard combinations used with the "English" keyboard go 
away. Like CTRL+A becomes "CTRL+ש" (control + shin).  I noticed this does not 
take effect immediately after switching keyboards, only after I've typed some 
Hebrew text using that keyboard.  Anyhow, how can you use Emacs with every 
normal binding of control and meta keystroke combinations unavailable to you?

I figured if anyone is using Emacs on Mac for Hebrew with Nikud (i.e., Hebrew 
with vowels, as used for extra pronunciation guidance, children's books, and 
liturgy), they would have to have worked out a better approach.

Can anyone provide specific solutions or approaches, i.e., for the Mac?

Thanks,

Mark