The big photo of the Rebbe (Rabbi Schneerson, late of Crown Heights, Brooklyn) on the linked site indicates that these are not merely Hasidic Gentiles, they are Lubavitcher Gentiles. I didn't know about the Web site for Gentiles (though I did know the L's were active on the Internet), but this is all in keeping with the Rebbe's directives...The Lubavitchers are the missionary (if I may use the word in that sense) wing of Hasidic Judaism, as opposed to other Hasidic groups such as the Sattmar Hasidim, who are more insular. They are hawkish on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, again as opposed to some other Hasidim. Most New Yorkers have seen their Mitzvah-mobile, a large camper van that blares Jewish pop music from tinny speakers, cruising the streets. If you are interested in this whole thing, I recommend The Rebbe's Army, forthcoming from Schocken Books...

Totally not surprising to me. For one thing, I've often heard non-Lubavitch Jews discussing whether faith or good works/living by the law was more important, whether faith was necessary at all if one lived by the law, whether living by the law was necessary if one had faith, etc.

More to the point, one of the bulletin boards I "drop in on" every week or so, while ostensibly for Jewish families of all types, is dominated by Chabad/Lubavitch. When someone comes by who is interested in conversion, the women on the board often push them toward Noahide thinking/living. What I've gathered from reading some of these discussions is that some people seem to feel that this (Noahide) is a step on the road to conversion. Others feel that no one who was not born of a Jewish mother can ever really be Jewish, and therefore that Noahide is as close as one can get (or should be allowed to get, given the tone of some posts).

There are at least one hundred Mitzvah-mobiles. If you are lucky enough to be in the Flatiron building on the Rebbe's birthday, each spring, you can see the Mitzvah-tank parade from our windows. It's intense!

Okay, the campaign to eliminate Christmas.

I'm now thinking of a picture of the Grinch holding a copy of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," with the caption: "The Grinch had a wonderful, horrible idea...."

Heck, if he can dress up as a Santa Claus, how much more difficult to do a black hat and side-curls?

Wow. Back in 1995, I dated a nurse who worked at Columbia Presbyterian. She was a throat specialist and she told me one day at work she got spirited into a quiet room full of Hasidic rabbis—to look at the throat of himself, Rabbi Schneerson. I think this was just a few months, if not weeks, before he died.

But reading about this makes me think of groups like Opus Dei and AHC, the Association of Hebrew Catholics. Now, the AHC is not into conversion. They basically formed as a sort of church within the church for Jewish converts who felt a bit homeless now that most of their families were no longer speaking to them. That kind of thing.

Never-ending wonder and surprise is right....

They seem like nice, tolerant folks:

The Rambam, indeed, officially rules in three places that Christianity is idolatry and thus forbidden to gentiles (Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Ma'achalos Asuros 11:7 and Hilchos Avodas Kochavim 9:4; commentary on Mishnah, Avodah Zarah 1:3), and implies the same in a fourth place (Hilchos Melachim 11:4) (Note: these texts are censored from the standard editions of these works).
—http://www.noahide.com/xmas2.htm

Jews aren't allowed idolatry and gentiles aren't either? Those poor idols get it coming and going.

A gentile...is liable for the death penalty...if he has invented a religious holiday for himself...The general principle is we do not allow them to make new religious rituals and to make 'mitzvahs' for themselves by their own devices....and if he does make some new 'mitzvah,' we lash him, punish him, and inform him that he is obligated with the death penalty for this..." (Rambam Mishne Torah97Hilchos Melachim 10:9)
—http://www.noahide.com/xmas.htm

Makes me glad I only celebrate religious holidays invented by other people who are now dead.

Someone should send them the Hilchos Xmas.

Or just a note saying "I create new holidays whenever I want, nyah nyah nyah." :-)

Their very own secret Talmud?! Once you allow this--anything you want to claim has been "censored from the standard editions"--you can prove anything you feel like.

I suppose I should be glad they mention explicitly that they're citing texts that the rest of us haven't seen and won't be able to find in the library.

I think I need to find an idol.

I've just read Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought". It was fascinating, and I find myself both more and less tolerant of people asserting loopy religious beliefs.

Boyer presents religions as stories that engage people's emotions on a very deep level, and are very effective at getting themselves passed on to more people, in both cases /because of the way we're wired./ Lots of stuff about cognition, and why a moralizing invisible watchman (or a mountain that erupts unless it gets sacrifices) are more likely religious concepts than, say, a rock that is blue on alternate days, or that knows what you're thinking but doesn't do anything about it.

My thoughts right now are a mix of "Good grief, religion has even less basis in reality than I gave it credit for" and "Poor dears, we're made that way, no wonder they fell for it." Both of which attitudes I daresay would infuriate True Believers in just about anything....

It sounds like an interesting book, and a non-falsifiable theory.

One of those little news tidbits on CNN Headline News -- you know, the ones they show at the bottom of the screen while the anchorperson is talking about Something Completely Different -- this afternoon said that there are 2,630 different religions in the U.S., of which 22 believe in UFOs.

The website (I finally found it by searching Google News) http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/31/counting.religions.ap/
also says 8 religions are based in drug use and three believe in vampires.

And while noodling around CNN's website trying to find that, I found this story http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/30/offbeat.traficant.cleansing.ap/index.html
about the Congressman who has Jim Traficant's old office and the "cleansing ritual" he held "to 'exorcise' Traficant's spirit." That's not entirely related to this thread but I had to share it.

Some part of Pascal Boyer's notions might be falsifiable, assuming that he is using results of neurophysiological studies to support his notion that the quasi-religious response Kate reports from his book. But at best that could give us a scientific understanding that the basis for some religious beliefs arises from the purely physical processes, just as we can say with some scientific certainty that humans developed through processes of mutation and natural selection.

The notion that this model explains all religious beliefs seemsn non-falsifiable, or at least runs up against the problem of the inherent non-falsifiability of sophisticated religious beliefs which aren't based on elements of the physical universe such as volcanoes and rocks which change colours.