u/Oceanic_Pomegranate

1. How many Chabadniks are actually meshichist? Is there a difference in beliefs in between Crown Hights vs. Israel vs. Elsewhere?

2. Outside of Meshichism, how common is the belief that the Rebbe was superhuman in some way?

3. Are some people just staying in Chabad because it is their family's tradition, but really hate the meshichist stuff/ obession with the Rebbe & Chabad's refusal to get a new one? Or did those people mostly leave long ago for mainstream Orthodoxy?

4. Genuinely curious: how do they not see that this is literally just Christianity 2.0?? Does the thought not, at least, occur to anyone who thinks Rebbe is moshiach?!

EDIT: my flair is "kinda Chabad", but I'm not. I'm just Jewish, never been Chabad but the only other flair option I saw was "Non-Jewish Visitor" lol

Hey y'all. Can I say something?

There is a tendancy of Jewish anti-zionists to not want to interact with local Jewish community at all because of Zionism. This, of course, is perfectly valid. But. We have a responsibility to do so right now.

We need to make stronger, pluralistic Jewish spaces where we can have hard conversations. We cannot just avoid interacting with our local Jewish institutions and wait for everyone to fully wake up.

I'm not saying to do more than you can personally handle, everyone has a different capacity. But avoiding Zionist synagogues & Zionist Jewish spaces is prolonging the issue. We *need* to be having hard conversations. I've been talking with my Rabbi, my partner & I "came-out" as not being Zionists, he's slowly falling away from Zionism.

Mindsets are changing pretty rapidly. Some spaces/ people are hopeless, I'm not telling anyone to throw themselves against a brick wall here, but I will say that "Zionist" is starting to not mean much in more liberal Jewish spaces. my Rabbi, who still calls himself "Zionist" (for now) thinks working towards a unitary, binational state could work.

Israel, What Went Wrong? By Omer Bartov, and Being Jewish After The Destruction Of Gaza: A Reckoning by Peter Brietbart are absolutely excellent books to utilize & recommend in Jewish spaces to help lead people out of Zionism.

We are dealing with a cult, here, in a sense. We need to start acting more like cult deprogrammers.

So, if I wanted to get 2 mezzuzahs checked while I'm up in L.A., can I just wander into a Chabad store with the mezuzahs and they'll help me out? Or do I need to make an appointment somewhere? If an appointment is needed somehwere, any recommendations on where to go/ anywhere I should avoid?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, just the first time I've had to get the scrolls checked myself!