Yes, now some idiots are claiming that the Lubavitchers control Congress and most of the world. I agree that some of the stuff written by Lubavitch is rather weird, but it's mainly from the nuts who believe Schneerson will arise from the dead to be the Messiah, yada yada yada.
Thanks to Bill O'Reilly and his ilk, this "war on Christmas" nonsense has somehow mutated into something akin to a religious "invasion of the body-snatchers", with Lubavitch playing the role the alien invaders from space.
Why do normally intelligent people believe this? Unfortunately, most of the problem is a book titled THE TANYA, authored by a previous rebbe, which has some very unkind descriptions of gentiles in it. Worse, this book has become a classic of Crazy Orthodoxy so it's revered almost as if it were halacha---which it's not. Briefly, the book states that the souls of gentiles are about the same as the souls of lower life forms, and only Jews have human souls, plus other rubbish I don't have time to mention. This warped theology is not what is written in the Torah and Talmud. It could never have been, because if only Jews have "human" souls, and we all know that animals can't convert, then how does this rebbe explain conversion of gentiles? The rabbinic dictum from at least the 1st century, AD (I know, it should be CE, standing for The Common Era rather than the Christian designation, but this is also a post for gentiles, who might be confused by BCE and CE), has been that when Moses and the Israelites stood before Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah, the souls of all those who were not there (meaning converts as well as future Jews) would be part of the covenant between God and the Jews---period! This is halacha, or Jewish Law, and has never been revoked, ever.
The rebbe's fulmination about gentiles comes from centuries of Christian persecution, but even the greatest rabbi in the world wouldn't be able to change halacha. Halacha is Torah---which was given to Moses by God on Sinai---and cannot be struck down. Rabbinical rulings are of lesser importance and can be abrogated. Torah laws can be re-interpreted when needed, but not even Moses could change the Torah.
Now comes the kicker: Adam and Eve were never Jews, and their descendants comprise all the nations to this day, even Jews. Until they stood before Sinai, not even the Israelites were Jews. Abraham wasn't one either, despite his circumcision. Therefore, how did their souls become suddenly human, when they'd been plain old gentiles before? And that's the flaw in the rebbe's book, because humans are humans, no matter what.
So just ignore The Tanya; Crazy Orthodoxy is absolutely wrong but won't admit it. The rest of Judaism upholds the ruling that humans have human souls. More on this topic later.
