Menachem: ARSo, I’m very curious. How exactly does this play out?
Like you’re on the subway or in shul or walking down the street, and a Lubavitcher bochur/yungerman/woman/child approaches you, strikes up conversation, and says: “By the way, I assume you know that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is Moshiach, because the Rambam says….”
Is that what happens?
That is one way it happens, although they don’t quote the Rambam. Another is when I pass a tefillin booth or similar, and the Lubavicher manning it apparently wants to make an impression on the people with him, so he calls out to me – an obviously chassidic non-Lubavitch type – and makes a comment ‘demonstrating’ how he and his cohorts are better than us lesser Yidden.
I have NEVER been the one to start the ‘altercation’.