Menachem, you said that 5783 is anti-Lubavich. Are you serious? He constantly toes the party-line to the extreme. Or did I mix up 5783 with someone else?
Re winding tefillin outwards: “I don’t think that this is even a true reason for our minhag. I’ve heard it mentioned before in jest.”
I have no doubt that that is not the reason for winding on tefillin in that direction, but I have definitely heard it used by Lubavichers taunting Litvaks, and not in jest.
“This is how a Lubavitcher could have worded it:
“As a group, you consider us meisisim umadichim, so then don’t get upset when we belittle your shitos.””
Doesn’t the Torah command us to hate the meisis for trying to convince others to follow avodah zarah? So why shouldn’t we get upset when we see Lubavichers belittling Torah-true shitos and trying to convince others to follow shitos that we see as “questionable” at best? It’s not that we care that you’re making fun of us; non-frum Jews also make fun of us all the time. It’s that you do so in the name of Yiddishkeit and Torah.
“every Chabad yeshiva has a Gemara seder on Shabbos”
Are you sure of that? The Lubavicher once said that during the week the seder should be 1/3 chassidus and 2/3 nigleh. On Shabbos it should be the opposite. Then people wrote in to him that in a kuntres of the Rashab – I think it may have been called Eitz Chaim – it says that only chassidus should be learned on Shabbos, and he retracted it. I personally have been confronted and laughed at for learning gemoro on Shabbos. (Some of this may have changed when the Lubavicher rebbe instituted learning Rambam every day of the week.)
“Many daf yomi shiurim before shachris in Chabad shuls in Crown Heights and other communities”
You must be quite young if you’re going to cite that. Lubavich, and the rebbe, were always against daf yomi. I don’t believe there were daf yomi shiurim in any Lubavich shul in Crown Heights before 3 Tammuz.
And in regards to eating gebrokts on Pesach, and putting tefillin on in a particular way. While there is certainly no “mivtza” in those areas, Lubavichers openly tell others that it is prohibited to eat gebrokts and that they put on tefillin in a more preferred manner that others.
But it is probably just a matter of you showing you age again. All these things used to be important to Lubavichers, until the last 30+ years when the Mashiach campain took over so strongly that in many parts that is all we hear about.