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Comment by jonathanyc | Hacker News Reader

> The religion does not allow for conversion to the faith. If a Mandaean man or woman marries someone who is not part of the religion, the couple’s children are not considered to be Mandaeans.

That’s interesting. Seems like the religion is “doomed” to forever remain that of a small and shrinking minority.

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I guess they think they have this covered:

"Mandaeans believe in marriage and procreation"

But this article speaks precisely to your statment: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-11-16/news/081116007...

That's obviously not inevitable, seeing as that the population of Mandaeans grew and existed for more than a millennium. It just sets a constraint between fertility and the rate of outside marriage.

This is also true of some ultra orthodox sects of judaism that are thriving.

Can you name the sect? I was raised as an Ultra-Orthodox Jew and this is not normative.

The Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, New York are near-impossible to convert into. I don't see it as inconceivable some other sect banned it altogether.

They do marry other Jews or descendants of converts from other courts, they just don't marry converts or convert using their own courts. Therefore they are not a real endogamous population.

Also, the edict is only since 1937, they were accepting converts earlier than that. So fundamentally they aren't a success story - they haven't been doing this very long.

> They do marry other Jews

Other Jews can marry in, but even this is limited. The majority of self-identifying Jews in the US would not have the qualifications to marry in. Any how, they are an insular community.

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