A couple of months ago, the papers resurrected the odd tale of a top Dutch soccer team whose fans call themselves "The Jews," wave Israeli flags and sport caps festooned with Stars of David, provoking fans of opposing clubs into paroxysms of anti-Semitism.

The desire to impersonate Jews does not very often strike sane gentiles, but another, and considerably more benign, example of the phenomenon has also manifested itself in the last couple of years at events known as "Lebowski Fests."

For the uninitiated, Lebowski Fests are a spin-off from the film, "The Big Lebowski," made in 1998 by Minnesota's marvelously meshuga Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel. A hilariously profane mistaken-identity caper flick about a stoned-out aging hippie known as "The Dude" (Jeff Bridges) and his bowling-league loser pals, the film - which garnered a puny $ 20 million at the box office - has had a prosperous cult-status afterlife reminiscent of a marriage of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" with Cheech and Chong.

The Dude's overheated Vietnam vet buddy Walter (John Goodman), a Polish Catholic, is still obsessed with his failed marriage to a Jewish woman, and remains an observer of the Jewish Sabbath (or, to quote Walter more precisely, " shomer f---ing Shabbes").

For this reason, Lebowski Fests - they have sprouted in New York, Las Vegas and Louisville, Kentucky - generally begin on Saturday night, though the one I attended near Los Angeles included a preliminary Friday eve rock concert. So much for Walter's observance.

Everyone is welcome, and attendees like to dress up as the characters, communicate in quotations from the film and drink The Dude's favorite beverage (White Russians, or "Caucasians"), while praising "3,000 years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax" and loudly declaring themselves "shomer Shabbes."

As I headed down the San Diego Freeway to check out the main event at the 66-lane Cal Bowl alley in Long Beach, a yellow moon hung in the sky like a big matzah ball in a black bowl. Wearing Walter's signature khaki shorts, shirt and vest, I strode into the packed space to find that I was merely one of scores of Walters, most of them bearded pudges like myself, almost all of them having a good time, saying "shomer Shabbes" to anyone even mildly attentive. Two creative types standing in line for bowling shoes had aimed to recreate the film in a more original way: Moses hefting a cardboard Ten Commandments and Sandy Koufax nursing his bowling ball in a baseball mitt. Unlike the crowd of "shomer Shabbes" Walters, they looked like they might actually be Jewish. (They were.)

My goal, however, was to understand why someone who wasn't Jewish would go to great lengths to emulate someone who was, sort of. I found my emblematic Walter candidate (real name David) at the bar, where he was buying White Russians for himself and his Valkyrie girlfriend (another character from the film). Something in his inflection of "shomer Shabbes" was a little off, and in return for my help with pronunciation, he explained that his interest in things shomer Shabbes began when he dated a Jewish woman who assumed from his name that he was a co-religionist. "She said, 'David, are your parents observant?' And I said, 'Well, they do pick up on what's going on around them.'"

"I take comfort in that," I told him - a quote from the movie that he raised his glass to. But what I really took comfort in at this gathering of Saturday night Sabbath observers was how warmly and positively Americans respond to the Jewish resonances of "The Big Lebowski" - the lovable lunacy of the non-Jewish Jewish character, the celebration of heimish pleasures (even when these involve a controlled substance or two) and a few added fillips of Jewish law and lore. American Jews might feel proud, watching "The Big Lebowski," of what they've accomplished as good neighbors in America. As Walter puts it - though he wasn't the first - "If you will it, it's no dream."

Sheli Teitelbaum