Template talk:Judaism

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[edit] Tomer's idea

I've just started fooling around here, trying to come up with a Judaism template, similar to the templates {{Islam}} and {{Christianity}}... help me out! Tomer ^TALK 09:51, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

This idea was spawned by {{Christianity}} and {{Islam}}

The "solution" to this is to use the {{Jew}} template, which already has the major Judaism subjects on it. IZAK 05:50, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I'd be happy to agree with IZAK, but I fail to see how "Secular Zionism" might fit into any template included in Tanakh...especially when there's an article on Religious Zionism which, as it happens, is not included in the {{Jew}}... (I could bring forth other examples as well...) Tomer ^TALK 06:20, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
- Firstly, to the non-Jewish world at large anything and everything to do with "Jews" is all one subject, and to them it's all "Judaism", it is mainly deluded Jews who "imagine" that the outside world is making complex decisions about what is or is not "Jewish" "religious" "secular" or whatnot, and to add to the confusion there is Humanistic Judaism that does NOT believe in God which would fit with other secular elements of Jewish culture. Secondly, no template is going to be "perfect" and comprehensive to the point that all bases are covered. Thirdly, I was giving an example of a template that INCLUDES Judaism-related topics which means there ARE various "sub-sets" to that template which deals with "Jew" including the religion of the Jew which has Judaism and Jewish denominations listed on it. IZAK 06:34, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] First suggestion/s

So what I'm thinking is:

Judaism

Jewish philosophy

Jewish principles of faith

Jewish eschatology

Kabbalah

Halakha

Jews as a chosen people

Names of God in Judaism

Jewish religious texts

etc.

Holy Cities

Jewish Holidays

etc.

Important Figures

Ezra Hasofer

Jewish lifecycle

etc.

Schools

Yeshiva

Talmud Academy

Jewish Theological Seminary

Religious roles

Ba'al tfila/Shatz

Sandaq

Mohel

Kvater/in

Kes (Beta Israel)

etc.

Buildings

Temple in Jerusalem

Synagogue

Mikvah

etc.(?)

Jewish liturgy

Sects

Jewish Denominations

Reconstructionist Judaism

Traditional Judaism

Beta Israel

Jewish religious articles

List of Jewish Prayers and Blessings

Relationship to other Religions

Comparing and contrasting Judaism and Christianity

Jewish views of religious pluralism

Abrahamic religions

Christian-Jewish reconciliation

Relations between Catholicism and Judaism

obviously, some of this stuff should be pared out...

(sign your name please)

No kidding, all that is missing is the kosher "kitchen sink" IZAK 05:43, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Dammit, I forgot that part: Here it is:

Kosher Kitchen Sink

:-p

And sorry for not signing, as you may or may not have been able to ascertain from looking at it, I spent a great deal of time working on this today, and signing my name to it was the least of my worries :-|~ Tomer ^TALK 06:58, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC) Tomer ^TALK 06:58, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC) Tomer ^TALK 06:58, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

I "edited" the above list/s so that we can all read them as they appear in their original articles, no need for "funny squeeglies" that no-one can read. This way everyone knows how the original articles appear on Wikipedia. IZAK 01:25, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

That looks really good, except that we have finite space to put this in. Maybe we should have each of these as a separate template, and then a "master" template for the broad topics.--Here T oHelp 20:57, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Preliminary thoughts

Interesting idea, but it's HUGE! For many of the linked articles, the template would be far bigger than the article itself. Also, I think you should use the standard article spellings for the links, rather than your preferred ones. Jayjg ^(talk) 04:53, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hej shush. :-p You'll notice that I used "normal" spellings in the Template as it appears presently. :-p :-p Tomer ^TALK 05:01, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC) and :-p

[edit] Duplication of other templates

I fully agree with User:Jayjg's views that "For many of the linked articles, the template would be far bigger than the article itself". But the BIGGEST problem is that Tomer seems to be ignoring the fact that we presently have a number of excellent templates that are more focused and work much better, and his huge new template would undermine their usage. They include:

Template:Jew: includes most of the various Jewish denominations and issues about Judaism already. I should know, because I designed it originally as a template so that that it would unite issues pertaining to both Jews and Judaism, and it has served well in that capacity till now. Please look at it carefully and see its scope after a number of users added suggestions to make it more inclusive.
Template:JewishHolidays: comprehensivley covers all the Jewish holidays including the New Israeli/Jewish national holidays.
Template:JewishLifeCycle: deals with at least 29 various major Jewish life-cycle stages, check it out.
Template:Books of Torah: produces links to all five books of the Torah.
Template:Books of Nevi'im: produces links to all the books of the Nevi'im (the Hebrew Biblical prophets).
Template:Books of Ketuvim: produces links to all 12 books of the Ketuvim.
Template:Jewish language: is extremely comprehensive and has almost 50 links within it to Jewish languages.
Template:Israelis: deals with major Israel-related links.
Template:JewsByCountry: Gives us "zillions" of "Jews by country"
Template:HebrewMonths: Lists the months of the Hebrew calendar.

So the bottom line is , that Tomer needs to give us some VERY good reasons why his proposed Judaism template would serve us better than the 9 (that I know of here) Jewish-Judaism-Israel-Tanakh-Jewish languages more focused templates that serve us so well at the present time. IZAK 05:35, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that this template would be useful on some articles relating to Judaism (that really don't relate to non-religious aspects of Jews). For example, it's fine that the individual books of Ketuvim have their own template, but Ketuvim itself probably deserves this one (plus the other). It would be more appropriate to that article than Template:Jew. But I don't feel strongly on this. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:25, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
- I don't want to kibbitz too much, but I invite you to read my rebuttal below. I'm not proposing to feed into the argument that Jews and Judaism are disjoint terms, but only to separate between those concepts that pertain specifically to "Jews" as a nation, as opposed to those that deal specifically with those concepts identified as relevant to "Jewish religion"...not to differentiate, but to break up the issues at hand into more readily "digestable" concepts for the non-Jewish reader. Tomer ^TALK 06:45, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

I think that if there are different articles on Jew and Judaism, there could well be different Templates as well. The concepts are not interchangeable, and different templates would help clarify the distinctions. That said, I'd like to see as little overlap as possible on these and the Jewish languages templates. As well, there should probably be an Anti-Semitism template as well, since I can think of at least 6 articles dealing with various aspects of the subject. Jayjg ^(talk) 06:32, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

- As I hope you're well aware by my edits (not including my sometimes rather abrasive talk comments), it is not my goal to inject my own perspective into Wikipedia articles (as much as I try to persuade others to accept my views on Talk, sometimes with success, other times with abject failuire, which I accept without throwing too much mud...). I did not propose this template as a way to start an argument, but rather as a way to include Judaism templates into articles where the Christians are injecting their templates and where Judaism templates are just as fitting, in certain sections (review my recent edit history), but wherein Template:Jew would be wholly inappropriate. (There is no place whatsoever in the Bible article, for example, for {{Jew}}, but I feel comfortable with where I've reinserted the {{Christianity}}, but was singularly displeased that there was no {{Judaism}} to insert in the Jewish Bible section...and believe me, my POV is that "our" view of the Bible should be far more relevant than that of "dem dere Christians'", yet, I cannot, for the life of me, understand how a template featuring links to "Yiddish" and "Yiddish Typewriter" and "Secular Zionism" has anything even remotely approaching relevance in an article about the Bible. :-p Tomer ^TALK 06:45, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

WRT Jayjg's post: I'd like to point out that, at no point has my proposal ever included an inclusion of Jewish languages in this template (since, while Jewish languages are relevant to Jewish culture and Jews as a whole, they really have, with the exception of Hebrew, Ge'ez and vernacular, nothing to do with Judaism. A noteworth exclusion, that I just noticed myself, is that there is nowhere in the template as I have it currently proposed, any spot for a link to Jew! :-p (This is why I asked for help!) Tomer ^TALK 06:49, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

OK fine, and Aramaic too. :-p Tomer ^TALK 06:50, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Well, right now the Jew template has a bunch of languages in it, and religious stuff too. This should all be cleaned out imho. Jayjg ^(talk) 08:12, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think the Judaism template is a great idea. It will just take some time to sort which links should go on which template so there's no overlap. I'll try to give more feedback on this later. --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 09:35, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tomer's Rebuttal to the points brought forth by the respectable editor IZAK

You bring up a very good point IZAK, but what I'm proposing is not necessarily an entirely new concept, but the subsuming of all of, or parts of, already-extant templates. For example, the Jewish_language template (in the development of which, you might, or might not, have noted, I've played a tremendous rôle...) has a bit to do with Template:Jew and about 1/5 that much to do with my proposed Template:Judaism. The Templates "Books of Torah", "Books of Nevi'im" and "Books of Ketuvim" have only minimally to do with Template:Jew and only parenthetically to do with my proposed Template:Judaism, inasmuch as they are crucial to the understanding of the single link to Tanakh within the "Religious texts" section, under "Tanakh". The Template:Jewish_holidays jingaling is "nice", and so perhaps that section of my proposed template should be pared down a bit accordingly, but I fail to see how the existence of that template should be regarded as jeopardizing my proposal. The Template:Israelis, with all due respect, has almost exactly nothing to do with my proposal. I respect your dissent, but I think that, while I regard "Jewish identity", i.e. the purview of Template:Jew as basically synonymous with Yehaðuþ, I think that every subject presently included in those subjects proscribed by Template:Jew can easily be divided between Template:Jew and my proposed Template:Judaism, my recent argument with you (IZAK), over kosher wine, notwithstanding. Tomer ^TALK 06:34, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Tomer, see my response below. (I am not in the least concerned about past debates with you, I have them with people all the time! So cheer up old chap, as they say, no hard feelings at all!) But, what are you saying here, that you would eliminate all the Tanakh/JewishHolidays etc templates? Please give some CLEARER reasons what you are saying and why so. ThanksIZAK 06:51, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Judaism vs. Template:Judaism

One of the problems with Tomer's new template is that he seems to want to "squeeze in" the entire universe of issues relating to Judaism, and at some point one needs to ask Why do we need such a huge template if we already have Category:Judaism that serves on the level of comprehensiveness that Tomer seems to want for the proposed Judaism template? Another major problem is fitting in all the various branches of Judaism "interpertations" of the the Jewish faith. It will convey a false impression of Judaaism by conveying too broad a spectrum of links. IZAK 06:51, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

IZAK, I agree with your basic assessment that it's too-damn-broad-ranging, which is why I solicited feedback to begin with. I think I've been pretty clear in my rationale for having proposed this project, from the very outset. If I wanted opinions only favorable to my own, believe me, I wouldn't have solicited yours, nor those of a couple others with whom I've recently argued. That said, there is one overriding fundamental problem with your argument (in this section of discussion), and that is this: <weasel_term>many</weasel_term> readers seldom read all the way through an article unless they're doing research on the specific topic at hand, and so including Category:Judaism at the bottom is all well and good, but does not serve the mere browsing reader (which I'd be so bold as to guess includes the vast majority of wikipedia readers, nor does it adequately serve those who are looking for genuinely related articles. As I've stated earlier, a template linking to "Yiddish Typewriter" does not so well serve either the casual reader, nor the research-oriented reader of Tanakh. I'm not interested nearly so much in encompassing as much of the Jewish universe as possible into a single template (although that's a criticism that strikes me as being far more legitimately leveled against Template:Jew than against my proposal...), as I am in encompassing the widest range of lead articles as possible within a template that deals with the religious aspects of Jewish identity. That said, I'll ask you, once again, to try to quell your woefully misbegotten prejudicial ideas about my Jewish identity, as you've once again expressed them in the ~~previous~~ <replace with>TOP</replace with> section of this talk page. Tomer ^TALK 07:09, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Specifically, I refer to your comments in Template_talk:Judaism#Tomer.27s_idea. Tomer ^TALK 07:12, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Tomer, why do you think those comments are about you? Why on Earth do you always want to personalize a discussion by twisting the meanings of my words and imagine I am addressing only your "ideas about ... Jewish identity"? There are bigger issues at hand here! Do you have a "complex" or something as they used to call it in the olden days? You seem to think that you are doing us all a great favor by "allowing us" to have this TALK on a "Talk" page of all places... well, believe it or not, you and I are not the subject here, so kindly stop making remarks that lead these discussions into personal childish bickering rather than "facing the music" of a full-blown intellectaul debate, which is the way of Judaism after all. Oh, and you are not the only one around here who is capable of being "abrasive", so let's focus on the discussion/s sha'nt we?!IZAK 07:22, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Shan't we indeed. Thank you for clearing the air. Tomer ^TALK 07:56, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template usage

Tomer, nu, you don't invite me to the template talk? I agree with Jayg and IZAK (or at least as much of the discussion as I read and discounting the angry bits) that the Jew template should be predominent on articles that have bearing on the Jewish people as a nation/ethnicity/historical group. But I agree that a Judaism template would be useful for the random religious articles, which do not currently have any template to serve as guidance between things like various holidays or religious texts. My suggestion is that we use the Jew template everywhere it is apporpriate (and actually include a new line in it linked to "Judaism Religious Practice Template" or "Judaism Guide" that would link directly to this template). We should then consider the new template for all the other orphaned articles. Of course, we need to trim it down substantially first.

One way to do so would be to discipline ourselves to use no more than two lines per heading, and collapse the rest into linkable headings. For example, we link religious texts to Rabbinic Literature and eliminate: Kuzari, Chumah, Mishneh Torah, Tur, Shulkhan Arukh, Tosefta, Berurah, Rabbinic works, Tanya, and Piyyutim. (Subject to consensus, of course). And we cut the holiday list down to the five major ones plus Shabbat, maybe with an extra link to "minor holidays." This is just too comprehensive, maybe we should even include a few words of explanation next to links for non-Jews "day of repentence" etc.

--Goodoldpolonius2 02:50, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hey. I didn't mean any offense. Welcome to the fray. :-) Tomer ^TALK 10:11, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] E=MC^2's thoughts

Thank you, IZAK, for bringing this to my attention. What IZAK said is correct, we do have many templates for individual aspects of Judaism, but I believe that this would go nicely in articles which do not really fit into other templates. The template has a bit of (not really)POV problems (,but problems with the choice of links) , which will have to be discussed if it is kept. I don't believe that Ovadia Yosef merits inclusion in this template any more than the Vilna Gaon, for example. However, this template should only be used in places where no template like {{Jew}} or {{JewishLifeCycle}} would be more direct. E=MC^2 T@lk 01:46, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

As anyone can tell from a cursory glance, right now it's huge. I didn't realize how big it was gonna be until I got done with it (which took a number of hours :-p) and I agree, there's stuff that ought to be excised. What's here is my proposed starting point. Tomer ^TALK 10:13, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New idea

I don't want to stall the development of this particular template too much...but I'm thinking now, hoping that those following this development proposal are familiar with mathematical tree-diagrams, will be able to figure out what I'm proposing now...

This is a proposal to overhaul all the Jew/Jews/Judaism/Jewishness/J* templates. What I'm thinking is this:

Jew
- Jewish Languages
- Jewish Ethnic Divisions
- Jewish History
- Jews by Country
  - Israelis
- Judaism
  - Jewish Holidays
  - Jewish Philosophy
  - Jewish Religious Texts
    - Books of Torah
    - Books of Nevi'im
    - Books of Ktuvim
  - Important Figures in Jewish Religion
  - Jewish Life Cycle
  - Jewish Denominations
  - Jewish Interfaith Relations

Where each of these are the various templates. I would like to see the Jewish Holidays template (which is, contrary to what has been said here previously, far from exhaustive) and the Jewish Life Cycle template revamped, and possibly turned into {RIGHT} templates rather than {BOTTOM} ones. What I'm thinking is something along the lines of a hierarchy of these related templates, where, for example, the JEW template would have a section of "related article series" for languages, ethnicities, history, national-origin, & judaism; etc. Thoughts? I realize this is something of a rather extensive overhaul. Maybe we should shoot to be done with it by Shavuot? :-D Tomer ^TALK 23:03, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

I think these ideas are good in general; turn them all into complete templates, put them on the right. However, templates shouldn't overlap each other in links; rather, each template can point to a main article for the other topics. Thus the Jew template could point to a Judaism article, and there one would also find the Judaism template which links to everything under Judaism. Similarly the Jew article could point to the Jewish languages article, where one would also find the template linking to all the languages. The Judaism template would point to Jewish holidays and Jewish lifecycle articles, which would also have the more restricted Jewish holidays and Jewish lifecycles templates etc. Jayjg^(talk) 16:53, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was proposing. Obviously I left out several things that would remain as sections in Template:Jew, but what you're saying is what I had in mind. Tomer ^TALK 23:48, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

To develop that point just a bit...for example in Template:Judaism would be a link to Jewish religious texts, which, after it's written, will feature Template:Jewish_religious_texts. In Template:Jewish_religious_texts in which, among other things probably, will be links to Torah, Nevi'im, and Ktuvim. In Torah will be Template:Books_of_Torah, etc... Tomer ^TALK 23:53, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Tomer, at this point, please do not assume that what you propose will be acceptable. You still need to demontstrate how what you propose will work, and you have still not given a single example where else on Wikipedia anything like what you propose exists at all.IZAK 20:36, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
Jay: I think that according to what you describe you will be defeating the purpose of any type of template which is to give on-the-spot information to related topics and provide easy links to relate articles, and not to act as a "collection of links" to other sub-sets of links, which would make the usage of such a template to cumbersome and frustrating. When did this dialogue shift from introducing a "Judaism" template to creating an all-inclusive jumbo template that will be "top-heavy" and functionally useless?IZAK 20:36, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Do all these subjects need to be connected? It seems that now you are taking the opposite tack, instead of focusing on creating a Judaism template only, you really do want to include every topic under the sun here..what is going on here? IZAK 01:29, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
- Well...um... "seems" is the operative word, since that's the exact opposite of what I'm proposing. Let me clarify: instead of Template:Jew including 3 lines for Jewish Languages, and 3 lines for Jewish Ethnic Divisions, and 3 lines for Jewish Denominations, and 10+ lines for Jewish history, have a section at the top of Template:Jew to direct ppl off to other lead articles for such sections, which will contain the various templates relevant to each field in the sub-lead articles. Tomer ^TALK 02:06, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
Where else is this done on Wikipedia? This is beginning to sound like a "scholars convention" with "self-referential" templates that link to each other and would only be of interest to the "scholars" rather than "lay-people"...This is more like an invitation to join a maze for the average Wikipedia reader...you have managed to confuse me. IZAK 03:04, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
In this respect, I agree with IZAK. <grandfatherly voice>I have not seen templates linking to templates in all my time on Wikipedia.</grandfatherly voice> A template is meant to link to articles in its cateoory. If some of the articles happen to get to articles with different templates, that is all well and good, but wea template is for its relevant topics only. E=MC^2 T@lk 21:27, 11 May 2005
I happened to like the first idea a lot better. The template as it is now does a perfectly good job in filling in the holes of all the other templates. E=MC^2 T@lk 21:28, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

(UTC)

Is this what we want to create? A maze?

IZAK 03:06, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

No. and you're funny, even when you're trying to be demeaning. look up binary search tree. Tomer ^TALK 03:28, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

I KNOW I'm funny, funny that it took you so long to find out, oh, and now you want us to study astrophysics to understand you? What next, a class in Kaballah as an "introduction" to Judaism..? IZAK 03:45, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] This is "simple"? All about trees....

A "simple" example binary search tree. What happened to 2, 5, 8, 9, 12 ?????

See Binary search tree for above...what next, the Evolutionary tree, or even better, the Tree of Knowledge? The plot thickens! IZAK 03:51, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Anytime you're willing to stop being a 2-bit whiner, I'm ready to resume rational discussion. Tomer ^TALK 04:19, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Oh Tomer, go ahead, I thought you figured out already that I was "Funny"...you just got me going. I am still waiting to be "enlightened" by what you have in mind, so please EXPLAIN in detail how, what you think you would like to do, would work here on planet Wikipedia. Go for it To' old chap! IZAK

[edit] Wake-up call

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia! It is not a "scholars' convention", nor is it meant to do anything but be a free repository of information! Templates and categories are around to make life easier. We must think in the interests of the casual browser of the encyclopedia. The question that should be dealt with here, and only this question, is: "Is this template making it easier for people to access Judaism-related articles? How can we make it better?" E=MC^2 T@lk 18:06, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template colours

Why are these templates some sort of mauve? Would dark blue for the headers, and alternating light blue and white for the lines, make more sense? Jayjg ^(talk) 14:19, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

What's a "colour"? What's mauve? :-p Tomer ^TALK 07:28, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

P.S., I don't care about the colors so much, but I think the current scheme is in rather poor taste...I've wondered whether or not the original color-chooser might not have been colorblind--although I think the color choices in a lot of other templates throughout wikipedia are in rather poor taste as well...see Template:Islam and Template:Christianity to see what I mean. Tomer ^TALK 07:30, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

So how about various shades of blue? Jayjg ^(talk) 19:42, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Go for it. You know I'll let you know what I think. :-p Tomer ^TALK 20:33, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Critique of the template thus far

Since User:TShilo12 seems to be tinkering with the template, I would like to state again, that I think the template looks to me like a fallen "bloated blimp waiting to explode" or a "misbegotten hippopotamus" of some sort...because honestly now, do we really intend to place this monstrosity on Judaism-related pages just because there are similar "templates" to it on Wikipedia? Even worse, the template is a mess! Here are some over-all observations worth noting:

Under its main name of "Judaism", the template starts off with Jewish philosophy. Question: Since when is the "onset" of Judaism a "Philosophy" as this "ordering" implies? In truth, Judaism can be set to begin with one or all of (both chronologicallly and theologically correct and true): The Torah -- Given at Mount Sinai (see Shavuot), and/or Abraham and/or Moses (see Ten Commandments), and/or with God himself (see Creation according to Genesis) commencing with Genesis 1:1...indeed ALL of the aforementioned are true, but to give an impression that "Jewish Philosophy" is at the "head" is definitely false. The "philosophy" (a notion from Ancient Greece) was "invented" much later in time.
God is a subject of "Jewish Philosophy"...huh? Does not the Torah teach and Judaism believe that God is the CREATOR of the Universe and the source of all life? Again, does not God deserve His own major "section"? (I mean we are talking Judaism here, this is not a TV quiz show with "multiple choice" after all).
Thus it follows from the above that, if anything, the template should start with who "God" is in Judaism (see Names of God in Judaism) and connect it next with "Religious Texts".
Then, after the "Religious Texts" should be the Jewish holidays, because it is from the main text, the Torah that Jews know that Judaism requires them to keep and observe Shabbat and the Holy Days, commanded to them by God.
Next should be "Jewish Life Cycle" for similar reasons to above, since the ONLY way Jews KNOW what they are supposed to do with their "Life Cycles" is because it is either stated or derived from the Torah.
How and why is Halakha ("Jewish Law") part of "Jewish Philosophy"? There should be an entire section devoted to Jewish law ALONE!
To place Kabbalah under the banner of "Jewish Philosophy" is FACTUALLY incorrect because the two subjects generally mutually exclude each other. One deals with pure Mysticism (guess which one) and the other is rooted in Rationalism (...and yes, I know that Chabad claims to "combine" the two, but does it really?)
Why are these four under the heading of "Jewish Philosophy": Kashrut; Tzeniut; Minyan; and Tzedakah when they are actually more part of the 613 mitzvot, meaning COMMANDMENTS?
Why is Shabbat in the "Jewish Holidays" section? Any serious student of Judaism knows it's not a "holiday", but it is a Holy Day.
How is the reader of the template supposed to know which are the major holidays, like Yom Kippur and which are just minor fast days such as Tenth of Tevet? This issue has never been addressed.
The "Important Figures" leaves out so many and includes others. Who the most important figures in Judaism are is a major challenge.

So the above are some of my observations for now. Does anyone care to join in with the critique? IZAK 07:34, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Bleh. Whack smack crack. Somewhere there seems to have been a confusion between "criticism" and "critique". As I said from the outset, "THIS OBVIOUSLY NEEDS PARING DOWN". That said, I'm almost now of a rebel mind to insist that it doesn't, just to be equally obstinate. Tomer ^TALK 09:30, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

Good thing you're just kidding. ;-) Jayjg ^(talk) 22:10, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't it say "Holy Days" instead of Holidays anyway? BD2412 ^talk 02:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Some Problems with defining Judaism as a "religion" in the gentile sense...

The problem with defining Judaism as a "religion" like Christianity or Islam is that Jews are NOT just a religion, we are more like a tribal people, and there's a lot of overlap between "religion" and "culture." A tribe is sometimes anthropologically defined as a group that has these five criteria: (1) common land of origin, (2) common ancestors (mythical or real), (3) common language (or at least some common words used by everyone), (4) common religion or belief system, and (5) common customs revolving around holidays and foods. We Jews fit all 5 criteria. Also, we are matrilineal for membership in the tribe, but patrilineal as to membership in "clans" (kohen, levi, Yisroel). These are also common tribal customs, i.e., one must either be born into it or adopted into the tribe or clan, one cannot join just by believing in it as with other religions. (In the case of kohen or levi, it is entirely based on geneaology and one cannot be a kohen or levi except by birth.)

So nu, we are a people, and "religion" is only part of it. "Atheist Christian" or "Atheist Muslim" might be an oxymoron, but "atheist Jew" is not. I would therefore vote for including links to things like secular Zionism, humanistic Judaism, etc. -- perhaps with an explanation somewhere about the tribal nature of being a Jew. At the very least, "Jew" SHOULD be linked!

One reason for including such links is that non-Jews tend to think of Jews only in terms of religion (as in "Catholic, Protestant, Jewish") and are genuinely puzzled by Jews who are not "religious" by their (gentile) definitions. And yet, they look under "Judaism" for answers to such questions because it never occurs to them to them to look for "secular Jew." Maybe this is already discussed somewhere on Wikipedia -- if yes, then it should be linked to the template somewhere, I think.

Also, I think "Sandaq" should be cross-referenced with the spelling "Sandek" because that is the more common spelling in American Yinglish. Ditto for a lot of other Hebrew & Yiddish terms. The preferred academic spelling is not the way most Americans will spell the words when searching for them, and it's not how they are usually spelled in novels and other literature. We want to be helpful, not obscure. rooster613

Bravo rooster613 for your crystal clear points here, I think that Tomer is overlaying his perceptions and technical terms and academic jargon on the Jews & Judaism issues here, and your prescient and wise comments reveal his fatal flaws! IZAK 07:34, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
- I beg your pardon? My what? I happen to pronounce qof differently from kaf. Is that a "fatal flaw"?! Or is not being a native-Yinglish speaker what you're talking about? Or not ashkenazi? Seriously, what on God's green earth are you talking about? Tomer ^TALK 09:31, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

Hey. Over at Template talk:Islam there has been some debate about adding criticism of Islam to the template. One of the arguments against it has been that criticism of Judaism (which unlike criticism of Islam and Christianity does not exist) is not on this template. On Islamic articles there has been a slight problem with editors trying to do things anti-Islam so some of the editors of the template feel it is a continuation. I typically tend to be middle of the line between the two camps and I think it should be added. However, I don't think it will stand if there is only criticism for Islam and not for Christianity, Judaism, Atheism, and the other major belief systems. So, I would encourage you to come to Template talk:Islam and participate in the discussion there and bring this to a more universal level. I am aware that the dynamics of this will be different since there is not a criticism page for Judaism but I'm sure in time will come. I'm not fully sure that the idea of an individual criticism page for a religion is encyclopedically sound... but, it is a reality and as long as its NPOV it should be fine. So, speculative thoughts would be welcome on the Islam template talk page so maybe there can be a concensus on this. Thanks. gren グレン 17:04, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

This template is a mess. I'm going to adopt it and merge it with {{Jew}}.--HereToHelp (talk • contribs) 02:24, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

This template isn't a mess, it's bloated, and primarily because rather than actually help with it, people just sat around and pissed and moaned a lot. While you're "adopting" it, you might consider reviewing this. Cheers, Tom e r ^talk 22:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

To fix that bloat, there's been an idea to shrink to font (see the talk for {{Jew}}).--HereToHelp (talk • contribs) 23:23, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

This thing is just too long! I say move everything on Jews to {{Jew}}, and leave only Judaism here.--HereToHelp (talk • contribs) 00:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This template is a monstrosity!

This bloated blimp on a page, it's not a "template", is like having the proverbial "bull in a China shop" -- it's disgustingly bloated to the point of being obtuse and meaningless. There are many other fine, SMALLER templates that deal with the gamut of articles and topics pertaining to Judaism (as I previously mentioned above, see Duplication of other templates), but this blimp does nothing but blur the picture (literally and figuratively). So let's try to stick with Template:Jew which is relatively neater and tries to avoid "dealing with the challenge of dealing with everything" -- including the (kosher) kitchen sink. Thank you. IZAK 07:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

P.S. There is a teaching in Judaism of Tofasta Beruba Lo Tofasta -- which basically means that: "If you try to take of hold of everything then you take hold of nothing". Think about it! IZAK 07:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a template(?) ...

IT'S A B L I M P ... IZAK 07:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Making this template deal with its subject: Judaism

I am removing this from the template page: <noinclude>Template links are incompatible with this template. To elaborate, {{tl|Judaism}} will be merged into {{tl|Jew}}, but the final product will sit at ''Judaism''. ''Jew'' will have famous Jews.</noinclude>

In addition, I edited the template so that it deals with, and only reflects, JUDAISM (cause, how on Earth do articles about kibbutzim etc fit in with "Judaism"?), so at least this version of the template will be referring to Judaism if it's used by some folks, and it has been used already. IZAK 10:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More about bloat

This template is still pretty big. I'm thinking perhaps parts could be spun off to their own templates...specifically I'm thinking Template:History of Judaism (analogous to Template:History of France, etc.) would be a good place to start..and that Jewish history can remain as a link in this template as part of another section (probably one yet to be created, by collapsing several other sections into it)... Thoughts? Tom e r ^talk 20:36, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

As for the "bloat" thing...what I was referring to is that there are still several articles that are linked to more than once, from different places within the template... also, there's already a {{JewishHolidays}}, so why are we taking up 4 lines in this template to list them all (or even half)? I see a similar thing has happened at {{Jew}}, where a dozen languages have found their way back into the template, completely ignoring the existence of {{Jewish language}}, and without any apparently consistent rationale. Tom e r ^talk 20:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

While I see the use of this template, it seems troublesome that it conflicts with template:Jew. Perhaps a better idea would be to use {{Jew}} combined with one of several mini-templates for specific topics, such as those in the various subsections- Jewish Philosophy, Jewish religious texts, Important Jewish figures, etc. --Eliyak T·C 04:33, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed...I'll try to come up with a proposal over the next few days. Tom e r ^talk 23:56, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

While this wasn't what I originally meant by "mini-templates", here is a demonstration of how an optional input argument (in this case, {{Jew|phil}}) could control a variable subsection on {{Jew}}. --Eliyak T·C 01:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Anyone know how to use the "hide/show" feature? I think it would be very appropriate for this admittedly large template (I didn't help by expanding the holiday section...)

This template was "pretty big" several bloat iterations ago, and is now in or around "unspeakably sprawling". I'd personally favour the assemblage of mini-templates idea (perhaps in a meta-template, so as to keep the appearance as consistent as possible), but failing that the show/hide idea would at least be a step in the right direction. Alai 06:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Replacing the Magen David with a Minorah?

Any reason for this? Masterhomer 22:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, actually. As I said in my edit summary, the menorah is a much better representative symbol of Judaism than a magan davidh. I see a huge

, but no

. This is discussed briefly in both Menorah and Star of David. The argument that the magan davidh is a better match for the color scheme is singularly poor--the color scheme was copied from the then-current color scheme for {{Jew}}, which has, itself, taken on a new color scheme, and, in fact, contains the exact same menora image as I used here... Tom e r ^talk 23:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

The Magen David, at some point or another, has become the "universal" symbol for Judaism, like the cross for Xtianity and the cresent for Islam. --Eliyak T·C 00:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Not really. It's become the "universal" symbol for Jews in the West perhaps, most likely because of the Sho'a, but that's hardly "universal" for Judaism which is what this template is about. Granted it's pretty difficult from within to see the distinctions sometimes between Jews and Judaism, but to the average Western mind the separation [dichotomy almost] between cultural identity and religious affiliation are complete, and the majan davið is definitely a symbol of Jews, not of Judaism. If it were otherwise, secular and completely unobservant Jews wouldn't run around with hexagrams hanging around their necks and sites like JewishJeans.com wouldn't be using them as a marketing scheme. Beyond that, however, is the additional fact that the menorah is a distinctly "Jewish" symbol, and even when it is used by chilonim or apikorsim, it is done as an identification with Judaism, not Jewishness. I really don't think it's worth getting into a big fight over, which is why I said to revert it if my rationale for changing the image didn't meet muster--I responded above simply bcz the question was asked, and I thought someone might actually be interested in why the idea had even occurred to me to change it. TIA. Cheers, Tom e r ^talk 01:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Tomer. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 20:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Messianic Judaism link

Any place to fit on the template a link to Messianic Judaism? I'll add it to the very bottom for now unless someone else wants to change it. inigmatus 16:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It is very controversial. I think Alternative Judaism is a better choice (if any) because it lists other similar alternatives as well. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 20:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It would make more sense to add it to the Christianity Template. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd support that. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 21:30, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Including Messianic Judaism or Jews for Jesus in the Judaism template would probably be in poor taste and would probably incite a lot of controversy. Valley2city

[edit] Request for template experts

I believe the Judaism template is a good example of how a religion's template should be done. I would like to ask any impartial editors to also take a look at the Scientology template and make any suggestions for bringing it up to the same standards of fairness and encyclopedic impartiality as this one. Highfructosecornsyrup 18:20, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Important Figures" may be controversial

I think the Important Figures section is quite objective. I am hesitant to add more people to it as the template is long enough as it is. However, how do we decide who goes in there? It seems that all of the contemporary people or those from the past century could all be classified as "Orthodox". I'm afraid that if I add Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist important figures, these will get reverted. What criteria should we create for adding to the Important Figures section so that it doesn't become a monstrosity. Valley2city 22:11, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Falasha Mura

Can we also include the festival of Sigd and the role of the Kessim in their respective catagores? It would be best if we also expand those articles. Are we attempting to keep this general or include all the geographical streams?

Guy Montag 04:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

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