Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Congregation Kol Emes

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was No consensus, which defaults to Keep. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 20:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Congregation Kol Emes

Congregation Kol Emes (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

The article makes no assertion that this congregation has any particular notability. --Eliyak T·C 03:57, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. —Eliyak T·C 04:03, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Eliyak: It is surprising that in the midst of the intense recent AFD discussions such as at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Adas Israel Congregation and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Adath Jeshurun Congregation that you are now fanning the flames with requests for deletions of more synagogue articles. Can we request that the dust settle a little before throwing more fuel on the flames. It would be advisable to continue seeking consenus at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism#Deletion of synagogue articles which you have chosen not to participate in but rather have just barreled on with these controversail AFDs. Please withdraw the nomination until such time as consensus is reached. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 06:20, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
    • IZAK: Since you address your personal comments to me on this AFD page instead of my talk page, I will respond here. I have not seen the Judaism WikiProject page for over a month. Perhaps this is negligent of me, but nonetheless I did not know we were in the midst of a spate of synagogue deletions, or that there was a discussion at WP:JEW. (I knew of only the Adath Jeshurun Congregation nomination.) I did in fact check into Congregation Kol Emes as far as I felt was reasonable to do (as I do with all synagogues I propose for deletion), and decided that Kol Emes is not particularly distinguished. I will continue to nominate articles of any type which do not appear to meet notability.
    • I would also dispute your assertion that "Jewish communities cannot be separated from their synagogues." At the very least, it is clear that Jewish communities often contain several synagogues. This particular synagogue was the result of a merger between other, older synagogues. These type of mergers often occur when one or both of the older synagogues can no longer sustain itself/themselves, so that fact does not seem to add to the prestige of the current congregation. It does demonstrate a continuous Jewish community in Richmond, but that is ostensibly not the subject of this article. Adding much background information about a Jewish community to a synagogue's article merely makes that page about the community, not the synagogue, and a good candidate for a page move.
    • I am still for the deletion of the Kol Emes article (or perhaps moving it to Jewish community of Richmond, Virginia). The new information, while impressive in depth and quantity, does not seem to indicate that it is a notable congregation. A large event at Kol Emes apparently consisted of 30 people. Also, a human interest piece in any newspaper is not a good demonstration of notability. In point of fact, these type of pieces regularly feature little-known personalities and organizations. The Times-Dispatch article, as quoted on the Kol Emes page, actually demonstrates that the synagogue was recently "without a Rabbi" and "struggling" to maintain any kind of prayer services. Wikipedia is not a place for human interest pieces! --Eliyak T·C 01:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Eliyak: I don't understand anything you are saying. Firstly this is about an Orthodox congregation, so would you rather prefer that the topic would be History of Orthodox Jews in Richmond, Virginia or Orthodox Judaism in Richmond, Virginia? In any case, if that got too big, it would justify a split-off and why create general topics if we are dealing with something specific? Secondly, the world Jewish population is very small. About 13 million today, with about half living in North America so that the threshold for numbers of Jews in questions of "notability" for Jewish persons, events and institutions can never be large and can never hope to match the scope of Christians/Christianity or Muslims/Islam or Hindus/Hinduism with well over a billion followers each! Thirdly, the challenge on Wikipedia is to allow Judaic topics, no matter how SEEMINGLY trivial they may seem on first sight, to be given the opportunity to be written up and stand on their own merit and not be measured up by comparison to eight hundred pound gorrillla topics or criteria that really are not helpful. We cannot write only about the big cities with Jews, that would limit us to about ten cities in the world. So that on the contrary, if in Richmond Virginia there is an Orthodox congregation, and it has a history that can be basically documented, then it can safely pass as a good article. And by the way, the struggle this synagogue faces is no different to the struggles all such synagogues face in small Jewish population centers in the USA, so rather than holding it up as "therefore it is not an article" one should say "this is an important topic" because unlike in the past, there are multiple media and other sources to record this phenomenon now. Fourthly, can you explain what makes a synagogue notable please? Some even argue that synagogues with large memberships are "not notable" so what is the standard please, and how on Earth can you assert that synagogues aren't key to Jewish life? In America especially, synagogues are the religious centers for Reform and Conservative Jews, because unlike Orthodox Jews who also have a lot of rituals they do at home, the Reform and Conservative Jews, and for many Orthodox in smaller locales, the synagogue is the ENTIRE focal point of their religious lives and lifecycle events if they desire it and many do. Finally, if you had your way, would you also eliminate "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" as the Jewish Biblical forefathers because they are "only" three people, or should the twelve sons of Jacob be called "not notable" because they were "only" twelve shepherds? What would you think of Abrham's plea to God when he requested what if "only" ten good people lived in Sodom and Gomorrah (there weren't, and Sodom and Gomorrah were thus destroyed...and these guys have 30! So why have a stricter standard than Abraham and God?) Think about it, since when do numerical numbers of Jews matter to decide if something is notable or not in Judaism? IZAK (talk) 11:33, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
      • P.S. NOTE: The article does not give actual membership numbers of its congregants over the long history of its existence. What it does say is that recently, it was visited by 30 Satmar Hasidim, itself a very notable event, because Satmar Hasidim are not known to be active with Jewish outreach usually. IZAK (talk) 05:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete per WP:ORG. Most individual religious congregations are non-notable, and no independent sources have been provided. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Hi Metropolitan90: In Judaism, Jewish communities cannot be seperated from their synagogues and certainly where sources exist to explain and prove their notability there is no justification to delete them. Your comments were directed at a stub, and with a little research on Google as I did, there is enough written out there about this synagogue to justify the retention of this article about it. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 08:22, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
• NOTE: The article, now renamed Congregation Kol Emes (Richmond, Virginia) for more specificity, has now been updated with information from reliable sources explaining its history and present status. It is requested that the nominator withdraw his hasty and unjustified nomination. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 08:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep because the article is now updated with sources and explanations for its notability as a synagogue. IZAK (talk) 08:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep I believe it is notable enough. Happy138 (talk) 09:53, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep, historical dating back to 1789. --MPerel 11:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Uh, wrong. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 01:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
  • While the history of Jews and Judaism in Richmond, Virginia apparently goes back at least to 1789, this synagogue cannot claim that entire history, as it was founded much later, in 1964. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Metropolitan90: The sentence in the article says: "Congregation Kol Emes is a continuation of Orthodox synagogues in Richmond dating back to 1789" and the history of the synagogue [1] clearly indicates that it was a culmination and continaution of Orthodoxy in Richmond and sees itself as such. So you are being too harsh on User:MPerel. IZAK (talk) 11:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - as the professional independent sources, like the Jewish Press and other reliable news media state, this is indeed a very important notable synagogue, we cannot censure worlds media extensive coverage and constant attention of this subject, because we in wikipedia don't decide whats out there, we can only write what others considered as notable out there, if somebody does not think this is important he should not read it. --YY (talk) 11:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
• keep. I have great concern with the system of nominating something for deletion only to have it immediately cleaned up. If the page was able to be cleaned up even before the deletion than the nomination was too hasty, and some articles that didn't have a last minute rescue end up being deleted when they shouldn't be. What is worse is that these deleted articles are almost impossible to recreate without a deletion review. On the other hand I question the prudence of making stubs which have little or no indication of importance even when it is clear to the author that they are notable. I encourage any interested knowledgeable editor to expand stubs (even by only a sentence or two) to give an indication of importance to prevent any accidental deletion. I would also encourage editor who find stub that are too short to contact the related wikiproject first in the hopes of expanding the article and preempting a deletion discussion. Jon513 (talk) 12:19, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Agreed 100% IZAK (talk) 11:52, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep As the article currently stands, there are appropriate reliable and verifiable sources to establish notability. A reminder that Wikipedia:Deletion policy requires a nominator to perform research on potential notability and to make efforts to edit, improve or consider merging the article before starting an AfD. Alansohn (talk) 16:46, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. I don't know why some are complaining about the afd nomination. Without the afd, the article wouldn't look like it did. I would suggest nominating more of these.
• Delete. User:Eliyak's powerful argument above has just swayed me. Its a very nice human interest story, but at day's end it's unnotable.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 23:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Hi Brew, see my response to his "powerful argument" above. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 11:51, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
    • I have worked my way through your arguments, but I'm unconvinced. Your arguments don't answer the essential question - How does this meet the WP:ORG notability standard?--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 07:07, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. Any organization that has a history going back to 1789 is noteworthy in and of itself. --Metzenberg (talk) 06:18, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The article was written in a way that would lead one to believe that the synagouge goes back to 1789, but it doesn't. It goes back a mere fourty years. I've corrected the ambiguity somewhat, but I'm not really interested in editing an article about a subject that believe is unnotable. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 07:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.