Talk:Reform movement in Judaism

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[edit] Article name

I have no problem with the article name necessarily, except that the opening definition seems to be somewhat polemical (i.e., from within an ongoing Wikipedia dispute over article names and scope). AGF, I gather that the lead can be revised and the genealogy of the term can be moved to a subsection (e.g., definitions). While I'm not going to look up sources this sec, I think it's quite common for "Reform movement" to refer to "Reform Judaism," in all of the latter's multifaceted and disambiguable meanings. HG | Talk 20:13, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

the opening citing Meyer and Philipson establishes reason for notability of the term (used by definitive authors. A substantial article could be written on the term itself. The term is notable enough on its own for an article, even without the history. But yes, in addition to the intro, we might want to consider a section elaborating why (I consider this low priority). Egfrank 13:10, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, I'm honored that so far much of my text has been moved here without uncivil comment (i.e., in a civil way). Thanks. HG | Talk 20:13, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reform movement vs. Reform movement in Judaism

Anticipating objections -- let me say that it is easy to establish that "Reform movement" or "reform movement" is used to refer to "Reform Judaism". In a few seconds I found both Reform websites and non-reform websites that use the terms interchangeably. It is common usage and probably more notable (except to folks like us) than the precision used by (some but not all) historians. HG | Talk 20:41, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
True for "Reform movement" but not for "Reform movement in Judaism" which is well known as a historical term. First we have its usage by both Philipson (1930/1967) and Meyer (1988) - both considered definitive in their time. Other authors include:
It's not clear what you're saying. On the one hand, you're agreeing that "Reform movement" is used to refer to Reform Judaism. But then you go into "Reform movement in Judaism." Are you implying that the article is only about "Reform movement in Judaism" but somehow exclusive of the Jewish "Reform movement" or the "Reform movement" (of Judaism)? If so, well, it's hard to know how to react AGF. I mean, no offense, but that would come across as quite tendentious and, well, bizarre. Gee, how could you or anyone police the article against ordinary editors who come along and don't distinguish between the "Reform movement" (as it applies to Jewry) and "Reform movement in Judaism"? I don't get it. But please don't ruin the hard word we've put into the article over this question. HG | Talk 14:14, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm puzzled. What is tendacious about using a notable term? We need the history. This is the right name for it. Google distribution aside, if we are even having this discussion there is a potential for confusion, so I've added a hat note to distinguish between the present day denominations and the historical development just in case someone lands here but really wants one of the present day denominations. Egfrank 16:38, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
As for the phrase "Reform movement of Judaism", based on the google hits it appears that google seem to think the phrase is sometimes a historical movement and sometimes a present-day denomination. (1st page of hits:3 historical - but they are the top 3; 6 present day). I agree that something so little as "of" vs. "in" shouldn't make such a big difference in meaning, but apparently it does. We just report here. Since that appears to mostly mean the present day movement, maybe we should have Reform Movement of Judaism redirect to Reform Judaism. I have no problem with that. Egfrank 16:38, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Done Egfrank 16:49, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
On second thought may be I have an explanation: "in Judaism" implies this is something that moves within the larger (non-denominational) Judaism - which is in fact true for the historical view. "of" is a looser pronoun so "of Judaism" means that this merely is associated with Judaism without actually specifying the nature of the association. So some people percieve it as "moving within" and connect it to the historical movement. Others see it as merely some part of Judaism and connect it to one of the present day denominations. But the bottom line is "people see what they see" - it isn't for us to say what they should see. Egfrank 16:49, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
I've also removed the line another editor added to the intro saying the term refers to the Judaisms themselves. If this was added for disambiguation purposes then it is covered by the hat note. The article does not discuss the Judaisms (That topic is already covered by the Progressive Judaism series), but rather the historical process. Furthermore, it is only rarely used to refer to Judaisms (see above). As discussed above and on the Talk:Reform Judaism page, this particular phrase is a notable phrase often used by historians and other students of the non-orthodox Judaisms to distinguish between the historical process and the denominations that grew out of it - either in acceptance or reaction. Multiple reliable sources can be found using this phrase, among them the two "definitive" works on the history of this movement. Egfrank 15:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

It occurred to me that I didn't address the issue of the actual term "Reform movement" without any prepositional phrase. So here is a distribution of meaning based on google hits: "Reform movement" Judaism

  • US Reform: all except...
  • Historical uses - not specifically explaining US Reform, UK Reform
    • (Orthodox POV - Aish HaTorah): #8
    • using term "Reform movement in Judaism": #20, #28
    • 19th century German reform: #23
  • Israel Progressive: #11, #12, #29
  • UK Reform: #6

==> Unweighted distribution: US Reform: 71%, Historical: 11-14% Israel=11% UK Reform=4%. Methodology note: top 30 hits evaluated. search key quotes "Reform movement" so that term is found exclusively. "Judaism" is unquoted so that we limit the search to articles that also mention Judaism. Wikipedia hits excluded. (#4 - Reform Judaism and #5 - German Reform movement (Judaism)).

It seems that "Reform movement" has a similar range of meanings as "Reform Judaism" - although this particular search *does suggest* that we might consider moving "Reform Judaism" to "Reform movement (Judaism)" since this distribution of meanings actually matches the intro to that article better than does "Reform Judaism". Neither Israel or history are part of the distribution of top google hits for "Reform Judaism" but *are* in the top google hits for "Reform movement (Judaism)". Best, Egfrank (talk) 16:35, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you should gather other views on this -- perhaps start with DGG. I find it hard to comprehend how one could justify separate encyclopedia articles, as you've suggested above, entitled "Reform movement in Judaism" and "Reform movement (Judaism)". Either the suggestion strikes me as POV-motivated or as lacking common sense about encyclopedia design. So I'd like some other opinions here. Thanks. HG | Talk 17:27, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Like it or not, the various phrases do have different meanings and usages - as evidenced by Google. Our job is not to pass judgment - only to report what can be found in reliable sources. I assume that there are no substantitive arguments in favor of the editor above's position since no counter evidence has been provided above other than a politely worded accusation of POV pushing. And, sigh, I will remind editors again that accusations of impropriety and ad-hominem arguments are considered incivility. (see WP:ICA, WP:ATTACK). Egfrank (talk) 07:23, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Egfrank, I struggling to understand you. If you feel my polite wording is an accusation, I disagree. I'm trying to make "I-statements" to express my own thoughts and feelings about how hard it is to interpret your comments. Still, I'm sorry that you feel it's an attack.
Let me try it this way. I agree that various phrases do have different meanings and usages. These phrases might include: reform movement, reform branch, reform movement in Judaism, reform movement (Judaism), Jewish Reform movement. Indeed, each terms itself varies in meaning over time and has diverse usages. However, just because different phrases have different meanings, does not justify different articles. I just cannot grok what you are trying to accomplish. We only need one article to cover this branch of Judaism. Your suggestion for both "Reform movement in Judaism" and "Reform movement (Judaism)" does not make much sense to me. Ok? HG | Talk 07:52, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Sticking to the content is much more helpful. But I still don't get what you mean by "this branch" or "one article"? Are you trying to address the issues in the Rfc on Talk:Reform Judaism or are you trying to accomplish something else? If those issues concern you, I think that is a better place to discuss that point. If something else is intended, I'm not clear here. Again I will repeat that there is no evidence that "Reform movement (Judaism)" has the exact same meaning as "Reform movement in Judaism" despite their linguistic proximity. Reform movement in Judaism seems to be used almost exclusively to refer to a historical socio-religious movement. Reform movement (Judaism) and Reform movement of Judaism both have a much broader range of meaning, but are both still primarily associated with Reform Judaism (North America). When there are multiple meanings to a word and/or overlapping meanings between two different words WP:NCON#Overlapping meanings recommends disambiguation pages. Egfrank (talk) 09:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Denmark section

I had to remove this section (moved from Reform Judaism) - the use of a large block cite and the sentences before it were too closely paraphrased for comfort and I don't have time to research this period to correct the problems. Will editors please remember to put content into their own words? Close paraphrases should be avoided. Block citations may be used to illustrate a historical observation, but they shouldn't be used in place of our own text to further the narrative. To avoid this problem, it sometimes helps to work from multiple sources when documenting a country or time period. Thanks, Egfrank 13:15, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, HG, for taking care of that. It would have been a pity to leave out the Danes. Egfrank 16:55, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Popularised

I've put a {{dubious}} tag on the assertion that the popularisation of the term was due to the two books. It seems more likely to me that the term was already in widespread use, and the books merely reflected terminology that was already in place. Are there any reliable sources that link a sudden prevalence of the term to either of these books? Jheald (talk) 08:54, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea about the "Reform movement", but the full phrase "Reform movement in Judaism" I believe comes from Philipson's book The Reform movement in Judaism. That book was first published in 1907 and revised in 1931 to contain material on the WUPJ. At least scanning the titles of the major books before 1907 it doesn't seem like that was the predominant term before Philipson. Earlier writers seemed to prefer "Reformation" or "Reformed". Do you have any notable earlier sources that use the phrase "Reform movement in Judaism" before 1907?
Meyer has a brief history of Reform movement histiography at the end of his book. This is what he says of the notable secondary sources:
  • 1858, Immanuel Heinrich Ritter wrote History of the Jewish Reformation - 4 volumes - personalized and biased by personal commitments.
  • 1892, Emmanuel Schreiber wrote Reformed Judaism and its pioneers: A contribution to its history - the book describes the movement via biographical sketches of 9 key figures. The book made two contributions: it introduced the idea of an integrated European movement to US audiences and it defined a periodization of the early German movement that Meryes still feels has some validity: (a) humanistic (b) aesthetical-homoletical (c) historical-critical. He says the book is little read today.
  • 1900, Simon Bernfeld wrote Toledot ha-reformatsyon ha-datit be-yisrael. Written in Hebrew - still read as authorative in Israel. Like Ritter, he concieves of the reformers as a kind of "Jewish Reformation". Meyers describes this as the "work of an outsider lacking sympathetic understanding"
  • 1907, David Philipson wrote The Reform movement in Judaism (updated 1931). Meyers describes this as the "creation of an enthusiastic advocate". Meyers also sees this as biased and given to reporting rather than analysis.
  • after this point there are no full histories. Between WWI and WWII two brief histories were published in German by Caesar Seligmann and Max Weiner. Weiner is notable for his lack of favoritism. Caesar for brief readability. After WWII Gunther Plaut published a two volume source book which he explicitly says in the introduction of each volume is not a history, but rather an attempt to let the thinkers speak for themselves. Petuchowski (1968) wrote a history of Jewish liturgical reform (Prayerbook Reform in Europe: The Liturgy of European Liberal and Reform Judaism in Europe) and Mahler wrote a marxist-zionist reading of the period (Divre yeme yisrael dorot aharonim). (Meyer, Response to Modernity, pp. 475-477.
Updated - I like your wording better than mine. I think it does more justice to Meyer's work - which I agree is far more than an update. However, Meyers does seem to see his book as an updated (and more balanced) version of Philipson. I base that claim on the following quote from the preface of his book: Suprisingly, no full-scale history of Reform Judaism has been published since the first decade of this century [i.e. Philipson 1907 - egfrank]. Those studies that we posses are woefully outdated, biased, and polemical, or - in the case of more recent works - deal only with a segment or an aspect of the subject. In addition, he subtitles the book with a direct allusion to Philipson's book: Response to Modernity: A history of the Reform movement in Judaism. (bold are mine) Of course, if this is not enough, I'm sure we could always ask Meyer what he thinks. He's quite alive and accessible.
As far as popularization, the majority of Google hits on the term are hits that either cite Philipson or Meyer or are the Meyer or Philipson book itself. That pretty much convinces me that the term comes from Philipson and Meyer and not from some other set of authors.
How would you like to resolve the dubious tag? Do you have a source using "Reform movement in Judaism" that is earlier than 1907? If not, would you mind terribly if I remove the dubious tag? Egfrank (talk) 12:44, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
An aside. Hey, I found a 1903 source -- Philipson's article in JQR. Just mentioning to be nice, and for the sake of correct data, I still doubt the "popularized by" claim. BTW, regardless of Meyer's emailed opinion, it's what he publishes that counts. ;-) HG | Talk 06:39, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
1895 -- He gave a lecture w/that title. The Biblical World, 6:2 (Aug., 1895) JSTOR. HG | Talk
Make that 1897, sort of. Ok, you might not like my spin on this. In 1897, Philipson's article clearly refers to the "reform movement" (e.g., "reform movement in Europe") for both the US and Europe. Furthermore, in the 1903-4 JQR series of articles, Philipson uses the title "Reform movement in Judaism" but he does NOT use that phrase much within the text, instead he refers dozens of times to the reform movement (w/o "in Judaism") in his writing. HG | Talk 06:48, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Comments. (1) There may well be a difference between the first attested usage and how the term becomes popular. Besides doubting whether Philipson had the first usage, I certainly doubt his book had big popular effect, though I'm open to being shown otherwise. So I'd keep the tag and ask: what is the source of the "popularizing" claim? (2) It may be good to have a section on the historiography of the Reform movement, even an article. A fair amount has been written about various hypotheses, e.g. the reaction formation of Reform and Orthodoxy. It seems odd to start off the article on this trivial historiographical point rather than, say, introduce to readers what the Reform movement has been about. HG | Talk 16:35, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia so we only need to show "popular" within the field of history. That can be shown rather easily via citation counts. If this really matters to you I will be happy to work with the librarian at HUC to come up with some kind of "proof" of notability. But I'd rather not bother her with this - she's really going to look at me cross-eyed and ask what sort of drug I'm on (well, no, she's too polite to do that).
The mere fact that Philipson is (a) on the HUC reserve shelf even in 2007 - 100 years after it was written (b) went through multiple reprintings - even as late as 1967 and (c) is the only comprehensive history written between 1907 and 1988 probably speaks for itself as to the influence of the book. I think JHeald was not questioning the popularity or importance of the term, but rather that it was "new" with Philipson. Egfrank (talk) 16:52, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Additional evidence of notability of Philipson:
  • It merited a review in the Spring, 1908 edition of The Jewish Quarterly Review[2].
  • The American Jewish Archives considers Philipson's papers significant enough to archive[3] and the book is mentioned in the archive bio - hardly a reasonable thing to do if it was an ignorable footnote in his career.
  • A 1989 book review in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion called Response to Modernity a "replacement" for Philipson's book - not a likely claim if Philipson's book was non-notable.[4].
  • Cornell's Modern Jewish History course put Philipson on the syllabus as recommended reading2001 syllabus, 2007 syllabus.
  • Philipson is also included in the Usenet FAQ Reading list on Reform history[5] - popular enough?
Do you really need more as evidence of Philipson's notability or influence? Egfrank (talk) 17:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC) (added at same time as comment below).
With JHeald, I don't question the popularity of the term "Reform movement." I question the claim that it was "popularized by" this historian. HG | Talk 17:20, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
At issue is the term "Reform movement in Judaism", not "Reform movement". No claim has been made in this article or any other that Philipson or Meyer invented the term "Reform movement" without qualification. So, on what basis do you question Philipson's influence on the use of the term "Reform movement in Judaism". Egfrank (talk) 17:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Please see my comment above, requesting DGG or other input on your notion of this as an article about "Reform movement in Judaism" but somehow not about Jewry's Reform movement. On Philipson, just provide a reliable published source that states the term was "popularized by" his book. Regarding this article's topic, in his Bibliographic Essay, Meyer says that Philipson is writing about "Reform Judaism" and that Wiener wrote about "the Reform movement" and Meyer himself (1st paragraph) refers to the historiography of "Reform Judaism" and the ideology of "the Reform movement" (without "in Judaism") in discussing the subject of his book -- and this article. HG | Talk 18:11, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
As noted above, except in the title, Philipson himself almost exclusively uses "reform movement" without the "in Judaism" part. Thanks to JSTOR, we also find, prior to Philipson, three authors in JQR 1889-1890 using "reform movement" -- W. Bacher, Immanuel H. Ritter, and Claude Montefiore. As you may know, the latter founded JQR only 2 years earlier. Anyway, "reform movement in Judaism" is far less prevalent than "reform movement" among historians (etc) discussing the same thing. HG | Talk 07:22, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Excellent points on the term "reform movement" used in a Jewish history context. However, the term in question is not "Reform movement" but "Reform movement in Judaism". "Reform movement" by itself can refer as you know to a lot of things having nothing to do with Judaism - a google search will show that the term (unqualified) has far more non-Jewish associations than Jewish. How do you know for certain that the authors aren't using the term as an analogy to other reforming movements, e.g. political or social reforms? Were not reforming movements were a big deal in the late 1800's?
As for the Meyer point - that needs of course to be put in context of the fact that Meyer goes out of his way to distinguish between "Reform Judaism" and a "Reform movement that produced Reform Judaism" and to explain on pp. viii-ix exactly why he uses the term "movement" and the particular choice of prepositional phrase used to qualify it:

I have called it a movement in Judaism, rather than in Jewry, to emphasize its essentially religious character. However, this indicates no intent to neglect its social foundations. It was not merely a movement for doctrinal or literugical reform unrelated to the realities of Jewish existence, and tehrefore its hisory cannot be adequately studied using only the tools of the history of ideas or the history of religions. It was a movement among Jews whose individual and collective motivations transcended the purely religious, even though they cannot be explained by simple reference to a fixed class orientation or to an overriding political purpose. It is only by attention to the interplay of idea and social situation that the Reform movement becomes fully comprehensible. (p. ix)

.
What I see in the above quote is an author who is deliberately distinquishing (a) between general reform movements and a specific reform movement in Judaism and (b) between the history of a religion and the history of a socio-religious movement. Again, our opinions here must defer to reliable sources when we have them. We may not like what we see - it may not fit our ideas even of "what sounds right" - however, until we have counter claims by equally reliable sources, it is what we have to go on.Egfrank (talk) 07:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
You asked: How do you know for certain that the authors aren't using the term as an analogy to other reforming movements, e.g. political or social reforms? Because I looked at the Bacher, Ritter and Montefiore texts. You are welcome to check my work, I'm not infallible. Like Philipson (and Meyer etc etc), they use "Reform movement" without "in Judaism" to discuss the socio-religious movement. Thanks! HG | Talk 21:27, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
You seem to be suggesting that "Reform movement in Judaism" is a term of art among historians. If so, then why do they switch so readily to "reform movement" alone? For instance, why does Meyer, quoted above, end by talking about "the Reform movement" without "in Judaism"? HG | Talk 21:24, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Origins in Germany and North America

I've modified the original leads to reflect a dual origin in the US and Germany. There seems to be little evidence that initial reform efforts in the US had much to do with German reforms and later reforms (1840's onward) reflect both American and German trends:

  • Of US reform, Meyer states The rise of the Reform movement in America after the initial Charleston episode must be attributed to both Germanizing and Americanizing trends. Neither trend alone will explain it. (Meyer, Response to Modernity, 235-36). He cites two sources in support of this claim: Jick, The Americanization of the Synagogue and Cohen, Encounter with Emancipation.
  • As for Charleston, South Carolina(1824) - the predominant influence in Charleston was British. Charleston was a major center of trade with England and Bevis Marks in London even sent a rabbi in the late 18th century or early 19th century. However, the reforms at Beth Elohim (1824) predate any reform attempts in the UK - the formation of the West London Synagogue under the leadership of Moses Montifiore did not occur until 1840.
  • Furthermore, the liturgical reforms instituted in Charleston (1825) predate German reforms by about 20 years: The Society's manuscript prayerbook represents the first radical liturgy produced in the Reform movement anywhere, preceding by twenty years the 1845 prayerbook of the Berlin Reform Congregation, the earliest European liturgy to which it can be compared. (Meyer, Response to Modernity, 231). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Egfrank (talk • contribs) 09:53, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RfC preparation

It would probably be helpful to get more input on the dispute over the scope of this article. Let's try to formulate an RfC. (We can also utilize or refactor some of the discussion above in the article naming and popularised threads.) For an RfC, maybe we can present different viewpoints (at least Egfrank and HG) and an overarching question. I think the overarching question could be What is the subject matter and scope of this article? or, move specifically, Should the scope of this article be XXX or YYY?

As an exercise in reflective listening, let me try to state what I take to be Egfrank's view.

  1. "Reform movement in Judaism" is a notable term in historiography coined by Philipson and further developed by Meyer.
  2. The term refers to a modern socio-historical process involving Judaism.
  3. The term has a different meaning and hence a notably different subject matter, for an article, than would either "Reform Judaism" or "Reform movement" as it applies to Judaism. Specifically, the Reform movement of Judaism is similar enough to merit a redirect to Reform Judaism.
  4. The term does not cover the denominations/Judaisms themselves, such as Reform Judaism. Egf (ital added): "this particular phrase is a notable phrase often used by historians and other students of the non-orthodox Judaisms to distinguish between the historical process and the denominations that grew out of it". (Likewise, Egf removed from the article "The term is used to describe both the historical process and its expression in various Judaisms, including Liberal, Progressive and Reform Judaism.")

Let me state my view:

  1. If it is a term of art used by historians, "Reform movement in Judaism" is not especially noteworthy. However, the term is not used in a manner exclusive of the more common term, "Reform movement," even by Philipson and Meyer.
  2. I agree that the subject matter is a modern socio-historical phenomenon in Judaism, however,
  3. I do not see how or why this movement can be written without describing and including its expression in Reform/Progressive Judaisms. Specifically, I disagree that there is a notable distinction, within the secondary literature or the primary sources of the movement, to justify articles on both Reform movement in Judaism and Reform movement of Judaism.
  4. I am open to the possibility that the Reform movement in/of Judaism may merit a different article than Progressive Judaism and/or Reform Judaism, but I'm not sure.

I hope my articulation of these two views will help us frame an RfC question. I invite Egfrank esp to correct my on any misimpressions in the above reflective exercise. Thanks. HG | Talk 17:24, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure what the goal here is:

  • this article is seriously missing in content even before we expand the scope to include denominations - why would one want to focus on expanding scope when we haven't adequately dealt with the content within the narrower scope?
  • there is enough material on history alone to merit its own article. What would you call an article on history alone, if not the term used by historians, rabbinic students, and any one else attempting to discuss the history?
  • what exactly is meant by including the denominations in the scope of the article? Of course the formation of denominations will be mentioned in the course of the article and appropriately wiki-linked - are you suggesting that the denominations themselves be fully described in the article? Wouldn't that present problems of WP:LENGTH? Shouldn't the major denominations have their own articles?
  • Even if we didn't have problems of WP:LENGTH, if we include denominations spawned by this movement where do we draw the line? Most scholars believe that modern denominationalism came from this movement. Wouldn't we therefore have to include all denominations in this article? That would mean orthodoxy, conservative, masorti, US Reform, US Reconstructionist, UK Reform, UK Liberal, German progressive, Dutch progressive, Israeli progressive, Australian progressive, plus coverage of denominations in 31 other countries. That's essentially all of Judaism - all in one article?
  • is this a high priority issue? isn't expanding/sourcing content more important? you created an article with serious synthesis and bias problems (Jewish beliefs and practices in the reform movement) a few weeks back and haven't edited it substantially in over two weeks - isn't fixing that problem a higher priority? Concerns about overreaching scope have also been expressed for that article - if you believe the scope is managable without problems of synthesis or bias, why aren't you working on demonstrating that? If you've lost interest in the article, I'd be delighted to AfD it.

Sorry, I'm really not getting this. Egfrank (talk) 18:41, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi. If you are not getting where I'm coming from, let's look at your first statement. Egf: "this article is seriously missing in content even before we expand the scope to include denominations" (emph add) Here you assume that the article has a given scope ("the scope") and that I'm proposing to expand it. However, I'm disputing that it has the given scope you ascribe to it. I think, if you don't jump to the conclusion that your view of the scope is correct, you'll be able to read what I wrote above more clearly. Let me know if I need to clarify more. Thanks. HG | Talk 01:17, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Also, I find your last bullet point unhelpful. It seems like an unrelated issue and, placed here, simply a way to heap on your criticism of me (i.e., personalizing the discussion). Please strikeout and move it to the other article or my Talk page, if you wish. Thanks. HG | Talk 01:17, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Denominations and RAMBI

Regarding the denominations. It sounds like Egfrank agrees that the "formation of the denominations" will be discussed in the article. And I would agree with Egfrank that, due to length (and topic), denominations should not be "fully described" here but wikilinked. Or, I'd say they could be summary style links. (Except Orthodoxy, which isn't commonly thought to be "spawned" by the Reform movement in Judaism. Maybe not ConsJud or Recon, but let's not get distracted.) So, as you say, the question is where do we draw the line? It would be great if you'd answer your question. Since you would like this to be historical, discussing the "formation" of the denominations/Judaisms, how far would the narrative of the ever-forming denominations proceed? Do you have cut-off date in mind, or some other way to draw a line? HG | Talk 01:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the best way to handle this is to play it by ear. Without all the material before us, it is hard to know in advance what will serve the article's flow best. I'd prefer to let that decision flow form the sources rather than make it a priori. RAMBI has 150 or so sources listed. I haven't even begun to scavenge these for material. But if you would like to look at the list with me and prioritize it/divy it up based on who has access to what/interest in reading what I think that would help us move forward. Egfrank (talk) 05:28, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
And of course if you have already read some of these, then perhaps you can add in what's relevant and we can cross them off the list. Egfrank (talk) 05:32, 30 November 2007 (UTC)