Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism/Archive 19

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Archive 19


Contents

Holy anointing oil merger proposals

There are two proposals to merge Holy anointing oil, one to merge it with Shemen Afarsimon and one to merge it with Chrism. Please see Holy anointing oil for discussion locations. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 04:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Apostasy & Heresy & Minuth

In the light of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jews in Apostasy there are now three related articles about Jewish apostates/heretics/minnim, see: Jews in apostasy; Heresy in Orthodox Judaism; Minuth. Is there any way to create a connectednes and continuty within and about these subjects/articles? Any suggestions please? IZAK (talk) 06:27, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion: Create an article using an overarching term drawn from the study of religion. The best term may be "deviance" as used in the sociology of deviance. For sample articles, see Google Scholar for religious deviance. Ideally, it would help to have a class of Religion and Deviance articles. Meanwhile, we could have an article Judaism and religious deviance. (Other options would include Judaism and heterodoxy or Jewish heterogeneity.) An article on Judaic deviance could cover apostasy, heresy, sects, non-observance, Sabbateanism, herem, and a wide range of technical/historical terms (e.g., Ebionites, Minuth and Apikoros) and prominent Spinoza. New scholarly book on this topic: The Boundaries of Judaism by Donniel Hartman (Continuum 2007). See also Adam Ferziger's Exclusion and hierarchy. Both use the term deviance. Best regards, HG | Talk 15:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I believe the religious concepts and the academic theories could fruitfully be regarded as two different subjects and deserving different articles. There are numerous analogies in the humanities and sciences for multiple approaches to subject classification co-existing. For example, languages are traditionally taught as distinct subjects, while linguistic theories often classify them into linguistic types. Articles on the distinct languages co-exist with articles on the linguistic types drawn from more comparative studies despite the existence of a certain amount of content overlap. Articles on distinct literary works co-exist with articles on genres and critical theories. One could argue the situation here is somewhat analagous. There's no need for Wikipedia to decide which way of looking at things is most fruitful. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 18:02, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Shirahadasha, hi, are you disagreeing with my suggestion? I have no problem per se with the existence of the various articles, I'm responding to what I gather to be a request for an overall article that can explain how these various articles are related or connected. Scholarly sources on religious deviance would help us explain the connections and provide some continuity. HG | Talk 18:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
The distinction I'd make is very minor and is more a matter of flavor than substance. I wouldn't personally consider sociology or a subarticle like Religious deviance to be the "overall" article; I'd probably personally regard Judaism or a subarticle as the "overall" article. As long as we can support multiple classification systems that have different "overall" articles in mind and don't impose one "overall" way of looking at things, I don't see this as a problem. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 18:35, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Let's see if I understand. Perhaps you like the idea of a Judaism and religious deviance article to briefly review such phenomena as heresy, minim, apostasy and apikoros. For this article, you'd regard Judaism as the overall article. Is that right? Sounds fine with me. Maybe Judaism could then offer a See Also link to Judaism and religious deviance. Pls let me know if I've misunderstood. Thanks. HG | Talk 23:19, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

"Religious deviance" is so silly. Are we now going to bury a classical word, like "apostate" and "apostasy" because of misguided political correctness? What is a definition of "religious deviance" in any case? It will be a violation of WP:NOR any way you slice it. Whereas with the terms "apostasy" and "apostate" all one has to do is report what Judaism has had to say on the subject, with "religious deviance" (which has no equivalnat in any Jewish denomination) there will be a thousand and one discussions that must willy-nilly go nowhere. It is so simple to define an "apostate" -- essentially any Jew who has abandoned Judaism for another faith, but what to make of a "religious deviant"? Is someone who leaves Judaism and becomes a Buddhist monk or joins Jews for Jesus the same "religious deviant" as a person he violates any other part of the Shulkhan Arukh but has yet remained a steadfast and loyal Jew? Twist as one may, there will never be an escape from the fact that it has always been Judaism that regards a Jew who abandons it for another religion as an "apostate" (what else to call him/her?) for which according to Judaism there is not much of a remedy, barring severe steps as explained in Jewish law, but that committing other sins does not equate with "apostasy" but can be dealt with and expiated by teshuva, Yom Kippur and perhaps some punishment such as yesurim, ("afflictions"). This discussion is slipping into the twilight zone. Will editors now try to redefine the consequences of not keeping the 39 categories of activity prohibited on Shabbat to call them something else with consequences never written in the Torah? Or how about that Reform Judaism does not require the keeping of Kashrut, since they do not think the Torah is a God-given Divine book, so will that mean Kashrut must be redefined as "Jewish dietary traditions"? This kind of renaminmg mania until the "lowest common denominator" is reached that waters down the meaning of subject until it just simply ceases to exist as a concept of Judaism, or as a mitzva of the Torah, is a self-destructive nose-dive into oblivion and headed towards diminishing returns that will not create a true picture of the subject but a by-product of POVs that wish to twist the facts as they stare one in the face. IZAK (talk) 01:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

"Deviance" is a sociological term, and if "religious deviance" is a current term in academia then there's no WP:NOR problem. However, I agree with one of User:IZAK's basic and fundamental points: the fundamental subject-matter of WP:JUDAISM is the Jewish religion, not sociological theories. I have no problem either with including sociological theories in Judaism articles or with articles on sociological theories that incorporate Jewish topics. However, the articles I'm primarily interested in working on involve Jewish concepts as such, discussed from various perspectives, not articles on academic theories applied to Judaism. If using a Hebrew word is necessary to clarify the conceptual difference involved, I could be convinced a Hebrew word is appropriate. Kohen and Levite are Jewish concepts; Judaism and caste systems represents a classification of those concepts based on a particular theory. The distinction is an important one. I am suggesting both kinds of articles are appropriate fro Wikipedia, so long as there is some overlap and cross-referencing to avoid WP:POVFORK. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 04:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Well put Shira. My main point is that there needs to be a wariness of a shift towards renaming and recasting articles that deal with core issues in Judaism, i.e as they appear in the Torah, Talmud, Shulkhan Arukh, or other primary sources of Judaic scholarship and turn them into pathetic "he said-she said" POV drivel from sources that are not part of the 3,300 year old Judaic tradition. Not just sociologists have lots of POVs about Jews and Judaism, so do all the world's historians, political scientists, theologians, philosophers, and academics by the gazzillions. If their views are now going to crowd out the primary sources of Judaism itself, then it will be a sorry day indeed. This is already a huge problem in many of the Biblical articles, an issue which I have long wanted to tackle but have not due to time constraints, that articles about Hebrew Bible topics are flooded with the opinions of Bible critics, the documentary hypothesis POVs, various Christian POVs, Islamic POVs, and often splits of how various Jewish denominations view things, so that the actual subject as it has always been accepted, studied and taught by Judaism for literally thousands of years gets lost in the shuffle, and if anyone would come across these subjects for the first time, they would never get to know what the subject was in the first place, because the introduction claims that Bible critics say A, Christians say B, Muslims say C, this Jewish denomination says D, the other denomination says E and by the time the poor reader, who wishes to get to the core subject has a chance to understand it in and of itself, there are already at least five or six gatekeeprs of "political correctnes" waving swords who will make sure that chaos and lack of coherence takes precedence of clarity (all in the name of "Neutral-POV" of course, which has sadly become and excuse for "No-POV" -- sure Wikipedia does not have POVs but Judaism, like any religion or belief system does, and it should not be shot down before it's even given a chance to descibe and explain itself in the original context, language and meaning!) Likewise here, an article about "Apostasy" must not spin itself to death by first quoting the POV's of all and sundry sociologists, historians, theologians, philosphers, educators, all of whom think that they know best, before one knows what do the Jewish primary sources say, what does the Torah, Jewish law and Judaism for the the majority of its history say. By all means, add on the POVs of all the critics, sceptics, free-thinkers, naysayers or whatnots, in "Criticsim" or "Other views" sub-sections, but don't drown out the baby's voice, perhaps even suffocating the poor kid, before it has even had an opportunty to present itself in its raw naked self to the world. IZAK (talk) 08:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Um, Izak, it sounds like you missed my point. I'm saying, keep the articles on "apostasy" and heresy, minuth, etc. If you want a way to put them all in some context that shows the relationship of these terms, you can do it through current sociological scholarship. There is no term in what you call the "primary sources of Judaic scholarship" that can otherwise cover this family of article topics. HG | Talk 17:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Ok, IZAK (talk) 06:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Arabic to English translator needed.

Can anyone translate into English the words on this page: Bsisa? Thanks. IZAK (talk) 07:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Jewish history in Saudi Arabia

An odd situation has arisen in the course of adding to Category:Jewish history by country. In that parent category (part of the larger Category:Jewish history) the "Jewish histories" of any country has been categorized under "Category:Jewish country-xyz history" but Category:Jewish Saudi Arabian history has now been challenged because it contains articles about events "before" Saudi Arabia came into official existence. But my objection is, in that case, one could then exclude the facts and events of Jewish history within almost all modern countries because when Jewish history events happened in them hundreds or even thousands of years ago, the modern countries in whose territory they happened had not yet come into existence. See the discussion at Category talk:Jewish Saudi Arabian history. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 06:28, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Troubling new categories

Two troubling and controversial categories were created by User Sm8900 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) , see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 December 21#Category:Jewish political status (and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 December 21#Category:Israeli-Palestinian conflict issues) for more information. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 13:11, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The troubling" categories you refer to, IZAK (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), are simple, to the point and convenient, and help to discuss issues on Judaism, as befits a member who is an Orthodox Jew living in Brooklyn, NY like myself. But go ahead and say how "troubling" they are. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 15:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi Sm8900: The statement that you are "an Orthodox Jew living in Brooklyn, NY" is of no significance to this discussion. Editors are evaluated and responded to based on their edits and contributions and not on their religious beliefs or personal backgrounds which should never be dragged into discussions as defenses, justifications, or credentials. Others can only judge you by what you write and do on Wikipedia, and not who you say you are or are not. These categories you created are very troubling indeed and I have explained why in the CFD nominations. I could have said more but I did not. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 06:18, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
wow, thanks. ok. I am starting to find your comments a bit unwarranted, if you don;t mind me saying so. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 16:46, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Menorah

Epson291 (talk · contribs) has change the naming of the articles Menorah, and Hanukiah. Changing menorah to a disambig page, Hanukiah to Menorah (Hanukiah), and menorah to Menorah (Temple). Before this change Menorah was about the temple menorah (with a disambig link on top), and Hanukiah was obviously about the 9 branched candlelabra. I strongly disagree with the change. The discussion in on Talk:Menorah (Temple)#Menorah. Jon513 (talk) 13:43, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Song of the sea

Views on merge of Song of the sea please! Chesdovi (talk) 02:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Done. IZAK (talk) 08:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Persecution of early Christians by the Jews

Any input on my move proposal would be appreciated. See the talk page. - CheshireKatz (talk) 19:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Remove all the direct quotes, and merge the whole shebang with History of Christianity? JFW | T@lk 22:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
CheshireKatz's proposal is to move Persecution of early Christians by the Jews to Persecution by Pharisees in early Christian theology. I oppose this proposal. However, I would be interested in hearing the Jewish perspective on this question.
Please provide your input at Talk:Persecution of early Christians by the Jews.
--Richard (talk) 07:42, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Cinnamon?

There is a WikiProject Judaism tag on the page at Talk:Cinnamon, yet the article doesn't seem to relate at all. Thought I'd check here before removing it. --75.89.130.114 (talk) 19:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. At least it isn't about antisemitism. I've removed the message, and hope that someone will teach his bot how to read. JFW | T@lk 19:32, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
The only herb that I can think of that relates to Judaism is Hyssop (used in the Red heifer, the treatment for Tzaraath and in the The Exodus), but the article is currently devoid of that information. Jon513 (talk) 23:44, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
That information is in the article Ezob. Jon513 (talk) 21:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
The Talmud lists cinnamon as ingredient number 11 of the 11 core constitutent components of the Ketoret, the incense offered in the Temple in Jerusalem. A standard 368-maneh annual batch had 9 maneh of cinnamon. The ingredients are studied as part of the standard Orthodox daily prayer book for the Shacharit service (And other times: at Mussaf on Shabbat, and Sephardim also say it at Mincha) It is even called 'kinamon' -- the English name comes directly from the Talmud version. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 19:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
I started an article on Ketoret listing the ingredients. --Shirahadasha (talk) 20:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
I think the term is probably Greek in origin, Shira. JFW | T@lk 22:07, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Online dictionaries seem to give it a Semitic origin. --Eliyak T·C 17:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Syangogues - size ranking

Hi guys, a slight problem I've noticed that you could probably fix:

From the Synagogue article:

The Dohány Street Synagogue or Great Synagogue in Budapest, Hungary is the largest synagogue in Europe and the fourth largest in the world, after the Beit Midrash of Ger in Jerusalem, the Belz World Center and the Congregation Emanu-El in New York City. It seats 3,000 people and is a centre of Neolog Judaism and hosts the Jewish Museum of Budapest. The building was built in 1854-1859 according to the plans of architect Ludwig Förster.

Straightforward enough? However, there seems to be some discrepancies across a large number of articles as to which order these Synagogues rank. The Hungarian Synagogue's article declares it the world's 2nd largest for example, and at least two have articles proclaiming to be the largest. Grunners (talk) 22:11, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I wonder what determines "size": the actual surface of the building or the number of worshipers it can seat? JFW | T@lk 00:46, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
According to the respective articles the Belz World Center seat 6000, Dohány Street Synagogue seats 3000, and Congregation Emanu-El of New York seats 2500. Both Belz and Dohany claim to be the second largest. The Belz World Center was completed in 2000 so the fact that dohany is the second largest may be out of date. I would suggest removing all references to "raking" of the synagogues since it is very hard to verify, and just state the seating capacity. Jon513 (talk) 14:45, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
A difficulty here is that size can be a notability claim, and just listing the seating capacity may not necessarily convey notability to editors used to 10,000 seat + megachurches. Perhaps something like "one of the largest in the world" would satisfy the notability issue without having to be too precise. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 17:40, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, some reference should be made, the Guiness Book of Records may be able to guide us on this matter? Chesdovi (talk) 12:11, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Verification help please

See discussion at User talk:IZAK#Jacob(Ya'akov)Valero. Maybe someone can help solve a mix up, or else we have a hoax on our hands. Thanks a lot, IZAK (talk) 14:30, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Input with Saudi Arabian Jewish history

Hi, hope all goes well. Maybe you can help improve the History of the Jews in Saudi Arabia article. It links to smaller articles about Jewish tribes in the areas of present-day Saudi Arabia, such as Banu Awf, Banu Harith, Banu Jusham, Banu Najjar, Banu Sa'ida, Banu Shutayba and they all cited sources. Now User:Bless sins is requesting "sources" for the same information about the tribes in the History of the Jews in Saudi Arabia article, as well as making other requests for sources and whatnot. (If you like, and have a minute or two, see the discussions that have been taking place at Category talk:Jewish Saudi Arabian history.) Please help out in the History of the Jews in Saudi Arabia article. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 14:32, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Glossary of Jewish terms

There's a new article entitled Glossary of Jewish terms. To be sure, the history of this article is rather idiosyncratic, having come out of discussions comparing Messianic Judaism and Christian terms. Nevertheless, since there are quite a few glossaries for various subjects on Wikipedia, this article may well be a keeper. (Though I do see some grounds for deletion, too.) If so, perhaps folks here would like to help define which terms should be selected for the glossary? HG | Talk 23:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Bethlehem - City of David

Does anyone have any info on this. Theres a section in the Bethlehem article on it but it is too short. I have no clue about this so any volunteers? Thanks! --Al Ameer son (talk) 06:10, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Of questionable notability

About a month ago, I tagged several bio articles for the lack of notability: Moshe Kletenik, Rivy Poupko Kletenik, Chaim Rapoport, Joel B. Wolowelsky. They all seem like fine people, so I'm reluctant to put an AfD on them. Can anyone help establish their notability? If so, please edit the articles. If not, well, what's to be done? Thanks. HG | Talk 06:32, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, has our WikiProject ever put together notability guidelines for rabbis? Such guidelines have been put together for diplomats, athletes, politicians, academics, etc. As much as every rabbi may be deserving of respect, they do not necessarily belong in Wikipedia. Given our collective understanding of rabbinic roles and status, perhaps it would be helpful if we drafted a guideline? Thanks. HG | Talk 06:47, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
HG: It may be wise to leave this alone for now. There will never be agreement, in fact it may drive editors away, about what makes or equals notability in each of Modern Orthodox rabbis, Hasidic Rebbes, Haredi dayanim, poskim, authors, Rosh Yeshivas, Mashgiach Ruchanies, kiruv rabbis, and then start with Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist rabbis. How will any Orthodox rabbis look if they get excluded and the non-Orthodox female rabbis are included? Dumb! Please do not open up a pandora's box that will inflame rather than calm waters. There is no "standard for rabbis" in the world like in other "professions" so that measuring the relative notability of rabbis is an impossible job and is bound to fail ultimately. What do Reform Jews know or care about Hasidic Rebbes? Zero! What do Haredi Jews think of Reform and Conservative clergy? Nothing! How about comparing the notability of living rabbis or rabbis from our times with rabbis of earlier generations, how will guidelines help, since usually a rabbi of past generations is known by his written works but not so with more recent rabbis, etc etc, so why open this tinderbox. I think the right thing is the one we have been doing all along, we take each article on an ad hoc case by case basis, and we try as best we can to keep track of rabbis' biographies, as you are doing with the abovementioned little group. So my advice is leave it for now. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 14:19, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
You raise very good points, IZAK, but there's a big advantage to writing our own notability guidelines, and it's mentioned in the header at Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Additional criteria: "A person is generally notable if they meet any of the following standards." (emphasis in original)
To me, the key word is "any". If a rabbi satisfies any of our guidelines, he or she is more likely to be considered notable in an AfD. If a rabbi satisfies the general notability guidelines, there's no problem. But satisfying one of our our guidelines might help save some borderline articles.
Because of the "any" benchmark, we don't have to reach broad agreement about criteria that would apply to every rabbi. People who care about Haredi rabbis could come up with a criterion for Haredi rabbis. Those with an interest in Reform rabbis could make a criterion for Reform rabbis. So long as the criteria are not inconsistent with one another, I think we all win.
To me, it seems like there is a tremendous benefit in preparing some notability guidelines of our own, but I don't see any disadvantage. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 00:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks to both Izak and Malik. Perhaps our guidelines could be developed step-by-step. For instance, if there are sufficient precedents (e.g., AfDs) for pulpit/congregational rabbis, we could start there. Or do each denomination separately, though I'd think that there are some useful criteria that would cut across quite a few subdivisions. Thanks. HG | Talk 00:37, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
As a matter of procedure, if the intent is to have notability guidelines that could be cited in an AfD discussion, they would need to be approved by the community as stand-alone notability guidelines or as additions to WP:BIO. See WP:ACADEMIC. A number of previously stand-alone notability guidelines, such as Wikipedia:Notability (pornographic actors), have been merged into WP:BIO, and there is a proposal to merge WP:ACADEMIC in as well, so if a proposal was agreed to within this WikiProject it might be best to propose it to the community as an addition to WP:BIO. Note that a previous more general effort at establishing notability criteria, Wikipedia:Notability (religious figures), failed. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 00:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, I was wondering how these different initiatives were related. Based on what you've seen, do you think this might be worthwhile or more of a cul-de-sac? Ciao, HG | Talk 02:38, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I really don't know here. Two of the difficulties with Wikipedia:Notability (religious figures) is it seemed too broad and didn't have a WikiProject behind it, and WP:BIO has some relatively obscure subsections, so this might have a chance. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 04:55, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Shirahadasha recalls correctly. Shira, together with User:MPerel and I tried to get some discussion going to save articles about notable Jewish religious figures from facing the axe unexpectedly, but some editors over there just cut off the discussions altogether, see Wikipedia talk:Notability (religious figures)#rejected and it was moved to Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Wikipedia:Notability (religious figures) and Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Religious figures. It was actually good that it was dropped because the way it was drifting, to the general community who know nothing about religion and less than nothing about Judaism and all its "branches and denominations" as they have developed, they would have allowed only a founder of a religion or a major Biblical figure which would have been ridiculous and would not have helped us. But I think this was a blessing in disguise, and as Shirahadasha intimates, we should live with the WP:BIO and its implications for now. User:Malik Shabazz is being overly optimiistic in thinking that guidelines for different rabbis is like coming up with recipes for different soups. Classsifying rabbis for notability using different criteria for different groups would be hypocritical, contradictory, illogical and just not hold any water whatsoever in the long run. For example, a Reform female rabbi could get an article just by dint of being a female who got hired by a Reform temple who got some media coverage and maybe wrote a book and some articles. But even a moderately significant Orthodox rabbi who is perhaps a notable Talmudic scholar would not get an article just for being a male rabbi to be hired. That would raise questions about equality and gender discrimination. Or how about if one would try to line up rabbis belonging to Humanistic Judaism that is officially atheistic, a Humanist rabbi would get an article because he most notably does not believe in God and it got written up in a number of places for citations, but what Orthodox or Conservative rabbi could be considered notable for believing in and writing about God? See another example of trying to come up with criteria in {{HasidicDynasties}} for the issues in coming up with a verbalization of what constitutes Rebbes and Hasidic dynasties. Therefore trying to create a very dangerous "official" homogenized classification system, when none exists in the real world, would itself be a gross violation of WP:NOR and lead to nowhere. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 11:35, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I wasn't aware of the history. Thank you, Shirahadasha and IZAK, for reminding all of us about the lessons learned. IZAK, regarding female rabbis or Humanistic rabbis: for better or for worse, a non-traditional rabbi who garners a lot of media attention is per se notable under Wikipedia rules, whereas a rabbi who may have made a more important but less publicized contribution to Judaism will have an up-hill battle to be considered notable for Wikipedia purposes. For better or for worse, those are the rules. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 19:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
I know the rules of Wikipedia Malik and I am not disputing them. What I was warning about was the nightmare of the Judaic editors here trying to come up with their own set of rules on top of Wikipedia's rules for WP:BIO which would only set editors up against each other, create deadlock and be a source for disputaion here whereas if we just leave matters where they stand for now (maybe sometime in the future someone will come up with a magic formula, who knows?) and go by the rules of Wikipedia and judge each case or set of rabbis on an ad hoc case by case basis, rather than us creating a fake "shulchan aruch of how to judge rabbis from all denominations" which does not exist in the real world and would be impossible to conjure up here either. That was all I was saying. The rest were just examples I was using to make a point and illustrate my arguments, as you should know I am fond of doing. Thanks a lot, IZAK (talk) 15:52, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Romanian Fascism Iron Guard

I came here a few months ago as an IP to state that it was strange Crticism of Hugo Chavez was part of the wikiproject, because his antisemitism is not confiremd and if it was, it was hardly a defining part of his policy. The response I got was that except in certain cases wikiproject:Judaism dosent deal with antisemitism. The Iron Gurads antisemitims IS confirmed, however as you have stated the project is not really meant to be about antisemitism as such (at least thats what I thought), so I thought Id let you guys know that the Iron Guard was part of this project. I confess to not reading the whole article, but there dosent seem much relation between the Iron Guard and Judaism excpet from antisemtism.R.G.P.A (talk) 00:46, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

If I were you I wouldn't get too worked up about where any particular wikiproject banner appears. The banner appearing on the talk page doesn't give the project any particular power over the article, nor does it guarantee that it will be watched by any project members. Frankly, I have never understood why there are wikiproject banner in the first place. If a banner doesn't belong be bold and remove it. Or just ignore it. Jon513 (talk) 17:32, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

k might as well leave it then, I dint know really what they did, it dosent really matter, I just thought as I got told before that these shouldnt be on articles on anti-semitism, Id let you know, but I dont really care that much one way or the other. (BT am R.G.P.A)86.154.49.77 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 13:37, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Shituf

This is a new Judaism-related article today with edits by only one editor so far. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 22:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I have added it to Portal:Judaism/New article announcements. Jon513 (talk) 11:31, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm interesting...

Nuff 'said. 68.112.202.189 (talk) 20:25, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

It is a wiki that attracts several edits a day, as compared to about 2 edits a second on Wikipedia (if not more). JFW | T@lk 21:18, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Still, "interesting". 71.87.23.22 (talk) 02:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Homiletics

I just noticed this. There are a number of pages that are a part of this project that contain links to Homiletics (e.g. Midrash, Leah, Rachel, Louis Jacobs, Aggadah, Israel Abrahams and a number of others). These pages use the term "homiletics" in a clearly Jewish context. Yet the "Homiletics" page deals with the subject from, as far as I can tell, an exclusively Roman Catholic perspective. Should there be a separate page for Jewish homiletics? Does the page need attention from this project? --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 19:33, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I think it would better to balance out Homiletics and (its Protestant rival, Sermon) with Jewish (and other non-Christian) approaches. There's only a brief mention of divrei Torah in Torah study. Any elsewhere? Good luck. HG | Talk 23:09, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Just a note, we also have Homily, which is probably a more direct counterpart of Sermon. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 00:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough, though "Jewish homiletics" is more common than "Jewish homily." E.g., Rabinowitz, Ozar Hadrush V`Hahatapha - An Encyclopedia of Jewish Homiletics. But both terms are less common in Jewish culture today than, say, dvar Torah. HG | Talk 00:32, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
HG, do you think it would be better to create a separate article on Jewish homiletics or modify the existing homiletics article? Also, I found this entry in the good old 1911 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 00:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, as I look more closely, I'm not sure you could easily add in a Jewish section to either Homiletics or Sermon; maybe it'd rock the boat unnecessarily. Encyclopedia Judaica ('71) has great articles on "Homiletic literature" and "Preaching". Very good: "Literature of the Synagogue" with section on sermons by Joseph Heinemann, and Saperstein's Yale volume Jewish Preaching, 1200-1800: An Anthology. Another idea: On Gaster's work. You could cover the homiletical forms of midrash (e.g., petihtah), ethical homiletics, and modern (post-Wissenschaft) sermons, including shift to vernacular. I think the JE article you linked should be used quite selectively, for key works, darshanim, and history. Thanks. HG | Talk 04:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
At this point, I'm fairly sure that the way to proceed is either to add a Jewish section to the existing article or to create a new one on Jewish homiletics. I think the second option would require changing the name of the current article to "Catholic homiletics." What about leaving a friendly note at WP:Catholicism to see what their reaction is? The article is currently part of that project. Also, the talk page at "Homiletics" is currently blank except for a couple of templates. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 04:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Checking the history, you'll see much of Homiletics is from a Catholic encyclopedia. That whole article structure is quite ill-suited to integation with Judaism. On the other hand: Talk:Sermon is already discussing how/whether to add in Islamic, Indian, etc materials, so Judaism could probably fit in there. Maybe you/we could add a Jewish subsection there. If it grows, it could be exported to its own main article. What sayest thou? HG | Talk 04:59, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Update -- I modified Sermon to see if we can add in non-Christian preaching traditions. Then I put in 2 sentences on Jewish sermons. Maybe you could use this as the seedling and work from there? Hope this is helpful. thanks, HG | Talk 05:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
So pipe the "Homiletics" links in the Judaism-related articles to Sermon? Doesn't seem like a very good fit to me. Check, e.g., Israel Abrahams. "Abrahams taught secular subjects as well as homiletics at Jews' College." It seems to me that a link to "homiletics" should go to an article on homiletics, not an article on sermons. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 05:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, homiletics is the art and study of sermons. So I think the piping to an eventual Sermon#Judaism could work fine. Whatever route you pursue, I hope it goes well. HG | Talk 05:45, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Hello, I'm Thw1309, I'm a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholicism. I have read the notice on our project's talkpage. I would like to remind you of the best principle of Wikipedia: Be Bold! "Homiletics" is a therm, shared by Catholicism and Judaism. This should be reflected by the article. If there would be an article with only the Jewish view on the topic, I would not hesitate to add the position of the Catholic church. If the therm is used by two regilions, there should be a general section and one section for each religion, not an all catholic article with a small jewish section. Don't add a jewisch section to a catholic Encyclopedia article. Create a neutral Wikipedia article and link the Judaism related article to the Jewish half. Happy editing.--Thw1309 (talk) 19:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Article "Judaism" needs work

Does anyone find it strange that pretty much that possibly one of the most important articles to this WikiProject is so terrible it can't even maintain GA status? See Judaism Masterhomer Image:Yin yang.png 05:22, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

It's been reviewed for good article status twice. The first time, it passed. The second time, it failed, primarily because the standards had changed after Wikipedia started requiring citations. It's in considerably better shape than it was after that failure, but don't hesitate to try to improve it. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 06:08, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Constant controversy at Glossary of Jewish and Christian terms

There is much heated discussion surrounding the Glossary of Jewish and Christian terms. See Talk:Glossary of Jewish and Christian terms#VOTE: Split the glossary into two for a proposed solution that could help bring the heat down from its ongoing unceasing boilingpoints. Thanks IZAK (talk) 15:49, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

The previous content of this glossary has now resurfaced as Glossary of Messianic terms. I don't think a glossary of Messianic terms alone would be objectionable on WP policy grounds; however, the new article again compares Jewish and Christian terms, with the same concomitant problems of original research. Thanks. HG | Talk 22:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Orthodox Judaism#Recent photo

A photo was recently added to this article of an Orthodox couple, taken on Shabbat. I raised the question of whether an Orthodox person might find being the subject of such a photo taken at such a time problematic or uncomfortable. I understand that this type of situation is a very gray area and there can be multiple views on this somewhat sensitive issue. I'd welcome your opinion at Talk:Orthodox Judaism#Recent photo. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 18:40, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Category issues about Jerusalem article and Category:Jerusalem

There has been some discussion about how best to categorize the Jerusalem article which also has an extensive Category:Jerusalem. Please see Category talk:Jerusalem#Placement of parent categories. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 19:49, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Jewish bankers conspiracy theories on Wikipedia. Did you know?

I've been having difficult removing monetary crankery from Wikipedia. There is a heterodox school of economics on Wikipedia called Austrian economics that is regarded as pseudoscience. There is currently a mob around these edits, involving several groups:

The first three groups are insane. The last group isn't totally off the wall, since they're just an obscure group of ideologues -- wrong, in my opinion, but not necessarily wholly unreasonable.

Here is the reason why I'm writing: Although Austrian economics is not openly associated with anti-semitism, in practice, it usually is. Even though their founders, Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard were both Jewish, their beliefs could simply be understood as self-hate. The authors seemed to have made it a practice of regularly appealing to anti-semites and subtly supported Fascism and Nazism as late as 1969. See Rothbard's horrible choice of words here.

And about Ludwig von Mises himself, here is some source material for you.

Ludwig von Mises, which the Wikipedia article names as the "uncontested dean of the Austrian School of economics," says of Fascism in Omnipotent Government (published in 1944, re-published in 1969):
http://www.mises.org/liberal/ch1sec10.asp

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.

And of Nazism:
http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/og/chap9b.asp

Nazism conquered Germany because it never encountered any adequate intellectual resistance. It would have conquered the whole world if, after the fall of France, Great Britain and the United States had not begun to fight it seriously.
...
With regard to these dogmas there is no difference between present-day British liberals and the British labor party on the one hand and the Nazis on the other.

The above four groups have engaged in ridiculous wikilawyering and the fact that Wikipedia IS a democracy means they can get away with it. I thought that by perhaps asking for your aid you could help address this issue. Zenwhat (talk) 20:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

This WikiProject is about Judaism, not about its opponents. JFW | T@lk 22:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Mordechai Gafni

Hello. I flagged this article up for attention on Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Mordechai_Gafni, and it was suggested to bring this to the attention of WikiProject Judaism. - Fructify (talk · contribs) was editing this article repeatedly to replace the article with a hagiography about how great Rabbi Gafni is. It is very possible that Fructify and Mordechai Gafni are one and the same (so this may also be a conflict of interest). I have tried to edit down the article a little to reduce the undue weight on Gafni's rape allegations, but some more knowledgable eyes would be appreciated, perhaps to expand the other areas of the article and check what is already there. Thanks. Neıl ☎ 07:51, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks all for your help. Neıl ☎ 16:40, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Harold Wallace Rosenthal

This page might need a review/rewrite, as it seems to exist solely as a coatrack for a conspiracy theory. Brimba (talk) 13:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Glatt kosher

Glatt kosher is currently a redirect to Kosher foods which doesn't seem to mention the topic. It's certainly worth its own article. Would anyone have access to sources on the history of the approach? Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 03:52, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It may require its own page. Obviously glatt kosher should sensu stricto only refer to the quality of the shehita, but in practice it is used to refer to the standard of kashrut as a whole. Sources needed. JFW | T@lk 14:30, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Ten Commandments

I'm continuously having to deal with "Ritual Decalogue" advocates on Talk:Ten Commandments. Could some of you please watchlist this and participate in the discussion? The relevant policies are WP:WEIGHT and WP:NOR. JFW | T@lk 07:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Could I again urge contributors to review recent edits by Heqwm (talk · contribs) and the completely circular discussion on the article's talkpage? JFW | T@lk 21:21, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Ecclesiastes

Recently there have been many edits claiming that the Qohelet is a women, because the word is grammatically feminine. But grammatical gender often disagrees with physical gender, so I find these arguments quite flawed. What do you think ? Please see Talk:Ecclesiastes. Y.t. (talk) 03:37, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. The opening verse says that he was "king (not queen) in Jerusalem". All other mentions of Kohelet in the book are also grammatically male. Not very hard to refute then. JFW | T@lk 08:37, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I have manually removed all the unsourced as weasel word-laden material. Without a source I am inclined to dismiss this as original research. JFW | T@lk 08:45, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Featured list drive?

Hi, I've been doing some work with the new Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration and am Jaakobou's mentor. Some of the project's work is to help improve cultural topics. We've recently done a good article drive for a Palestinian cultural subject and gotten a historic photograph (103 years old) featured on Commons. So it's time to seek an Israeli- or Judaism-related article that can rise to the next level. Our goal is to foster a positive and productive atmosphere. One page I noticed is ripe for improvement is 613 Mitzvot: your project lists it as high importance and the list itself is already thoroughly referenced. It's not far from becoming a featured list candidate. The introduction needs work. Footnotes and stub articles for the redlinks would be a big step forward. I could help with copyediting and with Photoshopping images. Welcoming feeback and ideas with best regards, DurovaCharge! 20:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Hi Durova: According to the Torah and classical Judaism, the 613 Mitzvot are the eternal commandments that God gave to the Jewish people only, to be observed forevermore. It is the core of classical Judaism, so that ideally only highly scholarly editors familiar with these issues should do any massive editing of any sort. The red links refer to very rare ancient holy books. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 08:01, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Durova: Why have you not told editors here that you have already initiated a discussion about the 613 Mitzvot in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle project Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration#613 Mitzvot without consulting the editors here? Meshing articles about Judaism with articles about current wars is very dangerous and should be strongly rejected for that project that seeks non-controversial and low-heat involvement. By actively combining religion with politics you are creating the flammable fuel for a big explosion that will defeat the purpose of your project. IZAK (talk) 08:14, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
    • I withdraw the suggestion. DurovaCharge! 08:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
      • Thank you, it is greatly appreciated. Maybe some other time. IZAK (talk) 10:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Durova, I agree in principle but I tend to agree with IZAK that the list is primarily a religious issue and should not become the territory for WP:IPCOLL to work in. That is not to say that I don't warmly welcome the effort by that WikiProject in promoting harmonious editing! JFW | T@lk 18:11, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

International Media Help

Hi, I am trying to make sense of the media organization described in International Media Help. Does anyone know something about it and if it is can be called a "Jewish media organization" so that it may fit into Category:Jewish media? Thanks a lot, IZAK (talk) 07:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Nunt

Came across Nunt it's a kind of desert supposedly but cites no sources and the only ones I could find by Googling were sites that mirror the Wikipedia stub about it. Does anybody have any idea what this is? Thanks. IZAK (talk) 15:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I never heard of it. The article started as a translation of de:Nunt. Jon513 (talk) 16:30, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Gathering of Israel

Gathering of Israel needs to be reviewed and it needs a lot of help. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 16:30, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

hot off the press, and needs work:

Shomer Shabath —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brewcrewer (talk • contribs) 16:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I've had the audacity of merging the relevant content with Shabbat under its own header. JFW | T@lk 23:02, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi I added alot more data and refs, moved it back to an article. Want to help DYK it? Thanks. HG | Talk 03:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Fow now I would say such a topic goes with Shabbat, otherwise there will then be a article for Mechalel Shabbat as well. There should definitely be an explanation of what Halachah has traditionally defined as either a Shomer or Mechalel Shabbat. And then one has to deal with the gamut of the different denominations' acceptance/rejection of traditional Halachic norms, definitions and rulings. IZAK (talk) 04:10, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The mekhallel shabbat is mentioned in Heresy in Orthodox Judaism and does deserve more fuller treatment there. I also noted it in Shomer Shabbat, thanks. I think the mekhallel is a more interesting and contentious term, with much more halakhic significance. While it's obviously central to Judaism to observe the sabbath, the term itself is notable yet tame. Speaking of which, shavua tov, Izak! HG | Talk 04:28, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Would somebody kindly do me a favor and add the Hebrew phrase to the beginning of Shomer Shabbat? Thanks! HG | Talk 09:12, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Yep. JFW | T@lk 09:23, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Talmud

I'm not sure what to make of recent changes to Talmud. Apart from being completely unreferenced, there may be some NPOV problems. JFW | T@lk 23:54, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Hebrew words in Yiddish

Reposted for continued broader discussion here from User talk:IZAK#Mashpia: Yiddish?. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 03:48, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Background: There are two categories: Category:Hebrew words and phrases and Category:Yiddish words and phrases. Recently I have added words to the Yidish category that are derived from Hebrew because of their accepted common usage in Yiddish. As a result of that the following discussion has ensued IZAK (talk) 03:51, 27 January 2008 (UTC):


You've added Mashpia to the cat of Yiddish words. Isn't it a Hebrew word? Yehoishophot Oliver (talk) 12:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Hi Yehoishophot Oliver: Yiddish is half Germanic and half Hebrew and lots of other words. I am being very careful. Yes, the origin of the word Mashpiah is from Hebrew, but it is widely used in Yiddish. Such as "er is mashpiah oif dem andern" or when Lubavitchers are speaking Yiddish then it automatically becomes a Yiddish word even if it's from Hebrew. Like "bracha" in "mach a brocha" is totally Yiddish even though "bracha/brocha" is a word of Hebrew origin and used in Hebrew. There are multitudes of words from Hebrew that get used in Yiddish like this and this has been the situation for about a thousand years since the advent of Yiddish. Thanks for asking and feel free to check with me. Good Shabbos ("Shabbos" is a Hebrew word too!) IZAK (talk) 12:18, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with YO that words that are not actually Yiddish should not be in Category:Yiddish words and phrases. The fact that Yiddish borrows much of its vocabulary from Hebrew and Aramaic does IMHO not mean that those words automatically become Yiddish words, much like raison d'être and Entente cordiale do not become English phrases because they are used by English speakers in otherwise English sentences. JFW | T@lk 15:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

  • I will prove to you how absolutely wrong you are!!!! This is a weird discussion and you may not be that familiar with the variety and richness of legitimate Yiddish usage. Question: So is "Sholom Aleichem" only "Hebrew"? How about "Oy Vey" when both are from the Hebrew, "Oy mehaya lanu", from the Kinnos, and "vey" or "Vaai" is from the Hebrew "Vaai"? Or how about "Yiddish" script and print which uses only the Hebrew letters and hence an "alef" in Hebrew is an "alef" in Yiddish and a bes in Hebrew is a bes in Yiddish and a "gimmel" in Hebrew is a gimmel in Yiddish ALL THE WAY THRU the entire Hebrew/Yiddish alphabet (including vowels) because there is NO "Yiddish" alphabet as such since it uses only the Hebrew one with the exact same names for its letters, there's your conjoining at the heart of the alefbes. Anyhow, as I have pointed out I am being super-meticulous about this. Sure, not every single Hebrew or Aramaic word took root in Yiddish diction and literature, just as not every Germanic or Slavic word was absorbed into it, and in our days, not every English word has been absorbed into Yiddish, but once a word gains widespread usage within Yiddish, especially from Hebrew and Old German it is entirely Yiddish. Dr. Wolff, your examples from French to English are not the same because they are small rarities in English, whereas without its Hebrew words, the Yiddish language does not exist. You know, there was a class of Yiddishists in the Soviet Union that used to sit around thinking up ways to rid Yiddish of its Hebrew words and when they utilised Yiddish it sounded more like wannabe German, but they never succeeded in ripping Hebrew from Yiddish since the languages are inherently inseperable. But as I said, I would not automatically class every Hebrew word with Yiddish, it must take a good degree of expertise and familiarity with both languages to see just how much Hebrew is the basis of Yiddish and that there is no getting away from it. Thanks for your attentive ears, and please let me have your feedback. Finally, "mashpiah" is definitely a Yiddish word as I am looking in the Harkavy Yiddish-English Dictionary (22nd edition, 1898, Hebrew Publishing Company) right now as I am typing this here, and I am looking at the Yiddish section, and for the YIDDISH word written in Yiddish, meaning Hebrew print, because there is no other way of writing or printing Yiddish, it clearly says that "משפיע" (mashpiah) means "to influence to instil" and to show you how flexible Yiddish is, when I look up "Influence" it says that it means "איינפלוס" (einflus) and "ווירקונג" (virkung) with einflus and virkung also being the Yiddish for "influence" and "effect" the same as the Hebrew "mashpiah" so that this illustrates the ambidexterous dual way Yiddish functions bowing to and drawing from both its Germanic and Hebraic sides SIMULTANEOUSLY, as confirmed by Harkavy, not that I needed him, but it should serve as proof that a Hebrew word is as much part of Yiddish as a Germanic word that says the same thing. And no doubt in the Slavic lands they had equivalant words that could serve up a third tier of words, and in America, Yiddish is the main language of all the Hasidic groups and they have absorbed of lot of English diction so that a "window" in Yiddish to most of them is a "vinda" a computer is a "kompuetter" (sounded with the same pronounciation sounds as "kompot") but we are not going that far here (yet). With Hebrew it is far different because Yiddish and Hebrew have been joined since the inception of Yiddish over a thousand years ago in the lands of Ashkenaz. Ol de best, alts gutz, Koil Tiv! IZAK (talk) 03:48, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Every Hebrew word will turn into a Yiddish word if used in a Yiddish sentence. The category is endless. Am interested to hear what other users have to say, but I find the whole categorisation of Hebrew and Yiddish words a bit overkill. JFW | T@lk 04:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Hi Dr Wolff: I know exactly what you mean BUT, and it's a pertinent but, because I am precisely NOT talking about "random" Hebrew words, but rather those words that are so well used and ingrained that they can make it into a basic dictionary. I assure you that my 1898 Harkavy English-Hebrew dictionary does not have every single Hebrew word used in Yiddish but only those that have found their way into common Yiddish usage. To prove my point, just take a look at the "List of English words of Yiddish origin" and notice the multitudes of "Yiddish" words that are derived from pure Hebrew, such as: bris, chutzpah, ganef, golem, goy, kosher, mamzer, maven, mazel tov, meggilah, meshuga, minyan, mishpocha, naches, oy, parev, shlimazel, Shabbos, shamus, shegets, treif, tsuris, tuchus, yontif --- who would ever claim that these words are "not" what they mean in Hebrew as well?, it would be preposterous indeed. And this small sampling is just from people who dumped the words into this list who consider them "Yiddish" when they are pure Hebrew words as well simultaneously, and the same goes for thousands of other words used in Yiddish conversation, diction and literature. This can no longer be overlooked and glossed over. But as I said, and I agree, that not every Hebrew can be classed as having a common Yiddish usage and that is one big proviso that should be posted, that it is preferable that only editors with a good knowledge and fluency in Yiddish should attempt to categorize Hebrew words as also being Yiddish words and that this be monitered and if someone has overshot the mark, it would be very easy to either discuss the matter (as we are doing now) to consider what should be done and if words belong or should be removed, but this cannot be ignore at this time when we have so many Hebrew words with Yiddish applications and usages up already all over Wikipedia. Thanks a lot. IZAK (talk) 07:30, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
    • I understand that Yiddish uses Hebrew words so much so that they are by now inseparable from the language, but ... the reason for that historically is that almost all Jews were frum, and so use of words related to (Classical) Hebrew was natural, in much the same way as Aramaic included many, many Hebrew words, or words just barely altered from Hebrew. (I imagine it was the same with Ladino, though I know nothing about that language.) But the word is still Hebrew, just a Hebrew word commonly used in Yiddish! Do you seriously propose to go through the Aramaic dictionary on the Talmud and define on wikipedia every Hebrew Talmudic word that's included there as Aramaic?! I see no difference. The only place in which I'd concede that the Hebrew word can properly be defined as Yiddish is if it's pronunciation and/or meaning is significantly altered from it's Classical Hebrew counterpart. For example, bris (or mashpia) is pronounced the same in both uses, and its meaning is the same, so it doesn't qualify, but the adjective treif, though stemming from the Hebrew word tareif, is 1) pronounced significantly differently, 2) means "not kosher"/invalid/forbidden rather than the strict definition of the Hebrew tareif, which is related to the word tereifa, an animal that has an internal blemish that will cause it to die. Anyway, can we please have more discussion and reach a consensus before this category is posted all over wikipedia. Shekoyach! :) Yehoishophot Oliver (talk) 09:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
      • Hi Yehoishophot Oliver: Sure the discussion is taking place right here. I must say right off the bat that your insertion about the relationship between Hebrew and Aramaic is a huge red herring, because: (a) We are not discussing Hebrew and Aramaic but Hebrew and Yiddish. If another editor wishes to work on the correlation of Hebrew and Ladino and Spanish or with Aramaic he is free to do so. This is Wikipedia and WP:NOT#PAPER. I am focusing on Hebrew/Yiddish only at this point. (b) Hebrew and Aramaic use and spell words differently but Yiddish does not. Yiddish uses the exact same Ashkenazi Hebrew pronounciation for the same Hebrew words using them the same way. Like any words there can be subsequent nuances of meanings as in all languages. But Hebrew and Yiddish words that are used in Yiddish mirror each other whereas Aramaic words have entirely different spellings, whereas Hebrew and Yiddish use the same spelling and the same pronounciation for the same words when it's used in Yiddish. (c) I am not going through nor making any "dictionaries" either on Wikipedia or anywhere because WP:NOT#DICTIONARY. What I am doing is looking at words all over, especially in the Category:Hebrew words and phrases and when I see something that is already in that category I take a very close look and if it is obvious that it's also widely used in Yiddish speech and diction then it is only natural and logical that it belongs in Category:Yiddish words and phrases as well, because it has become so widespread in Yiddish usage that it is accepted as a Yiddish word or phrase as much as Mazel Tov and Oy Vey which come from Hebrew are part and parcel of Yiddish as well 100%. (d) I don't know why you mention the "frum" factor because that also has no relevance to this discussion. What you mean to say is that once upon a time most Ashkenazi Jews spoke Yiddish, now it's only a minority, let's say 10% of Ashkenazi Jews who now speak Yiddish, so therefore the majority who does not speak or understand Yiddish has the right to decide which Hebrew words are or are not connected to and used in Yiddish because they do not use the Hebrew words that Yiddish way. But that is a total fallacy because it's like saying, since 90% of Jews are ignorant of or are anti-frum Judaism and are not Orthodox they now have the right to dicate and decide what Judaism is (based on ignorance yet!) because only a small minority of 10% is practicing "frumkeit" (and they do have the knowledge) which would also be a great error of logic, because the decisions about what makes a language or any subject valid or relevant is determined by either those who use it or know about it, and NOT by those who do not use it or know nothing or little about it. (e) Your suggestion that: "The only place in which I'd concede that the Hebrew word can properly be defined as Yiddish is if it's pronunciation and/or meaning is significantly altered from it's Classical Hebrew counterpart" makes no sense. How does this add up? If Yiddish words are identical to Hebrew and used in Yiddish the exact same way they are then "not" "Yiddish" but if they change then they "are" "Yiddish"? Who made up this rule? Sounds like a violation on the spot of WP:NOR to me. There is no such thing as this. If the two words match up then they are definitely part of both languages, simply because they are both the same. Yiddish is not just about words that differ. (If that would be the case then 80% of English would not be English because half of it is Latin and most of the rest is Anglo-Saxon and the 20% that's different would not qualify to form a functional recognizable language!) (f) So it is rather straightforward and will actually be of great benefit to those who do not know Yiddish and those who are "frum-to-be" when they discover and learn just how much Hebrew is used in the Yiddish language and rather than depriving them of this great opportunity it should be encouraged, which would be fulfiling the purpose of an encyclopedia to convey and record information accurately, truthfully and clearly. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 12:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
I would disagree with Izak and agree with YO and JFW only because a Title isn't part of the language it is a name of something. like YO has very eloquently eleberated on this that surely Yiddish is in essence comprised from other languages, but if only "Frum" people call it like this its because they use still their Hebrew language when talking about something holy, to notate a 'Hebrew' connection and explicitly not to make it a 'Yiddish' word, just like "Torah" or "Chumesh" isn't a Yiddish word even though there is no alternative in Yiddish, i think "Mashpia" is in the same category. True we use it in daily Yiddish conversations but in essence its still recognized as a Hebrew word.--YY (talk) 14:23, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Update, i now reread Izak's comments and he says that the the Yiddish Dictionary also has it as a Yiddish term than i must retract my above statement, and do as Izak says, we cannot overrule the professional Harkavi. Thanks Izak for bringing this to our attention.--YY (talk) 14:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Yiddisheryid, thank you. As I have said about this subject that one must be super-careful not to over do it, to throw in all the Hebrew words into Yiddish, but on the other hand, there is no way to escape that "even though" Hebrew words are the basis of Yiddish words they cannot be divorced from (the Hebrew words) being Yiddish as well. Just as we cannot divorce the Germanic origins of the other half of Yiddish words to say that if words can be identified as having proven German orgins that they cannot be Yiddish, such a claim would be futile and false. Therefore, because Yiddish is inherently a mixture and fusion of two main languages, (classical) Hebrew with (old) German, the etymology of Yiddish words can most of the time be traced to one of these two languages, the other much smaller segment of Yiddish coming from Slavic languages to a lesser extent. By the way, as with all languages, one finds that the educated classes, tradionally being the Torah scholars, tended to use more Hebrew and some Aramaic in their Yiddish because they were studying the Torah and Talmud and used a lot of those languages that then worked its way into the way they used Yiddish. In later centuries, after the Haskalah, the more educated secular Jews were prone to use more high-class German words in their Yiddish to express themselves. (This can be found in English too because English is also a combination of two languages, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, a Germanic language, so that the more educated "higher classes" use the more Latin, i.e. Romance, side of the language, as in legal and medical terms in English that are almost all in Latin, but when speaking "simple English" the tendency is to use the Anglo-Saxon Germanic part of English.) IZAK (talk) 11:31, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with IZAK on all points mentioned. --D. Breslauer (talk) 11:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

"Jewish Gestapo" and "Rabbi" Abraham Gancwajch?

Seems that User Lysy (talk · contribs) has just added articles about Jewish Gestapo and a "Rabbi" Abraham Gancwajch who worked with.for the Shomer HaTzair? Is this legit? Sounds very odd and the sources seem POV antisemitic. I redirected Jewish Gestapo to Group 13. See also some of the "funny" discussions at Talk:Tykocin pogrom. IZAK (talk) 13:24, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

source checking

I would like someone to check a source add to Judaism's view of Jesus about Milton Steinberg's view of jesus' life (this edit). A link to Amazon's search insider feature of his book is here, but needs an account that has made a purchase on amazon in the past. Jon513 (talk) 08:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I checked out their search inside the book feature, his page numbers are off, it's on 104, and I'm not sure what the exact context is, I see this "... who is incidently the Jesus of many liberal Christians. To Jews, that Jesus appears as an extraordinarily beautiful and noble spirit, aglow with love and pity for men, ..."

NachMS (talk) 15:58, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

New stubs to expand

Greetings. I would welcome help with Emanuel Feldman and especially Charles Liebman, which maybe we could turn into a WP:DYK esp if somebody wants to recap some of his major works or the new memorial volume. In addition, I'm concerned about the newly-created Marshall Sklare Award because I got a copyright tag. Can anybody help add some info about the Award that doesn't come from the ASSJ website? Thanks. HG | Talk 18:14, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Charles Liebman is no longer a stub and will shortly be on the Main Page, as a DYK. Thanks. HG | Talk 19:12, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Problematic new Christian/Jewish template

Please see the discussions at Template talk:Books of the Bible concerning the new troubled and troubling {{Books of the Bible}} template. Your attention to this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 05:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Please check this edit

For WP:NPOV. [1] Do all Jews believe the rebuilding of the temple is necessary for the Messiah to return? ScienceApologist (talk) 23:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There is very little that 'all Jews' believe. Adam Sandler and Mel Brooks (and this is an observation, not an evaluation) are secular Jews and probably do not believe in much. They have much in common with the majority of the current Jewish population whose perspective is perhaps not actively against religious consensus as much as it passively indifferent to things that they either never learned about or have no care for. A basic, fundamental concept asserted by numerous prayers included in the liturgy, based on scripture, expresses a desire for a hastening of the final redemption with an emphasis on the return of Jewry to the Land of Israel and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. If there are Jews who actively campaign against this perspective, they are not only operating outside of the realm of classical Jewish values but are eroding the very essence of the religion. DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 00:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Reform Judaism actively opposed both the rebuilding of a Temple and the concept of a personal Messiah from early in its development, and systematically rewrote its liturgy to remove all references to them. Conservative Judaism is essentially neutral on the issue, retaining elements of the traditional liturgy but not necessarily interpreting them literally (not necessarily a personal Messiah or physical Temple). So only in Orthodox Judaism is there enough belief in both events personally and physically occurring for the question even to make sense. Orthodox Judaism has no definite belief about which one will come first. Maimonides held that it was a waste of time to speculate on the exact nature or order of eschatological events. However, a lot of people have done it anyway. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 05:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, according to the discussion here, I changed the sentence from reading simply "Jews" to "Orthodox Jews". ScienceApologist (talk) 14:35, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd add "some" there and perhaps remove the reference to Jews entirely. It's not an article of Orthodox faith that the Temple needs to be rebuilt in order for the Messiah to return. Many Orthodox Jews believe the exact opposite, that it is necessary for the Messiah to return in order for the Temple to be rebuilt. And still others believe both events will happen, but don't claim to know in which order. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 17:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
CORRECTION: No Jews of any persuasion believe in the "return" of any Messiah. The idea of a "return" (second coming) is a purely Christian belief. --Shirahadasha (talk) 22:49, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I had already edited the article with this point taken into account. Secondly, it is not a belief of Orthodox Judaism -- it is the belief of Judaism. Why do the articles on Judaism not specifically state that practices are performed or binding only on Orthodoxy? The answer is because they are binding on all Jews. Irreligious Jews of the Conservative, Reform or any other persuasion do what they do in disregard to the laws, though most probably not deliberately because they were raised without a proper appreciation for the correct manner in which to act. Why is there a liberal bias to Jewish references? If there are splinter groups that redraw the rules of engagement, why are they given any special status as transmitters of the faith? Granted, they are unfortunately in the majority, but even so, that is a only a current phenomenon -- historically, there have been more Torah-observant Jews than Torah-non-observant Jews. How can the illegitimate views of corrupt Jews be expressed as the standard of practice? DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 01:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I think Shira's edit that changes the sentence to "Jews await the initial arrival of a Messiah of the House of David, or a Messianic age." is very good. It avoids the relatively minor issue of when the temple is built (if at all) and focus on the major theme in Judaism of a "messianic age" which has universal (or near universal) agreement. Jon513 (talk) 02:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
See Rambam Hilchoth Melachim, he says that one of the things the Messiah will do is rebuild the temple, meaning he comes before. Furthermore, "Messiah to return", is not a Jewish idea. NachMS (talk) 16:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Perhaps most of the above thread could be copied to article (and removed here)? Thanks. HG | Talk 15:24, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Who cares what the Rambam says? Apparently not the Conservative or Reform Jews. If they were interested in following Judaism as dictated by the Rambam, they wouldn't be Conservative or Reform? How is it that consensus of irreligious, misguided and misinformed individuals trumps sourced tradition of legitimacy? DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 13:40, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon

This letter was written shortly after the fall of Jerusalem to the Crusaders. I will be expanding the page in the future, but I'm looking for someone who might be able to locate a Hebrew website that features the letter in it's original Judeo-Arabic. I know the historian who discovered the letter, S.D. Goitein, first presented his findings in a Hebrew magazine, but I do not know the title of the article. All I know is that it appeared in Zion 17 (1951-52), 129-47. That's all of the citation that I know. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 12:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Idea for Talmud articles

I am reposting the following request from User Sh76us (talk · contribs) on my user talk page for wider notification:

I was thinking of trying to stimulate development of a series of articles on Gemara concepts and doctrines, maybe to help children or newcomers to Gemara with explanations of some fundamental concepts that recur throughout the Gemara. Some examples might be articles on Yiush, Chazakah, Ta'aninun (as in "Ta'aninun L'Yoresh"), Eidim Zomemin (forgive my awful transliterations), Migu, etc., etc. Maybe we could even create a category or subcategory for it. I created Breira in this vein. As I don't have the experience or expertise in Wikipedia to know what to do to best develop this idea, I figured I'd come to you for your opinions on: (1) whether it's a good idea; and (2) How to best go about implementing it. Thanks Sh76us (talk) 15:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. IZAK (talk) 03:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

If someone can start it, I can do part of yiush, all of chazokoh and most of eidim zomemin --Shuliavrumi (talk) 03:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure this is a project for wikipedia. 1) It is a specialized dictionary-like those for law or medical students. Not a general wiki knowledge. 2) There are several thousand terms and to be useful as reference, at least several hundred would need to be done in an orderly fashion. 3) there are already lists for teaching Talmud- see Anshav LeTalmud or Avraham Korman, has a volume. It might be better to translate one of these volumes. 4) To be clear and precise, I am not sure that the ad hoc definitions are sufficient, they need to be thought through. It is a technical knowledge. 5) Is the goal to present an Encyclopedia Talmudit? Just Hazal and basic rishonim? or are people going to start giving online chaburas on chazakah comparing Rav Shimon to Brisk? 6) Maybe this should be posted - and hosted- on one of the halkhic or mehanech listserves? 7) Finally, we never fished putting up Rabbinic biographies, a basic need of an encyclopedia, due to editors spending more time on contemporary Rabbinic politics than working in a systematic way. Just some first thoughts, ----Jayrav (talk) 04:24, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Shaul avrom: I disagree with User:Jayrav. I will comment on that. Thanks for responding. See how you go by clicking on these links and fill in with you know: Yiush; Chazokoh; Eidim zomemin. I have created Category:Talmud concepts and terminology which is now a sub-category of Category:Talmud. IZAK (talk) 04:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Jayrav: Thank you for the thoughtfull input. In response to your points: (1) This is no different to any field of knowledge. These articles would not be "dictionary" items. For example, they would be no different than the multitude of articles that explain Category:Medicine which also happens to have a sub-categeory of Category:Medical terms or Category:Philosophy that has a sub-category for Category:Philosophical terminology. Indeed, Wikipedia has a large parent category devoted to Category:Terminology alone. (2) The amount of terms does not matter. See Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, all within other Wikipedia guidelines of course. (3) Books can and should be sources for the articles on Wikipedia, but that does not mean that Wikipedia shouldn't have articles just because there are books already. (With that kind of reasoning there would not be a Wikipedia at all...). (4) Good, the edits and oversight of expert editors in the field will be key. That is how it is with all articles, but it does not mean that they should not be started. (5) The goal is not to imitate anyone or anything, it would be and is Wikipedia in action. Wikipedia would use the sources you mention if the editors can get to it and have the skills of using and posting them as sources. (6) This suggestion makes no sense. We are talking about enriching and enhancing Wikipedia's spectrum of articles relating to the Talmud. (7) There are plenty of rabbinic biographies up already. All the main commentators are up. If there are those still to add then it can be done, but that project in no way limits this one. They would be mutually beneficial. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 05:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I just noticed that there is already Category:Chabad terminology. The Talmud is not deserving of less honor than Chabad! IZAK (talk) 05:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

IZAK asked me for my opinion in this debate. I am not sure if separate pages on this subject are useful, and I tend towards Jayrav's view. I was initially hesitant when lifnei iver was created and even sent it to AFD. There is an almost immediate risk of verifiability problems, and it will be difficult telling such pages from a how-to manual.
There is a lot more to be said for somewhat longer pages enumerating various concepts under a general header, all supported with good sources. For instance, a separate page dealing both with Rabbi Yishmael's 13 middos and rabbi Akiva's 32 would be much more useful than separate pages on kal vachomer, gezeira shava, binyan av etc - just because it provides more context. There is also an urgent need to point out parallels between Talmudic logic and similar reasoning trends in other legal systems, so the content generated does not "hang in the air". JFW | T@lk 07:15, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Agree with Dr. Wolf. We should start with "concepts under a general header" and expand as necessary. One candidate for a framework could be Samuel ha-Nagid's Mevo ha-Talmud.
Also, if we do go ahead - regardless of whether the entries are separate pages or contained within a general article - we must define a structure and stick to it..
Fintor (talk) 07:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Note: Please be conscious of the fact that we have advanced from earlier years when there were hardly any articles relating to the Talmud and the Oral Torah in general. Over the past few years there has been a great increase in the number of articles and the quality of material in them has been steadily improving. A good example is all the extraordinary work on the articles linked to {{Rabbinical Literature}} and see the contents of Category:Talmud for more. The broad framework has definitely been set up on Wikipedia and we cannot escape the new frontier that beckons whereby there now comes a need to create articles for and with content that come from the great sources, and none is greater than the Mishnah and the Gemara, not "lists" or "lexicons" with pithy "definitions" since that is not what Wikipedia is about. There is more than enough material on the Internet, let alone books, to create good articles about Talmudic concepts and terminology. We may as well face the music now because this is inevitable. This may also be a good opportunity to put together material that will counter the gross distortions and lies that emanate from pseudo-sites, many of which are very antisemitic, like "sacred-texts", "Truth about the Talmud: Racist, Rabbinic Hate Literature", come-and-hear", "The Talmud: A Jewish-Supremacist Doctrine", The Talmud Unmasked", "The Talmud: Destroying Christian Cultures" and many, many others, very unfortunately like these. Creating articles that will present Talmudic terminology and concepts in clear NPOV and in readable terms will go a long way to counter the fraudulent culture of hate and prejudice against the Talmud and sadly against Jews. These are just some of the basic issues that make this initiative very important, and timely. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 11:04, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what your problem is with sacred-texts and come-and-hear. They are useful resources. --Eliyak T·C 23:23, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I've always found sacred-texts.com to be okay, but come-and-hear.com is run by some very sick people [2] [3]. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 00:12, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Come-and-Hear.com has two problems. One is that it's chock full of anti-semitic drivel. The other is that the copy of the Gemara they have there is illegal. -LisaLiel (talk) 14:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I support the idea. If someone wants to make a list of topics and advise me of it, I'll choose one or two topics to write about. Wikipedia's structure allows for links to related articles from the perspective of common law. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 14:31, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with IZAK here. These concepts represent the nuts and bolts of classical Talmudic scholarship, and articles on the key intellectual concepts are just as important to understanding the field as articles on key mathematical, philosophical, and sociological concepts are essential to understanding the fields of mathematics, philosophy, or sociology. It seems to me this is what a comprehensive encyclopedia is for. I also don't see how a policy argument against can be made given the publication of editions of the Talmud with commentaries explaining many of these concepts in English. My suggestion would be to use the transliterations found in the Schottenstein edition of the Talmud which is probably the most notable source that translates and explains these concepts. The Schottenstein's edition's English commentary is generally based on Rashi. If we start with only those concepts the Schottenstein Edition and similar works choose to translate, and there are hundreds, and if we use commentaries from these kinds of sources over editors' own explanations, I don't see why there would be any verifiability problem here. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 14:47, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Note: It might be useful to either have a section in Talmud introducing these doctrines and concepts or have a separate article. It might also be useful to have a list or category and to ask people creating articles to add them to the list. The need for structure is a valid one, but I see no need for it to prevent the development of content. Content and structure can develop together as is the case for Wikipedia articles generally. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 14:52, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I am against this idea. As far as I am aware, the dissemination of the Oral Law is only permitted among Jews. As wikipedia hosts many other subjects, indeed, “everything under the sun”, I feel that if Torah concepts were to be written here, their sanctity would be diminished somewhat. These subjects would be better served on another exclusive website, possibly with the same layout as wikipedia. I am against merging the mundane with the holy. I don’t like the sound of “This is no different to any field of knowledge”, etc. Chesdovi (talk) 19:38, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

While I understand your point, I disagree. The fact that anyone can read these articles doesn't mean you're disseminating it to anyone other than people who actively seek it by searching for the relevant terms. If you want to argue that these articles shouldn't be linked to other than from other Jewish law and Talmudic articles, that I can understand. But to say that they shouldn't be posted at all is like saying you shouldn't publish a book about Gemara because a library might stock it and non-Jews may read it in the library or that you shouldn't make daf yomi shiurim available online, such as at teachittome.org. I also think, as Java7837 said below, as Wikipedia is probably the single most important source of information that exists today, allowing people interested in Gemara to gain the tools necessary to do so more easily is something that can be a tremendous positive. Sh76us (talk) 15:21, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the dissemination of the both Torahs is only permitted among Jews with some exceptions. Yet, wikipedia is a encyclopedia that is supposed to be about everything, Do you suggest articles that relate to the Talmud and the Written Torah should be deleted? Should pictures be removed from articles, since some groups considers pictures to be absolutely forbidden, Thirdly, why would a non-Jew look up say, Bishul Yisrael, Fourtly I have learned more than half of what I know from reading Orthodox Judaism from reading wikipedia articles, I have read 10,000's of articles literally, Fourtly from reading Jewish articles, and some other factors caused be to become more interested in my faith, and eventually become Orthodox. I learned about the midrashim, and Rashi, etc. from wikipedia, and eventually bought some Jewish books, Finally today I just learned what, Kavod HaBriyot, is (I may have heard the word earlier, but I can't recall, learning it before) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Java7837 (talk • contribs) 04:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

As Shirahadasha implies above, we just need to be sure to focus on notable terms, which will show up in a reasonable range of traditional and scholarly sources. Meanwhile, there are already articles on terms, such as Nafka mina, that are weak stubs and could be improved. HG | Talk 04:55, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Can I put in a request that Sephardi transliteration be consistently used rather than Ashkenazi? E.g. shabbat rather than shobbos? As per the Encyclopedia Judaica transliteration rules, for example. Jheald (talk) 15:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that English translations are best whenever possible. (ie, oaths in Jewish Law instead of Nedarim). Jon513 (talk) 10:37, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
The Schottenstein Edition editors chose to transliterate rather than translate these concepts. One reason they gave, which I think is sound, is that the meaning of these terms is subject to both technical subtleties and disputes. For example, a nedar is but one of several kinds of oaths. In a nedar, one is vowing not to make use of property (ones own or others) or to make ones property unavailable to others. Different kinds of oaths have different specialized meanings. It's different from, let's say, a cherem (which from a Talmudic point is (roughly speaking) to persons what a neder is to property), a shevua, etc. (See the text of Kol Nidrei for other terms. Every one one of the terms listed in that formula is a legally distinct type of formal declaration with a legally different meaning.) The existence of pre-defined classes of oaths (so that courts will assume that one intended an oath of a pre-defined class and will try to determine what class was meant) has some analogies to the classes of property conveyance and court decisions about deed language in Anglico-American law in which there are a set of classes of conveyance and deed language is construed under an assumption the conveyor knows the classes and intended the conveyance to fall into one of them. Would it make sense (to continue the analogy) to title the Wikipedia article on Fee simple as "Property conveyance" (or Tenancy in common as "property ownership") simply because they are the most common kinds of conveyance/ownership and the ones lay people are most likely to have heard of? How would we explain and distinguish "Fee tail" (or Tenancy by the entirety) and the various other relatively obscure forms? As in any legal field, better to use the terminology that specialists in the field use, rather than develop our own, original-research, lay terminology that may (as in the example) fail to definitively identify the concept or distinguish it from other concepts that lay people may not recognize as different but which specialists distinguish. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 18:28, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I find this idea very interesting. I have already dones some basic work on the Shev Shmaytsa page. I do not think that seperate pages for Yiush, Chazakah, Rov, etc. are really in place for Wikipedia (I would love to see a seperate project along similar lines with in depth discussions of these) but a general page for Talmudic Terminologies or whatever seems appropriate. At is we will need to include, Is Migo a Birur or a Zechus HaTaanah? Is Chazakah a birur or Hanahaga? How does Hodaas Baal Din K'Maiaha Eidim work? That is for a seperate project.Wolf2191 (talk) 04:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


Wives of the Karaite exilarchs

What where the names and backgrounds of the wives of the Karaite exilarchs Hezekiah ben Solomon and his son Hasdai ben Hezekiah? --Ghostexorcist (talk) 23:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Evil Picture Removal

I would just ask the administators and authors to remove the evil pictures from WikiProject Judaism, such is not found in any other template and it causes a Chillul Hashem. Wikiplantjud (talk) 18:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Dude, you need your sense of humour BIOS flashed. In what way, exactly, do these pictures constitute "evil" and "Chillul Hashem"? JFW | T@lk 21:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Yfyll! 68.112.202.189 (talk) 10:39, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

While these pictures are not evil and are far short of a chilul Hashem, they are very stupid and really not becoming. Actually I agree 100% with User Wikiplantjud (talk · contribs) and I had once tried to remove them myself but someone put them back in. They are not appropraite for a serious project like this. If it's a sense of humor we desire in everyone, or comedy we want, maybe we should then put in pictures of Jewish comedians such as:

Sacha Baron Cohen aka as Borat:

or how about Jerry Seinfeld:

or even the Marx Brothers:

Maybe now is good time to change for something better. Since this is about Judaism primarily, how about a photo of something holy and/or significant to Judaism? Surely that can be found. Thanks a lot, IZAK (talk) 06:38, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

So the pictures are not "evil and Chillul Hashem", they're just silly. But does it all need to be serious? It's a long time 'till Purim. JFW | T@lk 14:50, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it looks like we do have an evil and stupid picture. Here's one. It says right on the picture label, "Is stupid and evil". Isn't that a reliable source?:

Come to think of it, this one probably isn't quite putting our best foot forward, either:

Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 16:16, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

However much I admire Photoshop skills by Masterhomer (talk · contribs), I think an alternative picture would put an end to this highly exciting discussion. Anyone in the mood to design a pretty logo? JFW | T@lk 22:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


Well, I have been browsing through Category:Jewish images for something of a good enough artistic, and symbolic value that has a good enough photographic clarity. I happen to like these:

Image:Decalogue parchment by Jekuthiel Sofer 1768.jpg, it is a little dark though, but it's on the {{WPRT2}}, the Wikipedia:WikiProject Religious texts template, see more choices at Category:Images of Jewish literature:

and I happen to like the Mogen Dovid at Image:JudaismSymbol.PNG

See more possibilities at Category:Images of Star of David. Just some ideas. IZAK (talk) 11:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Masterhomer here, original creator of those images. I made them when I redesigned the WikiProject page. You can see a long list of anything (including names) can be quite boring without pictures. Wikipedia's featured lists is full of lists with many pictures. However, I don't have any problems replacing them though if anyone finds them offensive. Masterhomer 20:19, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Convert and Baal Teshuvah Biography Project

What's the best way to enlist some assistance in updating biography information for Converts and Returnees?Tim (talk) 16:03, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Brief Description:The project will list people who need biographies and books that can be useful for writing the articles about said people. The group will also try to add already existing articles to the Baalei Teshuva or convert category if the articles belong there. Also most convert articles should be listed on the convert list--Java7837 (talk) 19:41, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the normal process should be followed. Are you sure a dedicated project is needed? Apart from some specific exceptions, converts and returnees would not get a Wikipedia article unless notable for some other reason. If you need sourcing or assistance on a particular person, just drop a note here and see what happens. JFW | T@lk 22:10, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

We're only interested in adding people who are notable, or those for whom the fact of conversion itself is notable -- such as clergy from other religions. Right now the normal process is lagging behind. On the list of converts page, for instance, we have a bunch of names that were added a few months ago that still don't have their own articles. I had to resurrect the Asher Wade article from the dead. A lot of the former clergy have been too cagey to document (I know one who is still waiting to be notable for other reasons before 'coming out'). I've emailed a few that I know personally who are on the list, looking for the best bio sources. The problem is that a number of them are documented in full books (and buying twenty books for a Wiki article is a bit much for a single editor to do), and at least one only has his bio on audio. So, we're trying to hunt down what's verifiable and notable, adding what should be added, and deleting the name if it truly does not meet notability standards.Tim (talk) 00:39, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe all of the people on the converts list were notable enough to deserve their own article--Java7837 (talk) 02:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Postage stamps and postal history of Israel

Y Done For the stamp collectors among us, there is no article yet for Postage stamps and postal history of Israel (part of Category:Postal history by country) that would have so many Jewish themes. Feel free to go ahead and start it. (See the other country's in Category:Postage stamps by country that have theirs.) Nothing for Israel on Category:Postage stamps by country neither on List of country articles containing postal sections nor on List of philatelic bureaus. (but just a teeny note on Israel at Compendium of postage stamp issuers (Io - Iz).) This is truly a great shame and pity because Israel, and before that when it was the British Mandate produced and continues to issue the most beautiful and extensive stamps by any country. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 11:04, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Surely this is a job for WP:ISRAEL and WP:PHIL, given that there are preciously few religious issues with Israel's stamps? JFW | T@lk 22:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Dr. Wolff. Israel has been extraordinarily prolific with its stamp publishing. Just having a casual knowledge of its stamps, there have been untold mutiple series on the Jewish holidays, Biblical themes and topics, and subjects from Jewish history, and much more. But I have placed notices on a few other pages to give this subject greater exposure. IZAK (talk) 09:08, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
See also List of people on stamps of Israel Chesdovi (talk) 13:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
The DYK for the new the Israel stamps article is on the Main Page, with an image. Feel free to help expand the article. Cheers. HG | Talk 11:41, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Ahmed Deedat

Please direct attention to the Ahmed Deedat page [4], where anonymous vandals keep removing mention of his antisemitism and anti-Christian rhetoric. Saws38 (talk) 07:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

We are a Wikiproject on Judaism, not antisemitism. JFW | T@lk 12:41, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation

User Avraham (talk · contribs) prodded the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation article and I am disputing his move. Please add to the article and see the talk page at Talk:Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 07:44, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

So, please fix the sourcing and notability issues. Thanks. -- Avi (talk) 07:53, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Done. But you could have just easily done it yourself because you know full well it's an important organization and it has lots of sources about it online and in print. Your wording justifying your prod was also pretty lame, that: "Not every anti-Lashon Hara organization is notable. Nor is every Monsey organization" -- was really silly and uncalled for because there are no other notable organizations like it in the frum world! That was no way to conduct business. Next time, if you see the problem, fix it yourself instead of threatening to delete it which is never a good "tactic". How would it look on your "resume" that you deleted the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation article? IZAK (talk) 12:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


There is little doubt about notability. WP:POINT? JFW | T@lk 12:41, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Kabbalah

The Kabbalah article once contained many non-Jewish sections. However, as it now stands, the article is given entirely to traditional Jewish Kabbalah, and I would like to see the Project Judaism template added to it. (The non-Jewish sections have been moved to their own articles.) The article is in very bad shape, and I hope that some editors who are knowledgeable in the subject (which I am not) will improve it. Kabbalah has long been an important force in Judaism, and it should have a quality article that reflects its importance. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 22:17, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem, on Wikipedia and elsewhere, is that Kabbalah means different things to different people. Many seem to think that Kabbalah is the same as Occultism, which is a mistake. Others mistake it for Mysticism, which it is to a certain degree but not alone.
When dealing with articles in a bad shape I would start by finding good sources. Sadly, there are not many Jewish sources in English that offer an accessible and systematic approach to Kabbalah; some of Aryeh Kaplan's works? JFW | T@lk 22:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, different things for different people; like the word "God" or "peace." In Carlo Suarez's CIPHER OF GENESIS he claims that the Aleph-Tav are Hieroglyphs, spiritual glyphs(spirit = non-material part of man-- intuition, inbtellect). He uses the term cabala to define this knowledge system and its use. He gives the values of the Hieroglyphs. It is not "beyond the intellect", mystical. In late '65 or '66 I read an article in the Sunday supplement to the NYT which held that a Jewish male over 40 who had memorized Torah and read all of Talmud and other writings could apply to be taught the significance of each "letter" of the Aleph-Tav: if he promised not to speak of this until he was 50. Suarez writes that the 40 and 50 indicate Mem and Noun, not age Mem is a period of formation. In the New Testament the Pharisees are written to have said to Jesus, "why are you talking of these things and you are not yet 50?" Carlo writes that there was an "opening of cabala" in the '60s(now closed). He thought physicists would be most likely to find interest in the formulas of Hieroglyphs in Torah. As a Physics graduate student at the time it made perfect sense. We, by consensus, use well defined symbols. We are trained to "feel" formulas of these symbols. By chance I was forty when CYPHER OF GENESIS found me. I am reasonably certain that there are editors who will not instantly forbid a page termed Carlo Suarez Cabala. I am hoping you're one.Johnshoemaker (talk) 07:49, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

No doubt that is a problem, but at the top of the article is: This article is about traditional Jewish Kabbalah. For other western Kabbalistic and esoteric mystical traditions see Hermetic Qabalah, Christian Kabbalah, Emanation: Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Kabbalah Ma'asit. I think that makes the subject of the article clear. (I removed also Kabbalah Ma'asit to a separate article; because, although it is Jewish, every rabbi I have spoken to said it is forbidden.) Kabbalah continues to be an important force in Judaism, and I see no reason why the name should be surrendered to the distortions of for profit groups like the 'Kabbalah Center'. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 22:48, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Note that there is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Kabbalah, although of course there's lots of overlap. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 00:10, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Not all Project Kabbalah Is Jewish. I think it is important to have a Kabbalah article that presents what Kabbalah really is...a part of Judaism. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 01:04, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
There have historically been many people who have practiced a form of mysticism that they have called "Kabbalah" and is loosely based on concepts from the "Jewish" Kabbalah, adulterated with concepts from other religions. I don't think we can deny that this exists, and should work to clarify that this "parakabbalah" has been detached from its Jewish roots. It should also be clear that modern Judaism has been heavily influenced by Kabbalah, but that it is only one of its many influences. JFW | T@lk 12:41, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Jewish Jewelers!

Hey I think its a great idea to add a section dedicated to Jewish Jewelers. There are many prominent Jewish Jewelers out there; enough to make a whole sction about. Im new to wikipedia but I think someone with more knowledge can create this.Levi Seigel (talk) 02:29, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

A list is useless unless its members have Wikipedia articles. Could you provide us with a list of notable Jewish jewelers? JFW | T@lk 14:09, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Lev Leviev, Shlomo Moussaieff! Chesdovi (talk) 18:30, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Two is company, three is a crowd. I see no point in a list with two names! JFW | T@lk 20:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

History of the Jews in the United Arab Emirates

Am I the only person who has a problem with the title of this article?--Kimdime69 (talk) 19:15, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

What problem do you have with it? --MPerel 19:15, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
My problem is that this article is about antisemitism in UAE and about UAE-Israel relations, it's not about the "history of the Jews in the United Arab Emirates", anyway I'm not sure that a jewish community existed in this country.--Kimdime69 (talk) 19:20, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
This is probably a more suitable discussion to bring up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Jewish history, since it's not about Judaism, the focus of this project. --MPerel 20:01, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kimdime69: The Jews, as long-time residents and citizens of all areas in the Middle East have been part and parcel of all parts of the Arabian Peninsula as well. The information varies from location to location. As part of a series on the History of the Jews in the Arabian Peninsula the fact that the UAE dedicates so much effort and time to the question of Jews, makes it part of its own focus on Jewish history by default. Would you prefer that the article be called Antisemitism of the United Arab Emirates which it documents very well? IZAK (talk) 02:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The concern etc remind me somewhat of the discussion at Category talk:Jewish Saudi Arabian history. HG | Talk 18:58, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi HG: In both cases I added even more material about the internal Jewish history of those countries. It seems that people do not realize that the recent regimes of these countries have chosen to ignoreand suppress that their modern-day countries are on top of territory that over the last three millenia have had Jews living there. Some countries in the Arabian Peninsula still have small numbers of Jews living in them, and others have proven historical records of large numbers of Jews having lived and thrived there at various times and eras. So the concerns are unfounded because there are written sources and more of them are being posted online about the history of the Jews in almost any point on the Arabian Peninsula, indeed anywhere in the Middle East. IZAK (talk) 20:24, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Jewish Superstitions

How about a central page about (ashkenaz/sephardi/mizrachi) Jewish superstitions e.g. the evil eye? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.49.45.29 (talk) 05:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

You will find that "superstition" has a negative ring to it, and is not generally appreciated. JFW | T@lk 09:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Talmudic concepts encore

Hi. What's happened with the Talmudic concepts effort, described above? What progress has been made? I just started geneivat da'at and would welcome 1-2 collaborators to get it into shape for a Did you know... nomination. Thanks! HG | Talk 14:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, it's currently up as a Did you know.... thanks to Jfdwolff. Improvements most welcome! Thanks, HG | Talk 22:17, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Requesting article

Thanks. ClaudeReigns (talk) 08:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

ISBN 0-92601-990-2 is a collection of essays in his honour. I must say it is hard finding useful biographical data on a cursory Google search. JFW | T@lk 09:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes Google has become a vast commercialized digital oceanic cesspool and desert-size quicksand, but we have no choice but to use it and there is no better tool on Earth to find information on the web about anything provided one is patient and is willing to check out links intelligently. Best wishes, IZAK (talk) 10:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Say, IZAK, I was trying to be helpful in identifying some sources. Lay off the bashing will ya? JFW | T@lk 09:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Who did I bash besides Google (as I simultaneously acknowledged their supremacy)? I was trying to encourage you to persevere as I have done myself under such circumstances. IZAK (talk) 11:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Working on the article now... I will keep everyone posted if I think this could DYK. ClaudeReigns (talk) 06:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:Antisemitism

I would request that an additional subcategory of the above category be created. The problem as I see it with the extant category is it does not allow for differentiation regarding what might be called "secular" antisemitism by "secular" entities, like communist governments, for instance. The lack of such subcategorization makes it harder to differentiate between "religious" persecution by other religious groups, and state-sponsored or secular antisemitism, and I believe we would all agree that there is a pronounced difference between social antisemtism, like the religious kind, and institutional antisemitism by governmental entities. Would there be any objections to the creation of such a subcat? I would propose Category:Antisemitism from secular parties or maybe Category:Governmental antisemitism or Category:Institutional antisemitism as possible names for such a new category. John Carter (talk) 20:42, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Hi John Carter: At this time the way the sub-categories are lined up:
  1. Scholars of antisemitism
  2. Anti-Defamation League
  3. Antisemitic attacks and incidents
  4. Antisemitic propaganda
  5. Christian Identity
  6. Creativity (sect)
  7. Crypto-Judaism
  8. The Holocaust
  9. Holocaust denial
  10. Islam and antisemitism
  11. Jewish ghettos in Europe
  12. Anti-Judaism
  13. Ku Klux Klan
  14. Nazi Germany
  15. Nazism
  16. Neo-Nazism
  17. Portuguese Inquisition
  18. Spanish Inquisition
  19. Westboro Baptist Church

reflect the way this subject has traditionally been seen from both Jewish and secular perspectives. Your suggestions here, while seemingly helpful are actually very narrow and not to the point because the roots and continuation of antisemitism result from complex deeper historical and rel;igious factors and supercede latter-day concepts of "secular parties/Governmental/Institutional" even as they penetrate those "secular parties/Governmental/Institutional" places that are just technocratic words that will hide and create "euphemistic" labels for the raw phenomenon itself which is amply exhibited by the current set of sub-categories. IZAK (talk) 08:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I think the above is itself a misreading of what I had said. I was not proposing a separate subcategory which would be in any way an "exclusive" category, that it, one which would remove articles from other categories. Rather, that there are and has been, unfortunately in several cases, instances when there has been direct governmental antisemitism. At present, given the existing category tree, there is no place to find such content. It would be useful for both the WikiProject Politics and WikiProject Jewish history or Jewish culture, and possibly any projects relating directly to individual governments, if such a subcategory, or perhaps more than one such subcategory, would exist for the purposes of letting all the relevant groups know that the articles are directly relevant to them. At present, there are several WikiProjects which relate to one or more separate governments, and it would be in everyone's best interests if they could find content relevant to their subject as well. In this sense, antisemitism is a subject which is probably of interest to more than just the Judaic projects. John Carter (talk) 18:23, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I will note that WP:JUDAISM considers antisemitism to be outside the scope of this project. A better place for this discussion might be WP:WikiProject Jewish history. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 10:27, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Probably accurate, and my apologies. However, I do believe how you could see how religious antisemitism from other religions would probably qualify as being an "interfaith" topic, considering it deals with the interactions of different faiths, whether the members of this project have decided that it qualifies for inlusion in this project or not. John Carter (talk) 18:19, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Religion

In case you haven't noticed from your watchlists, WikiProject Religion has finally followed through on their long-standing intention to tag every single article they can find that has some sort of relation to religion. Some may remember that this was hotly contested here when User:Badbilltucker brought it up a little over a year ago (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism/Archive_13#Wikipedia:WikiProject_Religion). Personally, none of my concerns over having editors with little to no knowledge of Judaism ranking the quality of articles have been answered in the intervening time. A section has already been set up on the WP:RELIGION talk page complaining about their wanton tagging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Religion#Project_spam . Any thoughts welcome (I'm sure Izak is going to be thrilled ;)). DanielC/T+ 19:06, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The tagging seems to be being done by a bot -- BetacommandBot in particular. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 19:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, but according to the bot creator at User_talk:BetacommandBot, a Religion project member, User:John_Carter requested the tagging, presumably on behalf of the project. DanielC/T+ 19:30, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I have taken the liberty of removing the project tag from these articles: Talk:Antisemitism in the United States, Talk:Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Talk:Blood libel against Jews Talk:Antisemitic canard, since they are not part of this project or any other religion project, and seem to have been included only because they are in Category:Antisemitism. I will also note that I think it's a little odd to include everything in that category in the religion project, especially since this project has taken a definite decision to exclude antisemitism related articles. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 01:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Anyone is free to remove banners at any time, although in some cases with protests. However, you yourself indicated one of the reasons why the banners were placed on as many articles as they were. One of wikipedia's objectives, and certainly one of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team's objectives, them being the group who is most directly involved in, for lack of a better phrase, "wikipedia as a whole", is to try to figure out just what all we have here, particularly regarding the matter of choosing articles for collaboration or some sort of release version. Without such banners, assessments are at this point impossible.
Also, I think it probably is a bit presumptuous of anyone, possibly including me if I were to do so, to say what is and is not part of any other project, without clear evidence from the group that it agreed. You may have done that by your statement which implied that this project's definition of Judaism was one that has to be followed by all other projects. That is particularly dubious if those other projects have different definitions. But I digress. I have already today tagged more than one article that I remember for the Judaism project, as well as for several other projects. At least one of these articles was about a subject allegedly being a former rabbi who converted to Islam. I unfortunately typed the word "rabbit" instead of rabbi in my edit summary, and you can find it referenced on my talk page. Sorry about the typo, by the way.
Trust me on this, only about half of the total articles out there have been tagged at all yet. Clearly, many/most would fall within the scope of at least one project. It's simply the case that they haven't been tagged yet. There is a bot out there that will autotag any new articles created on the basis of it being included in one or more relevant categories, a prospect I know many of you might dislike, but if you were to use it I think you would find that there are a great many more articles about Judaism out there, possibly including alternate versions of people with differently named articles elsewhere, out there. I've found at least two alternate articles on the same friend of Mohammed today.
Also, personally, I do think that the Wikipedia:WikiProject Discrimination would probably count all those articles as being within their scope. Unfortunately, their banner isn't set up for assessment yet. Also, clearly, Houston Stewart Chamberlain is definitely relevant to the Biography project, at least one instance where it just hasn't been tagged yet, and I am adding that banner there. John Carter (talk) 02:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
John, I think this whole issue has been fairly thoroughly discussed, and I don't want to pile on, but I'll just say this. What troubles me about this whole controversy is that you seem unreceptive to the notion that you may have made a good faith misjudgment about some of the categories you selected when you posted your bot request. You included in your request at least one category (Antisemitism), and, from what I can see of the discussion, many others that quite properly include many articles that have no particular connection to religion. When challenged on this, you do not acknowledge any error on your part, but ascribe the whole thing to faulty categorization. If the articles in the categories selected by you for your bot request are unrelated to your project, well then, it just has to be something wrong with the way they're categorized. It couldn't be your mistake. Have you considered the possibility that the actual problem is a series of faulty assumptions on your part about what these categories properly include. Have you given any thought to the possibility that there might be a reason for all the flak you're getting about this other than the view that John Carter is right and everyone else is wrong?
While I appreciate the idea that adding an article to a project is unlikely to do the article any harm, and, generally speaking, the more eyes on an article the better, there are some very valid reasons for objection. One is simple absurdity. Many of these articles obviously have nothing to do with religion. Another is courtesy. The mass addition of thousands of articles to a project is bound to raise eyebrows and raise questions. This whole procedure has left a very large footprint on behalf of WP:RELIGION, and not in a good way. Third, there are certain issues of consensus that come into play. I think the response you've received to this move is the best possible indication of where the consensus lies here.
I hope none of this has gotten too close to WP:NPA or WP:AGF. I just don't know any useful way to tell someone that I think he made a mistake without mentioning the person that I think made it.
Whilst composing this, I took a look at the WP:RELIGION project page. That page says "The scope of this project is all articles in the Category:Religion." Since any project that wants to be successful obviously needs to define its scope, I'll ask two questions. First, do you interpret that statement as referring to only the articles listed at Category:Religion or all the articles, plus all articles in the sub-categories, sub-sub-categories and sub-sub-sub-(etc.)categories? Second, what criteria did you use when you decided which categories to include in your bot request? Was it limited to Category:Religion and its subs or were some other criteria used?
I'm sorry, but I'm fast joining in the view that the best solution here is to simply undo all the actions of your recent bot request and start over. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 05:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it seems to me that you may have already came to that conclusion, based on some of your earlier comments. If you would notice my own recent edits, you would see that I have in fact been going through the articles recently tagged alphabetically and determining which do and do not actually belong, and removing the banners from those where the relevance is at best dubious, which to date has largely been most of the "Abu"s who were among the founders of Islam. Clearly, those individuals did convert, but there is no material in the articles relating to their earlier religions, and so there is very unlikely to be a potential conflict there. In fact, I think I already said that, although that seems not to have been noticed several of the comments I made.
All the categories used were included in the Category:Interfaith topics, as I believe I already said. In all honesty, a simple view of the number of articles relating to religion, and the Category:Religion, and even the number of articles relevant to this project, make it completely obvious that the Category:Religion was not used, as was claimed above. And it might have helped if you had bothered to look at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Interfaith work group page, which is what the tagging was actually done for. If you had, you would have already had that answer.
And the I believe false issues raised about consensus are possibly, more accurately, rather issues of WP:OWN. I regret to say that what I see most clearly here, and certainly from IZAK, seems to me to be more that possibly anything else. I am becoming more convinced, as this conversation goes on, that there is a rather unfortunate more pronounced tendency toward ownership issues from this group than most I have yet encountered.
My alleged failure to acknowledge errors is in fact I believe indicated to be false by my removing the banners from several articles, as I have already started to do, and placing the accurate banners in if they aren't already there. I regret to say that what I see most obviously here is an at best incomplete attempt to determine the facts, a rush to judgement based on that, and reactions based on that judgement.
I had already indicated elsewhere that I am working on banners for the religious projects which would provide separate assessments for each project, in the style of the MILHIST, Biography, Australia, and other similar banners. Among them are a single banner for all the Christianity projects, a banner for religious texts, and, yes, one for the Judaism projects. Given the rather presumptuous, poorly thought out criticism I have received regarding my own actions, which I think is if anything even less justifiable than my own alleged improprieties, I am going to have to very seriously reconsider bothering to work on the last one, given the possibly hysterical reaction I now have reason to believe it might receive. John Carter (talk) 15:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Block User:John Carter

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Block User:John Carter:

It is incomprehensible how after such an uproar and with so much across-the-board rejection of his position and his bot, that User John Carter (talk · contribs) does not back down, dump his bot and his strategy, and apologize for all the aggravation he is causing, in clear violation/s of WP:SPAM, WP:CONSENSUS, WP:DISRUPT, WP:POINT, WP:NOR, WP:NEO, WP:SOAP, WP:IINFO, WP:BATTLE, WP:ANARCHY and WP:REICHSTAG. If he does not cease and desist immediately he should be blocked for all these multiple violations. IZAK (talk) 09:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

In all fairness, I don't think it's actually his bot. However, the bot in question seems to be doing his bidding, and as I said above, I think he's suffering from a case of "I'm right and everyone else is wrong." I don't know if administrator tools are the best option here or it would be better to do some kind of RfC to undo the bot's actions. I think we were much better off with the status quo ante, but I'm not enough of a wikilawyer to know the best way to get there. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 10:21, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi Steven: See the upheaval going on at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Block User:John Carter, that's what my post was in response to, and I reposted it here for the benefit of those editors here who are only getting a smaller taste of what User:John Crater is attempting to impose without discussion. 12:00, 21 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by IZAK (talk • contribs)
  • What I find incomprehensible is that IZAK never bothered to let me know this discussion wasa even taking place. That is a clear violation of etiquette. He could also learn how to spell my name a bit better as well. And I am frankly appalled at the presumptuousness displayed by IZAK. It seems to me that he is basically trying to unilaterally declare ownership of much of the content of wikipedia. Also, he has clearly shown no indication of even bothering to check to see if his comments are supported by any relevant facts. If he had bothered to check my own subsequent edit history, he would have noticed that I have in fact removed the banner from several articles, added some other relevant banners to the articles if they weren't already there, and assessed the articles for all projects involved. The majority of the disruption that I see taking place is, for better or worse, from IZAK. He has explicitly failed to AGF, has jumped to conclusions which are not even remotely substantiated by facts, and shown not even the most basically civility, by notifying me of the discussion.

John Carter (talk) 14:51, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

John Carter: Why would I have to notify you if you were involved in discussions right here(see above)? IZAK (talk) 09:57, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
IZAK, I wasn't yet involved in any discussions here, as the records will indicate. Are you trying to dodge the issue? John Carter (talk) 15:41, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I just want to remind the WikiProject that WikiProject Judaism has no more ownership of or say in any article than any other WikiProject. Thus far the rest of Wikipedia has often defered to WikiProject Judaism on Judaism-related articles. However, if members of WikiProject Judaism start doing things that tend to reduce the rest of Wikipedia's trust level, such as a proposal that was construed as proposing bypassing regular notability criteria and referring the notability of religious matters to WikiProjects, this will tend to increase the likelihood that other Wikipedians who disagree will respond by having other WikiProjects pay more attention to articles that have previously been left to us on trust. And they have every right to do this. Responding by proposing that leaders of other WikiProjects be blocked for exercising their review rights will not help regain trust either. I don't like being blunt, but sometimes I feel I have no choice. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 14:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Zelig Sharfstein

Anyone want to write an article about the recently deceased Rabbi Sharfstein on Cincinnati, OH? Google News has sources. -- Y not? 04:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I started an article. Chocolatepizza (talk) 13:04, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Orthodox rabbis

Java7837 (talk · contribs) has been categorising rabbis into "Orthodox rabbis", even those who lived well before the term "Orthodox" was ever applied. I think this is a form of POV and a complete anachronism, and was wondering what others thought about this before reverting the whole lot. Please also see our exchange on Java's and my talkpages. JFW | T@lk 09:16, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dr. Wolff: While Java7837 does tend to be a spirited editor, he does have a basic sound sense of Judaic subject matter. Now while it may be true that technically the term "Orthodox" only came into use in the early 1800s, but nevertheless it also has a generically true meaning and sense of a "Torah Judaism" Judaism that adheres to the 613 Mitzvot, the Oral Torah as applied through the Shulchan Aruch. Thus the term could also be applied retroactively. In the past we have had non-Orthodox editors who have objected more in principle than on the facts, because after all, before Reform came along, all Jews were essentially "Orthodox" (as defined above), unless they abandoned Judaism entirely or became part of breakaway movements like the Karaites that are now essentially defunct. So I would say, let's see where he goes with this, as a review of his editing history shows that he's sticking to rabbis in the last few centuries. If he gets into the Acharonim or Rishonim it may get tricky. But let's see where it goes. It would help if he would come over here and discuss the matter.IZAK (talk) 10:11, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
IZAK, to use the term "Orthodox" for mainstream Jews prior to 1795 is simply an anachronism. The whole concept of Orthodoxy was unnecessary because apart from movements like Karaism etc there was only one form of Judaism, without a need for further labels. There were obviously subdivisions, such as Ashkenaz and Sefard, Hasidic and non-Hasidic etc, but these only apply proactively. I would greatly hesitate to label the Rosh or the Raavad "Ashkenazi", because they predate the actual split between those groups and their views inform both schools. Likely, it would be ridiculous to call the Rama or the Maharal "Misnagedim", because they lived more than 200 years before the Baal Shem Tov. Yet many later Misnagdim identify with the Rama and the Maharal. Can you see my point, and the impossibility of applying such labels retroactively? JFW | T@lk 21:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

It is not a form of POV because the Reform invented the term to describe Jews who insisted on following the laws of the Torah, just because the term wasn't used till much later doesn't mean Orthodox Judaism didn't exist till the 1800's, for example no one would dispute that there were Vegetarians before the word vegetarian existed, since Orthodox Judaism is the following the Judaism of Rambam and others and has not changed there should be no dispute that earlier rabbis with a few exceptions were Orthodox, and insists on not contradicting earlier sages I see no reason why Orthodox Judaism would be classified as the affiliation of the earlier sages, in the New Testament Paul never calls himself a Christian does that mean that Paul was not a christian--Java7837 (talk) 15:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I would dispute that. What Orthodox Judaism means today (as distinct from Haredi / Ultra-Orthodox Judaism) basically is the movement defined by Hirsch and others in the nineteenth century; and represents a substantial reformation from what went before, both in terms of intellectual position and of self image. Labelling someone like Maimonides as "Orthodox" is unneccessary - and unhelpful. Jheald (talk) 15:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Java, I am sure your changes were well-intended, but as I indicated above it is simply not possible to apply labels retroactively. I will not address the argumentum ad Paulum separately. JFW | T@lk 21:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

"The term "Orthodoxy" first appeared in respect to Judaism in 1795, and became widely used from the beginning of the 19th century in contradistinction to the Reform movement in Judaism "

"Yet, in general, Orthodox came to designate those who accept as divinely inspired the totality of the historical religion of the Jewish people as it is recorded in the Written and Oral Laws and codified in the Shulḥan Arukh and its commentaries until recent times, and as it is observed in practice according to the teachings and unchanging principles of the halakhah"

The first sentence would not apply to Rabbis earlier then 1795, but the second would. Since Orthodoxy does carry a connotation of opposition to Reform I would say a more neutral term of Traditional Rabbis is better. Wolf2191 (talk) 17:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

FYI -- these quotes are from Encyclopedia Judaica on Orthodoxy. HG | Talk 18:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The term Traditional rabbis is a ridiculous name, by doing so you are saying that non-Orthodox are not traditional which they are to an extent and it could be seen as offensive to non-Orthodox Jews--129.115.29.172 (talk) 17:44, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Orthodox Judaism has always meant being the Orthodoxy which has always been belief in the Oral Tradition, Torah, following them and all later works, the term Orthodox Judaism has probably been used in the past before reform existed by Karaites --129.115.29.172 (talk) 17:49, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Why is it useful to classify them as "adjective" Rabbis at all? Why not just classify them as "Rabbis" ? Jheald (talk) 17:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

'Orthodox' as a self-defining adjective for Jews/Judaism is non-controversial, verifiable and neutral. As such, 'Orthodox' only starts to apply to rabbis and communities around the end of the 18th century. The term can also be applied, with limited controversy, to haredi rabbis or groups who might not use term but are frequently identified as Orthodox by high quality reliable sources. (However, we probably shouldn't apply 'Orthodoxy' to haredi who object to the term.) In any case, prior to the Orthodox movement of the modern period, rabbis were not identified (or self-identified) as Orthodox. Today, only an Orthodox viewpoint would label a pre-modern rabbi as Orthodox -- and I'm sure most Orthodox academics recognize the anachronism and don't make this mistake. Hence, high quality sources, whether by Orthodox scholars or not, do not label Rashi or Rabbenu Tam as Orthodox. (I also see no reason to call Rashi or Rambam "Traditional" because that's a modern notion, it conveys no real meaning, and it isn't used in quality sources. Ask yourselves, were there Untraditional pre-modern rabbis? Sure, Rambam! I think Rabbi is sufficient.) Thanks. HG | Talk 20:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

For an up-to-date explanation, see pp.1-4 & extensive footnotes in Adam Ferziger's Exclusion and hierarchy: Orthodoxy, nonobservance, and the emergence of modern Jewish identity 2005. HG | Talk 18:38, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
A similar anachronism can be found in Category:Mishnah rabbis. Were the early zugot Rabbis? HG | Talk 20:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, while they are not called Rabbis they all had Semicha; the term "rabbi" is from the late Second Temple period and is (for that reason) obviously derived from Aramaic. I have no problem labeling the Zugot rabbis. It becomes more problematic for the few remaining prophets who sat on Ezra's Great Assembly. Were they Rabbis, Prophets, or both? JFW | T@lk 21:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

What terms are used in the "quality sources" then? Perhaps we should leave it as (Insert proper number)th century Rabbis. A category Rabbis by itself is too generic.Wolf2191 (talk) 20:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Please look at Category:Rabbis by period. Strikes me as adequate periodization. HG | Talk 21:26, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with HG on this one. JFW | T@lk 21:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good to me as well.Wolf2191 (talk) 04:53, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I strongly agree with HG. It is anachronistic.--Jayrav (talk) 05:04, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem is if someone was born in 1890 and died in 2005, also quit making false claims Modern Orthodox didn't exist till 1800's which is a branch of orthodoxy not Orthodoxy itself--129.115.29.172 (talk) 20:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I would like to comment on a different issue than whether someone is Orthodox or not. Java7837 has been making up new categories for people who are not even rabbis — like "Russian Orthodox rabbis" for Michel Dorfman, who was a shochet and bookbinder. Then Java7837 created a new category, "Austrian Orthodox rabbis," for Hanoch Teller, who is an American/Israeli citizen who was born in Vienna but left at the age of 2. Furthermore, many of these people that Java7837 is categorizing have already been categorized into other categories that make it clear that they are rabbis (e.g. Hanoch Teller is already entered under "Haredi rabbis in Israel" [fair enough] and "American Orthodox rabbis" [stretching it a bit, since he doesn't live there]. Yoninah (talk) 21:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I suggest Java7837 awaits further consensus here before continuing to subcategorise people into the categories by affiliation. JFW | T@lk 21:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

The first sentence on the article for Michael Dorfman said he was a rabbi--75.53.28.214 (talk) 01:49, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. It's a mistake and I will fix it. The position of rosh yeshiva of the Breslov yeshiva was an honorary position, more along the lines of "administrator." Yoninah (talk) 11:37, 24 February 2008 (UTC)