Talk:Conservative halakha

Merger discussions
Word. I think it's time we merge in CLJS and get this article up to snuff. --yonkeltron 01:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The CJLS is a major Rabbinical Assembly committee, and needs its own article. Halakha, as interpreted by Conservative Judaism, is not identical to a discussion of this committee. "Conservative Halakhah", if such terminology is appropriate, is based on a very wide variety of sources including the Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, Responsa, and various Traditional/Conservative poskim, such as Louis Ginzburg, Isaac Klein, Joel Roth, and more. It is also based on responsa from the CJLS, but also responsa from the Masorti Movement in Israel's legal body, the Va'ad Halakhah. Conservative Jews also accept as valid the responsa of many Orthodox rabbis, even if they do not view them as binding. Therefore we should not totally merge these two articles.
 * However, there is a great amount of unnecessary overlap, leading to the same topic being described in two different ways. This is being done for no good reason, and is in some measure my fault. I think that I will move some text from the "CJLS" article to "Conservative Halakhah", but leaving most of the CJLS article intact.
 * The idea is to follow the good pattern of other Wikipedia article: Summarize the major topics, and then link to another article where they are discussed in more depth. I will do this one piece at a time. Please let me know how you think I am doing. Mark3 15:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I still confess I don't understand why there are separate articles for Conservative Halakha and Conservative responsa. It seems to me that there is a lot of overlap between the two and there is really only enough material for one article. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 01:17, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
 * See also below, near bottom. I think the main obstacle now is for somebody to conscientiously do the work. Cheers, HG | Talk 05:27, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Remove unrelated topics
Shirhadasha writes: Hello, I had to revert these edits because they somehow introduced Wiki markup language errors which made parts of the article show mark-up language as text in an unreadable way. Also, most of the content you added appears to describe various Conservative practices etc., but didn't appear to address the specific issue of Conservative Halakha, the article's subject. Conservative Halakha deals specifically with the legal reasoning (or, as some say, lack thereof) behind Jewish-law decisions made by the Conservative movement's rabbinical bodies. The Conservative movement publishes a commentary on the Torah, a siddur, etc., but details about these matters, like details about its youth organization, annual convention, etc. etc., are relevant to this article only to the extent they drive or reflect its Jewish-law decisions and the legal reasoning behind them. Otherwise they should be in other articles

Need an article on Torah commentaries
We should have an article that briefly discusses Torah commentaries. Mark3 19:57, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Torah commentaries for liturgical use in synagogues
These are Torah commentaries that are set up not only for reading and study, but also for liturgical useage. The Torah passages are separated by parashiyot, and they have hafatarah readings for eeach parashah.


 * Hertz Chumash (Traditional, was/is used by all movements)
 * Mesorah Stone Edition of the Torah (Orthodox synagogues)
 * Plaut Torah (Reform & Reconstructionist)
 * Etz Chayim: A Torah Commentary (Conservative)

Torah commentaries for study

 * Torah (and Tanakh) commentaries, in Hebrew only AFAIK, from Mossad Harav Kook, Israel. I have never read these, but I understand that these are the only Modern Orthodox Tanakh commentaries. They even include some modern day archaeology.
 * Soncino Chumash (Traditional, was/is used by all movements)
 * Richard Elliot Friedman's Torah commentary (used in study groups in many non-Orthodox synagogues. Is it used by any Orthodox groups?)
 * JPS Torah commentary series
 * The Artscroll Tanakh series on the Torah
 * The Anchor Bible series, by Doubleday. (That is non-Jewish, non-denominational, but occasionally used by non-Orthodox.


 * An article on each type of Chumash sounds like a good idea. I wrote a section on the Soncino Chumash in the article on the Soncino Press. Best, --Shirahadasha 00:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Halkaha and Aggadah
The article says that the Conservative approach balances halakha and aggadah. In light of the fact that (a) The CJLS expressly rejected the Tucker dissent, which relied on this approach, (b) it expressly adopted the Roth responsum, which said the opposite (it said halakha totally trumps aggadah and aggadah has no weight compared with halakha), and (c) the only other responsa it accepted were essentially silent on the issue, does this statement accurately reflect the current CJLS position post December 2006? Best, --Shirahadasha 19:59, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Quotation mining
I think a lot of what is written here is essentially a form of data mining. You have mined the papers of the Conservative movement for quotations, selecting ones that appear most shocking from an ultra-Orthodox perspective, but without really understanding them. This is a very uncritical kind of reading. I would not recommend this article to anyone who is really trying to understand Conservative movement's approach to Jewish Law, and the debates that are going on within the Conservative Movement at this time. Someday, when I have the time, I want to work on this article. My approach will be to delete much of this material and write a much shorter article that is actually informative about Conservative Judaism. --Metzenberg 11:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Your comments are perceptive but I do not think it would be a good idea (and might possibly be a violation of policy) to delete the cited material. The CJLS has several (paper) publications of responsa. A more extensive sampling of these responsa, not only the most "shocking ones", could be added to this page. If it gets too long, the article can be split into "Conservative Halakah - Shabbat", "Conservative Halakah - Kashrut", "Conservative Halakah - Family", "Conservative Halakah - Festivals", etc. If you want to write a better summary, focus on the introduction but don't delete material. EqualsMCSquared 04:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the article has taken the perspective "conservative halakha is like Orthodox halacha except where it's different", and this approach has tended to focus on highlighting the differences. --Shirahadasha 06:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The perspective "conservative halakha is like Orthodox halacha except where it's different" would generally be the Orthodox point of view. EqualsMCSquared 19:44, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no wikipedia policy against deleting material. Not all material that somebody happens to write for wikipedia belongs in wikipedia. Somewhere, we have to redact and make an article short enough and succinct enough so that people can actually learn something from reading it. --Metzenberg 07:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The relevant policy that might apply suggests "try to preserve information. Reasons for removing bits of an article include..." things like patent nonsense or inaccuracy which are not being alleged here. EqualsMCSquared 19:44, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * As I recall this article was created in no small part by taking bits of material out of other articles -- Role of women in Judaism, Shabbat, etc. -- and centralizing it here. However, the centralizing principle is not being kept, for example, material on a series of recent decisions on Niddah was recently added to the Niddah article but not here. If the desire is to have a shorter and simpler article describing philosophies etc. without getting into specific decisions, perhaps the material on specific decisions should go back to the individual articles. If the desire is for a more informative result, perhaps a better introduction could be added, perhaps along with sections on history, philosophies, etc. to help give better background and avoid immersion in a jumble of decisions. However, if the intent is to remove material perceived as overly critical, I'd suggest a pause for reflection before acting. If this material accurately describes these decisions (at least from this perspective), why should it be deleted entirely? It can always, after all be supplemented by material from currently under-represented perspectives. I would comment that, acknowledging myself to be a critical outsider with my own biases. Joel Roth and others criticised some of these decisions -- not sure that characterizing the criticism involved as "Ultra-Orthodox" in character accurately reflects the subject. Given that e.g. Gordon Tucker and Joel Roth wrote opinions publicly claiming that each other's ways of thinking weren't genuinely Conservative, I have doubts about whether a short simple article presenting a single, unified perspective could be made either consistent with WP:NPOV or reliably accurate. It's very easy, and often tempting, to use ones powers as a Wikipedia editor to put in material reflecting only ones own point of view and remove material for no other reason that one disagrees with it. It might be helpful to explain how your proposal will avoid doing that. Best --Shirahadasha 20:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the big mistake here is to think of Conservative Halacha as being something you can define by showing how it is different from Orthodox Halacha. By adopting that as the framework for the article, we have ended up with an article that isn't really about Conservative Halacha. I've been working on the article about Rabbi Gordon Tucker.  I've been trying to show what his historical antecedents were, what his philosophy is, where he fits in the spectrum of Conservative views, and so forth. Conservative Judasim has a distinctly different institutional framework and philosophy. You can't show what Conservative Judaism is simply by mining a few of its recent documents for quotes to show that it rejects Orthodox positions. And when that process of quotation mining is carried out by ultra-Orthodox Jews, the result is very predictable. --Metzenberg 08:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Terrific! Sounds like you are motivated and able to add a lot of good material to this article. EqualsMCSquared 16:05, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Given that you're proposing a complete rewrite on a controversial topic, why not write a proposed revision on a sub-page on your userspace and add a link on this talk page. That way it can be vetted and discussed and hopefully agreement reached without messing up the main page in the event there's disagreement and a discussion. Best --Shirahadasha 19:43, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * On most issue-by-issue comparisons, I would add the conservative movement's halakhic positions on the issue as a section within the article, rather than have a long exposition on specific issues here. I would devote this page instead to a discussion of the process (institutional) and its history, with some examples. As an example, I just added a relatively brief subsection to the article on agunot. Since the issue was treated already in the article on Rabbi Saul Lieberman, it didn't have to be a very long subsection. --Metzenberg 08:20, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Merger with Conservative responsa
I'm proposing a merger of Conservative Halakha and Conservative responsa. The two articles currently seem to have a great deal of their content and subject-matter in common. If they should be kept separate, suggest clarifying the scope of the two articles and moving the common content into one or the other. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 00:36, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * This discussion is being carried out at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Judaism. Egfrank (talk) 19:45, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Took a few steps in the direction of the merge, which seems to be supported. HG | Talk 16:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Homosexuality and Conservative Judaism
Folks, hi. Due to length, it's time to spin-off the multi-part section on homosexuality. Since there's also a long Conservative section at Homosexuality and Judaism, the spin-off shouldn't deal only with the responsa, but be able to handle other related items that may need to be spun-off from Homosexuality and Judaism as well. So, to ensure consistent naming with the main article(s), let's call it Homosexuality and Conservative Judaism. Time-permitting, I'll try to start this process myself. Comment here (or new article if created). Thanks. HG | Talk 16:29, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

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