Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conjugal obligations and rights in Judaism


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

The result was   merge to Jewish views of marriage. NW ( Talk ) 21:21, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Conjugal obligations and rights in Judaism

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Merge and Redirect to Jewish views of marriage because it's a clear-cut violation of Content forking of Jewish MARRIAGE laws and customs ("conjugal/marital" = "marriage"!) All content should be merged into the main Jewish views of marriage article where there is more than enough room. Parts of this article also border on Libel with offensive and pejorative archaic terms (albeit maybe misguidedly taken from old encyclopedias) like: "the wife is treated as a posesssion owned by her husband"; "In biblical times, a wife was regarded as chattel"; "husband was ba'al, literally meaning lord...meaning lorded over"; "As a polygynous society, the Israelites did not exhibit any laws which imposed marital fidelity on men" that do NOT portray an accurate picture of Israelite society and certainly not of Judaism's and the Torah's view of marriage. There are also clear undertones of deliberate violations of WP:NOR and a subtle undermining of WP:NPOV in portraying the Jewish view of marriage as something less than ideal and even outright barbaric by modern standards. IZAK (talk) 08:36, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Merge and Redirect to Jewish views of marriage and edit all pejoratives as per above. IZAK (talk) 08:36, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions.  IZAK (talk) 08:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and Redirect to Jewish views of marriage. I like the content but it needs to be trimmed waaaaay down to "Just the facts, Ma'am" and merged with general articles about Jewish marriage.  I don't think the topic warrants its own article.  Joe407 (talk) 11:26, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge the Jewish Views of Marriage. I don't think there needs to be another article, when this article clearly falls into Jewish views of Marriage. Yossiea (talk) 15:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and Redirect to Jewish views of marriage. There is some salvageable information in this article, but it undoubtedly belongs in Jewish views of marriage. I've already removed the New Testament sources, which were somewhat ridiculous given the title, and much of the data seems to be based on cursory readings of the 1903 encyclopedia. We should take the notable portions not already discussed in the JVoM article and place them there, and then get rid of this one. Avi (talk) 17:26, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and Redirect to Jewish views of marriage. Per above. Kaldari (talk) 01:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep This is not a small article and well-sourced. I think it is a legitimate split-off from Jewish views of marriage, which is quite large and already has received some merges of late. Debresser (talk) 12:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * BTW, the "pejorative statements" are sourced and actually correct. And the wording is not POV, because no value is being given to the statements. In any case, disagreement with content is not a reason for a merge. Debresser (talk) 12:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Chattel", for example, is a gross oversimplification. There are kinyanim that exist in a marriage--it has both a sacramental and a transactional component, but to claim the woman is considered "property" of her husband is a misrepresentation of the various kinyanim the husband may have in her property (Nichsei Melug, Nichsei Tzon barzel), her work product (Maase Yadeha as a return on the responsibility to support), or sexually (Permitted to him, forbidden to others, he becomes asur in various of her realtives, Chamesh Esrei Tzaros, etc. ). These clarifications can, and do, belong in Jewish views of marriage; not misrepresentations in a separate article, in my opinions. -- Avi (talk) 17:59, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with you about that one. That is a little extreme. But the others are neutrally worded and neutrally represented. If anything is misrepresented, you can always fix this article. Debresser (talk) 22:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Chattel" is the term used in the source. Personally I find the word a little archaic - its rarely used in the UK these days - but I can't go against the source, because to do so would be OR. And that bit does say in biblical times not in Jewish religious law as written down in the 2nd-5th centuries, and later. Newman Luke (talk) 23:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Newman, that is just one perspective, from your' WP:POV, but the fact of the matter is that traditional Judaism was not and is not the way you portray it in such stark negative terms. Women were granted extraordinary powers and rights by the Torah, that removed them from being chattel and made them into the co-equals if not the superiors of their men-folk. This is is all detailed in the Torah as you may well know and to deny that borders on violating WP:LIBEL against an entire entire nation that has been called the Ohr LaGoyim (Light Unto the Nations), but it's not apparant from the way the archaic encyclopedia you are so fond of tries to do the opposite. IZAK (talk) 05:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, its what the source say. I wouldn't use the term chattel if I could express my own POV; as I said, I find the term archaic. If someone is granted ... powers and rights... that means there must have been a time when these rights and powers did not exist, and furthermore if its the Talmud that grants them the right, before the Talmud must be the time when they didn't have them. Now, if you'd care to read the sentence properly it clearly states in biblical times. By no stretch whatsoever can Biblical times be made to refer to after the Talmud, or even close to it. Newman Luke (talk) 06:46, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Debresser: This article clearly violates WP:CONTENTFORK, i.e. "Policy in a nutshell: Articles should not be split into multiple articles just so each can advocate a different stance on the subject" -- and that is precisely what this new article does, it projects a terrible and demeaning picture of Jewish women in marriage and not the way they are portrayed in the Hebrew Bible or in any of the Talmudic or Halachic sources that demand the dignity of women and speaks of their elevated spiritual status often higher than that of men even over that of their spouses. Judaism enacted the first laws granting women rights in marriage unlike any other ancient religions or cultures that treated women no better than slaves. What don't I get? IZAK (talk) 07:40, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It is not my opinion that this article was created to advocate any opinion, since I see the information here as basically correct. Therefore, I don't think this falls within the definition of a contentfork. Debresser (talk) 22:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The article is simply based on a Jewish Encyclopedia article - if you check the first edit you'll see a direct unwikified copy of the public domain text. The article there is called husband and wife; I merely chose a less ambiguous title. As far as I know the JE didn't create that article to advance any position, and I certainly haven't added any changes with the intent to do so. Furthermore, since the JE was clearly written by Jewish individuals, many of whom were thus presumably married to Jewish women, I hardly think it had the intent of presenting a demeaning picture of Jewish women in marriage. I don't think you are showing much good faith, IZAK.
 * Also, I have to say that I don't find it to present a demeaning picture, quite the opposite in fact. If you read the lead paragraph, it clearly points out that Jewish women were (in the view of the source - the JE article) treated better than women in the marriages of other religions nearby. In fact, it points out that on almost every occasion they intervened, the rabbis made the lot of women less bothersome, not more so. You should read the article more carefully. Newman Luke (talk) 23:07, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep and do properly with modern sources and a full consideration of traditional ones (and the restriction of century old views on this topic to a historical section of how the topic has been viewed in the past). . I agree with IZAK about the sloppy way this was done. . But the overall topic of Jewish views of marriage is a large part of  the talmud, and much to large to deal with in one article. I have never figured out the desire to not discuss religion in encyclopedic  detail.  DGG ( talk ) 04:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and Redirect to Jewish views of marriage, as this is a clearcut case of WP:CONTENTFORK violation. -- Nahum (talk) 13:01, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and Redirect to Jewish views of marriage. - Lisa (talk - contribs) 13:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and Redirect This is an article that includes a significant amount if material that belongs in the parent article itself. Alansohn (talk) 13:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete distorted, misleading content, Merge and Redirect to Jewish views of marriage. Yehoishophot Oliver (talk) 15:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Its not content forking. Its mainly based on the Jewish Encyclopedia article Husband and Wife - . You'd be able to see that for yourself if you care to check the first edit - . Also, there's just not enough space in Jewish views of marriage. Furthermore:
 * I really don't see what's objectionable about pointing out that in ancient Judaism Baal-marriage was practised. Its a perfectly ordinary anthropological term; Baal does mean lord, and it does mean lord in this context. And its what the JE says.
 * The source article in the encyclopedia does say the wife was treated as chattel. In fact, it explicitly uses the word chattel to state this. What's offensive about that? Lots of cultures did that, there's nothing out of the ordinary about it, in historic terms.
 * What's offensive about saying the Israelites were polygynous (one man has many wives). There's nothing disputed about that fact, surely? Is IZAK trying to claim that Jacob only had one wife now?
 * Nor can I see what's offensive about mentioning that there was no requirement for Israelite men to have marital fidelity? That's simply what the JE article on adultery says. In fact, if you study the Torah's laws, (a) a man can have multiple wives, (b) if a man has sex with an unmarried woman it constitutes betrothal; in other words, (a) and (b) combine to make it utterly impossible and meaningless for a man to be accused of being unfaithful to a wife of his. In other words, as the article says, because they were polygynous, there were no laws imposing fidelity on men.
 * Newman Luke (talk) 22:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In Response to Newman Luke: Kindly don't twist my words! (1) In the Torah=Judaism, men are told to listen to their wives and take heed of their words. Hence, Abraham is told by God to follow Sarah; Isaac accedes to Rebecca's plan; Jacob accepts Leah's wishes and listens to Rachel; Moses folows Tziporah's instructions ete etc; (2) "Chatel" is just NOT accurate and it's a lie to call Jewish women the "chatel" of their husbands. Maybe other cultures had it but not ever officialy in Jewish history. To say so reveals ignorance of Torah Judaism. (3) No, IZAK is not saying that Jacob had only one wife, he had four or 2 wives + 2 handmaidens ("common law wives"). In any case, it was before the Torah and its compulsory laws was given, a key point of the difference between before mattan Torah and after mattan Torah, it's a foundation in Torah studies. Note: The fact that the Torah does allow for more than one wife, does not mean that Judaism meant to say that it was a hunting season for men to grab as many women as they liked and that the poor women were therefore "chatel" or whatnot. (4) You are creating your own theories and thereby violating WP:NOR when you claim that the Torah "allows" things simply because it "does not forbid them". You are not on the level of a classical commentator to do that. You are making the wrong connections as you paint a picture of Israelite men acting like a bunch of pirates and Vikings when the opposite is true that the Torah was the first set of complicated laws demanding that Jewish men treat their wives with utmost dignity and set down laws and guidelines for that to be achieved. (5) Hey, is this an article about Judaism's views on polygamy or is it an article about "Conjugal obligations and rights"? Because for the bulk of its history and for almost all its men, Judaism has been the world's first and leading monogomous religion, even though it may have allowed for more than one wife in THEORY, men were discouraged and stopped from doing it. Again, what is your point exactly, to drag the Torah, the Israelites and Judaism through the mud, or to create a well-balanced picture that takes into serious consideration the entire corpus of the Written Torah and the Oral Torah that says the opposite of what you allege as you spin your never-ending theories? IZAK (talk) 05:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * (1) You are spouting original research. You are trying to contest a cited source with original research. That's just not allowed. (2) You are spouting original research. You are trying to contest a cited source with original research. That's just not allowed. (3) Does this statement have any point? (4) No, I am copying directly from a highly respected reliable source, wikifying it, and then slighlty re-arranging it because the source doesn't readily break up into wiki-manual-of-style-recommended section structures. It is YOU that is creating your own theories. I have yet to see you cite a single reliable source (or unreliable source, for that matter) in relation to absolutely anything you contest against me. (5) According to Jewish literature, Judaism only officially imposed monogamy in the early middle ages (some time around 1100 if I remember correctly), so unless you are claiming that Judaism didn't exist before the 2nd century AD, you'll have to conclude that Judaism wasn't monogamous for most of its history. And I'm fairly sure that bigamy was illegal in a number of Christian countries before the middle ages, so it can't have been the first either.Newman Luke (talk) 06:37, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Lean Keep - All religions have ugly histories, and the article does take pains to note how much of the original biblical law was supplemented by the Talmud and rabbinical authority to even the scales of marriage. The information is interesting and relevant, and merging most of it into Jewish views of marriage would actually be worse; either you discard most of the information, or you risk making modern Judaism look backwards like you claim the article itself does. At least here is largely historical; mixing it with Jewish views of marriage would make it easy to misread it as modern practice. &mdash;ShadowRanger (talk 23:05, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Shadow: It is demeaning to state that the Hebrew Bible=Judaism has "ugly histories" and the point is that the sources in the article are point blank wrong and biased against the very subject they write about. They wrote as secular scholars and as biblical critics often with no sense of the true meaning of the passages in the Bible or how they were applied. There was no "ugly" stage in Judaism. In fact it was provably better to start out with and it declined with time, the opposite of what one imagines. The Bible is filled with passages honoring Jewish and non-Jewish women, such as Sarah; Rebecca; Rachel; Leah; Yocheved; Miriam; Tzipporah; and in the Tanakh Ruth; Naomi; Esther; Yael; Chana; Bathsheba and many others, this is way before the times of the Talmud and they are role models for all Jewish and gentile women until the present time. IZAK (talk) 05:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * IZAK, when are you ever going to cite a reliable source that says that those people wrote often with no sense of the true meaning of .....? Or are you the king of person that just wants to push their own pov all the time?Newman Luke (talk) 06:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Izak, saying that all religions have ugly histories is hardly controversial. And defining Judaism as the Torah alone is wishful thinking, since it's interpreted by fallible men; last I checked, only certain fundamentalist Christian denominations try to claim that every word is literally true and their interpretation is flawless. Part of what I like about Judaism is the relentless study and questioning of the meaning of the Torah; intellectual rigor is hardly a bad thing. That said, many of the the events that transpire within the Torah would be considered barbaric or backwards if viewed by many modern standards (e.g. genocide, death penalty for homosexuality, etc.). I'm not saying that ancient Judaism is uniquely backwards (if anything, a religion with this much history would be expected to have far more skeletons in the closet). But pointing to examples of successful women and claiming they completely erase the explicit laws laid down in other parts of the Torah is disingenuous. &mdash;ShadowRanger (talk 18:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and Redirect to Jewish views of marriage. The subject of the article would seem to have Jewish views of marriage as a proper context. Bus stop (talk) 05:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * VERY IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CLOSING ADMIN - IZAK has been WP:MEATPUPPETing -, and many of the above votes may therefore need to be discounted. Newman Luke (talk) 05:14, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Firstly, you mean canvassing, not meatpuppeting. Secondly, talk page notices are not only allowed, but encouraged. See Canvassing. -- Avi (talk) 05:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Um, excuse me Newman, but placing a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism, the very project devoted to this subject, is by no means any form of what you allege. You, and anyone, are welome to join in and place any of the hundreds of "Please see" notes that get placed there all the time. By the way, desperation is not a substiture for logic and WP:AGF. Thanks again, IZAK (talk) 06:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Placing a note is fine. Placing a note and implying that people should vote a certain way is entirely forbidden - WP:MEATPUPPET defines it as meatpuppetry.
 * Its amazing, when you think about it, how many of the people voting to merge have a hebrew language userbox on their userpage...Newman Luke (talk) 06:15, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Truly amazing, one would think that these people may actually know something about Judaism, its laws, and its traditions. Astounding [[file:face-smile.svg|25px]]. -- Avi (talk) 06:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, because such people wouldn't necessarily discover this article so rapidly. However, people viewing the place where IZAK appealed for Meatpuppets would. And people reading at that location are more likely than those in general to know Hebrew. In other words, I'm pointing out that the demographic here is abnormally and suspiciously high towards Hebrew-speakers, suggestive of their having arrived here via IZAK's meatpuppet request. And therefore that they should be discounted.Newman Luke (talk) 06:21, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That is what talk page notices are for, Newman, and it stands to reason that there is a correlation between interest in Judaism and knowledge of Hebrew (the language of Judaism) - for how better to understand than to read original sources :) . But 'tis a wiki truism, when an argument fails on merit, break out the accusations of cabalism. I believe large chunks of Raul's Laws relate to that phenomenon. -- Avi (talk) 06:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * There is an absolutely huge difference between saying you might be interested in this and saying this editor has been up to his nefarious tricks again, see this; the latter is an attempt to seek Meatpuppets, and the latter is exactly what IZAK did here. Newman Luke (talk) 06:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * And in relation to your more specific point, my point is that if people came to this AfD via the AfD page, or via the sexuality wikiproject (its the closest wikiproject to the subject of 'marriage'), or via the sociology wikiproject, or via finding the article by encountering it while reading pages, they are less likely to be the kind of person who'd know hebrew, than they are if they came here via IZAK's meatpuppetry. And since there is an abnormally high number of people here who indicate on their pages that they know hebrew, this suggests they came here via IZAK's meatpuppetry, rather than via one of the other routes.Newman Luke (talk) 06:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed, how diabolical and nefarious that Izak ... posted a link on the Judaism Project page. Outrageous. Yehoishophot Oliver (talk) 06:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This notice is actually far from neutral. Saying that the article is "POV-pushing" and "depicting Judaism in negative lights" in a notice is clearly inappropriate per WP:CANVASS. Tim Song (talk) 07:36, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with Tim. the problem is not placing the notice on a project page, but the wording of the notice. I consider is disruptive, and I would even if I agreed 100% with Izak's view of the article.     DGG ( talk ) 05:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It is telling that I know most of the editors who seem to have a problem with this article to be Jewish. :) Am I the only one who thinks this article has merit? :) Debresser (talk) 16:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Merge and Redirect per nom. WP:CONTENTFORK. Shlomke (talk) 05:56, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Newman, when will you stop personlizing the discussions and focusing on me and deal with the real issues at hand which is your clearly-stated intention to totally obliterate any views you don't like, particularly if you suspect they may be coming from an "Orthodox" perspective as you have made abundantly clear again and again on your talk page and elsewhere, as an example please review User talk:Newman Luke and more. Thanks. IZAK (talk) 05:07, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirct to Jewish views of marriage. Present article(s) appear to be some sort of WP:CONTENTFORK. -- nsaum75  ¡שיחת! 05:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect. Looks like a content fork to me - in particular an attempt to create a similar article with a different viewpoint, something very much frowned upon here. The notice on the project page was worded badly, I agree. But that doesn't invalidate anyone's opinion. As for Debresser's comment, sometimes I despair. It isn't funny. And in the interests of transparency, I am not Jewish although there is a family story that I have a great-grandfather, or maybe a great-great grandfather, who was a French Canadian Jewish lumberjack. Oh, I don't know Hebrew either. Dougweller (talk) 16:50, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.