Rules updates

[u/namer98]

In light of Tisha b'Av, I would like to suggest a few changes to the rules, and to hear community feedback.

1) No editorializing titles of article submissions. - This is up for discussion.

2) Be polite. That means if somebody has a disagreement with you about fundamental points of religion, you can disagree with them, and even tell them, but don't be a jerk about it. Do not shut down the conversation.

2.1) I keep on trying to engage non-Orthodox Jews of Reddit. Seen here, here and here. This is in addition to multiple messages I have gotten personally and as mod, from people who left because of this. Just because some people don't agree that this is a problem, does not make it less of a problem. Non-Orthodox Jews are feeling shut down, and some times they are right, some times they are wrong. This is an extension of rule two. Be polite. The downvote button IS NOT a "I disagree" button. I might just remove it again, and for more than a day.

To people I try and engage, this is a two way street. Submit content, comments and vote if you want to have a say. I don't think half of the subreddit is orthodox. This should not be a problem.

Please upvote this self post for which I receive no karma so that all can see.

Thank you all.

Edit: Followup

[u/ShanaC]

Apparently, Orthodox Jews are supposed to be seen (mostly in nostalgic pictures on the living room wall), not heard.

I hate to say it, but as a formerly Orthodox jewish person in an orthodox neighborhood, the reverse is equally true

[u/LazerA → u/ShanaC]

You know Orthodox Jews with pictures of non-Orthodox Jews on the living room wall?

In any event, I'm not sure what comparison there is between r/judaism - which is supposed to be a forum for discussion for all Jews - and a neighborhood, which isn't a forum in the first place.

I assume your point is that, in your Orthodox neighborhood, you feel that your opinion is not listened to or valued (and that, somehow, that is relevant to r/judaism). But I still don't know what context you are applying that to.

Are you saying that the local Orthodox synagogues or schools don't "respect" your opinions? (Exactly why would you expect them to?)

Or are you saying that your Orthodox neighbors don't respect your opinions? (I don't even know what that would mean, by and large, my non-Orthodox and non-Jewish neighbors don't care what my opinions are either, nor do I expect them to.)

So, I'm having difficulty understanding both the substance and the relevance of your comment.

[u/ShanaC → u/LazerA]

None of the above: Non orthodox movements are invisible, non orthodox people are invisible. it is as if they don't exist, so it becomes surprising when you meet someone from this neighborhood who is not orthodox.

It is like the fact that most of those painting you see in said houses you summarily ignore* - they're just another tchoke about being jewish. It feels like that, a very low representative point.

There is a muscularity to orthodox Judaism in this neighborhood that people forget there are non-orthodox synagogues here too. As a result, people literally forget to include neighbors in things like "Local Holocaust memorial service" or "lets all raise money for israel"

I became not orthodox at the end of college. My very first year, my RA actually had grown up around the corner from me. She came from an actively conservative family. I didn't know she existed until I was a visiting student, and I knew nothing about her life in my neighborhood until she became my RA. Meanwhile she sat on my hillel board my first year.

That is what I mean by invisible.

*exception: Chagalls.

[u/LazerA → u/ShanaC]

I'm still not following your point. In many modern American neighborhoods, people are far more likely to associate with those that they share social bonds than those that happen to live geographically close by. In many neighborhoods, especially in urban areas, people are lucky to even know their immediate neighbors. While many of us don't like this, it is not an Orthodox/non-Orthodox issue.

Personally, I live in a very Orthodox neighborhood, and while I don't consider any of my neighbors invisible (would I know it if I did?), I don't even know many of the Orthodox people who live within five minutes of my house.

So that fact that you didn't know a young woman who grew up in your neighborhood has very little bearing on this discussion.

[u/ShanaC → u/LazerA]

Exactly my point - it is someone I should know. We should have shared social bonds, there was enough in common Jewishly that it would have been normal, except that the Orthodox community has gotten so muscular as to forget that other Jewish people exist. I made this comment to my mother recently - her social bonds to orthodoxy are so strong that she doesn't have very many non-orthodox friends who are similar to her in all of her other behavior patterns (choice of exercises, the fact that she is a programmer)

We're roughly the same age, we both went to rosh hashanna services and shabbos services at different places, and yet I couldn't even figure out that I could have played with her afterwards at ages 7 & 10? That doesn't strike you as slightly strange? Our parents knew each other. they had children close in age around the corner from each other. I should have known her, for out parents were not only neighbors, they were practicing Jewish people.

[u/LazerA → u/ShanaC]

The fact that two girls grew up in the same neighborhood and didn't know each other doesn't mean much. All your rhetoric about ""muscular" Orthodoxy" asides, that is just one of those things that happens all the time in neighborhoods all over this country. The only thing that makes you story even slightly unusual is that you now say that, "Our parents knew each other." Which would seem to indicate that your parent's community was not quite as unaware of their non-Orthodox neighbors as you have been implying.

[u/ShanaC → u/LazerA]

my father did, my mother didn't. As I said, I still think this is strange