Tachlis Forum

1. Be respectful.
   Examples: don't misgender people, don't tell people that they are child abusing misogynistic cultists.

@alter_kaker said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:

Another question is religion and how do we handle the radical differences between different frames of reference (i.e. Orthodox, Reform, etc)? I'm Orthodox, for example, which means that I need to either stay out of some conversations because my understanding is going to be straight up not welcome, or participate in some kind of bowlderized way, or risk serious conflict. One of my goals is to enable a space where people of different FoRs can interact, because I know Jews who for example have never knowingly spoken to a Reform Jew, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Queer person.

I created a topic for this discussion.

In re the discussion in Meta Topic—What do we Want?

@alter_kaker said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:

Another question is religion and how do we handle the radical differences between different frames of reference (i.e. Orthodox, Reform, etc)? I'm Orthodox, for example, which means that I need to either stay out of some conversations because my understanding is going to be straight up not welcome, or participate in some kind of bowlderized way, or risk serious conflict. One of my goals is to enable a space where people of different FoRs can interact, because I know Jews who for example have never knowingly spoken to a Reform Jew, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Queer person.

@talya said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:

idk if i'm once again too trusting, but i'm thinking that so long as we proactively remind people that all FoRs are valid so long as they don't actively harm another person, that people should stay respectful, mindful of their biases, then i don't see why different FoRs wouldn't be able to mix. i think that so long as someone didn't open a discussion explicitly saying "hey i want to get the PoV of people from this FoR only, thanks", there's no reason not to allow someone to join in, so long as they're aware of their limits (and even possibly state them outloud, e.g. "as someone who grew up in Israel i'm aware my perspective on this may be biased, but yada yada").

@ellie said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:

Make that goal clear from the outset. Also create a thread specifically to talk about how to do this so early members are all involved and those who join later can see our work and contribute their thoughts.
Tags so readers have an idea what to expect is good, and so is the expectation that people will handle themselves.

I'm going back and forth on the idea of categories for the movements while the group is small and have currently landed on build it so it's clear there's space for everyone.

I think that for me, Pluralism is a fundamental political principle, although as a value I still need to do work to define it within my Orthodox FoR. I would like this to be a space where we can practice pluralism, even when it's difficult and personal and messy. I hope that we can, as a community, reflect the larger Jewish community with all its great diversity, but learn, despite some existentially profound differences, to hold each other as fellows so that we can coexist within this small delimited space.

When you really think about it, pluralism is incredibly difficult; and it seems that each corner of the Jewish community has deeply held beliefs that totally invalidate the existence of at least one other corner (as someone who has inhabited a probably unusual number of corners, I can say this with confidence). How do we do it? How can we stay true to ourselves and our beliefs, but still carve out a space for others for whom our beliefs don't explicitly make space? Maybe we can start with a set of rules. We're Jews after all...

Oh and I hope that some of the very knowledgeable Torah students I invited come and help us talk about how to understand pluralism Jewishly in the Torah section.

@ellie said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:

(Oh, can we have a rule that positive, supportive emojis are read as positive and supportive? Had a bit of trouble with someone reading : ) as passive aggressive. I'm too old to remember all those hidden meanings )

figuring out if you're dealing with someone who would use a smile emoji as a passive aggressive or genuine under any particular circumstances is a full time job

@talya said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:

so long as we proactively remind people that all FoRs are valid

This needs its own topic. As soon as I have some time, I'll try to branch this and other pieces into their own topics so that we can discuss them without turning this topic into a frustratingly digressive chat room

Or, if one of you wants to start a topic, I don't think that there are any restrictions

@ellie said in Meta Topic—What do we Want?:

For myself I'd like somewhere which can afford at least some respite from politics, but recognise I'm in the minority on this. I don't live in either the U.S. or Israel and my bandwidth for both of those never has a chance to recharge.

We can definitely try to keep politics somewhat contained in its own section. It might be worth looking into just how compartmentalized we can keep this space; maybe you can subscribe to some categories and just ignore—or even hide—others.

My biggest concern is that it might be difficult to keep politics out of Torah discussions. To me Torah is intensely political and it would be inappropriate to ignore that. But I'm using the broad definition of politics: the question of how do we live as a society.

Mostly I'd just like to engage with more Jewish subjects, teachings, religion, music, literature, language, humour. Liberal arts rather than poli sci if you will. I'm very isolated that way.

How granular do you think this should be? We can have levels of categories on here; lots of granularity has pros and cons for sure.

Another question is religion and how do we handle the radical differences between different frames of reference (i.e. Orthodox, Reform, etc)? I'm Orthodox, for example, which means that I need to either stay out of some conversations because my understanding is going to be straight up not welcome, or participate in some kind of bowlderized way, or risk serious conflict. One of my goals is to enable a space where people of different FoRs can interact, because I know Jews who for example have never knowingly spoken to a Reform Jew, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Queer person.

In the old Facebook group I was on back in the day they would tag discussions with a FoR, and people would have to handle themselves. We could do that, or use the categories... What do you think?

As for federation, I'm 100% on board with people federating their posts out but am wary of bringing fedi in. Or more properly, bringing arguments from fedi in.

This sounds to me like we keep Fedi out for now, and people can share links the old fashioned way, via copy and paste. I agree with that, at least until we get something going.

The abstracts I'm looking for are safety, a sense of comfort and home, somewhere that's nurturing of us as Jews.

I love this list!

The problem with blithely repeating "don't be afraid, Hashem is in charge and is taking care of us" is that when, inevitably, bad things happen, where is your bitochon? There has to be room for the understanding that painful and frightening things happen to faithful Jews all the time, and Hashem does not guarantee that bad things won't happen to us—especially, especially, especially as consequences for our collective behavior as a people.

So when I see our people endorse violence and corruption—in the name of Hashem, no less!—of course I'm afraid. How can I not be afraid when we are worshipping the idols of money and power and nationalism and calling it Judaism? When we daven every day and afterwards tell the widow and the orphan in our cities that it's their fault?! We are on a collision course with Hashem. Again, just like before. And like before, we are full of certitude and self-righteousness as we do it.

I think that we don't have prophets anymore because there's nothing new for a prophet to say. Just read this through the end of the chapter:

Yeshaya 1:10

שִׁמְע֥וּ דְבַר־יְהֹוָ֖ה קְצִינֵ֣י סְדֹ֑ם הַאֲזִ֛ינוּ תּוֹרַ֥ת אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ עַ֥ם עֲמֹרָֽה׃

Hear the word of GOD,You chieftains of Sodom;Give ear to our God’s instruction,You folk of Gomorrah!

Pirke Ovos 2:2

(English follows)

רַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל בְּנוֹ שֶׁל רַבִּי יְהוּדָה הַנָּשִׂיא אוֹמֵר, יָפֶה תַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה עִם דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ, שֶׁיְּגִיעַת שְׁנֵיהֶם מְשַׁכַּחַת עָוֹן. וְכָל תּוֹרָה שֶׁאֵין עִמָּהּ מְלָאכָה, סוֹפָהּ בְּטֵלָה וְגוֹרֶרֶת עָוֹן. וְכָל הָעֲמֵלִים עִם הַצִּבּוּר, יִהְיוּ עֲמֵלִים עִמָּהֶם לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, שֶׁזְּכוּת אֲבוֹתָם מְסַיַּעְתָּן וְצִדְקָתָם עוֹמֶדֶת לָעַד. וְאַתֶּם, מַעֲלֶה אֲנִי עֲלֵיכֶם שָׂכָר הַרְבֵּה כְּאִלּוּ עֲשִׂיתֶם:

Rabban Gamaliel the son of Rabbi Judah Hanasi said: excellent is the study of the Torah when combined with a worldly occupation, for toil in them both keeps sin out of one’s mind; But [study of the] Torah which is not combined with a worldly occupation, in the end comes to be neglected and becomes the cause of sin.

There's a debate between Rambam and Abarbanel about this mishna. Rambam says:

ר"ל בדרך ארץ הנה העוסק בפרנסה ואמרו וגוררת עון כמו שבארנו במקום אחר אמרו סופו שהוא מלסטם את הבריות

By derekh erets (the way of the world), he meant involvement in a livelihood. And his saying, "and leads to sin" is as I explained it in another place [about] their saying (Kiddushin 29a), "In the end he will steal from the creatures."

Abarbanel counters:

'דרך ארץ ומלאכה' לא כיון אומנות הידיים כי אם על החכמה המדינית וידיעת המדות המשובחות והנהגתם. כי על זה נאמר באמת "דרך ארץ" ושם "מלאכה" עליו נאמר גם כן, לפי שהידיעה המדותיית תכליתה המעשה.

"derekh eretz and melakha" doesn't mean labor with the hands, but political wisdom and knowing the virtues and attaining them. For on this it is truly said "derekh eretz" and there "melakha" is also said, because knowing of virtues its essence is in the deed."

On the one hand, as a working class Jew I've always felt strongly drawn to Rambam's interpretation, that a Torah teacher must also work in a trade and not be reliant on payment for Torah lest he is corrupted, and so that he would have experience making a living.

But Abarbanel's position that Derech Eretz means that a leader of the people must understand politics in addition to knowing Torah so that he would be able to deal with the malchus—and (my addition) not mislead the people into the arms of charlatans and con men, especially appealing today...

I do really think that the dialectic of Torah-Derekh Eretz can contain both interpretations, they're just applicable in slightly different areas of the responsibility of a leader.

Hi everyone,

Here is a place we can talk about what we are looking for out of participating in this community. Here is something I wrote in a yet-to-be-published blog post to get us started:

I was discussing with @zx the things I am looking for in online interaction that I'm not getting from traditional or federated social media. A lot of different things came up, but the most important and central is this: the need to be able to have deep, complex conversations with people I trust, in a way that those conversations are not ephemeral, lost in the endlessly scrolling feed, like an infinite dark plain in which attention is but a circle of candlelight—but permanent, archived, accessible. This is because I want to be able to collaborate with people to create ideas, with complexity and nuance, for which it's necessary to be able to build on the past and plan for the future.

So, we identified some key needs:

• To build a trusted community,
• To build and enforce community norms,
• To keep some discussions private, and some public,
• To keep past conversations easily findable and accessible.
• A few other important pieces are:
• A good mobile experience,
• Inexpensive to operate,
• Extensible with new features that might be needed.
• And, finally, it would be nice, but not mandatory, to be able to achieve some level of federation with the Fediverse, so long as it's strictly limited and controlled.

Given those requirements, an Internet forum was what suggested itself. Forums are encapsulated communities, with both technical and social norm-building and enforcement features. Good forum software provides both private and public spaces (although typically it's necessary to sign up to post and reply), and forums are archival, in that conversations aren't lost but categorized and saved, in formats that are designed to be accessible to referral and long-term interaction.

Some more questions

• What do we want to talk about? How do we want to organize discussion? Categories, etc.
• Do we want private areas? Which?
• NodeBB has federation abilities. I turned them off. Do we want to turn them on? Under what parameters should this forum federate?
• What are the (abstract) things you are looking for in online community? How can we concretize them?