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Purpose | Related Lists | Submissions | Subscription Donations | Back Issues | Ground Rules | Listproc
Purpose of the mailing list: Mail-Jewish Home
This mailing list was founded in 1986 for the purpose of discussing Jewish topics in general within an environment where the validity of Halakha and the Halakhic process is accepted, as well as for the discussion of topics of Halakha. The mailing list is open to everybody, but topics such as the validity of Torah, halakha etc are not accepted.
Mail-jewish has grown to be a quite active list, and you should expect to get about 10 to 20 mailings each week, (more or less depending on how busy I am and the volume of submissions). Each mailing is a digest of different submissions, usually between 250 and 300 lines in any given issue. In general, there will not be more than 4 issues sent out in any given day. The mail-jewish archives are available on shamash.org (see below for more info). I generally change volume number when we get to about issue 100.
Related Lists Top Mail-Jewish Home
<The following information is not currently correct and I will be correcting it shortly. mj-announce and mj-chaburah are not currently active. Avi> There are now four sublists that have grown out of the mail-jewish list. The first is mj-announce. This list contains announcement and request type messages often involving travel and Israel, local events of Jewish interest, and other postings that are not aimed at discussion. To join that list, send the message:
subscribe mj-announce <your name here> to: listproc@shamash.org
The second list is mj-chaburah. This list is more intermediate/advanced learning oriented list where a specific topic is discussed for a period of a week or two, based on a full range of Jewish/Halakhic sources (e.g. Talmud, Rambam, Shulchan Aruch, Reshonim, Acharonim). The topic of discussion is always posted to mail-jewish before the beginning of the discussion period on mj-chaburah. To join that list, send the message:
subscribe mj-chaburah <your name here> to: listproc@shamash.org
<The next list is current, but at this point is relatively quiet. Avi > The third list is mj-ravtorah. This list is run by Josh Rapps and publishes divrai torah on the parsha based on notes of shiurim given by Rav Soloveichek. At this point, most of the material has been completed, and additional mailings are relatively not frequent. You can join the list by sending the message:
subscribe mj-ravtorah <your name here> to: listproc@shamash.org but likely of more interest is the Web page of the previous mailings; http://shamash.org/lists/mj-ravtorah
<The next list is fully active, and at this point is running at about twice the mail-jewish volume. Avi> The fourth list originally called mj-machshava has merged with a second list and is called Avodah. It deals with some of the more philosophical areas of Jewish thought. This list managed by Micha Berger, a longtime member of our list. To subscribe, send the request:
subscribe Avodah to: majordomo@aishdas.org
Submission of Articles: Top Mail-Jewish Home
You are welcome to submit articles on whatever you'd like related to halakha or Judaism. Try to be gentle and tactful. If you want to post an article mail it to mljewish@shamash.org. In general, I will assume any email message sent to the above addresses is meant for inclusion in the mailing list. If it is a private message to me, and not for the list, please state so in your message. Anonymity will be preserved on request.
Cross posting between mail-jewish and other jewish mailing lists is discouraged. Publishing any portions of the mail-jewish digests on any other medium including other mailing lists without asking me or the originator of the article represents a breach of trust as many of the people who write in wish their privacy preserved. Please note that in todays world of increasing electronic intercommunication, mail-jewish may be redistributed on local BBS and is available for reading through the World Wide Web
The preferred address that you can send things to is:
mljewish@shamash.org
You can also reach me at:
ayf01@aol.com
Subscription Donation: Top Mail-Jewish Home
I am requesting a yearly subscription donation from readers of mail-jewish. I am modeling it somewhat like some museums, in that I am recommending a suggested subscription level, but you are free to choose what level of subscription you wish to contribute. The suggested subscription levels are (for US readers) $36.00 for employed individuals or families (i.e. if you have more than one person in your family on mail-jewish, only one subscription fee is requested), and $18.00 for students, under-employed etc. If you are just joining the list, I would suggest waiting a month and reading this list to see what this list is worth to you before making a decision. [Note: I have not done anything to register mail-jewish as tax exempt entity with the IRS, so any money sent should not be viewed as tax exempt, the same is true for Canadian subscriptions sent to Harvey Poch, and I'm sure the same is true for the Isreali subscriptions.]
NOTES: At the present time, it does not appear to me to be practical to request this subscription fee from the non-US readers, due to the issues of converting the currency, etc. The exceptions are Israel, where I will take the subscription fees in Shekels (NS), at the suggested levels of 50NS/25NS, and Canada, where one of the members of the list has agreed to collect funds from other Canadians on the list and then forward it to me (details below). Non-US readers who are able to get mail-orders or check drafts payable in US dollars would be greatly appreciated. Any non-US reader who would be willing to collect funds from other members in your country and then either send to me in US dollars or a single check in non-US currancy that is more practical to convert, please let me know.
Checks payable in US dollars may be made out to either "Avi Feldblum" or to "mail-jewish". In Israel, please make the check out to "M. Feldblum" and send it to the address listed below.
The address to send the contribution to is:
For Canada, checks can be made out to " Harvey Poch" and mailed to
Mail-Jewish c/o Harvey Poch 78 Chelmsford Avenue Willowdale, Ontario M2R 2W4
Back Issues: Top Mail-Jewish Home
All the back issues of mail-jewish are available on the shamash archive area. A new service that has been added is a fully "html-ized" version of the list that is available on the mail-jewish home page. Further information on retrieval from the archive area is included at the end of this message. For those that would prefer, however, I have the mail-jewish archives available on floppies. They are packed as self-extracting compressed files, so I get about 2+ Meg on each floppy. There are currently about 15 floppies in all. I'm charging $4/floppy to cover media/shipping and handling for US requests. Please let me know what volumes you are interested in. It will be somewhat higher for non-US requests, please let me know if you are interested. [I also have a Zip drive, so I could zip all the volumes onto a single zip disk. If there is any interest please let me know.]
Mailing List Ground Rules: Top Mail-Jewish Home
Halakha | Flaming | Hebrew | Halakhic Authority | Signatures | Editing | Quoting
1) Halakha
a)Submissions to the mailing list may not advocate actions which are clearly in violation of Halakha.
b) Discussions about whether it is appropriate in these modern times to follow Halakha is not a valid topic for discussion
c) It is the responsibility of the moderator to determine what the bounds of acceptable discussion are. The moderator may discuss borderline issues with some selected members of the list to help in making that decision.
2) Flaming
All members of the mailing list are strongly urged to keep the conversation focused on the topic of discussion, not on the people saying things. Flaming of any sort will result in automatic rejection of your submission.
3) Hebrew
All transliterations of hebrew words, except those that are "common", should also be translated. The members of the mailing list span a wide range of knowledge and background, and we would like things to be understood by all. Words such as Torah, Shabbat, Mitzvah fall in the catagory of "common". If you are unsure, it is better to err on the side of including the translation. If the translations are missing, the moderator will either supply the translation, clearly marking that the translation was added by the moderator, or will send the submission back to the submitter for translation.
4) Halakhic Authority
The mailing list is not a halakhic authority, and no discussions held on the mailing list should be relied upon in a situation where a p'sak halakha [specific halakhic decision] is called for. In such a situation, whether explicitly stated in the submission or not, the rule is: CYLCHA - Consult Your Local Competent Halakhic Authority, or more commonly put - CYLOR - Consult Your Local Orthodox Rabbi.
5) Signatures
I enforce the 4-line limit to signatures that is recommended in Usenet etiquette. If your signature is longer, I will edit it down to 4 lines. I will also edit out lines that do not carry information, e.g. adding a favorite quote to one's sig is popular, but will usually be removed before a submission goes out.
6)Editing
I will generally do minor editing of articles that are submitted, usually limited to fixing typo's that I see. If it requires anything more than that, I will generally return it to you with a comment about what I would like to see fixed.
7) Quoting
When quoting previous submissions, please trim the quoted material to what is needed to make your contribution understandable. The standard convention in the email world, supported by many mail user agents is that the quoted material is prepended with an identifiable character, usually a "> ", i.e. here is how a quoted line might look: > this is a quoted line and here is my reply Doing this, or something similar helps everyone read things more clearly.
Listproc: Top Mail-Jewish Home
General Info | Join | Postpone | Signoff | Change Address | Archive Material
General Info:
This mailing list is administered using the listproc on shamash.org. The listproc software can handle many administrative matters, such as joining or leaving the list, and requesting archived material. These requests can now be handled directly by email requests to the listproc address as well as via a
Full documentation on the Shamash Listproc can be found on the main Shamash Web site. The address for these administrative requests is:
listproc@shamash.org
NOTE: NOT mail-jewish@shamash.org
To get a copy of the user reference manual by email, send the message: GET doc userman.txt or for the user reference card: GET doc user-ref.txt to: listproc@shamash.org You can also get a nicely formatted copy (in rtf format) of the above documents by replacing the .txt with .rtf in the above commands.
Here are some of the more common things you might want to do:
Join: To join the list send a message to the above address which contains the line:
subscribe mail-jewish first_name last_name
where you put your name in the appropriate spot above.
Postpone: If you are going to be unavailable for a while and do not want the mail piling up in your mailbox, you can set your subscription to POSTPONE. The way to do that is send the following message to the listproc address:
set mail-jewish mail postpone
when you return, you can reset your mail mode back by sending the message:
set mail-jewish mail noack
Signoff: To leave the list, send a message to the above address which contains the line:
signoff mail-jewish
Change Address: To change your email address, send a message to the above address which contains the line:
set mail-jewish <address> <password> <new-address>
where <address> is the current address, <password> is your password for the list, and <new-address> is the address you want to change it to.
Archive Material: <At this point, I would suspect that the Web server is probably the more up to date location for material, but I will check out and make sure that the listproc archive area is correct as well. >
To find out what is available from the archive server, send the following message:
index mail-jewish
To get a file in the main directory, send the message:
get mail-jewish file_name
One file that you may wish to pick up is fullindex. This an index of topics discussed in volumes 2-24 <The fullindex on the web page is accurate to volume 29>
The various volumes are located in subdirectories, to get, e.g. Volume 5 number 62, send the message:
get mail-jewish/volume5 v5n62
If you have any problems, or the above either does not work for you or doesn't make sense, please send me email and I will try and help you.
Avi Feldblum mail.jewish moderator mljewish@shamash.org