Rugela offers ways to filter out content based on Content Warnings.

What are your thoughts on them?

Useful? Not useful?

Too broad? Too narrow?

Do you wish we covered topics we don't?

A teenage science prodigy from Belgium who got his doctorate in quantum physics at the age of 15, is heading to Israel to be a researcher at Bar-Ilan University.

Heya everyone! I'm new here, and am hoping I can meet some coolio peeps on this platform, especially once it's fully launched.

I guess as a first question, does anybody have a favorite work of fiction they especially like the depictions of Judaism and/or Jewish culture in?

It turns out Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and the president who told terrorists to get off his plane is a Jew.

Harrison Ford's mother, Dorothy Nidelman, was a Russian Jew Minsk. His father was Irish Catholic. In an interview with Kveller, he said that as a man he felt Irish, but as an actor he felt Jewish ( kveller.com/harrison-ford-makes-an-excellent-joke-about-his-jewish-mom/ )

Sandys Row Synagogue, one of only two shuls still functioning in London’s East End, has received nearly £200,000 in grants to support a project which aims to ensure its future as a place of worship, heritage, and learning.

“Sandys Row Synagogue has a very special history, and we have many members who trace their ancestry back to the founders,” said synagogue chair Harvey Rifkind.

Study in human ovaries found they have increased inflammation, structural changes in tissue decades after menopause

This article talks ostensibly about LLMs being used to make your smart TV dumb, but the larger point is getting rid of the things in your television that you don't want to be there and having it do what you bought it to do.

A lot of content online sits behind a paywall, especially news sites.

Should we have a policy for moderation around that?

Some thoughts/possibilities:

1. No policy

Some content is paywalled, others aren't.

2. We disallow paywalled content

Then you know everything you see on the site is free to browse, but we might miss out on good stuff and discovering new things.

3. We treat paywalled content as a CW

You can choose to filter out paywalled content, but this places more work on the submitter to ensure the CW is in place. More importantly, this changes the CW to be about distribution rather than Content.

What do you think?

Yale University Press has created a highly successful, award winning, profitable series profiling the lives of contemporary Jews, but has inexplicably decided to end the series, capping it at a maximum of a hundred. Is that enough to capture a slice of Jewish life?

The scroll, found in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds, is an astonishing 717 centimeters long or 23 and a half feet. It was written in 125 BCE, so yes, it is more than two thousand years old.

Seeing it is frankly a spiritual experience; the neat handwriting, the editing—yes, later scribes changed what the first scribe wrote, and the sheer fact that it is two thousand years old and complete.

Shabbat shalom, everyone.

Since this is our first Shabbat with Rugela on, I thought I'd try a little thing where we create a threat that we can come together at the end of the week.

What are you bringing to the table this week? It could be something good, something difficult, what you’re cooking, something you learned, someone you’re thinking about, or simply that you survived another week!

Whatever this Shabbat looks like for you, you’re welcome at this table.

One sentence is plenty, and the thread will still be here afterwards.

gut shabbos!

With demographic shifts, synagogues sometimes need to close or congregations merge with one another.

What that happens, what happens to the donated artwork? Congregation Temple Beth-El in Great Neck, NY is dealing with that very question.

How can Judaism help us get free?

In our moment of polycrisis, this is an urgent question for those of us invested in Judaism. Many formations and organizations have emerged to attempt to offer alternatives to the stultifying and content-less (except for pro-Israel work) identity-based Judaism on offer from an increasingly less mainstream “mainstream.”

“The Faithful: Women of the Bible” is a three-part biblical TV “event” that explores the lives of Sarah and her handmaid, Hagar; Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, and her relationship with her sons; and the complex relationship of sisters Rachel and Leah, the wives of Jacob.

Weitz and Mendelsohn talked to Kveller about how this show came to be, their approach to recreating biblical times, and who they’re hoping to portray in upcoming seasons.

Merger versus acquisition.

This is one of the big discussions at the synagogue, and has been for years leading up to what's going on now. My predecessor and I were always adamant that we'd not go down this road - that any other congregation that would want to join with us (given local history) would see it as an acquisition and we'd be swallowed up.

So it's very fair game when my congregants ask me why I keep asserting that this is a merger, not an acquisition. It's a very fair question.

In a merger, you don't lose your identity. Our name is part of not just the legal name of the new congregation, but the everyday business one.

In a merger, it's about coming together. Like a marriage, we might be moving into their 'house', but we're bringing our things with us, and what we'll use on a daily basis is a combination of both congregation's 'things'.

In a merger, it's about finding ways to work together, to use the best from each side. The new bylaws are based on theirs, but with copious input and language from ours, and has the recent revisions we made to be more inclusive.

In a merger, you talk about 'joining with', not about 'them and us'.

And I'm very blessed that our partners in this, the congregation we are joining with to form this new congregation, are all about finding the wins, having the discussions, and building together.