Talk:Anarchism and Orthodox Judaism

Problematic article

This article is one of my least favourite Wikipedia articles. I think it is really problematic. In general, Wikipedia does not like "and" articles, and they are almost by definition WP:SYN. It would be far better if the article focused on e.g. Orthodox Jewish anarchism or anarchist Orthodox Judaism. The problematicness of the article is apparent in the "Criticism" section, which now contains several paragraphs on Jewish usury and Jewish support for the Israeli state, which really have nothing to do with the article but could be legitimately claimed as "criticisms" of libertarian interpretations of Judaism. Any thoughts?

I don't see how this this article is different from other articles on anarchism and religion, e.g. Christian anarchism and Anarchism and Islam. They both summarize very diverse anarchist tendencies and alternatives within a tradition that is usually conceived as authoritarian. The "Criticism" is composed largely of information, provided by authoritarians and outright vandals, which I considered worthy of preserving and moving to "criticism" section. I agree that this section grew into an odd bulk of unrelated information. I gonna edit it now a little bit. Laplandian (talk) 18:53, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

The writer of this article has a bias toward being anti-semitic although his knowledge of the Jews is good. Many of his passages have nothing to do with Anarchism, but they are included in a manner which suggests that they are anarchistic. This is a deliberate misuse of his knowledge. Generally the Jewish religion supports the government where-ever the Jew may live. When two countries are at war, the Jews in each are expected to join their respective armies and fight on their different sides. This is not a anarchial attitude--its the opposite.Macrocompassion (talk) 13:18, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

What? Where do you see an "anti-Semitic" bias in this article? Hayyim Rothman, an American historian and an Orthodox rabbi ordained by the Yeshiva University, recently published a book on this subject titled "No masters but God: Portraits of anarcho-Judaism". His list of most prominent Orthodox rabbis who considered themselves anarchists and anarchists who were practicing Orthodox Jews largely coincides with the personalities mentioned in this article. BTW, the stereotype that "bourgeois" Jews are politically inert and blindly follow politics of their respective countries is often used by anti-Semites. Now, considering today's political situation, I would think that this sudden accusation smacks (intentionally or not) of Russian propaganda. Involvement of Jews in antiwar protests is well known, well documented and normally taken positively. You believe that 250,000 Jews who live in Russia, and even more who happen to have Russian citizenship, are supposed to fight for Putin, do you? Laplandian (talk) 03:07, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I am Hayyim Rothman and I just want to correct a claim here. I was ordained by Yeshivat Achei Temimim, not by Yeshiva University. I attended YU as a graduate student, not as a rabbinic student. 2A00:A040:197:520E:B0CD:C157:EE92:F1E8 (talk) 18:33, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree this is a highly problematic article that does feel like original research, interpreting sources to suit the author's biases. I am not sure what we can do about it, but it is quite misleading. Maybe move it to "Jewish anarchists" and de-emphasize the "Orthodox" aspect, which is really a modern term that would not apply to most of the people described in the article anyway. It is certainly a stretch to call Abarbenel an anarchist, even weird. I am not qualified to re-write this article, and call on someone else to do it. DaringDonna (talk) 18:37, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Several historians consider Isaac Abarbanel an anarchist of sorts. I will add more links to academic articles on this subject. Quoting Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, "Abarbanel... argued in favour of democratically elected councils, but was at heart a utopian anarchist. In an ideal world, he believed, there would be no rulers and no ruled". A scholarly book called "Religion and Politics in Jewish Thought" contains a research article by Zev Harvey named "Anarchism, Egalitarianism, and Communism in Isaac Abarbanel". There is nothing weird in this claim, it is well known that Abarbanel's famous rejection of monarchy is anarchistic in nature (although somewhat inconsistent).

This article's original title was actually "Anarchism and Judaism", but it was renamed after someone complained that it only covers Orthodox Jews. It would be great if someone adds information on Reform or Reconstructionist anarchists. I believe that the Jewish Renewal movement altogether has strong hippie-like anarchic tendencies. Laplandian (talk) 03:29, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Buber

Buber was never shomer mitzvot/Orthodox, to my knowledge. Please review and correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.78.178.51 (talk) 11:38, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixed Laplandian (talk) 04:32, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Improving the article

I added a couple of links and removed the tags complaining about "undue weight" and "additional citations". This article is way shorter than "Christian anarchism", although most Christians are, most likely, not aware of such a phenomenon. Anarchist interpretations of other world religions deserve their own detailed articles.

As Dr. Hayyim Rothman (I am not him) shows in his recent scholarly book "No masters but God: Portraits of anarcho-Judaism", anarchist ideas were indeed significant in 20th century Judaism, represented by such notable people as the famous kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag and the territorialist Isaac Steinberg. Instead of complaining about citations in general, please add suggestions in particular places where they might be needed, one by one.

Other complaints ("original research" etc.) also don't sound fair, but I am not going to remove them until I (or other editors, please) find a sufficient number of additional non-primary sources. And please explain point by point, how is this article more "essay-like" than the ones on Christian anarchism or Christian communism? Unfortunately, articles focusing on intersections between world religions/cultures and radical politics may sound like essays due to the specific - but historically, politically and socially important - nature of the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laplandian (talk • contribs) 04:25, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

@I.am.a.qwerty: Could you explain why you added these tags to this article? It would be helpful for resolving these issues if you could point out some examples for each. Grnrchst (talk) 17:35, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Some thoughts:

• This article pretty clearly looks like it breaks WP:OR etc. and to excuse it by saying other articles are worse is not good enough.*
• I have removed some of the most glaring examples of direct quotations from sources. But there's lots more that can be done on this end.
• Older Jewish sources are also problematic as they do not specifically relate to "Orthodox Judaism" which is only be associated with a certain segment of Jews from the advent of Reform Judaism. If you want to keep the content, I'd suggest you move it to the general Jewish anarchism page.
• Anarchist views of specific Orthodox Jews cannot justify this page
• There's far too much "background" and "related" content for an article of this size (and indicates how it breaks WP:OR)
• Perhaps the whole page is just a fork from Jewish anarchism and should best be merged into that page
• Not having enough scholarly research doesn't give WP editors permission to interpret older primary sources
• Personally, I'd move to delete the whole page per WP:TNT, and start afresh.

I.am.a.qwerty (talk) 15:18, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts and efforts to cut down on OR. I'd personally lean towards giving time for the more problematic aspects of this article to be reduced, but I can understand the motivations for wanting to merge/delete this. Hopefully we can cut out more of the OR and interpretation of primary sources, while adding in some more reliable secondary sources. If not, then a further discussion on this article's future may be warranted. Grnrchst (talk) 17:07, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

• It does seem, generally, that the article would need to be rewritten from scratch in order to remove original research. There are entire sections without citations and the few citations do not appear to be for the major claims of the paragraph but of side points. Some of the Hebrew citations do not appear when searched in WorldCat so unclear what they are. Ultimately it's even unclear to me what we would even merge to Jewish anarchism if we wanted to condense there and start over in summary style. I can redirect to that article to preserve this page history, if anyone wants to merge content, but both the sourcing and content issues are manifold. If you wanted to start with Rothman's book, I'd recommend starting there in Jewish anarchism. czar 20:29, 6 July 2022 (UTC)