Talk:Havruta (organization)

No actual controversy

The Controversy section here serves as a stage for bringing up claims of rival organizations, mainly Kamoha. The claims brought here were brought up by a single person and have no public singnifiance. The citation for the claims are all based on quotations of that single person brought in a serious of articles he published in the Israeli press, claiming he was forced to created his own organization because Havruta has began accepting nonreligious board members, began supporting egalitarian minyan, etc. Some of the claims are easily refutable e.g. it can be easily verified that the organization was founded by a religious and ex-religious guys. Other claims don't make sense because of the timing of the events e.g. the egalitarian Minyan took place a year or two (required verification) before the split took place. Other simply cannot be supported by any other source.

The section is so biased that I removed it altogether. It might be justifiable to create a section discussing some of the more progressive acts of the organization and the mixed reaction they received from various rabbis. Yet, creating a section for the mere purpose of bringing false quotations from a rival, seems wrong to me. I'm bringing here the original section I am just about to remove. I'll give it a day before I actually delete it.

Controversy

Some of Havruta's policies have been criticized by more conservative-leaning elements of the Orthodox LGBT community in Israel. The organization Kamoha split off when Havruta began supporting egalitarian minyanim (prayer groups) without a mechitzah and began accepting nonreligious board members. Havruta created a float for the 2011 Tel Aviv pride parade, a decision criticized by the organizations Hod and Kamoha. נמר ערבות סיבירי (talk) 14:04, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

References

Do Religious gays really exist, or are there just merely "Religiously Inclined" gays who wish to portray themselves as Religious?

Anonymous editor 70.20.249.46 edited the article twice, changing any appearance of the term religious gays into religiously inclined gays, the logic being that there's no such thing as gay orthodox people. He was undone twice by Jayrav. I undid his edit for the third time. To the point, the fact that there are gays in the religious orthodox society is known for a decade now and is by now way disputed by most of the orthodox rabbis in Israel and in the united states. The statement of principles of the orthodox rabbis as well as dozens of other citations I might bring, makes it a common knowledge. נמר ערבות סיבירי (talk) 22:32, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I checked נמר ערבות סיבירי's source and I don't find it showing anywhere that the gays who find themselves associated with the religious orthodox society being referred to as religious themselves. Jayrav undid my edit because I didn't provide a source, and I maintain that the burden of proof is on the writer of that bold statement. He is making an statement which implies that orthodox Jews consider the gays in their society to be religious. This is by no means common knowledge. According to this very article, one of this organization's goals is to promote recognition and acceptance of gays with religious connection in the general religious public!

Wikipedia requires a reliable source with any material that was challenged or likely to be challenged. The burden of proof lies with the editor who adds or restores material. The material in question, being unsourced, really should just be removed. Being that all I did was to modify it's language to be ambiguous, and I didn't add any new information at all, the burden of proof should be solely on the editor who wrote this, who by the way is נמר ערבות סיבירי himself. This also makes it understandable bias; i.e. if he is a member or supporter of this organization he may want to fulfill the organization's aforementioned goal by using Wikipedia as one of the means to present his unsourced opinion. Anonymous editor 70.20.249.46, September 9, 2012