In conclusion: Keep prayer and politics separate, no matter which side you’re on, and I think the congregational prayer experience will be better for everybody.

Rabbinic Conversion Court judges are more likely to reject prospective converts who were partially trained via the Internet, a senior source in the Conversion Authority said Sunday.
According to the source, about 70% of prospective converts who are interviewed by the conversion court are accepted. However, among prospective converts who were trained in part via the Internet, only about half are accepted, said the source.
The issue of conversions comes to the forefront ahead of Shavuot, which is celebrated with the reading of the biblical story of Ruth, the archetypical convert to Judaism.

According to the above-referenced conversion court source, the court can tell the difference between people who study partially using the internet, and those who study using only books and a face-to-face teacher. I maintain, however, that this isn’t a matter of the internet producing lower-quality students, or the internet providing lower-quality material, but students either not utilizing it properly, or students finding alternative oppinions of rabbis who don’t necessarily hold like the rabbis sitting on the conversion panel, and thus these students are disqualified. During my conversion studies in 1999/2000, if it hadn’t been for the internet, I would have never gotten the information I needed. I devoured JewFaq, and to this day I use it as a partial reference, along with Project Genesis and Aish Hatorah due to the almost complete inavailability of seforim in any sort of accessible format. And until this complete inavailability is changed, I’ll continue to do so, or I’ll have to buy print seforim and then scan them, correct the mistakes that creep in through OCR, and then, finally, read it. So in my eyes, this annti-tech decree strikes me as a luddite one at best.
Hat-tip.

Rabbinic Conversion Court judges are more likely to reject prospective converts who were partially trained via the Internet, a senior source in the Conversion Authority said Sunday.
According to the source, about 70% of prospective converts who are interviewed by the conversion court are accepted. However, among prospective converts who were trained in part via the Internet, only about half are accepted, said the source.
The issue of conversions comes to the forefront ahead of Shavuot, which is celebrated with the reading of the biblical story of Ruth, the archetypical convert to Judaism.

According to the above-referenced conversion court source, the court can tell the difference between people who study partially using the internet, and those who study using only books and a face-to-face teacher. I maintain, however, that this isn’t a matter of the internet producing lower-quality students, or the internet providing lower-quality material, but students either not utilizing it properly, or students finding alternative oppinions of rabbis who don’t necessarily hold like the rabbis sitting on the conversion panel, and thus these students are disqualified. During my conversion studies in 1999/2000, if it hadn’t been for the internet, I would have never gotten the information I needed. I devoured JewFaq, and to this day I use it as a partial reference, along with Project Genesis and Aish Hatorah due to the almost complete inavailability of seforim in any sort of accessible format. And until this complete inavailability is changed, I’ll continue to do so, or I’ll have to buy print seforim and then scan them, correct the mistakes that creep in through OCR, and then, finally, read it. So in my eyes, this annti-tech decree strikes me as a luddite one at best.
Hat-tip.

Mirrored from customerservant.com.

The Religion News Blog reports that researcher James Kugel has found that the descriptions of God employed in the early books of the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) might not be metaphorical after all.
He believes that, when the text says “God walked in the Garden,” (see Genesis 3:8), it means he literally walked.
In other words, the God we have come to know as omnipresent and incorporeal is really a mere physical being, just like us.
The most obvious question raised by this is “What’s the point?”
It seems to me that James Kugel spent some time giving the text a cursory reading, which led him to his conclusion.
Does it really take long hours of research to come up with this?
Secondly, I don’t see how this argues against the idea of the anthropomorphic descriptions of God in Tanach being metaphorical.
How else are we supposed to understand a being that is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient, if we don’t use the language we’re familiar with, (I.E., descriptions of physical attributes)?
More to the point, what’s the use of worshipping, obeying or fearing a God who is little better than we are?
And that may be what Mr. Kugel is driving at.
Maybe he’s looking for the perfect justification to use in order to make himself feel more comfortable with discarding his belief in God.
Admittedly, this is merely speculation on my part.
But I can’t see any other reason for advancing a view like this, unless you’re looking for an escape hatch, and the time honored ones just won’t do.
Finally, I’m amazed that anyone, especially a rabbi who seems to be traditional at the very least, can honestly say that he’s shaken by this.
As a rabbi, I’m sure Yosel Rosenzweig has studied the works of the Rambam, which deal with the idea of God being described as a physical being in detail (see Moreh Nevuchim, chapter 26, where it says that we describe God using attributes that the masses would consider perfect in relation to themselves).
If all it takes to shake one’s faith and cause one to struggle greatly is for another to suggest that God might have physical characteristics because the text of the Tanach seems to say as much on its surface, then there must not have been much faith there to start with.
Mr. Kugel says he’s not sure what effects his observations might have on contemporary Jews and their religious practices, and I submit that his research won’t effect contemporary Jewish religious practice in the slightest, unless you count collectively yawning.
Those who are faithful won’t care, and those who don’t see any point in engaging in Jewish religious practice will most likely do the same, if not for the same reason.

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Rabbi Raymond Beyda

Negative financial news strikes fear in the hearts of common men. How low can it go? What steps must one take to survive? The smiling face is replaced by a concerned countenance, and the friendly “good morning” passes from a daily ritual to a once-in-a-while occurrence. Serious thought is given to the lifestyle changes one must make to avoid falling deeply into debt. It is not a pleasant situation, to say the least.
It is sad that when a person is under pressure and cannot think clearly, time-proven methods for bettering his or her situation may be missed.
However, it often happens that one who can only see gloom and doom consults with a helpful outsider and finds a simple solution that he or she would not have found alone.
Two steps taken by many people when the going gets rough are said by our Sages to be counter-productive. There are those who feel that the appropriate first step to take when experiencing concern about the future financial well-being of one’s business is to cut charitable contributions. Yet this move can really reduce the possibility of bailing out of trouble. The Torah teaches that one who gives is blessed. Furthermore, one is challenged by Hashem to “test Me with this”-i.e., Hashem promised: give and you will get and remember, you have the right to test His promise!
Secondly, many cut out time from their Torah learning schedule in order to devote more time to business. True, one’s business may need more hands-on attention, but one must find that necessary time without decreasing the time already dedicated to learning and self-improvement. The Torah, says the Gemara, protects and saves and so reducing the time spent learning reduces one’s protection and security.
If you, unfortunately, are in a situation where you are forced to consider making changes in order to deal with hard times, include the advice of our wise predecessors in your calculations. Give, and you will get. Torah protects and saves. These are simple solutions for complex problems.

CONSIDER THIS FOR A MINUTE

A good technique for deciding whether to do something or to refrain: When one has to decide, one should imagine that another person asked his or her advice on the matter. Usually, when one is advising another, one sees clearly, without personal interest and prejudice to cloud the issue. What you would advise another is how you should act yourself. (Sefer Hasidim 155)