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I am curious and have a lot of questions about Jewish people and history, but as a non-Jewish person I want to avoid treading on toes. Are there any things I should avoid when asking questions here? I noticed some people typing G-d, is this something I should follow? It's hard to pick up subtleties as an outsider and as the site is already quite well established. |
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As long as your question is about Jewish stuff, you're unlikely to offend anyone. On the old site, some people stirred up disfavor by asking questions about other religions. That would be off-topic here, too. Using "G-d" instead of "God" is not universally considered to be obligatory or even necessarily a good idea, especially on electronic media. You can use either convention here without offending. In general, don't be shy! The worst that can happen is that your content will be edited, and you'll get some feedback. That's what SE is designed for! |
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We welcome questions about Judaism. You will probably get many answers. They will probably conflict. Welcome to Judaism. :-) A couple things you might want to watch out for: Try not to call our bible the "old testament"; that's a Christian term. You can call it the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh. Similarly, we aren't unwilling to talk about Jesus the historical man (if it's a Jewish question, e.g. what practices might have been common in his time/place), but "Christ" means "messiah" and you probably want to avoid calling him that. Some people write "G-d", some "God", some "Hashem" (literally "the name"). You don't need to fret over the hyphen; the people who write "G-d" do it because that's what they do, not because that's what they expect you to do. This is more of a "mindset" thing: We don't tend to think of ourselves as being deprived because of halachic restrictions. For example, it's not that we "can't" eat bacon; it's that we "don't", because God said so. (We do not mind in the least if you eat it.) Ditto all the other laws that may seem restrictive from the outside (not working on Shabbat etc); we accept, and ideally even take joy in, the laws that God gave us. So questions of the form "why can't you do X" are likely to be met with "because God said so"; to dig into how the laws about X came about or how we apply them, you might want to try asking in those terms (e.g. "how is 'work' that you can't do on Shabbat defined and where does it come from?"). |
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Yes, there are a few things that are outlined in the faq; the bottom line is that questions should be practical and answerable (as with other SE sites), nothing too open-ended. Outside of those guidelines, I think that as long as your question relates to Jewish life and learning, you have as much of a right to ask questions as any other member of the community (whether they be Jewish or not). The '-' is just a way people cope with writing G-d's name in a medium that will be erased (in some abstract sense it is cleared from the screen). I don't think it is your responsibility to pick up on these obscure nuanced practices in order to ask questions on this site. I hope that as this site continues through beta it becomes a welcoming environment to people (Jews and non-Jews alike) to ask questions about Judaism. I am interested in hearing what other members of the community answer; great question! |
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