TOR-CH FAQ

(Torat Chayim List Frequently Asked Questions)

Welcome to Tor-Ch. This is our charter:

Living Torah: Tradition and the World From the perspective of Conservative Judaism

The Torat Chayim (Living Torah) list explores the relationship between our world and the tradition in the spirit and context of Conservative Judaism. Our list is devoted to understanding and continuing Jewish practice, connecting Torah with current issues, and exploring ways to live meaningful religious lives. Our conversations mix halakhah, theology, politics and spirituality. We value learning from tradition as we encourage new thinking. Torat Chayim aims to be a thoughtful community founded upon mutuality and respect. May we give credence to Hillel's saying, "marbeh torah marbeh chayim", "the more Torah, the more life".

Why Tor-Ch?

Tor-Ch started in order to create a forum on Conservative Judaism which integrated specific religious discussion with broader discussion about politics, spirituality, etc. Tor-Ch has been around since Passover, 1995.

• We hope to be a community and not just a bulletin board.
• We hope to make space for many voices and be open to new ideas.
• We are focused on Conservative Judaism but we are open to many different people, divergent interpretations of Judaism, and to aspects of religion and life which cannot be defined by one's "movement."

How do I join the TOR-CH list?

Click here to subscribe to Tor-Ch and receive messages as they are posted to the list. Or... if you'd like to receive Tor-Ch as a digest (a collection of many posts in a single message) mailed to you usually once a day, send the following message to listserv@jtsa.edu :

  subscribe tor-ch firstname lastname
  set tor-ch mail digest

To receive copies of your own posts when they're distributed, include the line

  set tor-ch repro

After you've joined the list, to send mail to Tor-Ch, send your messages to: tor-ch@jtsa.edu and it will be distributed to the entire Tor-Ch list.

Other subscription options are listed below.

Who are the Tor-Ch Moderators?

Richard Friedman

richard.friedman@hhs.gov

Mark Frydenberg

MFRYDENBERG@bentley.edu

Janice Gelb

j_gelb@yahoo.com

Jeff Marker

rabjeff@echonyc.com

Irene Plotzker

irene@dol.net

Susan Rand-Lakritz

rlakritz@netvision.net.il

Alana Suskin

alanamscat@yahoo.com

Jeff, Mark, and Richard are the list-owners. Janice, Irene, Susan and Alana join them in acting as moderators of the list.

Everyone who subscribes to Tor-Ch is placed on review when they first sign on. The moderators periodically evaluate the list of people on review and remove "review status" from those participants who post regularly and in line with our guidelines for civility.

Occasionally, a usually civil poster may post an atypically inappropriate message. The message would appear on the list because the person is not on review status. In these cases, and in cases where a post by a person on review borders on being inappropriate, posters are contacted privately by the moderators. The moderator's conversations with individual posters are private.

If a thread is becoming contentious or is considered outside the scope of the list, the moderators will sometimes post a request to the list that a thread stop.

The moderators try to promote a forum where we all can participate comfortably. We also rotate sharing "list ownership" duties, handling administrative list server issues. As a subscriber to Tor-Ch, you too have a special role in contributing to the overall quality of the list.

David Rosenthal, ( davidr-tor-ch@drosenthal.org) is the shammes of the Tor-Ch web pages.

What are the Tor-Ch Guidelines?

• INTRODUCE YOURSELF. If this is the first time you're posting, or you haven't posted for a while, briefly let everyone know who you are as you become a part of this virtual community.
  
• MAKE SPACE for other voices. Participate actively, but limit your participation to ensure that others can also have a chance to speak. This can include not responding to every subject, not sending in more than three posts in a day, or not posting on a particular subject when your view has already been expressed. Read ahead to see that someone else hasn't already answered the question. If a conversation on a topic has turned into a dialogue with one other person, consider continuing it in private, off the list. Also, you may or may not notice this in your own e-mail reading, but when someone posts too often, or posts really long messages, people start deleting that person's messages without reading them.
  
• SHOW RESPECT for people with whom you may disagree, whether on the list or in the Jewish community. This is an important part in making this list a comfortable place to raise questions and to speak personally.
  
• USE AN ACCURATE SUBJECT LINE. If the subject changes, so should the subject line. If you receive Tor-Ch as a digest, don't just do a "reply", because that will cause the subject of your message to be "Re: Tor-Ch Digest' and not the individual message to which you are responding.
  
• TRANSLATE all but the most common Hebrew words that you may use in your message. As people on this list come from different backgrounds, many have limited knowledge of the transliterated Hebrew words you use. Check out the Hebrew FAQ, a list of common Hebrew words and their translations.
  
• FORMAT your message on lines of at most 80 characters, and make use of white space to keep your messages more readable. Keep your signature file down to at most four lines. Long signatures take up lots of wasted space, and tend to be annoying. Some people pay for their email.
  
• QUOTE OTHERS' POSTS ONLY TO THE EXTENT NECESSARY. It's usually unnecessary to include someone else's post in its entirety. Reproduce only the portion that's relevant to your response, or else paraphrase.
  
• READ IT OVER BEFORE YOU SEND IT OUT. Remember that over 250 people will read your message, and once you send it, you it's too late to take it back. Keep private messages off the list.
  
• SEND ALL ANNOUNCEMENTS TO A LIST OWNER FOR POSTING. If it's an event, your message should contain a short summary of the event, the sponsoring organization, and the name/address of a person to contact for those who are interested. If it's a publication, give us a short summary, access and contact information. By sending these to the list owners, Tor-Ch doesn't become cluttered with announcements.
  
• MINIMIZE CROSS-POSTING. If you do send the same message to more than one list, be sure to tailor the message for the audience. That makes more work for you, but that's exactly why people feel imposed upon by cross-posting: they don't feel addressed as people in a conversation, but rather, bomboarded with advertisements. Tell people why you feel they might find the piece interesting in the context of this list.
  
• DON'T FORWARD SOMEONE ELSE'S POST TO ANOTHER LIST WITHOUT PERMISSION. You may forward Tor-Ch posts to a friend (or a few friends), as long as you credit the author appropriately. Although you need not ask the author for permission, nevertheless it is good manners to do so, or at least to let the author know you valued that post enough to share it with others. It is NOT appropriate to repost anything from Tor-Ch to another public list, or republish it in any other medium, without prior permission from the author(s).

What Subscription Options Exist?

You can either receive tor-ch "live" as individual e-mail messages, or as a digest, a collection of messages, sent as one (longer) e-mail message. Digests are automatically distributed daily just after midnight, or as soon as 600 lines of material have accumulated.

Your subscription and the mailing list's maintenance is handled by a listserver at the Jewish Theological Seminary. To change an option or get information about the list, send e-mail to listserv@jtsa.edu - leave the subject blank, and include one of these commands as the body of your message:

    subscribe tor-ch                     subscribe to Tor-Ch
    set tor-ch mail digest              receive Tor-Ch as a digest
    set tor-ch mail                     receive Tor-Ch posts individually
    get tor-ch                           get archives of old Tor-Ch, see below**
    review tor-ch                       see who else is subscribed
    set tor-ch nomail                   stop receiving Tor-Ch temporarily
    (send set tor-ch mail or 
    set tor-ch mail digest to resume)
    set tor-ch repro                    receive copies of your own messages
    info refcard                        learn more obscure listserv commands
    signoff tor-ch                      unsubscribe to Tor-Ch

How can I get access to the TOR-CH Archives?

Tor-Ch archives from March to October 1995 are in files of the form LOGyymm where yy is the year (95) and mm is the month number.

Starting the last week of October, 1995, Tor-Ch is archived weekly, and the file format is LOGyymmw where yy is the year, mm is the month, and w is the week (a,b,c,d, or e). For example, to get the posts for the third week in June, 1996, you'd send to listserv@jtsa.edu the command

   get tor-ch log9606c

Or, click here to see the archives posted since Wed, 21 Aug 1996 or click here to search the archives using a search engine to find key words.

How can I find out about Other Jewish lists?

You can get a info about other Jewish lists by sending to listproc@shamash.org the message

   lists global

Go back to the TOR-CH home page

http://www.tor-ch.org/torchfaq.html

HTML coding by: David Rosenthal
Tor-Ch logo by: Linda Salvay