10 May 2006

The Blogs "A Rabbi Must Follow" Listing

While R' Gil Student of Hirhurim posted an outline of his presentation that he was going to give (well, now has already given) on "What A Rabbi Needs To Know About Blogs", much interest was in which blogs were going to be mentioned in the "Which Blogs Must a Rabbi Follow?" section. However, he has uploaded his PowerPoint presentation to his Yashar website so people may view it there. For those without PowerPoint capabilities or whatever, I have provided the listing below of blogs he mentioned/mentions.
Inspirational
-Beyond BT
-Lazer Beams
-A Simple Jew
Current events
-Canonist
-The Town Crier
Commentary on current events
-Cross-Currents
-DovBear
-Emes Ve-Emunah
Torah content
-Torah Musings (okay, it's really Hirhurim...)
-Seforim
-Rabbi Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
-On The Contrary!
Israel
-My Right Word
-Little Green Footballs
Prominent personality
-My Obiter Dicta
-Ben Chorin
Scandal
-Luke Ford
-Un-Orthodox Jew
-Failed Messiah
Hipster Judaism
-Jew School
-Jewlicious
-(Esther's) My Urban Kvetch
Skeptic
-[not the] Godol Hador
-Da'as Hedyot
-Jewish Atheist
-Ben Avuyah
Miscellaneous
-Renegade Rebbetzin
-AJHistory
-Drew Kaplan's blog (I'm not making this up, I swear (I posted about this a couple of days ago.))
Jewish Blog Aggregators
-JRants
-Jewish Blogging
-Technorati Judaism Blogs
-Sera and Ez
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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Truly bizarre, nu?

Thanks for the heads up …

Ezzie said...

Interesting. Cute how I made it as a J-blog aggregator, but I guess that makes sense to a point.

Anonymous said...

Do you really get inspired by BeyondBT? I stopped reading it finally after weeks of going out of curiosity and coming back sad and disappointed. Most of the posters seemed to be advocating the most reactionary, fundamentalistic kinds of social taboos as "frum", and constantly doubting the frumkeit of anyone deviating. It was like only for Ba'alei Teshuvah who joined exceptionally repressive, xenophobic, and triumphalistic forms of farthest-right Haredi orthodoxy.

Anonymous said...

Alsky

Go back and give BeyondBT a more generous reading and you'll see that the majority of posters and commentors have a very similiar hashkafic outlook as Gil.

In fact, I have a post in the works on why it's almost impossible for a BT to be Haredi, assuming that your definition of Haredi is not anyone to the right of you.

Being that is a group blog you will find some variety based on the person and the situation.

Give it another read (or not) and try to see each person as an individual with their unique background, personality, teachers and challenges. I'm sure you would appreciate being treated that way and not as a faceless member of some LW/RW MO/OU frum group.

Anonymous said...

THIS WAS ON HAYOM.BLOGSPOT.COM :

Rambam on dissing Gedolim
I happened across an amazing Rambam:

יז) וזה הוא דרך ישיבת הלצים הרשעים: בתחילה מרבין בדברי הבאי, כעניין שנאמר "וקול כסיל, ברוב דברים" (קוהלת ה,ב); ומתוך כך באין לספר בגנות הצדיקים, כעניין שנאמר "תיאלמנה, שפתי שקר: הדוברות על צדיק, עתק" (תהילים לא,יט); ומתוך כך יהיה להן הרגל לדבר בנביאים וליתן דופי בדבריהם, כעניין שנאמר "ויהיו מלעיבים, במלאכי האלוהים, ובוזים דבריו, ומיתעתעים בנביאיו" (דברי הימים ב לו,טז); ומתוך כך באין לדבר באלוהים וכופרין בעיקר, כעניין שנאמר "ויחפאו בני ישראל, דברים אשר לא כן, על ה', אלוהיהם" (מלכים ב יז,ט).

Basically, the Rambam is detailing a four step process that can lead people to the point of kefirah b'ikar.

1) Spending lots of time talking about "narishkaitin".

This, he says, will lead to:
2) Degrading Tzadikim.

Eventually they will:
3) Speak [negatively] about the neviim and begin doubting their words.

Which will result in:
4) Total kefirah.

What amazed me was that we saw this four-step process take place before our own eyes on a number of blogs over the last few years.

Drew Kaplan said...

last anonymous,
check out GH's comment

Anonymous said...

> Skeptic
-[not the] Godol Hador
-Da'as Hedyot
-Jewish Atheist
-Ben Avuyah

I object to this grouping. I am no more skeptical than many of the other bloggers in your other categories. The point of my blog is not bash religion, or push atheism, but rather to search out answers to questions.

Steg (dos iz nit der šteg) said...

congratulations!

(me = feels left out)

Drew Kaplan said...

Godol haDor,
I only copied Gil's list - I didn't organize the categories myself (Why would I have categorized myself as miscellaneous?).
Steg,
Thank you.
Shmarya,
sure thing

Jeffrey R. Woolf said...

In all modesty, I'm both flattered and gratified.

Anonymous said...

Hipsters? Drew... you've met Michael. Do we really strike anyone as hipsters? We don't even wear trucker caps at a jaunty angle! We are all devastatingly handsome though. Wll, the guys are anyway ...

Drew Kaplan said...

CK,
Just as I commented above, *I* did not categorize anyone - I merely copied straight from R' Gil's notes - NOT on my own. So if you have beef with the categorizing, take it up with the one who categorized and not the one who merely copied them from the categorizer. btw, I think Michael is utterly hilarious and cool. Not to mention, of course, that I am a fan (ok, one of the thousands, so I'm not special) of your site).

Anonymous said...

Well I know that drew... I was just wondering what you thought of that characterization of us as hipsters. Seems to me it only serves to uh... infantalize us and minimize our relevance. Just wondering...

Drew Kaplan said...

CK,
Ah, well in that case, in a sense, I wouldn't disagree with R' Gil about the categorization, but I also wouldn't box you in totally to that genre. However, I can see how, for R' Gil, who was presenting to rabbis, that a simple way of description would cover that. For bloggers, something that simple will of course come under scrutiny.

since I'm answering this one, as to GH's blog being categorized as skeptical, I see R' Gil's point, but I don't think GH is TOTALLY skeptical, just skeptical with commonly-held understandings but is otherwise trying to break out of what seems problematic and move towards a more sensical 'place'

AS said...

Thankfully no Rabbi will be looking at my blog.

Chasdei Tovim Meoros said...
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