Talk:Tumah and taharah

message: This is a much needed article. However, I propose moving it to Tum'ah. If there's no objection, I'll do the move in a few days. --Eliyak T·C 20:25, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title 

message: Following the lack of consensus, partly due to objections to the word "ritual" - despite the fact that "ritual" is used for other Wikipedia articles on "ritual" cleanness/uncleanness or purity in Ancient Near East religions / Judaism / Christianity / Islam / etc. - we are still left with an article which thinks it is wiktionary, giving a lot of Hebrew terms for texts which use "make clean" "be clean" "cleanness" etc. without doing much more than restate the English with random sowing of foreign language terminology counter WP:EN and WP:RS/WP:PSTS. This in largely badly written (with all respect to non-native speaker participation in en.wikipedia) and obscure sentences. And despite the Hebrew dictionary approach of the article some of the texts cited are actually in Aramaic, which is a related but different set of foreign language terms anyway. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:16, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: So what *is* the preferred English?

message: What's with the transcriptions in the first sentence, "Hebrew: טומאה‬, pronounced [tˤumʔa]) and ṭaharah (Hebrew: טהרה‬) pronounced [tˤaharɔ]"? If this is supposed to be Biblical Hebrew, the vowels are wrong, and if it's supposed to be modern Israeli Hebrew, the consonant [tˤ] is wrong, and if it's supposed to be Ashkenazi pronunciation the vowels in one word are right and in the other are wrong. --Linguistatlunch (talk) 14:16, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Dunno. Go ahead and fix this. I would go with Modern Hebrew pronunciation - Ashkenazi is too parochial, and Biblical Hebrew is too unfamiliar. Ar2332 (talk) 15:03, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wikipedia as a rule indeed goes with the modern Hebrew pronunciation. In terms related to Torah learning we often add the pronunciation generally used in yeshivot ("yeshives") as well. In general, please have a look at WP:HEBREW. Debresser (talk) 16:43, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: There are a LOT of footnotes referring to the Bible as a source.  Is using scripture as references for scripture considered a secondary source for Wikipedia purposes?  It makes me question the notability of "tumah and taharah" in the first place. NewkirkPlaza (talk) 20:48, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: There are plenty of non-biblical footnotes also, which are sufficient to establish notability. Ar2332 (talk) 06:44, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: , I agree with Ar2332 that this topic is resourced adequately. Perhaps the problem as you may see it has more to do with the Hebrew title of this page, whose meaning, in an English encyclopedia, is largely unclear to its English-speaking audience. Here, the article discusses the Jewish legal laws touching "Impurity and Acts of Purification," for which entire treatises have been composed throughout a period spanning some 2,000 years, the most notable of these authors being Yitzhak Alfasi, Maimonides, Joseph Karo, Jacob ben Asher, and a host of other rabbis - both new and old. This topic is no different from having an article on Wikipedia that discusses any particular custom known to Bhuddists, Muslims, Catholics, Taoists, etc., etc. There is a place for all knowledge, so long as it can be shown through verifiable and reliable sources.Davidbena (talk) 13:18, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm familiar with the subject, and the language of the title was not throwing me off; I was just distracted by the outsize proportion of non-secondary references.  For example, the references in the sub-sections on Ritual Impurity and Moral Impurity are entirely sourced from the Bible itself.  For Wikipedia purposes, you can't start a section with "The Torah, particularly the book of Leviticus, lists various activities..." and then have every item on that list be referenced directly from Leviticus; a book can't be used to refer to itself, as it's a violation of the secondary-source rule.  If, after culling those references, there are still enough secondary references that justify this article, then certainly it can stand on its own.  To the same point, if enough sources (and, as you point, there are enough out there) refer to the aforementioned "activities," then those should be the sources in the footnotes, not the Torah itself. NewkirkPlaza (talk) 15:13, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: If your objection is to the phrasing of a single third-level subsection of the article, I'm not sure why your intended solution is to delete the entire article. Ar2332 (talk) 05:36, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: , as far as secondary sources are concerned, that presents no problem. All of the authors mentioned by me above have spoken about these very things. It's a matter of finding the time and patience to search them out and to add them here.Davidbena (talk) 22:11, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: , that would be excellent, and yet 15 months later it still hasn't happened.  The burden is on the contributors to provide secondary sources, not on random readers, is it not?  And , I never said anything about deleting the article; I'm saying that the reference list is embarrassingly self-referential and makes the subject appear to be not notable for Wikipedia purposes.  At least 35 references out of 58 refer directly to the Tanakh or the Talmud, so this isn't about "the phrasing of a single third-level subsection."  Either this subject can stand on its own or not, and right now a casual reader will assume that the subject stands 40% on its own.  NewkirkPlaza (talk) 01:55, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

text: Still waiting.  Saying "there are sources" and then taking 21 months to provide said sources is basically asking people to edit out the poorly-sourced information.  WP:THEREMUSTBESOURCES NewkirkPlaza (talk) 23:47, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  notability 

message: I read the above: a whole lot of Talmudic hot air, i.e.: BS. Everyone in his right mind uses the English terms when communicating in English, and they are perfectly good. Idiotic exceptionalism and hair-splitting pushed to such limits would mean that nothing can be translated till the Messiah brings us back to a pre-Tower of Babylon state. Encyclopaedias were the tool of Enlightenment; this here takes us to pre-Enlightenment, defeating the purpose. Yeshiveh Heblish is not English. There's enough room for a special Wikipedia for that specific jargon, but this here is enWiki.
Constructively: one can add here all the other purity laws, relating to menstruation - or toothbrushing, for all I care. Once an useful "Jewish purity laws" art. is put together, one can split from it - or not - whatever one likes.
The same yeshiveh attitude is reflected in the total lack of inf. on archaeological, related historical, and non-Jewish sources. Intellectual ghetto is what it is. I've now made a start. Haskala all over again. Anyone interested to pick that up? Arminden (talk) 17:29, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  English: Jewish purity laws