Post History

I'm going to separate out some of my thoughts into multiple answers for the sake of clarity in voting.

**Questions about people** should be in scope if their Judaism is core to the question:

- "Who was the first Chassidishe Rebbe to settle in America?" -- marginal; "...to establish a Jewish community in America" would be on-topic.

- "Does anyone have a source for the claim that the Satmar Rav, R' Yoel Teitelbaum, said to VP Hubert Humphrey, 'Sell weapons to Israel!'") -- yes, if we assume that his saying it would be significant because of his position (and not because, hypothetically, he was a friend of a friend of the VP and got an introduction that way).

- Questions about individuals who happen to be Jewish (Isaac Asimov, Sandy Koufax, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Disraeli -- no.  Being Jewish does not automatically make someone on-topic, whether Isaac Asimov or Isaac Moses.

- Questions about Einstein's letters on the existence of a Creator -- no, unless the question is about points raised in those letters about Jewish texts or theology.  (I don't know these letters, so I'm making this up.  If Einstein made some claim about God and represented it as Jewish, a question about sourcing it seems fine.  If he was arguing for atheism based on secular sources, that's off-topic even from a Jewish author.)

- Questions about Koufax not playing on Yom Kippur -- yes if about the Jewish aspects of that action, no otherwise.  Asking what *halachic* leniencies might have been possible, what our sources say about playing on the Day of Atonement, even asking *Jewish* questions about the employment or negotiation aspects would all be fine.  Asking how not playing affected his career, on the other hand, would be off-topic.

I think we'll need some more examples to flesh this out, but I want to explore the idea of "people as people" (off-topic) vs "people with Judaism being central" (on-topic).