Welcome to the Judaism community on Codidact!
Will you help us build our community of learners? Drop into our study hall, ask questions, help others with answers to their questions, share a d'var torah if you're so inclined, invite your friends, and join us in building this community together. Not an ask-the-rabbi service, just people at all levels learning together.
Respect for the names of Hashem and avoiding Shaimos
TL;DR Is Shaimos an issue to be concerned about in posts, and if so, what policy should we set?
This question contains (at the moment) a name of God in Hebrew that is considered Shaimos, requiring proper burial of any printed copies and not trash/recycling. There are different opinions as to what constitutes Shaimos, but my general understanding is that a written Hebrew name of God, in proper context ("Elohim" where it means "human judges" is not a problem at all), is a problem even if it is not part of an actual passage of sacred text.
I have noticed many questions that use Hashem (literally, "the name") as a non-Shaimos term, as is common practice in traditional Judaism for both spoken and written reference to God when a proper Hebrew name is not necessary.
I have two concerns with the use of Shaimos in this system:
- Respect - both for Hashem and for the Jewish community
As this is a community dedicated to Jewish education, I expect that all people posting questions & answers would either be Jewish or be interested in and supportive of Jewish practices, even if they are not observant of practices of traditional Judaism themselves.
- Shaimos
There are reasons to print out posts from this site - whether to discuss a question offline or for a Shabbos-observant Jew to read a Dvar Torah on Shabbos or Yom Tov. If a post includes Shaimos then the page must be buried. That prevents recycling (so it is not good for the environment) and can also be accidentally overlooked, resulting in an accidental violation of the Shaimos prohibition.
We have a few options:
- Ignore/don't care
- Encourage use of Hashem (in English or Hebrew), replacement of ה with ק and similar changes, in order to avoid Shaimos except where a direct quote is necessary
- Programmatic replacement - I am throwing this out there, but I don't think it is realistic for a bunch of reasons, including "Elohim" = "judges" and other situations where, in my opinion, automatically replacing likely Shaimos would actually be a step backwards in terms of respect for Hashem's name, as it would take secular references and treat them as if they were holy.
0 answers
0 comment threads