This is a general guidelines thread, for the use of hosts/admins to explain any issues that should be addressed.  If you have any questions or suggestions about anything you feel should be mentioned or clarified, please direct them to community@beliefnetstaff.com.

Generally, we don't have a whole lot of guidelines that are different from the rest of the site or that the regulars don't already know, but I figured I'd post this for the benefit of any new posters.

The main thing is, this is a board for the debate of the Jewish religion. This means discussing the sacred texts, customs or general validity of Judaism is appropriate here.  Politics regarding the state of Israel, however, is not. There is already a board set aside for that, Middle East News and Politics. Here is the link:

community.beliefnet.com/go/forum/view/44...

I understand that there can be a fine line between the history of the Jewish religion and the politics of Israel, at least in some minds. However, I've seen enough posts in the past months to feel it would be worth directing new posters to the Politics board for discussions that are not directly related to the Jewish faith, since we all know what it is like to be new and to need help finding our way around.