JFW writes:

The Maimonides issue has spun completely out of control, like many other pages where RK decides to take over.

No one has taken over any article. The real problem, as I encourage you to see for yourself, is that JFW has refused to offer any ideas, yet becomes angry when POVs other than his exist. I have repeatedly extended my hand in friendship, and encourged him to offer points-of-view from within his own community. We have communicated in a most friendly fashion in private e-mail and on a number of Talk pages. I always welcome his point of view. I would love for these articles to include many points of view. But what can I do? JFW refuses to include any POVs he claims exist from within his own community, and it hurts him that not-ultra-Orthodox POVs views exist.

All JFW has been able to do so far is to protest the very existence of ideas that differ from his own. That is not Wikipedia NPOV policy.

I understand that an ultra-Orthodox Jew, JFW has only rarely been exposed to critical-historical research of his own faith. Still, it is a bit startling to see him dismiss the writing of his fellow Orthodox Jew so blithely. Nothing I added was original research; rather, I merely referred to the views of mainstream scholars of the topic - many of whom themselves are Orthodox Jews. Unfortunately, JFW has a very select list of who he consideres authentic Orthodox Jewish scholars and rabbis, and he is pained by the citation of people not on his very short list.

To give an example of JFW's misunderstandings, the last time I mentioned Orthodox Jewish points of view on the topic of Artscroll books, he posted a panicky attack accusing me of damaging Jewish unity. What JFW fails to understand is that Wikipedia is not a fundamentalist Jewish religious publisher. The goal of Wikipedia is NOT to foster JFW's idea of "Jewish unity", Joe's idea of "Christian Unity", or Sally's idea of "Islamic Unity". Our goal is academic honesty and integrity.

A long time ago we found that many of our Christian fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalist and Muslim fundamentalists became angry when they were confronted with historical-critical studies of their faiths. So? They learn to allow these other points of view to exist, or they revert all the material which pains them, and then they eventually get reprimanded. JFW should choose wisely.

JFw writes:

He deposits a lot of research, most of which is only of marginal relevance to the issue,

Wow, that is dishonest. We were discussing a very specific issue, and JFW and Jayjg repearedly asked me to provide quotes and references. I complied; In response, JFW is now attacking me for politely presenting the very quotes he explicitly asked me for. I find it mean and disingenous for someone to ask me to provide citations, yet then to complain when I comply. That's outrageous behaviour.

JFW writes:

and causes long and heated debates on talk pages whether these insertions are justified.

Yes, this occurs on every one of our pages about religion, Jewish, Christian and Muslim. If you cannot handle this, then this forum is not for you. I have seen a few Chrisitan fundamentalists here become very angry when confronted with sources that do not match thier religious dogma; the same is true for Jewish fundamentalists such as you and Ezra Wax. You both get angry when you see a historical-critical POV.

This has all happened before. For example, see Ezra Wax's old battles with Danny. Ezra viewed Danny's contributions as wrong, heretical and biased. In Ezra's view, unless the article was acceptable to ultra-Orthodox Jews, it was not "NPOV". Unfortunately Ezra was wrong. As Danny pointed out to him, NPOV does not mean that everyone will agree with the article. It merely means that we say that "According to group A, the following is true, while according to group B, such-and-such is true". Your problem is that you don't want the article to mention points of view that you consider heretical, and that's not cool.

JFW writes:

Often, vital POVs are not represented, because RK favours particular sources for his research and (?conveniently) forgets to mention that these POVs exist.

I am pained to see such deliberate falsehoods. Folks, please check the talk pages for the articles in question. You will see that I have repeatedly asked JFW to bring forth other POVs, if he believes that they exist. JFW refuses to do so - and that is his fault, for which he can blame no one else. Instead of bringing forth other POVs, he tries to censor those that he finds heretical or inconvient. He especially seems angry at the views of Orthodox Jews who are not ultra-Orthodox.

JFw writes:

I do not argue with Robert over pages that don't have my interest, but we recently had a major flurry over [[Artscroll]], a Jewish publisher of religious texts. Robert wanted to insert allegations expressed on mailing lists concerning the historicity and

factuality

of the content of many of these books. While some of these allegations came from respectable sources, some others were simple paranoid mumblings by mailinglist

contributors.

This is shockingly dishonest. The issue, ironically, was about the phenomenon of ultra-Orthodox Jews censoring facts that they found inconvenient.

We are talking about an ultra-Orthodox Jewish publisher faking photos in Soviet-style revisionism, censoring facts about the life of religious scholars, etc. The faked photss and censored texts are well-established facts. The phenomenon is openly discussed in the academic Jewish community, and a significant amount of criticism towards this censorship exists in the modern Orthodox community.

The fact that JFW is at odds with his own fellow Orthodox Jews over censorship and historical distortion is a private matter; the fact that he misrepresents this subject in order to effectively censor an article is richly ironic.

I'm seriously wondering where this is heading.

This is an ad homenim attack, attributing sinister intentions to me, solely because I am openly discussing subjects that you wish to keep hidden. For shame.

We here on Wikipedia do not allow Christian, Jewish or Muslim fundamentalists to restrict the topic or contents of our articles, in order to meet their comfort levels. As I have always done, I continue to invite you to provide quotes and references to back up any points-of-view that you would like to include within any of our articles. Just stop attacking other people for having the right to do the same.

Robert (RK)

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