Culling the blogroll

If you haven't posted in 2007, you're gone. Let me know if you start blogging again.

And now, the final curtain.

(This post will remain at the top until the voting is over.)

Mah Rabu has made it to the final round of the Jewish and Israel Blog Awards!

You can vote in the following categories for which Mah Rabu has qualified:

• Best Series (for the Hilchot Pluralism series) - if you only vote in one category, vote in this one
• Best Jewish Religious Blog - if you're new here, check out these highlights
• Best Jewish Religious Post (for Hilchot Pluralism Part VI)

Some other notable blogs have also made it to the finals:

• Two Heads of Lettuce for Best Kosher Food/Recipe Blog and for Best Kosher Food Post (for the potluck guide)
• Abacaxi Mamao for Best Personal Blog
• Jewschool for Best Group Blog, Best News/Current Events Blog, Best Left-Wing Political Blog, Best Jewish Anti-Establishment Blog, Best Jewish Music Post, and Best Designed Blog.

Vote!

JIB update

(This post will stay at the top during this round of voting. Scroll down for new posts.)

Thanks to everyone who voted in the first round! The results are not yet certified, but Mah Rabu appears to be on top of its group, meaning that it will advance to the final round, which begins on May 10.

In the meantime, the Best Series voting has begun, and goes until May 6. The Hilchot Pluralism series has been nominated for Best Series, and you can vote in this category here. It's listed there as "Mah Rabu - Jewish Pluralism".

Welcome, JIB voters!

(This post will stay at the top until the first-round voting is over. Scroll down for new posts.)

Mah Rabu has been nominated for Best Jewish Religious Blog in the Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards. If you got here for the first time, here are some highlighted religious-themed posts from the last year for your perusal.

Nominated separately for Best Religious Series (voting starts next week):

• Hilchot Pluralism

Independent Jewish communities:

• Take me to the round church, where echoes resound and my spirit is found
• You Kant always get what you want
• When it rains, it pours
• Bait and switch
• Why they're wrong
• Bovine sabbath
  

Jewish holidays:

• The one-day yom tov person's guide to the second seder
• The omer series
• Why I'm benching lulav this Shabbat
• Mei'Hodu ve'ad Kush
  
• Everything under the sun is in tune
  

Prayer:

• Self-sufficient prayer
• Just and rightful authority
  
• Meme!!1!
• Creation revelation redemption
  

Torah:

• Leviticus 18:22 according to Rabbi Ishmael
• Thy rod and thy staff
• A long-expected party
  

Ideology and halacha:

• My soul hates your new moons and your seasons
• Limmud NY Reform halakhah panel
• Limmud NY Reform halakhah panel: DVD extras
• Award: Best use of a physics analogy in a halakhic or metahalakhic teshuvah
  

Ritual practice:

• Cars trucks buses
• Jewish continuity
• Look back on those days when my life was a haze
  

GOTV

The JIB Awards are here, and Mah Rabu has been nominated for Best Jewish Religious Blog! I'm not telling anyone whom to vote for, but you can vote here for the blog of your choice. The voting is open until Sunday, April 29.

Mah Rabu has also been nominated in the Best Post and Best Series categories, but those votes don't start until next week.

Indigenous Peoples Day

Whoa. The Hilchot Pluralism series continues to get nationwide exposure. Today the SiteMeter showed an incoming link from the Little Minyan of Columbus, Ohio. (First of all, is anyone still trying to argue that independent minyanim don't/can't exist outside of coastal cities like New York and San Francisco? Bah.) Their newsletter says:

Ever wonder how a Jewish community can effectively accommodate people with different views of kashrut, liturgy, and Halakhah (Jewish law), yet retain its own identity? At our January 22nd Research/Study Group meeting, we explored this question. The discussion focused on an on-going blog on Jewish pluralism that has been occurring on http://mahrabu.blogspot.com/. The blog's author belongs to an egalitarian minyan in New York and was an organizer for last summer's National Havurah Committee Institute. This discussion of Jewish pluralism has been building on line for the last 18 months. The Mah Rabu blog also includes two interesting new postings on Reform Halakhah, which might be a topic for future Little Minyan discussions.

If anyone from the Little Minyan is reading this, how did the discussion go? Did you reach any new conclusions?