Hilkhot Listserve
(Jewish Laws of E-mail Postings)




	Internet Torah: 
	And thou shall never repeat all that you heard just to concur or disagree,
	or my wrath will be severe unto the third generation, yea, my wrath shall
	be great. 

	Rashi: 
	Kema shene'emar, 'all that you heard' - This means never quote an entire 
	usenet newsgroup message, including headers. Rather, just add a few
	lines of your own. 

	Rambam: 
	It is a precept not to waste bandwidth.This teaches us the value of 
	brevity.  All those who know this, yet waste bandwidth despite this well
	known fact, are ignoramuses and are not to be trusted. 

	R. Yosef Caro: 
	One must quote the name and date, but must never quote the Internet 
	transmission path, except on HoShannah Rabbah. One must always quote the 
	relevant part of the message, and have it spaced five characters to the 
	right. It is strictly forbidden to quote more than you write.  It is
	strictly forbidden to write less than 60 character lines. Writing lines
	that are over 80 characters results in herem. 

	R. Moses Isserles' Mappah: 
	One can be lenient on line character length if it is denoted as being 
	an HTML file.  It is well known that German Jews have the halakhically 
	acceptable custom of never writing lines _under_ 80 characters in 
	length, but other Ashkenazim should avoid this. 







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