Morethodoxy Website Refreshes

by Drew Kaplan · Published September 6, 2018 · Updated September 6, 2018

Morethodoxy has announced a move towards more content and refreshing, although it has not changed its visual interface

The website Morethodoxy is seeking to refresh itself, providing new life and content into a nearly decade-old website. In addition to this attempt at refreshing, the creators behind the website have created a Facebook page to help drive traffic to the website and to provide updates on the popular social medium.

While the creators behind Morethodoxy have not changed the layout, fonts, colors, or anything else concerning its appearance, they are suggesting that there is new content coming to the website. For a website that brought some fascinating content, especially with dozens of posts in its first several years but with content that has slowed to a trickle in recent years, this is welcome news.

After kicking off in June 2009 with 133 posts in the final seven months of the year (an average of 19 posts per month), the average number of posts over the next five years was 58 per year (an average of less than five posts per month). However, in the last four years, there have been a total of just 24 (yes, an average of six posts per year).

Number of posts on Morethodoxy per year

In a recent post on their Facebook page, the creators provide a historical overview to this renewal:

From 2009 – 2016 Morethodoxy was a spunky, thought-provoking, sometimes-a-little-edgy blog of Modern Orthodox thought, authored by four Modern Orthodox rabbis and eventually by one Rabbah as well. With the help of a loyal readership (including a loyal opposition!) it helped to shape creative spiritual conversation in the Orthodox community. After a couple of dormant years, Morethodoxy is returning refreshed and new, with some of its original voices and several new ones: Dr. Elana Stein Hain, Rabbi Dan Margulies, Rabbah Claudia Marbach, Rabbi Hyim Shafner and Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky.

In addition to this renewal, the same post announces that “Morethodoxy is a project of the International Rabbinic Fellowship. Opinions expressed are those of the individual authors, not of the Fellowship or its leadership.” It would seem this renewal of interest comes after the previous attempt a few years ago at creating a blog for the International Rabbinic Fellowship and shifting attention away from Morethodoxy. That blog, Engaging Orthodoxy, published seven posts in 2015 from April through August, and had been meant to take over from Morethodoxy, including an announcement (since deleted) that “Morethodoxy as a blog will cease posting new articles” and its “writers will be sharing their thoughts and words of Torah along with those of many other authors” at Engaging Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, we now see the renewed interest in publishing on Morethodoxy, and we now have a first post on the website by Rabbi Kanefsky in time ahead of Rosh HaShanah.

I am curious to see how Morethodoxy grows from here and renews itself.*

*Disclosure: the author of this post is a member of the International Rabbinic Fellowship.

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