Our Jewish and Hebrew Discussion Groups welcome subscribers from all mainstream Jewish sectors. We all try to help each other feel comfortable and to have useful and worthwhile discussions together.

These discussions take place nearly every day of the year. Not all groups are active all the time (even Jews have to catch our breath from time to time), but the group itself is available and ready to accept postings.

Messages are reviewed on weekdays, on Fridays before Shabbat, and on Saturday following Shabbat. They are reviewed on civil holidays and on non-Jewish holidays. They are not reviewed or posted from late Friday afternoon until Saturday evening.

In addition, messages are not posted during certain Jewish holidays, including the two days of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the entire holiday of Sukkot (including the intermediate days), the day in which Simchat Torah is celebrated in the Diaspora, Passover (including the intermediate days and the eighth day of Passover in the Diaspora), and Shavuot (including the second day of Shavuot in Diaspora).

One of our groups, The Other Shul, has a separate policy. That policy is clarified in its own web pages.

In addition, messages may be delayed during certain days that relate to food, including Jewish fast days.

Email is posted as usual during most of the rest of the year, including some days that may surprise some subscribers. For example, although Chanukah is certainly a popular holiday, the postings continue for those eight days (except for Shabbat, of course).

And if we're discussing days in which you won't get postings, let's not forget the most common cause for mail delays - our friendly Internet Service Provider. Our service is no better than yours, and we certainly can't predict the next time that we won't be able to send or receive mail. Add to this the recurring problems with Topica, Smartgroups, and Yahoo - the services we use to send out our e-mail - as well as sundry other modern-day afflictions, and we have still more (albeit unpredictable) "holidays."

There are thus days in which the free flow of information will indeed be impeded. That applies even if the message is important.

You may feel free to discuss our vacations and holidays, as well as other general group policy, on the Jewish Electronic Publishing group (Jewish EPub).