Change of Address

The name of this website, Havolim, is no longer appropriate for either its content or its writers.  Despite numerous reasons for having chosen that name, its denotation is at such odds with what it identifies that any symbolic or philosophical connotations don't matter.

That being the case, all content that was originally posted here has been copied to a new website, Beis Vaad, titled Beis Vaad L'Chachamim, at  http://beisvaad.blogspot.com.

I chose that name because while I initiated most of these Divrei Torah, the comments and letters I then received almost always resulted in the posts being rewritten and dramatically improved.   Over the years, I have benefited from the he'aros and mar'ei mekomos of Rabbis and Doctors and Rabbi Doctors great Unknown, Eli, Chaim B., Nachum Stone, Lakewood Guy, and many that remained anonymous.  Personal conversations with my children and sons in law, with my shiur, and with my friends, have added at least as much.  The classic example is the dvar Torah on Bris Milah, here and now here as well. In several cases, people let me know that not only did they disagree with me, but that what I wrote was a form of Avoda Zara.  In light of the collaborative character of these posts, and the quality of the criticism and comments, the name Beis Vaad LeChachamim fits.

This site has been up long enough to have developed a particular flavor, and I might begin posting other people's insights that have that sort of ta'am.

As I update the divrei Torah that are here, I am going to erase them from Havolim and leave them only on Beis Vaad.

For the moment, most posts will remain in both places.  Eventually, I'll remove the serious divrei torah from here and leave everything else.   That won't be as easy, because it's hard to definitively categorize many of these pieces as being one and not the other.