#or specialists for jewish history

[hyperpotamianarch]

-Hey, Arch?

Yes, fake audience voice?

-Why are you reblogging your question a third time?

I'm so glad you've asked! See, I've went over some historical stuff and came across a completely different answer for the first question. So, since the other reblog line (the Jewsade) has become too long, I've decided to start over.

-Why not reblog some other post that discussed that topic? Also, why the heck did you not do the proper historical research while working on the origi-

All right, that's quite enough.

So, another answer to question one! How exciting! Especially since everybody loved the original so much. So, you see, it has come to my attention that some 17th century events might have greater bearing on-

-It's because you liked the idea of the Jewsade too much, isn't it? You've spent a whole whopping Shabbat researching David Reubeni, Shlomo Molcho and John Calvin, and it was so darn exciting-

Shut up!

-on the presence of Jews in certain places by the time HDM occures at. You see, Menasseh Ben Israel-

-You were so caught up in your idea of a Jewish Messiah getting somewhere and then failing miserably. Why? Was that a commentary on the State of Israel or something?

Shut UP! I'm trying to-

-Trying to nothing, you keep allow me to break you because you enjoy this way of portraying stuff and don't have a proper outline to anything about Menasseh Ben Israel!

All right, fine! I'll admit it.

So. Umm. That.

Yeah, as my fake-audience-voice (-Hi!) said above, I did get caught up with research on David Reubeni, even though I knew about Menasseh Ben Israel's bearing on the history of Judaism at the time. The truth is, the thought hit me on my way to the Synagogue on Shabbat eve and I got so excited I kept it in mind for the entirety of the Shabbat. Then I wrote my post immediately when Shabbat ended where I live.

Those are not very important details, but I think they explain my odd focus on the Jewsade on the other post. I got excited. It was a cool - if slightly disturbing, considering its relation to the crusades - event that didn't happen in our world but could happen elsewhere. Only problem is, the alterations were slightly too early.

I don't know at what year was John Calvin elected pope in Lyra's world. However, besides it changing very little (the people who mattered for the sake of the Jewsade are the kings more than the pope), it was also likely after both Reubeni and Molcho were imprisoned by Charles V. It doean't have to be that way - slight alterations, even prior to the major deviation point, are not hard to make - but it makes it more of an independant idea.

Menasseh Ben Israel, however, held an important role in the history of Judaism, and lived during the 17th century, placing him in an easy place to be affected by this alteration. I will admit to lazyness in my historical research - when galvanized during the Shabbat I can do a lot, but Ambaric and Computing devices tend to distract me easily during the weekdays. That's a weak excuse, but this is why my reading on Ben Israel was mostly just his Wikipedia article.

Either way: Menasseh Ben Israel was the son of Porugese Anusim, forced converts. His family lived in La Rochelle for a time as a way to escape the Inquisition, but later moved to Amsterdam, where Menasseh Ben Israel spent most of the rest of his life. For the record, the time cite in Wikipedia for their move to the Netherlands is 1610.

Now, it's probably important to note that the Netherlands were only starting to become independant - there was a war, which was somewhat related to the Netherlands being mostly protestant while Spain, which sort of controlled them, was famously Catholic. This is probably significant, since most Netherlanders were not just any type of protestant - they were Calvinists.

To get to the point, though, Menasseh Ben Israel apparently attempted to explain Judaism to the Christians of the world - he was in a good position for that, I guess, having been raised in a family of Anusim. He also made efforts to convince Sweden and Britain to allow Jews to live in them, under the belief that the salvation of the Jewish people will only come once they reach the farthest corners of the Earth. He had limited success with Sweden - a small Jewish community was founded there during 1680s, but was later expelled. He didn't live to see that, though, or the eventual success of his efforts in Britain, because he died at 1657 while trying to bring his son's body to burial in Amsterdam.

To be fair, it took about a century more for Sweden to truly allow Jews in again, but Menasseh Ben Israel is, in some ways, the man who caused those two countries to accept Jews. Incidentally, if you follow Lyra's journey, most of the time she's in her own world is in one of those countries. Plus a portion in Greenland (Svalbard and Lord Asriel's hut, possibly the Station as well) and some time in India (I think? I'm pretty sure it was a mountain range in Southeast Asia in the book. In the series it was a somewhat forsaken island, IIRC). Though, considering she was unconcious for most of her time in that last place I'm not sure it counts.

Well, I just checked and it turns out there were Jews in Denmark earlier than in Sweden - it's not clear if there were Jews there during the Middle Ages, but Jews were allowed there in 1622, when Menasseh Ben Israel was about 18. So maybe I exaggarated his influence a bit. I'm not sure what bearing it has on Greenland, though. Anyway, attempting to avoid uncomfortable topics: with changes in how the church functions, a lot of stuff in Europe will change. I've said so in the other line of reblogs already, but I don't know if the Magisterium will start by giving the Inquisition more authority or close it entirely. We know that by Lyra's time the Inquisition isn't active anymore, but the hints that it was active in the past might indicate it survived Calvin's reforms to the Catholic church. So, in short, the Ben Israel family might have nowhere to go in fear of the Inquisition. It can affect Menasseh's life in a myriad of ways - he may have went to live in America, for example - and many of them can lead to no one raising to Cromwell, or whoever else might be controlling Brytain at the time, the topic of allowing Jewish return to it.

Without the Jewsade (assuming I'm dissuaded from it. I'm not yet - still attempting to work on a fanfic, which doesn't mean much considering it has been less than a week), the results of simply not having such an important figure will mostly just be no Jews in Sweden or Brytain. For the same reason Menasseh Ben Israel doesn't fulfill his function in our timeline, it may be that there won't be Jews in Denmark and Norway either. It might be that there would be mass emigration of Ashkenazi Jews to North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, or America due to expulsions. Alternatively, there will be much more Anusim.

What you may have noticed by now in this attempt at historical research and alternative history is the prominence of Portugese Anusim and Expelled people. Or you might have chucked it to the "two is a coincidence" bin. I'm not sure what to think of that myself, as I'm usually more focused on the Spanish Expulsion as a significant event for Judaism in that era. The Portugese one usually comes as an afterthought. I do think it points out to a significant fact: the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula were very well educated and strongly affected every community they got to. There were Jews in Italy prior to the Banished Sepharadim, but instead of joining those local congregations - the Sepharadim started their own. In North African and Middle Eastern Congregations they're considered to have had a significant effect on practices.

If you're wondering what I'm getting at, you should know I myself don't know. Maybe that instead of talking about some French theologian I have to focus on Spain and Portugal when talking about the History of Judaism at the beginning of the Modern Era? Also, a lot of religious development in Judaism at the time occured in the Ottoman Empire, where Rabbi Joseph Karow wrote the Beit Yosef and Shulchan Aruch. One religious and political shift in Christianity isn't enough to change that. The Jewsade possibly has the largest effect because it's shaped by European politics and will change the state of affairs for Jews in the Ottoman Empire. Other than that, though, it's just a question of more oppression or less oppression.

And I'm starting to ramble. Main takeaways:

a. Shifts in the timeline might result in Jews not only being kept out of Brytain and Sweden for the forseeable future, but also migrating from Christian countries to Muslim ones or to the newly-sprouted coloniess.

b. Most everything related to that is shaped by the Spanish and Portugese Expulsions, forced conversions and Inquisition. Considering the possibility of those expanding all over Europe, I'm not sure what role Spaniard and Portugese Jews might play. They had a significant role at this period already, to be honest, but they might even have an even bigger one here, if very different.

c. Honestly, I'm not very good at this historical research thing. I love reading lore details about alternate histories and such, and feel that Judaism is usually ignored in the grand scale of things in most works about that (excepting WW2 related works, which is something of a tired trope to my understanding), but I don't see myself as the right person to change that. I just decided to drop History as a topic for my BA, and got a barely decent grade in the only class o the topic I took this year. I'm fascinated by history, but some things in its study are slightly boring me. In short, I really want someone else to take this from me. That might be why I just wanted to see the post by the Tea Detective instead of doing all this work: I knew, if subconciously, that I don't have the willpower to do it well. So please, if anyone reading this is as interested as I am in the topic and actually knows how to do historical research, please help.

Huh. Glad to have this off my chest, but not sure I expected it.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading that and found it interesting. Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

All right. So, first: if you are either Jewish, like His Dark Materials, or both, please reblog. If you aren't any of those but know someone who is - please share it with them. I want to get as many thoughts on this as possible.

In essence, I just want to ask two simple questions. I have the beginnings of answers for myself, but Judaism is nothing if not full of discourse and many opinions on one topic. So, again: reblog. Share your thoughts and opinions. Hopefully, it will give us a wide variety of possibilities and answers.

The two questions are: where are Jews in Lyra's world? And what are the theological and Halachic concequences of having dæmons?

I intend to share my opinions in two separate reblogs, but please share your thoughts even if you don't see mine. The short version is that I looked about events in Jewish history around John Calvin's time for the first question (pope John Calvin being the major alternation of history in HDM). As for the second question - I have some thoughts relating to the Chabad thought stream. Elaborations, again, going in reblogs.

Thank you in advance!

(PS, question number 1 was handled once by the sadly deactivvated user the Tea Detective, though their full post disappeared. Link to a reblogging of the first half: here. Note, another reblog mentions other religions - feel free to discuss them, I'm focusing on Judaism because I'm Jewish. Another post asking this question was posted here, so have fun with it. Meanwhile, this post is about dæmons and religions in general and lightly touches Judaism.)

[shedpuns]

Commissions open!

Hi I'm a disabled Jewish lesbian and work has been really unstable lately. Help me buy groceries and get awesome writing in the process. If you can't commission at this time, I'd love a reblog to help this reach a wider audience!

I'll write just about anything: fiction, nonfiction, fanwork, OCs, sfw, nsfw. If I'm not familiar with a character or setting, I'm willing to research on a wiki or read a summary of an OC if you have one. I am willing to write any kink which does not appear on the list of things I will not write. Samples of my (fan)fiction writing are available here or on ao3 (works). Samples of nonfiction writing are available here on my game design blog. My process includes an initial consultation, first draft, and edits, to make sure you're happy with the end result. The final work will be yours to use however you wish (although I would ask you not to post it on AO3 with any mention of it being a paid commission) and I can present it in the form of a PDF, google doc, or .docx file or post it on AO3 or tumblr.

I'm also available to edit your original writing! Again, I'll edit both fiction and nonfiction, and the final product will be yours to do whatever you wish with.

My pricing is as follows:

Drabbles, SFW: $2, +$1 per 100 additional words up to 500 words. Fiction, SFW: $20 per chapter (roughly 1500 to 2500 words). Fiction, NSFW: $30 per chapter (roughly 1500 to 2500 words). Nonfiction: $10 per page (roughly 500 words). Editing: $10/hour.

Below please find a short list of things I will not write.

Incest (including adoptive family), pedophilia, or bestiality Teacher/Student romantic relationships Anything related to the Holocaust. Material which endorses racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, antisemitic, islamophobic, ableist, or fatphobic ideas.

I will edit, but not write nonfiction at a specialist level (at or above college 200 level) about topics I am not educated on. Topics I am educated on include computer science, game design, English, linguistics, history (excluding some areas), and education.

[eretzyisrael]

by Robert Philpot

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Miko Peled, a pro-Palestinian Israeli-American activist and author, is now under investigation by specialist counterterror police following complaints about remarks he made during the debate. “What we saw on October 7 was not terrorism,” Peled argued. “These were acts of heroism of a people who have been oppressed.”

Thousands of Hamas-led terrorism invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, slaughtering 1,200 men, women, and children, and kidnapping 251 to the Gaza Strip, amid acts of horrific brutality including sexual assault.

Jonathan Turner, executive director of UK Lawyers for Israel, says he believes Peled’s remarks breach section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

“In saying this, he expressed an opinion or belief supportive of Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organization,” Turner told The Times of Israel. “Moreover, given the cheers he had already received, he was reckless as to whether members of the audience would be encouraged by his words to support Hamas.”

Turner suspects Peled has now left the UK and returned to the US. British police are unlikely to seek his extradition, due to the costly process and possible refusal on the grounds of freedom of speech.

“However, if Peled returns to the UK, he should be arrested and tried,” Turner said.

An open letter, organized by the Pinsker Center, a campus-based foreign policy think tank, and signed by over 300 academics, has similarly raised concerns about law-breaking at the event.

“We unequivocally condemn the incendiary remarks made by some speakers in support of Hamas and terrorist violence. Such statements are not only morally reprehensible, but also in clear violation of the law,” said the letter, whose signatories included Baroness Ruth Deech, Prof. Sir Vernon Bogdanor, acting principal of Oxford’s Brasenose College, and University of Haifa history professor Dr. Fania Oz-Salzberger. “Glorifying acts of violence under the guise of advocating for Palestinian rights serves neither justice nor peace.”

The academics also targeted the tenor of the debate. “While discussing issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is vital, dangerous rhetoric, provocative behavior, and acts of intimidation have no place in such forums,” they wrote. “Reports that Jewish students felt threatened or intimidated during and after the debate are deeply disturbing. The university and the Union have a duty to ensure that Jewish students — and all minority groups — feel safe, respected, and protected from hate and harassment.”

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … January 31

1729 – A Prussian baker is executed for fellating another man who later died, according to the court, of "exhaustion."

1797 – Austrian composer Franz Schubert was born (d.1828). He wrote some six hundred Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. He is particularly noted for original melodic and harmonic writing.

While Schubert had a close circle of friends and associates who admired his work (including his teacher Antonio Salieri and the prominent singer Johann Michael Vogl), wider appreciation of his music during his lifetime was limited at best. He was never able to secure adequate permanent employment, and for most of his career he relied on the support of friends and family. Interest in Schubert's work increased dramatically in the decades following his death.

Schubert was significantly influenced by his close-knit group of male friends, known as the Schubert Circle. His relationships with an older school friend Joseph von Spaun, the young poet Johann Mayrhofer, and the wealthy young sensualist Franz von Schober were the most important of his life. He and Schober often lived together for extended periods.

Citing the composer's dissipation, his lack of female love interests, his passionate male friendships and several oblique references in his surviving correspondence, Maynard Solomon has argued that Schubert's primary erotic orientation was homosexual. The immediate reaction on the part of many musicologists and music critics, who often simply refused to consider the evidence, revealed a deep-seated homophobia among many specialists in classical music. But in recent years the notion of a gay Schubert has become if not commonplace, at least much less controversial. Schubert's alleged homosexuality and its effect on his music are subjects of continuing debate among music historians and critics.

1914 – Edward Melcarth (d.1973) was a painter, sculptor, illustrator, lecturer and teacher, born in Louisville, Kentucky, as Edward Epstein Jr. Edward Melcarth who dared to live as an openly homosexual man and not hiding his support for communism did not earn a significant place in modern art’s canonical history for exactly those reasons.

He was active on New York’s burgeoning, post-World War II art scene; his work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1940s and at Manhattan galleries over a decades-long timespan, and he knew just about everyone, including the multimillionaire art collector and Forbes magazine publisher, Malcolm Forbes; his circle also included many other artists as well as countless, now nameless hustlers, sailors, beach bums, and representatives of working-class “trade” who posed for his pictures and with whom he had sex.

Summer Morning

Melcarth was born Edward Epstein to Jewish parents in Louisville in 1914. After his father died, his mother, whose family discouraged her from becoming an opera singer, remarried a wealthy British aristocrat. Edward, who would reject religion and change his surname to that of an ancient Phoenician god, was educated in London and at Harvard University; later he studied art in Boston with the German-born painter Karl Zerbe.

The gay, Kentucky-born artist Henry Faulkner, the photographer Thomas Painter, and Melcarth lived together in New York for some time during the decades following WWII. They shared friends, artistic interests — and sexual partners, too.

Painter was one of the research subjects who provided testimonials about his own and his homosexual associates’ sexual activities to the pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey. His reports were detailed, and from them we learn that Melcarth's appetite for sex was rapacious.

In the late 1960s, Melcarth left New York and settled in Venice, where he focused on making sculpture and died in 1973. At some point during his New York years, he had met Malcolm Forbes, who became a regular collector-patron and, after Melcarth’s death, acquired a large quantity of his works, and has been the source of many expositions of Melcarth's art.

1948 – Paul Jabara (d.1992) was an American actor, singer, and songwriter of Lebanese ancestry.

Paul wrote Donna Summer's "Last Dance" from Thank God It's Friday (1978) and Barbra Streisand's song "The Main Event/Fight" from The Main Event (1979). He cowrote the Weather Girls hit, "It's Raining Men" with Paul Shaffer.

Jabara was in the original cast of the stage musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. He took over the role of Frank-N-Furter in the Los Angeles Production of The Rocky Horror Show when Tim Curry left the production to film the movie version in England. He appeared in John Schlesinger's 1975 film, "The Day of the Locust", where he sang the production number "Hot Voo-Doo"

In 1979, Jabara won both Grammy Award for Best R&B Song and the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song performed by Donna Summer, "Last Dance". Jabara's album Paul Jabara & Friends, released in 1983, features guest vocals by a then-20 year old Whitney Houston. It also includes the song "It's Raining Men". That song was later re-recorded several years later by drag supermodel RuPaul and Martha Wash. Wash sang on the original recording as part of the group the Weather Girls.

Jabara co-founded the Red Ribbon Project in 1991, and is credited with conceiving and distributing the first AIDS Red Ribbon.

Paul Jabara died of AIDS in Los Angeles at the age of 44 on September 29, 1992.

1952 – Brad Gooch is an American writer.

Born and raised in Kingston, Pennsylvania, he graduated from Columbia University with a bachelors in 1973 and a doctorate in 1986.

Gooch is currently a Professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey. He has lived in New York City since 1971. His 2015 memoir Smash Cut recounts life in 1970s and 1980s New York City, including the time Gooch spent as a fashion model, life with his then-boyfriend filmmaker Howard Brookner, living in the famous Chelsea Hotel and the first decade of the AIDS crisis.

Gooch is married to writer and religious activist Paul Raushenbush; they have one child.

1973 – Portia Lee James DeGeneres, known professionally as Portia de Rossi, is an Australian-American actress, model and philanthropist, known for her roles as lawyer Nelle Porter on the television series Ally McBeal and Lindsay Fünke on the sitcom Arrested Development. She also portrayed Veronica Palmer on the ABC sitcom Better Off Ted and Olivia Lord on Nip/Tuck. She is married to American stand-up comedian, television host and actress Ellen DeGeneres.

De Rossi, born Amanda Lee Rogers in Horsham, Victoria, Australia grew up in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria, and modelled for print and TV commercials as a child. In 1988, at the age of 15, Rogers adopted the name Portia de Rossi, by which she remains best known; in 2005, she explained that she had intended to reinvent herself, using the given name of Portia, a character from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and an Italian last name.

De Rossi was married to documentary film-maker Mel Metcalfe from 1996 to 1999, initially part of a plan to get a green card, but she did not go through with it. She said that "it just obviously wasn't right for me". In a 2010 interview on Good Morning America, she explained that as a young actress, she was fearful of being exposed as a lesbian.

From 2000 to 2004, de Rossi dated singer Francesca Gregorini, the daughter of Barbara Bach and the stepdaughter of Ringo Starr. She said that most of her family and Ally McBeal castmates did not know she was a lesbian until tabloid pictures of the couple were published. She declined to publicly discuss the relationship or her sexual orientation at the time.

De Rossi and Gregorini broke up in late 2004 because de Rossi began dating Ellen DeGeneres, whom she met backstage at an awards show. In 2005, she opened up publicly about her sexual orientation in interviews with Details and The Advocate. She became engaged when DeGeneres proposed with a three-carat pink diamond ring. They were married at their Beverly Hills home on 16 August 2008, witnessed by their mothers and 17 other guests. On 6 August 2010, Portia filed a petition to legally change her name to Portia Lee James DeGeneres. The petition was granted on 23 September 2010. She became a US citizen in September 2011.

In 2010, de Rossi published the autobiography Unbearable Lightness which talks about the turmoil that she has experienced in her life, including suffering from anorexia nervosa and bulimia and being misdiagnosed with lupus.

1979 – Daniel Tammet is an English essayist, novelist, poet, translator, and autistic savant. His memoir, Born on a Blue Day (2006), is about his early life with Asperger syndrome and savant syndrome, and was named a "Best Book for Young Adults" in 2008 by the American Library Association's Young Adult Library Services magazine. His second book, Embracing the Wide Sky, was one of France's best-selling books of 2009. His third book, Thinking in Numbers, was published in 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton in the United Kingdom and in 2013 by Little, Brown and Company in the United States and Canada.

In 2016 he published his debut novel, Mishenka, in France and Quebec. His books have been published in over 20 languages. He was elected in 2012 to serve as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Tammet was born Daniel Paul Corney, the eldest of nine children, and raised in Barking and Dagenham, East London, England. As a young child, he suffered epileptic seizures, which remitted following medical treatment.

He participated twice in the World Memory Championships in London under his birth name, placing 11th in 1999 and 4th in 2000.

He changed his birth name by deed poll because "it didn't fit with the way he saw himself." He took the Estonian surname Tammet, which is related to "oak tree".

At age twenty-five, he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome by Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge Autism Research Centre. He is one of fewer than a hundred "prodigious savants" according to Darold Treffert, the world's leading researcher in the study of savant syndrome.

Tammet holds the European record for memorizing and recounting pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours. This sponsored charity challenge was held in aid of the National Society for Epilepsy (NSE) on “Pi Day”, March 14, 2004, at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, UK.

He was the subject of a documentary film titled Extraordinary People: The Boy with the Incredible Brain, first broadcast on the British television station Channel 4 on 23 May 2005.

He met software engineer Neil Mitchell in 2000. They lived together as domestic partners in Kent, England, where they had a quiet life at home with their cats, preparing meals from their garden. He and Mitchell operated the online e-learning company Optimnem, where they created and published language courses.

Tammet now lives in Paris, France, with his husband Jérôme Tabet, a photographer whom he met while promoting his autobiography. Tammet is openly gay.

2017 – Thousands of gay and bisexual men who were convicted of now-abolished sexual offenses laws in Britain have been posthumously pardoned under a new policing law, the Justice Ministry announces. The law, which received Royal Assent on this day, is named after British WWII codebreaker Alan Turing, who committed suicide following his conviction for gross indecency and was posthumously pardoned by Her Majesty the Queen in 2013. It also makes it possible for living convicted gay men to seek pardons for offenses no longer on the statute book.

[therealcocoshady]

how do u feel that ppl r saying Eminem is supporting a "genocide party" after the Kamala Harris rally? and that he shldnt even be involved in politics bc he hasnt said anything abt Palestine in any of his music or on social media this entire time?

Well… that’s a complex issue. As someone who is not from the US, hasn’t lived there and is not a specialist of American politics, I have a limited understanding of what is going on. So please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

As far as I know, none of the parties are actively involved against the genocide that has been going on in Palestine. On the one hand, there is VP Harris, who worked alongside Biden, whose policies have supported Israel in many ways (though I believe a call for a ceasefire ended up being made at some point ?). On the other, we have Trump & the Republican Party, whose support for Israel is matched by their xenophobic and Islamophobic stances. So, anyone supporting any of the candidate is supporting a party who has not made a clear display of support for Palestine. As far as I know, none of them have expressed any intention of applying pressure on Netanyahu or recognizing Palestine… Then, by that logic, anyone supporting either candidate is supporting genocide, you know ?

As far as Marshall Mathers himself, he has not made any statement regarding his views on the matter. He hasn’t expressed any support for Palestine, nor has he expressed any for Israel after the events of 10-07-2023. I’ve seen people reaching, arguing that Paul Rosenberg might be a Zionist (as far as I know he hasn’t spoken either ?) which would mean Em is one too, or that some people he has worked in the past support Palestine, meaning that so does he. Honestly, there is no way to know what his views are.

Now, I assume there is a underlying question to your Ask, which would be : what do I think of the fact that he hasn’t spoken on the issue ?

Well… I’m not sure. To be clear : I am 100% supporting Palestine 🇵🇸. I am 100% AGAINST the killing of innocent people. And I am 100% AGAINST the expansionist policy of Netanyahu. This is how I feel as a human being, and as a Christian from Jewish descent.

Now, the issue of people with a tremendous platform having a duty to speak out on issues is a complex one. We could write tons of posts and probably a book about the arguments against or in favor of it. There are moral and ethical issues at play which, I believe, coincide with economical and reputational stakes.

I can understand why artists would be wary to speak out. Or why their management might advise against it. It sucks because the cause could use their platform, whether it is about spreading awareness or raising funds.

I wish more artists would speak up but I am also not someone who would cancel someone for not speaking. I don’t know people’s reasons to stay silent. At the end of the day, he is a grown man with his own moral compass, making his own decisions.

He often speaks about wanting to be on the right side of history, though. So I wish that, regardless of the candidate he chose to endorse, he had used his influence. But I’m not going to stop listening to his music or being a fan because he didn’t speak up, you know ?

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again : I do not believe that him supporting Harris means he agrees with every single thing she stands for. I think this is him supporting the candidate who is the best option, and aligns with his views as much as possible.

I want to end with this : just because people are silent doesn’t mean that they aren’t doing good deeds. I believe that Eminem is a prime example of that, seeing as he doesn’t advertise everything he does for others. Who knows, maybe he is helping in other way ? 🤷‍♀️

Hope this answers your question !

[justforbooks]

Yahya Sinwar

Hamas leader who plotted the 7 October attack on Israel that triggered war in the Middle East

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who has been killed by an Israeli patrol in the Gaza Strip at the age of 61, was the principal architect of the attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that killed 1,200 Israelis, kidnapped 251 hostages, and propelled the Middle East into its greatest peril since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

The overall leader of Hamas after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in July 2024, he was its key strategist before and after 7 October, Israel’s most wanted man and the ultimately pivotal Hamas figure during ceasefire negotiations. Though presumed to have been hiding for most of the year within Gaza’s vast tunnel network, he was killed alone in a ruined apartment in Rafah, according to the Israeli military.

Despite repeated vows by Israeli leaders to assassinate him during their devastating retaliation for the 7 October attack, and after what Israel announced was the killing of his close collaborator Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, in July 2024, Sinwar was the last survivor of the three Hamas leaders against whom the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, sought arrest warrants for suspected war crimes.

Sinwar first came to prominence in 1985 when Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the organisation that would become Hamas in 1987, put him in joint charge of an armed internal enforcement agency known as al-Majd.

He missed direct participation in the momentous Palestinian events of this century’s first decade, including Hamas’s election victory in 2006, the subsequent imposition of an international boycott, and its armed seizure of full control in Gaza in 2007, because he was in jail. In 1989 he received four life sentences for orchestrating the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the execution of four Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel. According to his interrogators, Sinwar admitted without remorse to personally strangling one victim with his bare hands.

By a historical irony, he was among the 1,027 prisoners released in 2011 by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to free a kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. The exchange reinforced Sinwar’s belief that such abductions were needed to release Palestinian prisoners. During his 22-year incarceration he assumed a commanding role among Palestinian inmates and tried at least twice to escape. Jail, he later said, had been turned by militants into “sanctuaries of worship” and “academies”. He learned fluent Hebrew, studied Israeli politics and society, and by his own account became “a specialist in the Jewish people’s history”.

Sinwar was born in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. His father, Ibrahim, and his mother had been forced to flee Majdal, now Ashkelon, as refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. He would tell fellow inmates in prison, said one, Esmat Mansour, that he had been heavily influenced by conditions in the impoverished refugee camp, with its daily humiliation of queueing for food. He was four when Israel overcame Egypt in the six-day war of 1967 and took control of the Strip. He attended Khan Yunis senior school for boys and then the Islamic University, graduating in Arabic language. Sinwar was active in student organisations fusing Islamism with Palestinian nationalism after the perceived failures of the secular PLO. He was briefly detained in 1982 and again in 1988 after Israel’s discovery of al-Majd weapons.

An autobiographical novel he completed in prison in 2004, called Thorns and Carnations, describes the protagonist Ahmed sheltering with his family during the 1967 war, only to find their dreams of Palestinian liberation shattered by Israel’s victory; Ahmed becomes an Islamist after a cousin convinces him of the religious concept of the waqf – the God-given Muslim land from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. Infatuated with a young woman, Ahmed ends the relationship – chaste in accordance with strict Muslim custom – because in “this bitter story” there was “only room for one love”: for Palestine.

Also in 2004, Sinwar had a brain tumour removed by Israeli surgeons, detected by a quick-thinking Israeli prison dentist (and later intelligence officer), Yuval Bitton, who had Sinwar rushed to hospital. Over multiple conversations in jail before and after this life-saving episode, for which Bitton was warmly thanked by Sinwar, he recalled the prisoner telling him: “Now you’re strong, you have 200 atomic warheads. But we’ll see, maybe in another 10 to 20 years you’ll weaken, and I’ll attack.”

After his release, Sinwar was elected to Hamas’ political bureau in 2012 and, in what was seen as a shift towards its militarist tendency, to the faction’s Gaza leadership in 2017, replacing Haniyeh, who subsequently succeeded Khaled Mashal as political bureau chief. Hamas was losing popularity after two wars with Israel, in 2008-09 and 2014, and Gaza’s deep impoverishment by the blockade imposed by Israel (and Egypt) since 2007.

Sinwar seemed at times to adopt a relatively pragmatic approach. No ally of Mashal, he worked to restore relations with Iran that Mashal had ruptured by opposing Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in his repression of a popular revolt. But he did not demur when Mashal published a (for Hamas) innovative 2017 document which, without recognising Israel, or abandoning its aspiration for the whole land, indicated it would meanwhile accept a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders – comprising the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

In 2018 Sinwar conspicuously appeared at the Great March of Return, a series of unarmed mass protests at the border barrier. Increasingly organised by Hamas, to the chagrin of some civil activists who had devised them, the protests seemed briefly to offer some alternative to armed insurgency, despite the lethal gunfire against them by Israeli troops. Sinwar even wrote (in Hebrew) to Netanyahu, proposing a long-term truce.

But a turning point came in 2021, when Sinwar and Deif are thought to have begun planning for what became the 7 October attack. By then, the 2020-21 Abraham accords between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain had reversed the Gulf countries’ refusal to recognise Israel unless the Palestinians secured a state. How far this – and the fear in 2023 that Saudi Arabia might imminently follow suit – dominated Sinwar’s thinking is unclear. But in his 7 October speech praising Sinwar and Deif for the attack, Haniyeh excoriated the Arab states for seeking “normalisation” with Israel.

Sinwar reacted defiantly during Ramadan in May 2021 when police raided the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, after clashes in the city between Palestinians and rightwing Israelis. When police did not leave the compound by a Hamas-set deadline, Gaza militants fired 150 rockets, Israel responded with airstrikes, and there was a short but intense 11-day war. Sinwar warned that Hamas, whose rockets had reached deeper into Israel than before, had enacted a “general rehearsal” for what would happen “if Israel tries to harm al-Aqsa again”.

Less conditionally, in December 2022 Sinwar addressed Israel at a Gaza rally: “We will come to you, God willing, in a roaring flood. We will come to you with endless rockets, we will come to you in a limitless flood of soldiers.” Hamas would name the 7 October attack the “al-Aqsa flood”.

So secretive was its planning that Sinwar kept its timing and scale – though apparently not that something was being prepared – from most of the Hamas external leadership. Western intelligence agencies also believe he did not confide his intentions in advance to Iran or its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

According to a June 2024 Wall Street Journal report, Sinwar described the huge Palestinian losses in a wartime message to Hamas leaders in Qatar as “necessary sacrifices”. In another, on the seizure of women and children as hostages, but without clarifying whether he was referring to Hamas fighters or others who joined the attack and its accompanying atrocities, he said: “Things went out of control … People got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.”

Though he told hostages he met in the tunnels that they would be protected and exchanged in a prisoner release, one 85-year-old peace activist, Yocheved Lifshitz, freed in the week-long ceasefire in November, said she had challenged Sinwar on whether he was “not ashamed to do such a thing to people who have supported peace all these years. He didn’t answer. He was silent.”

In 2011 he married Samar Abu Zamar, and they had three children, the fate of all of whom is unknown. Sinwar’s brother (and close ally), Mohammed, is still being hunted by Israeli forces.

🔔 Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, politician, born 29 October 1962; died 16 October 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Anyway back to the scheduled program: a massive congratulations to all of you who have denied rape by Hamas. You have set the clock back on women’s rights against sexual violence even further than it was before. You’re a bunch of fakes. Here’s a note about rape denial. Perpetrators who are successful in discrediting their victims do so because they have dehumanized their victims, and this dehumanization becomes echoed by a world that sides with the perpetrator. That is what Hamas has achieved. The total dehumanization of its victims. Posters ripped down. Rapes denied.

Trauma specialist Judith Herman writes:

"When the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides. It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing.… The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain."

History shows us that we need movements around women in order to protect our rights and our bodies. What is happening currently with the denial of sexual violence against women in Israel sets all women back. And it does so by design. Women who are victims of the October 7 attacks are far less likely to come forward and testify knowing how the world has taken enormous pleasure in the suffering of Jewish women, and in the sordid details. Efforts to seek justice often require further traumatization, too. Perpetrators of trauma know this.

The more evidence against the perpetrator, the more extreme lengths the perpetrator has to go to deny the truth, and instead to focus on humiliating the victims, for there is great social currency in this. As we have seen even before this war, rape has become a subject of sickening entertainment on apps like TikTok. Hamas know this too. Hamas know that the more Israel issues evidence, the more those who take glee in the rapes will post their depraved responses. Does that mean we should stop releasing evidence? Absolutely not.

The element of joy found in extreme prejudice is a crucial element of both antisemitism and misogyny. When the two are combined, the effect is nuclear. By the way, this is all fairly textbook stuff. What's shocking is that it should be familiar to and recognized by every feminist. And it's not, because the movement protects all women, except Jews. Jews are imperfect victims. Israel is an imperfect victim. Israel doesn’t just roll over and die when she’s attacked. So Israel’s a little hard to get behind.

The world denies the sexual violence by Hamas because it sides with Hamas, and if it were to accept these acts there is no possible way the world could remain a bystander. All arrows point in the direction of Israel as the victim. Hamas is the perpetrator of unspeakable acts.

There is no justification for Hamas's continued existence, or any group of people who support Hamas. Whereas Israel has a right to exist free from such crimes against humanity, and Israel is perfectly within its rights to wage this war. Rape denial is part of the brainwashing. The only way to continue to ignore Israel's victimization is to discredit the individuals targeted by Hamas on October 7 and since. And failing that, mocking and humiliating the victims and/or anyone who speaks out in their defense, or dehumanizing us with libelous claims (racist! TERF! ZIONIST! — OK that one’s true). They can single us out as "Zionists" and warp the definition of Zionism to suit their needs, but it doesn't absolve them. Those who participate in such antisemitic rhetoric are no longer mere bystanders, but active assailants to the perpetrators, ie Hamas.

[mariacallous]

In a Senate confirmation hearing that often turned to discussion of Israel, Marco Rubio voiced his view that the United States should revoke the visas of any “supporter of Hamas” in the country.

The Florida GOP senator, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, also used his Wednesday hearing to back an expansion of the Trump-era Abraham Accords and vowed to repeal Biden-era sanctions against some West Bank settlers, in a signal of how the hawkish foreign policy specialist would implement Trump’s priorities in the Middle East. 

On the question of visas, which Rubio would have jurisdiction over as secretary of state, he said revoking them for Hamas supporters was “common sense.” 

“If you apply for a visa to come into the United States and in the process of being looked at, it comes to light you’re a supporter of Hamas, we wouldn’t let you in,” he said. “Now that you got the visa and [are] inside the U.S. and we realize you’re a supporter, we should remove your visa. If you could not come in because you’re a supporter of Hamas, you should not be able to stay. That’s how I view it.” He added that he intends to be “very forceful” on the issue.

The issue has been a hot topic since the explosion of pro-Palestinian activism, particularly on U.S. college campuses, since Oct. 7, which in a handful of high-profile instances has included open shows of support for Hamas. Trump has vowed to deport students engaged in such activities, a controversial measure that opponents say infringes on the right to freely protest. 

Rubio himself had previously called for similar measures in a joint op-ed with Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, who teed him up to make the declaration about losing visas during the hearing. McCormick made a reference to “pro-terrorist violence on our college campuses” during his questioning, though Rubio himself did not define what he meant by the description “a supporter of Hamas.”

In addition to being notably friendlier than Tuesday’s confirmation hearing for defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, Rubio’s hearing was also overshadowed by news of the ceasefire and hostage return agreement reached between Israel and Hamas, which was announced midway through his questioning. 

Rubio said he was “hopeful” about the agreement, while noting he didn’t have more complete details about it. He praised both the Biden administration and Trump transition team for working “side by side” on the deal. 

When discussing the agreement and other matters, he defended Israel’s conduct in Gaza, which has drawn fierce global criticism, and insisted that the Israeli army does not deliberately target civilians, a charge its critics advance that Israel denies. 

Rubio also vowed to quickly appoint a State Department special envoy for antisemitism to the position currently held by Deborah Lipstadt, though he did not indicate who that person would be. In his first term, Trump did not immediately fill the position, drawing criticism.

Rubio further signalled a willingness to walk back restrictions Biden’s administration had placed on violent Israeli settler groups. In response to a question from Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, asking whether he would commit to “ending discriminatory sanctions against Jews living in Judea and Samaria,” a reference to settlers in the West Bank whom the Biden administration has penalized for stoking violence against Palestinians, Rubio assented, adding that he was “confident” that Trump’s second term “will continue to be perhaps the most pro-Israel administration in American history.”

Rubio also declared that “the term ‘genocide’ has been appropriated to almost global or international slander,” an apparent allusion to progressive claims that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and blasted the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ICC, he asserted, “has done tremendous damage to its global credibility,” and also claimed the court may be preparing a “test run” for going after the United States (which, like Israel, is not party to the ICC).

Himself a Cuban-American with a longstanding antipathy toward Cuba’s Communist government, Rubio also declared at one point that Cuba has been “openly friendly toward Hamas and Hezbollah” and trashed Biden’s just-announced move to delist the country as a state sponsor of terrorism (Cuba’s president has led pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including one that had been scheduled for the anniversary of Oct. 7). He also repeatedly attacked Iran.

Repeatedly throughout the hearing, Rubio highlighted what he called “opportunities” in the Middle East, including the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the weakening of Lebanon and Iran, and noting that such developments could benefit Israel. When asked at one point about the Abraham Accords, Trump’s historic normalization agreements between Israel and some of its neighbors, the senator said he hoped to push Saudi Arabia to soon join them.

As members of Trump’s extended family have benefitted from business deals during his first presidency, including in the Middle East, Rubio also downplayed the idea that they should refrain from doing so. Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, recently doubled his financial stake in a major Israeli firm.

Rubio, who is generally well liked in the Senate, is not expected to face any difficulty in his appointment to the position.

[blueiscoool]

Gustav Klimt Portrait Missing for a Century Sells for $32 Million

A portrait by Gustav Klimt that was unseen for almost a century has sold for $32 million – the bottom end of its pre-auction estimate.

The “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser,” thought to be one of the Austrian painter’s final works, created huge excitement in the art world, but it ended up selling at the lower end of its valuation of €30 million-€50 million ($32 million to $53.4 million).

Bids started at €28 million and the work went for a hammer price of €30 million. This does not include the auction house’s fees.

The sale price was less than half that fetched by another Klimt painting – “Dame mit Fächer” (Lady with a Fan) – in London last year. The last portrait completed by Klimt became the most expensive artwork ever to sell at a European auction, when it sold for a £85.3 million ($108.4 million).

The “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser” had long been considered lost, according to Vienna auction house im Kinsky. However, it recently emerged that it had been privately owned by an Austrian citizen.

“The rediscovery of this portrait, one of the most beautiful of Klimt’s last creative period, is a sensation,” the auction house said in a press statement on its website prior to its sale on Wednesday afternoon.

The intensely vivid and colorful piece had been documented in catalogues of the artist’s work, but experts had only seen it in a black and white photo.

The sitter is known to have been a member of a wealthy Austrian Jewish family who were then part of the upper class of Viennese society, where Klimt found his patrons and clients. Nevertheless, her identity is not completely certain.

Brothers Adolf and Justus Lieser were leading industrialists in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Catalogues of Klimt’s work state that Adolf commissioned the artist to paint his teenage daughter Margarethe Constance. However, new research by the auction house suggests Justus’ wife, Lilly, hired him to paint one of their two daughters.

The statement on the auctioneer’s website reveals that the sitter – whoever she was – visited Klimt’s studio nine times in April and May 1917. He made at least 25 preliminary studies and most likely began the painting in the May of that year.

“The painter chose a three-quarter portrait for his depiction and shows the young woman in a strictly frontal pose, close to the foreground, against a red, undefined background. A cape richly decorated with flowers is draped around her shoulders,” the auction house said.

It added: “The intense colors of the painting and the shift towards loose, open brushstrokes show Klimt at the height of his late period.”

When the artist died of a stroke the following February, the painting was still in his studio — with some small parts not quite finished. It was then given to the Lieser family.

Its exact fate after 1925 is “unclear,” according to the auction house.

“What is known is that it was acquired by a legal predecessor of the consignor in the 1960s and went to the current owner through three successive inheritances,” the statement said.

The painting was to be sold on behalf of its Austrian owners, who have not been named, along with the legal successors of “Adolf and Henriette Lieser based on an agreement in accordance with the Washington Principles of 1998,” the auction house said.

Established in 1998, the Washington Principles charged participating nations with returning Nazi-confiscated art to their rightful owners.

Claudia Mörth-Gasser, specialist in modern art at im Kinsky, explained the situation in an email.

She said the auctioneer checked the painting’s history and provenance “in all possible ways in Austria,” adding: “We have checked all archives and have found no evidence that the painting has ever been exported out of Austria, confiscated or looted.”

But by the same token, she added: “We have no proof that the painting has not ever been looted in the time gap between 1938 and 1945.”

And this is the reason “why we arranged an agreement between the present owner and all descendants of the Lieser family in accordance to the ‘Washington Principles,’” she said.

Klimt’s portraits of women “are seldom offered at auctions,” the press release stated. It continued: “A painting of such rarity, artistic significance, and value has not been available on the art market in Central Europe for decades.”

By Lianne Kolirin.

[evilasiangenius]

19 and 17 for the ask game

Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

Note: I have more than a few WIPs going on but I checked with @corvidcrafts273 and am focusing on Fell, the Good Omens human au where Crowley works in corporate and Aziraphale works in a nearby university library, but Crowley is already engaged to marry someone else...

I know you're interested in backstory, and we are going to learn more about the backgrounds of all the main characters as the story progresses. I have most of the major details all worked out, though I give some space for the characters to surprise me. The chapter with the receptionists gives us some clues about Crowley's past; all of the hints are accurate. I can tell you that Crowley and Asmodeus have been together for a very long time, since high school. All of the main characters' respective family backgrounds are a big part of the mystery, so to speak, especially Mr. Fell, whose past will be the hardest to suss out since he is the most secretive.

O minutiae! (Set to the Orff O Fortuna). One thing that I decided while writing Fell was to entirely make up the city and the university without ever naming any specifics, while setting it in the real world. The setting is a combination of cities I've been to, universities I've visited, and even a few different libraries (not all university). To make things seem more plausible, I looked up things like corporate structure, library job descriptions, historic library renovations (since the library in the story is a combination of an old historic building and a modern mid-century build), weather details for a plausible large city perhaps on the eastern seaboard of the US, specific details about cell biology, various majors and graduate degrees in STEM and in classics, 19th century forgers, airline seating diagrams… For example that one sentence about Mr. Fell going to a talk about the Upanishads in chapter 4 took a lot more work and double/triple checking than you'd imagine for one sentence. I like to try to make experts at least sound like experts even if I'm not a specialist myself. (FYI I am almost certain Mr. Fell knows Sanskrit.)

The company Crowley works for is named after the 'celestial house of study' known as Metibta (Source: Jewish Encyclopedia article on Asmodeus). Metibeta's salary model is based on a Seattle company that became famous for a $70k minimum wage, which is why even the receptionists can afford to buy homes. Crowley disparagingly calls herself an executive assistant but is actually a Vice President. However, that bitterness comes from the fact that Crowley should be Metibeta's CEO but is not, for various reasons that are revealed later.

Asmodeus' surname Ashmedai (his mother's surname) comes from the same source as above and is either a variant of the name or a different entity altogether: apparently the jury's still out on that one. Asmodeus is actually a nickname. He does have a fairly ordinary given name, but we won't find that out for a while. In fact, all the main characters go by names that are not the ones they were given which will be revealed in time.

It will be in the story a lot later, but something that goes unspoken for quite some time in this first part is that Asmodeus' executive assistant is the Disposable Demon aka Eric and Crowley's executive assistant is Eric's brother, D'Eric (pronounced like Derek). They're identical brothers that ended up being hired together. Eric was the one who came to interview with Asmodeus and D'Eric came to support him but ended up being hired along with Eric. Besides loyalty to the executives they work for, the brothers get along really well and coordinate Crowley and Asmodeus' schedules nearly perfectly. Their offices are adjacent and possibly connected.

The books and artworks referenced are real, except that astronomy book, which is from the show. In fact, it's been fun to try to weave in aspects of the original novel or show, like Crowley's tattoo. Crowley doesn't have a tattoo in this story, but the design is on Asmodeus' business card. I don't remember if it's discussed yet, but the design is also worked into the engagement ring. Speaking of rings, Mr. Fell does have a gold signet ring, but doesn't wear it, for reasons that are yet to be revealed.

Currently in the story, I am writing at around the 80k mark, which is way further than what's available online so far and a LOT has happened. In the past few weeks of writing I've done a lot of research on hotels, restaurants, and local dining in foreign locales. Recently I found a very interesting regional pizza to include in the story that apparently is just topped with a lot of chopped cabbage (you can guess the location).

One more thing that's not obvious in the text (sorry, I know this is long): normally both Crowley and Asmodeus live fairly modest lives since their company doesn't pay them extravagant wages, though Asmodeus does have inherited wealth to draw on. They fly commercial when they do fly (usually business class because they're both tall, and with a lot of mileage points etc.), and don't often go out to fancy restaurants except for work or a special occasion. They're both workaholics, with Asmodeus being far worse than Crowley. I don't think either of them have been on a real vacation in years. Most of their joint travel seems to be centered around Asmodeus going to meetings or conferences and Crowley tagging along, though they seem to take mini vacations of 2-3 days around certain holidays.

Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

I've actually been writing for a lot longer than what's available online. I have always been an avid reader, and iirc my first attempts were scraps of stories in middle school that I didn't know how to expand. In high school, I wrote a lot of poetry -- not very good poetry -- and wrote my first longish story. It wasn't very good but I remember enjoying the process. I still write poetry sometimes, though it's mostly unpublished. I also spent many years very seriously writing academic papers, which helps a lot in terms of better understanding structure.

Probably the largest bump along the way was having clinical depression. I didn't write much in those years. But at one point, when my life had more purpose and my mental health improved, I realized that writing helped me with stress and gave me some meditative calm, so I started writing more regularly. I thought things were better but the pandemic years and the years after have been really hard. There was period during some of the worst of the lockdowns when I wasn't writing much, and when I returned to it, some of the stories took strange turns. The Seventh Prince of Hell, for example, was originally meant to be much lighter than the Mistakes series but subsequent stories after the first one ended up in some ways much more serious.

Despite the bumps, over time I became modestly disciplined as a writer and I write almost every day now, for at least a couple hours. I'm about to cross the 1.5 million word mark on ao3, it will probably happen in the next few weeks or so, depending on how much I feel like posting.

Currently I have planned scenes for 1) Canterbury Tales with a run-in on the road with the Pardoner, Summoner, Canon, and Canon's Yeoman, 2) modern au travel continues and truths begin to seep out, 3) a night at the opera for Mistakes: Together, 4) Hallmark Christmas movie parody (human sacrifice is involved), and 5) need to figure out some stuff for that Worthy Love story. It got put aside during a prolonged period of stress this fall and I can't quite remember what my short-term plans for the story were though I know the long-term goals.

A friend and former prereader of mine sometimes tells me that I should file off the serial numbers and publish professionally, but I'm rather fond of the artistic license of just writing the stories and characters I'm interested in exploring, and throwing it out in the wind, hoping someone will see it. So the answer is, in general I don't know where I'm going, but I have a rough idea and I'll follow it to the end. Thank you for reading, thank you for the interest, and thank you for seeing me, I appreciate it!

[sefaradweb]

Instituto Cenvantes: Presentación del libro HISTORIA DE LOS JUDÍOS EN LA ESPAÑA CONTEMPORÁNEA

🇪🇸 El 15 de agosto de 2024 a las 18:30 h, el Instituto Cervantes de Tel Aviv acogerá la presentación del libro "Historia de los judíos en la España Contemporánea" del historiador Jacobo Israel Garzón. Esta obra, que consta de tres tomos, es el resultado de una exhaustiva investigación sobre la presencia judía en la península ibérica. Durante el evento, participarán Susy Gruss y Silvina Guesser, expertas en literatura judeoespañola e historia cultural de España, respectivamente.

🇺🇸 On August 15, 2024, at 6:30 PM, the Instituto Cervantes in Tel Aviv will host the presentation of the book "History of the Jews in Contemporary Spain" by historian Jacobo Israel Garzón. This three-volume work is the result of extensive research on Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula. The event will feature contributions from Susy Gruss and Silvina Guesser, specialists in Judeo-Spanish literature and Spanish cultural history, respectively.

[wuxiaphoenix]

Worldbuilding: Druids and Weeds

After decades, nay centuries, of study, investigation, experiments, debates, and volleys of papers and counter-papers, botanists and ecologists alike have settled on this concise definition.

Weed: A plant in a place you don’t want it.

No, seriously. Botanists, and especially invasive species specialists, have had to settle on this, because there just isn’t anything else problem plants have in common. Kudzu is a perfectly well-behaved plant in most of Eastern Asia, where its main predators are human beings. In the Southeastern U.S.? Not so much. Likewise, Spanish needles are a common native plant on disturbed areas in Florida... and a galumphing mass of well-over-six-foot weeds in roadside China.

(Saw them in the background of a Jackie Chan movie. “Wait a minute, that looks like...!” I checked, and sure enough. Spanish needles are invasive in China.)

A lot of our modern agriculture is dependent on growing food plants places they weren’t native to, and even some of our food plants used to be weeds thousands of years back. See lettuce, a former weed of wheat-fields, and apparently one of the “bitter herbs” in the Jewish religion before we bred it to be tastier.

So what does this mean for a druid?

From what I’ve been able to find, the word for druid comes from the same root as the word for oak. Druids are, through history, associated with oak groves.

Groves that they or their predecessors planted, because acorns are food.

We may not think of it much today, because European oaks and wheat like a lot of the same soil and light conditions, so over the centuries wheat fields often won out. But oaks were traditionally huge sources of food. Some produce sweeter acorns than others, and those you treated and ate; others, with more tannins, were a major part of the nut mast you fattened up livestock on. In the culture druids came from, wealth was livestock. Survival was livestock, even more than grain. So historically druids have always been involved in agriculture. In choosing which plants were weeds, and which weren’t.

Meaning a responsible druid of the interface between city and wild will be checking on plants and animals people bring in, to see how they behave. And what happens when they escape.

...Look, if there’s one thing human history teaches us, it’s that it’s when, not if. We fortunately do not have a breeding population of tigers in NYC. But not for lack of people trying, given how many cops have discovered in people’s apartments!

(Hey, horror fans! Plotline for you!)

It’s valid to see fantasy druids as defenders of pristine wilderness. Yet it’d be equally valid to see them as the ultimate doomsday preppers; ensuring there’s wild game, herbs, and healthy pasture for livestock if everything goes to heck. That kind of druid would be a way to build resilience into the (demi)human ecosystem, and give it some slack for stress - disease, famines, breakdowns in trade, and inevitable war.

Or, you know, random dragon raids. Can you imagine the hit to a fantasy medieval farming community if even one red dragon strafes the fields at harvest? Brrr.

Think about druids in your world; of how they would interact with nature. They may surprise you!

[danjaley]

Jo's school, the war, those Germans and how to write a good character purely by accident.

A literary essay that came to my mind yesterday, through the conversation with @nocturnalazure

Originally I wanted to include this in the favourite characters tag, but it required so much background information: It's easy to find good characters in well-written books. One of my favourite characters in a badly written book is Frieda Mensch from the Chalet school series (the blonde girl, in the back on both images)

I discovered the Chalet School series at a jumble sale a few years ago, and I enjoy reading it because I like to imagine what could have been done with some good plotting skills. Also it's full of motifs that only made sense in the mid 20th century (the chain-smoking lung specialist) and the German spoken by the characters is simply hilarious. (Onkel Reise - a very tall man.)

Interestingly, the series is heavily inspired by Little Women and its sequels, especially Jo's school. It's about the English sisters Josephine (Joey) and Madge (not Meg!) Bettany who set up an international school in Austria around 1930. There's also an unrelated little Amy around.

Frieda Mensch is an Austrian girl who goes to that school and becomes a friend of Joey's. So far that's nothing special, the series is literally about Joey being everyone's supportive friend. In volume two the sisters spend Christmas with Frieda's family in Innsbruck, which makes her stand out a little. Then, because her first name means "peace" and her surname means "human", the author assigned her the role of the peacemaker in her class. She's portrayed as a serious, law-abiding girl, but of course schoolgirls must also be good sports and know when to break the rules. Even if it's possibly an accidental contradiction, this gives her an implicit conflict. Gradually she becomes the main loyal friend who supports Joey if needs be (like on nightly ice-skating-rescue-missions ^).

When the girls in the books are around 19 and just left school, in real life the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany hit. By the time the school could be fictionally evacuated, war had begun too. Suddenly this Austrian girl whose name means "peace" and "human" becomes hugely symbolic. Frieda has to flee to England, one of her friends' father is tortured to death, her fiancée is also shortly imprisoned and suddenly she's a girl with a fate. She also helps Joey, who is married by then and has recently given birth, to cross the Channel. At the end of that volume Frieda gives a speech to what's left of the school, about peace and acting humanely despite political conflicts. Wars change many lives and reveal unknown strength in some people - sometimes this is even true for fictional characters.

(If I were set the task to write a novel in which an international school defies the Nazis, my first thought would be that they might have some Jewish students they must protect. Interestingly, this thought never crossed the author's mind. The Nazis turn their full force on this English school because the girls privately vowed to always keep up their girl guide ideals, even the Germans and Austrians from whom they're about to be separated. While violence against Jews is mentioned in the story, it shows how little the threat to them was taken seriously abroad. It also shows the hope that the decent-minded Germans might get the upper hand again after a while. It's strongly biased in its own way, but it's a perspective one doesn't find in books that were written with the whole history in mind. That's why I enjoy historic fiction so much.)

If I ever get so far with the McCarrics, I'm going to steal a lot from Highland Twins go to Chalet School. In fact I've already named Shiena after a character from that book.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

(CNN) — A portrait by Gustav Klimt that was unseen for almost a century is expected to fetch millions when it goes up for auction this spring.

The “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser,” thought to be one of the Austrian painter’s final works, is expected to fetch up to $54 million at a sale that has created huge excitement in the art world.

The painting had long been considered lost, according to Vienna auction house im Kinsky.

However, it has now emerged that it had been privately owned by an Austrian citizen.

“The rediscovery of this portrait, one of the most beautiful of Klimt’s last creative period, is a sensation,” the auction house said in a press statement on its website.

The intensely vivid and colorful piece had been documented in catalogues of the artist’s work, but experts had only seen it in a black and white photo.

The sitter is known to have been a member of a wealthy Austrian Jewish family who were then part of the upper class of Viennese society, where Klimt found his patrons and clients.

Nevertheless, her identity is not completely certain.

Brothers Adolf and Justus Lieser were leading industrialists in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Catalogues of Klimt’s work state that Adolf commissioned the artist to paint his teenage daughter Margarethe Constance.

However, new research by the auction house suggests Justus’ wife, Lilly, hired him to paint one of their two daughters.

The statement on the auctioneer’s website reveals that the sitter — whoever she was — visited Klimt’s studio nine times in April and May 1917.

He made at least 25 preliminary studies and most likely began the painting in the May of that year.

“The painter chose a three-quarter portrait for his depiction and shows the young woman in a strictly frontal pose, close to the foreground, against a red, undefined background. A cape richly decorated with flowers is draped around her shoulders,” the auction house said.

It added:

“The intense colors of the painting and the shift towards loose, open brushstrokes show Klimt at the height of his late period.”

When the artist died of a stroke the following February, the painting was still in his studio - with some small parts not quite finished. It was then given to the Lieser family.

Its exact fate after 1925 is “unclear,” according to the auction house.

“What is known is that it was acquired by a legal predecessor of the consignor in the 1960s and went to the current owner through three successive inheritances,” the statement said.

"The painting is to be sold on behalf of its Austrian owners, who have not been named, along with the legal successors of 'Adolf and Henriette Lieser based on an agreement in accordance with the Washington Principles of 1998,'” the auction house said.

Established in 1998, the Washington Principles charged participating nations with returning Nazi-confiscated art to their rightful owners.

Claudia Mörth-Gasser, specialist in modern art at im Kinsky, explained the situation in an email to CNN.

She said the auctioneer checked the painting’s history and provenance “in all possible ways in Austria,” adding:

“We have checked all archives and have found no evidence that the painting has ever been exported out of Austria, confiscated or looted.

But by the same token, she added:

“We have no proof that the painting has not ever been looted in the time gap between 1938 and 1945.”

"And this is the reason why we arranged an agreement between the present owner and all descendants of the Lieser family in accordance to the ‘Washington Principles,’” she said.

Klimt’s portraits of women “are seldom offered at auctions,” the press release states.

It continues:

“A painting of such rarity, artistic significance, and value has not been available on the art market in Central Europe for decades.

The painting will tour internationally ahead of the sale on April 24, stopping in Switzerland, Germany, Britain and Hong Kong."

The last portrait completed by Klimt became the most expensive artwork ever to sell at a European auction, when it fetched a staggering £85.3 million ($108.4 million) in London last year.

Depicting an unidentified female subject, “Dame mit Fächer” (Lady with a Fan) also established a new record for Klimt, outselling “Birch Forest,” which went for $104.6 million in a sale from the collection of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen in 2022.

Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement.

[totallyhussein-blog]

The stories we share and the legacy of food

Throughout the history of the Jewish people, food has served as a bridge between their ancient heritage and the present day, as Daniela Ghelman explains in the Boca Raton Observer.

Culinary Curator and Jewish and Israeli Food Specialist Naama Shefi’s latest cookbook, “The Jewish Holiday Table: A World of Recipes, Traditions & Stories To Celebrate All Year Long,” highlights this connection exceptionally well.

Hailing from Givat HaShlosha, a small kibbutz in central Israel, Shefi arrived in New York City in 2005, following a career path in film. While navigating the bustling pace of her new life in America, she turned to food to reconnect and strengthen her Jewish identity.

She began organizing various culinary events across the city, such as gefilte fish conferences, an Israeli Moroccan Seder and an Iraqi Jewish comfort food pop-up. These projects paved the way for the Jewish Food Society, a nonprofit that Shefi founded in 2017 that preserves, celebrates and revitalizes Jewish culinary heritage.

“Following the success of launching many delicious Jewish food events across the city, I started to imagine a home for Jewish food,” says Shefi, 43, of the nonprofit. A great inspiration was her husband’s grandmother, Nonna, who Shefi says opened her eyes to the connectivity, hospitality and spirit around the Shabbat table.

“I thought back to Nonna and realized there are countless cooks like her whose recipes tell the stories not only of their lives and those before them but also of their communities and Jewish experience. I knew that if those recipes disappeared, so would a crucial and irreplaceable part of our history and culture.”

[mediaevalmusereads]

The Satan: How God's Executioner Became the Enemy. By Ryan E. Stokes. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Genre: biblical studies

Series: N/A

Summary: Many people today think of Satan as a little red demon with a pointy tail and a pitchfork—but this vision of the devil developed over many centuries and would be foreign to the writers of the Old Testament, where this figure makes his first appearances. The earliest texts that mention the Satan—it is always “the Satan” in the Old Testament—portray him as an agent of Yahweh, serving as an executioner of evildoers. But over the course of time, the Satan came to be regarded more as God’s enemy than God’s agent and was blamed for a host of problems. Biblical scholar Ryan E. Stokes explains the development of the Satan tradition in the Hebrew scriptures and the writings of early Judaism, describing the interpretive and creative processes that transformed an agent of Yahweh into the archenemy of good. He explores how the idea of a heavenly Satan figure factored into the problem of evil and received the blame for all that is wrong in the world.

***Full review below.***

I picked up this book because I'm expanding my exploration of biblical studies - particularly studies of the Hebrew Bible and the history of certain ideas or figures. And honestly, what character is more interesting than (the) Satan?

Overall, I found Stokes's book to be well-researched, well-argued, and incredibly compelling. Stokes's main argument is that the Satan first emerged as a superhuman Executioner in God's employ, and over time, Jewish writings associated the Satan with opposition to God and the cause of human suffering and evil. Through each chapter, Stokes does a good job convincing the reader of his main points and supports each claim with multiple close readings and language studies that made his argument seem logical and natural. I particularly liked (or appreciated) that the study was confined to ideas and traditions in the Hebrew Bible (though there is one chapter on the New Testament); while other books trace the history of "Satan" up through the modern era, Stokes limits his analyses to a particular period/set of texts, and I found this focus to be beneficial.

All that being said, I wouldn't recommend this book for casual readers. As accessible as I think this book is for non-specialists, Stokes does a lot of comparisons and analyses that require the reader to have some familiarity with the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish writings. For an academic like myself, this book is easy to read, but if this is your first foray into biblical studies, it might be a little difficult to follow.

TL;DR: The Satan is an exemplary monograph on the history of the figure of the Satan in early Jewish writings.