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  1. Jonathan Edelstein

    Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)

    You've gotta wonder, though, what will happen three or four years and ten or twenty million deaths from now, when the shooting stops and people all over Europe realize how much of what just happened was due to bruised royal egos.
  2. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    So wait, Mennonites independently invented the Shabbos goy? Somehow that renews my hope for humanity.
  3. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    In that case, I think you'll like the December 1840 story.
  4. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    That wouldn't be an issue on the American prairie, because the laws of shmita apply only in the Land of Israel. A relationship between Jewish and Mennonite farmers would still be beneficial, though, because the Mennonites could teach the Jews how to farm land that is unfamiliar to them...
  5. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    I Am Not A Rabbi, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no - shmita is a time-bound commandment, and as such it isn't one that can be fulfilled in installments, any more than you can skip Shabbat by taking one-seventh of each working day off during the week. The only way to deal with shmita in a...
  6. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    So I think I've got the last three 1840 stories in place. The Feast of Atonement, Constantinople, October 1840: Sabbateans, the Ahrida Synagogue, the Tanzimat, and intrigues involving Central Asian emigres; The Day of Joining, Beit Mina and Tiberias, December 1840: Eid al-Banat, a by-election...
  7. Jonathan Edelstein

    Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)

    Fair enough. But I suspect that while Christian X won't quite attain Steffie levels of infamy, he isn't going to be remembered as one of Europe's good kings.
  8. Jonathan Edelstein

    Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)

    I second the motion. Christian X fleeing like a coward and not even bothering to express sorrow for the Danish citizens who were killed to protect his escape is the kind of thing that ends monarchies.
  9. Jonathan Edelstein

    Triple Assassination at Saqifah - An Islam alternate timeline

    Do the empty eastern Slavic lands include what is now Poland, or will that be part of Slavic central Europe ITTL? And that would leave Ukraine and Russia to be populated by... steppe nomads? Finno-Ugric peoples? Balts? Norse? There would be potential for any of those to become Islamized (or...
  10. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    You have to be pretty good to get a job at a synagogue archive after being expelled from rabbinical school. And the Galilee in 1840 still isn't that big - it has the population of Fort Collins, Colorado, so stories are going to intersect.
  11. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    The Qumran caves were certainly known, but it's a matter of stumbling on the right one. IOTL that happened by accident, and it might have to happen that way ITTL as well, but with more people in the area, the odds go up. Hmmm, President Grant is due for a visit in 1878, and he's got a wife...
  12. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    Notes to The Antiquarian: 1. The Cairo Geniza has come up several times in this thread; for those unfamiliar with it, it’s a collection of more than 400,000 medieval and early modern documents stored in the basement of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat. A geniza is a storeroom for documents...
  13. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.
    Threadmarks: THE ANTIQUARIAN SEPTEMBER 1840

    THE ANTIQUARIAN SEPTEMBER 1840 “They found another Yehuda Halevi poem,” said Meni the clerk as he laid the document on Avram Cohen’s desk. “Tell me when they find a poem by someone I’ve never heard of,” Avram answered. But still, he picked up the yellowed, brittle paper with care and put it on...
  14. Jonathan Edelstein

    WI: Egypt's Independence is Achieved Under Ali Bey the Great?

    It would be hard for the Egyptian Mamluks to actually do worse than they did under Muhammad Ali, but I doubt they'd come out much better. The other Mamluk emirs would see (and did see) Ali Bey as an equal who got lucky rather than an overlord, and Ali Bey, recognizing this, had several of them...
  15. Jonathan Edelstein

    AHC: Make Bridgerton realistic. Africans intermix with European nobility.

    More than one. Although the black sahaba were more often Somali or Ethiopian, and many of them were born slaves.
  16. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    The Krymchaks said the same thing, for many of the same reasons. Alexander I's awkward gratitude toward the Hasidic regiments ITTL sometimes spilled over into benevolence toward other "non-standard" Jewish communities, such as the grant of farmland to the Krymchaks. Some of these communities...
  17. Jonathan Edelstein

    King Theodore's Corsica

    The moment is frozen in time as both sides await the decisive intervention of Corsica...
  18. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    More on the Buddhist side than the Hasidic, given that Buddhism is a less exclusive and more acquisitive religion than Judaism. OTOH, I've always had the feeling that Hasidism - especially Chabad Hasidism as outlined in the Tanya - is the most "Buddhist-compatible" of Jewish traditions, and it...
  19. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.

    Notes to The Kingdom of Ishah Kadmon: 1. The Maid of Ludomir, both IOTL and ITTL, is unique in being a woman who gained fame as a Hasidic teacher and miracle-worker without being the wife or widow of a male rebbe. IOTL, she was pressured into marrying in the 1830s and later moved to Ottoman...
  20. Jonathan Edelstein

    What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.
    Threadmarks: THE KINGDOM OF ISHAH KADMON JULY 1840

    THE KINGDOM OF ISHAH KADMON JULY 1840 Dov Ber of Truvitz looked at the pine tree in front of him and considered the cut he’d made. It was almost ready to fall, and one more blow should do the job, there. He raised his ax, swung it halfway to measure the stroke, and then struck. Slowly, the tree...
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