(no subject)

Sometimes I find odd things amusing. I posted "Anna in the Jungle", my first Slings and Arrows fic, last Tuesday on AO3. Now, AO3 has a few mechanisms for announcing new stories- if you've subscribed to an author, you get an announcement anytime they write a story. And if you've subscribed to a fandom feed you get an announcement anytime someone posts a story in that fandom. And of course, there's always browsing the archive and sorting by most recent.

I've done this experiment before, with my Avengers/West Wing crossover. It got nearly a hundred hits before I made any posts announcing the story, which kinda freaked me out because I usually don't get that kind of attention even when I do make splashy announcements. With Slings and Arrows, a much smaller fandom, I was curious to see how effective discovery was.

In a week, I got three hits and one kudos. So yeah, not as many people hunting for Slings and Arrows fic via AO3. I'll put some announcements out and see whether people in the fandom like it.

Anyway...


"Anna in the Jungle"

Post-Series fic about Anna as a Bolivian revolutionary. Pretty self-explanatory. I'm pleased with it. Anna is totally awesome, and her life is a mess anyway, and this was fun to write, to give her a fantasy life that is grounded in reality and a reality that is grounded in fantasy.

(no subject)

This was originally going to be a comment on some random blog, but I didn't actually want to get into an argument about this with random strangers on that blog, so I'm adapting it here.

I was responding to a discussion about defining a spectrum of Jewish practice wherein one might be described as 'more observant' or 'less observant'. It's my belief that they were suggesting that Reform Jews are 'less observant' than Orthodox Jews, but they weren't entirely specific.

I self-identity as 'an observant Jew' at times because I am uncomfortable identifying in some contexts with either the Conservative movement or the Modern Orthodox movements, though those two sets of ideological tenets fall closest to my practice. Observant is a somewhat useful identifier in this context. It implies a commitment to the practice of Jewish law as I understand it, in contrast to 'ethnic Jew' or 'cultural Jew' or a handful of other similar names that imply a person whose Jewish identity does not involve religious observance. However, this does not mean that I believe in the kind of spectrum of observance I mentioned.

I don't consider 'the Ultra-Orthodox' to be 'more observant' than me, because their observance extends to rules I think are overreaching, not supported by Halacha, and in some cases ethically wrong. To call them 'more observant' would be to suggest that I considered myself to be failing to live up to their standard of observance. And there are some Reform Jews that I don't think are 'less observant' than me, because their practice of Judaism suffuses their life in a similar way to how my practice suffuses mine, though I disagree with the specifics of their understanding of Jewish law. I do believe that the Torah requires observance of the laws of Kashrut, for example, and I think that a Reform Jew who believes otherwise is wrong, but I don't believe that a Reform Jew who does not observe them is 'less observant' than me.

Where "more observant" might be useful is within the context of a conversation about sin. I am a sinner. There are laws that I do subscribe to yet don't fully live up to. The Torah requires me to show kindness to those in need, to look after the welfare of the poor, to be a brother to my fellow Jew and to my fellow human, and these are areas in which I can always be more observant. There are ritual areas, too, in which I could improve. I could definitely be more committed to the observance of Shabbat as a day dedicated to God, more enthusiastic in my enjoyment of Shabbat. I miss davening more often than I ought to. I've slipped behind in my Daf Yomi study. On Yom Kippur I atone for my failures to live up to the standards of observance that I believe the Torah requires for me. I don't atone for my failure to live up to the standards set by the Charedi community.

Jews have enough problems without getting into competition with each other about whose religious beliefs are better. I'd prefer we approached our religious dialogue from a position of humility, with the knowledge that all of us could be more observant and none of us are lesser people for it.