It’s the weekend! I’ve picked two longer works, both about… Axis war crimes, and the different interpretations of victors and victims. Yes, this is still my series of reviews on speculative fiction, you’ve read that right! I want to talk about both at length, so I will post the reviews separately, and over the course of two days (G-d willing).

Before we start, a different issue – I’m a bit annoyed to see that some of the stories I was sure would fit into the short story category run in the novelette category on this year’s Hugos. I had originally intended to concentrate on short stories, but many places don’t post word counts in story headers, and in some cases stories are split up over multiple pages, which makes them appear shorter… like this one, which is actually a novella, even longer than a novelette! So I’ll have to reorganize the list and group stories by length.

Shtetl Days by Harry Turtledove (an American Jewish man)

from Tor.com Originals, Apr 14 2011

This story looked like a quick read when I scrolled through the page (and I wasn’t really in the mood for anything longer), but when I actually started reading, I was quite surprised to see “Page 1 of 4″ and a link to the following page at the bottom.

I read on, and I was very happy I did. AWESOME happens right after that page break. I want to say as little as possible, but still something that will make you read the story, so I will just say that Turtledove takes the timeworn shtetl-kitsch clichés and subverts them masterfully, while still staying true to the sentiment that pervades them. Amazing, really.

There are some minor inconsistencies, for example when it comes to pronunciation, but (spoiler!) since the characters are historical reconstructionists, it’s perfectly understandable they would get at least a few things wrong.

I only had a small gripe with the story – as an Orthodox Jew, I’m uncomfortable with fully spelled out divine names included in works that come without warnings to treat the names respectfully. As this stands, readers will probably print out the story and toss the printout once they’ve finished, or read it in the bathroom, etc. all of which would be prohibited by halachah (Jewish law).

The author is secular and thus probably not particularly bothered by it, but I am! If you as a reader want to play it safe, the easiest way is to just leave the story in electronic format (which does not qualify as “writing” as per halachah) and read it that way. This also saves trees

Another minor gripe which has nothing to do with the story content:  sometimes there were extra spaces inserted before and after vowels with diacritics, I guess someone’s word processor goofed up there!

*

Here is a beautiful Karliner nigun which demonstrates my point above. In practice, divine names are often hyphenated or substituted when not praying. In the video, you can hear people sing “Kah echsof” while the text reads Y-ah echsof”.

Here is another version (by Aharon Razel & co.) where they sing “Y-ah echsof”:

Updates are a bit slower this time of the year: it’s the Jewish High Holidays, and when I’m not offline, most of the time I’m busy working (or procrastinating… you get the idea!). I apologize and I’ll try to post once in a while.

I actually have a regular Youtube Tuesday post I haven’t posted yet, but there’s something Youtube-related I’ve noticed that has to do with the holidays, so I typed it up. It has a lot of Hebrew, but I’ve tried to make the meanings reasonably clear.

Here’s what bugs me about this Rosh haShanah (R”H), the Jewish new year. Everyone was posting the same R”H music videos on Facebook (here’s one – here’s another), and to my surprise, I found myself disapproving. Maybe I’m a misanthropic curmudgeon, but in order to be less of a misanthropic curmudgeon, I decided not to tell people off on their own Facebook walls (that would be really rude!) and instead make a short – and hopefully moderate  – post here about my issues with these videos.

First, Rosh haShanah isn’t about partying like crazy: there are plenty of Jewish holidays like that, but R”H isn’t one of them. This is a Western idea that you have to party on New Year’s. R”H is about yirat haShem, midat haDin, etc. Of course, these concepts are hard to translate to English – you can say yirat haShem is “fear of G-d”, and midat haDin is “the attribute of judgment”, but these translations totally miss the point when considered in the framework of Western thought (which is not their own native framework). In any case, you can see that these are not happy-go-lucky ideas, and it might be hard to mekarev secular Jews with “OMG CAN YOU FEEL THE ATTRIBUTE OF JUSTICE!!!” – that is, to bring them closer to the traditional observance of commandments – as opposed to “Yay, Happy Jewish Party!”. But it would be… I don’t know, more honest? More appropriate?

Second, Gad Elbaz did the breakdancing frummies music video thing several years ago, so it’s hardly a new idea (I don’t like the rap verses, but the chorus is very catchy):

One can probably find even earlier examples (breakdancing Breslovers, maybe?), but anyway, this is a great excuse for me to link to another Gad Elbaz video – Al Naharot Bavel (based on Psalm 137). I love this song and it certainly has more to do with Hashem’s judgment. The video is slightly over the top and in the song itself there is some totally unnecessary autotune toward the end, but it’s still well worth watching and listening to (and again, and again ):

Gmar chatima tova!

Just a small post -

First of all, Expanded Horizons has a new issue out, I just finished uploading the content. Make sure to visit! It also has an autism-related story.

Second, I registered on Playstation Network, my username is “prezzey”, add me and I’ll probably add you back – if I don’t have the slightest idea who you are, first send me a message, leave a comment here, etc. you get the idea. (BTW I have the same username on Xbox Live.)

Third, I was very angry to see when I came online after the chag that the Pesach robots video has been removed – here is a writeup of the contents in case you were wondering. This video has been online for a year and I had no idea it would disappear over the holidays… *sigh!*

Pesach starts in an hour (at least in my time zone), I hope everyone who’s been preparing is more or less prepared! (I could fall asleep standing. ) I’d like to take the time to wish a kosher Pesach for my Jewish friends, a joyous Easter for my Christian friends and a happy spring holiday for everyone else!

To mark the occasion, here is a really cute Pesach video from Israel… with robots!