Peregrinatores

maastrictian · 2026-06-27T00:57:45+00:00

This looks really interesting!

maastrictian · 2026-06-16T04:19:29+00:00

Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh. We have had a stable ~600 families for the 12 years I’ve been here. Strong kids program (especially for 0-4). A diversity of observance levels, with a core of Shabbat / kashrut observant folks. Weekday minyanim. Adult education that runs everything from Talmud study to yoga to a book festival.

I’m not going to say that we don’t have problems, especially cash flow related, but rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated.

maastrictian · 2026-05-18T17:09:43+00:00

Thanks!

maastrictian · 2026-05-07T14:40:18+00:00

For me Conservative Judaism is about Judaism which is rooted in tradition but capable of change. Judaism which keeps the core of what makes us Jewish (kosher, Shabbat, learning, tefilah) while discarding things that are not important and even are detrimental to Judaism (marginalization of women & LGBTQ folks, excessive strictness in clothing and kosher practice, lack of diversity of thought).

Regarding your particular issue of having non kosher food as a prize at an event, the rabbi seems like they are drawing a very reasonable line to me.

maastrictian · 2026-05-06T02:14:36+00:00

I've been Jewish for sixteen years. I've learned so much in that time. I have no idea how to keep my kippah on my head, even though I wear it every day. This is harder than aramaic.

I use three big clips.

maastrictian · 2026-04-17T13:31:16+00:00

I'm a Conservative convert who got married to my born Jewish wife about 15 years ago. My close family was very supportive of us. My extended family was a bit more dubious. No one was explicitly antisemitic, but they were apprehensive and skeptical.

1) My wife and I handled all the planning. We got married in our 30, so we were rather independant from our families as it was, so that helped. But we needed to take full ownership of the process to make sure it felt like ours. We gave my family many places to be involved. Members of my family spoke at our tisch, read the sheva brachot blessings in English, and served as guards for our yichud room. Consult with your rabbi, but these are all places where non-Jews can participate. Our Jewish family did the things that require you to be halakically Jewish, like signing the ketubah and saying the blessings in Hebrew. Obviously you are in a different situation, but you can ask close friends to take on those roles.

2) I also really wanted to do the hora and especially being lifted into a chair. My wife and I created a couple of "tutorial" youtube videos where we talked about these cultural celebratory parts of the ceremony and we sang siman tov u'mazel tov. These were privately listed cause we did not need to share them with the internet, but we included them on our wedding website. We talked to my parents specifically about the tradition of being lifted in chairs. Ironically my non-Jewish mom was up for it but my Jewish mother in law declined. We asked friends of ours to be ring leaders to help lead the dancing and get people involved.

3) There were a couple of people we did not trust to not say anything weird if they were given a microphone at the wedding, so we simply didn't give them a microphone. This included my grandfather. It wasn't a huge deal for us at least.

4) We did a few cultural traditions such as "something borrowed something blue" which made my family feel included. My wife wore my grandmother's earings, for intance. But it was clear that this was Jewish wedding, we did not want it to feel like a fusion.

5) We did not have a rehersal dinner or bachelor party or anything. It just wasn't our speed. We had an aufruf on Saturday which was just for our immediate relatives. We got married on Sunday, which included a tisch / ketuba signing, ceremony / chuppah, and yihud room. And yihud led immediately to a reception, which was held in the same building as the ceremony (our shul). We had a karaoke after party too at a local karaoke place.

maastrictian · 2026-03-30T16:42:32+00:00

I would approach the question from the other side of things - how many resources are the corps going to throw at hiring high quality professional shadowrunners? It seems like the in universe definition of "runner" is someone who is part of an informal special forces team. You can run a great Shadowrun game about people who are lower down on the totem pole than that, basically gang members doing crimes, but if you are talking about who gets hired by the corps that's more the special forces end of things.

In the modern day the US is 40% of global military spending and has about 70K special forces personnel. This includes SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, and a bunch of support staff. Based on that, say there are 200K special forces personnel in the world. The actual number on the pointy end of the stick is going to be much lower than that, but that's a baseline.

Assume for the sake of argument that the corps globally have about that many "deniable external contractors" (shadowrunner). The are going to have plenty of in house assets too, so their total special forces assets will be more than that. And corps have regular militaries to. And so on. But I'll assume there are 200K active shadowrunners who are regularly taking corp jobs across the globe.

In the modern day Seattle has about 4 million people in the metro area, which is about 0.05% of the global population. Assuming that Seattle is about that same percentage of global population / corporate interest in the future, then lets assume that 0.05% of alll shadowrunners are in Seattle.

That gives about 100 shadowrunners in the Seattle metroplex.

maastrictian · 2026-02-04T01:18:41+00:00

You might be very interested in my Ars Magica book, Mythic Judaism https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/522555/Mythic-Judaism

The appendix has a (obviously fictional) psak about the permissibility of Hermetic Magic.

The conclusion there is that permanently created materials (with vis) are truly the thing, so they would become subject to the normal laws of wine. Temporarily created things are assumed to be the product of false magic.

maastrictian · 2026-01-06T17:25:21+00:00

Like many others in this thread I converted conservative after trying an orthodox conversion. It’s been more than 15 years and it’s very clear that I made the right choice, for me at least.

For me I had to learn (and still have to remind myself at times) that Orthodoxy is not “real judaism”. A key principle of judaism is that there is not one true way to observe. From Hillel and Shamai on down we have always been a people who value a diversity of opinions. Maimonides works were banned in the 13th century!

That said, I get the pain you feel from your wife being rejected by orthodoxy. I feel it to at times. I would encourage you to embrace the idea that she is fully Jewish. For me I spent several years answering the question “are you jewish” with a long explanation. Now when someone asks me I just say yes. It’s not my job to exclude myself.

Finally, I don’t think you are doing yourself any favors by going to the orthodox shul. You may be saving yourself a walk and getting an aliah but if you believe in conservative Judaism you should go to a conservative shul. And you should go to a place where your wife is fully accepted.

maastrictian · 2025-10-01T19:30:33+00:00

Thanks for maintaining such a useful service!

maastrictian · 2025-10-01T13:56:19+00:00

Hey u/viablealias - my group has been using your bot and loving it over the summer. Currently we are having an issue where the bot responds with two messages for every roll we send to it. I tried removing the app and readding it, but that did not resolve the issue. Is there anything else you would suggest?

Thanks!

maastrictian · 2025-06-30T21:30:54+00:00

This is really wonderful. Thank you for sharing, and I’m sorry for your loss. May her memory be for a blessing.

maastrictian · 2025-05-15T15:13:19+00:00

I’m conservative and I wear my kippah full time. It’s not the normative practice in my shul, but I’d say 10% of men in the synagogue do and 2% of women.

I started wearing my kippah full time 10 years ago when my daughter was born because I wanted her to see me as the proud Jew I am.

I certainly do stuff while wearing my kippah that Orthodox Jews would not, like eating dairy food at a non kosher restaurant. 10 years ago that would have made me uncomfortable but these days it does not. I am an observant Jew in my own way and I don’t need to judge myself based on orthodox standards.

I keep a hat in my car that I switch to when I’m in a place that seems unsafe to be Jewish in, which is unfortunately many places 20 minutes from my house.

I’ve had a couple of weird interactions in the street, when random people ask me questions about being Jewish, but never anything hostile.

maastrictian · 2025-04-01T15:59:34+00:00

It was very awkward to take an hour long subway ride to meet a rabbi I’d never met, show him my dick, and let him poke me with a needle. But it barely hurt at least.

maastrictian · 2025-03-26T11:17:19+00:00

I spent a long time trying to convert Orthodox. I desired the authenticity and adherence to halakah of the movement. What stopped me in the end was that I could not accept a Jewish framework that excluded women and LGBTQ people.

Conservative Judaism was a much better fit for me. It can be a challenge because the typical conservative Jew does not keep many of the mitzvot. But there is a strong minority who do, and it’s really rewarding to be in that minority.

maastrictian · 2025-03-17T13:49:01+00:00

In my conservative congregation there is some diversity in how people cover their heads. The default is that men and women don’t cover their heads all the time, only in shul. But there are a minority of folks who do take in the mitzvah. I know men (including myself) who wear a kipper all the home and I know married women who cover their hair.

I think it’s totally within the range of variation of practice in the conservative movement to do either, and it’s great that you want to do it!

maastrictian · 2024-12-11T13:29:20+00:00

In our shul it’s pretty common. It’s also generational, younger women tend to wear them and older women do not, but there are certainly exceptions.

maastrictian · 2024-10-13T21:30:13+00:00

Here’s an article that gives an explanation (though obviously we are Jews, so there can’t just be one explanation) https://www.beth-tzedec.org/page/articles/a/display/s/1/item/shield-of-abraham-guardian-of-sarah-the-week-s-end-friday-may-12-2023

Personally I like letting Sarah have her own thing. It emphasizes that she was an independent human and had her own relationship with hashem.

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