Getting stuff done.

[gridlore]

Couple of hundred words on my intensely detailed outline/time line for the Concordat. isomeme will be pleased, the first ship ever to make a FTL jump was built by a team from Harvey Mudd and was named the West Dorm.

One of things sitting in my notes and ideas folder is what I'm doing with the Jews in this setting. One of the big points in my history is the Last Jihad. This sis the result of what fusion power does to oil prices, and the economies of the oil-producing states. (Can you say "crash and burn"? Knew you could!) This creates a whole new crop of frothing radicals, who go on a fifteen year rampage. Part of this, of course, is trying to destroy Israel. With bioweapons.

This is the last straw. When FTL becomes available, the Israelis are in the forefront of scouting. They find a garden world, claim it, and move there lock, stock, and Western Wall. (Yes, they take the whole thing with them.) Once they get to their new home, they convert the colony ships to war craft, and post "Stay out (unless you're Jewish, then come in.. we have cake!)" signs on all the approaches. While the rest of humanity scrambles to reach more systems, the Israelis develop their one.

By the "present day" (2466, in my concept) New Israel is still independent, restricts gentile visitors to certain sections of the planet, and is armed to the teeth.

Never again, indeed.

But something occurred to me. Here we have a world surrounded by the Concordat, yet independent. With the muscle to back it up. Know what that suggests to me? Switzerland in space. And what did the Swiss become famous for?

Banking. Yes, without intending it, I've put the Jews of the Future right into the stereotypical role of being bankers. It's not like the don't have the experience. And being a financial center for the whole of human space is certainly lucrative. I'm just amused at that image.

BTW, for my Hebrew speaking friends.. please help me with a better name for this new homeland than New Israel. I'm trying to avoid too many "New This" and "New That" in my world names.

Comments

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

And what did the Swiss become famous for?

Shoot. I was thinking mercenaries...

[aurictech.livejournal.com]

Which brings to mind Joel Rosenberg's Metzadan Mercenary Corps stories, thus nicely closing the loop.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

There's another good possibility. After all, every military needs to blood its troops occasionally.

Makes me wonder how many troops in the Colonial Legion will be from New Israel?

[10binary-cats.livejournal.com]

Could make for an interesting mix/clash of cultures in La Legion. Could make for a fair smattering of french bistros on the Jewish homeworld. Is the wildlife on >New Israel< compatible with human biology? Is it Kosher?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Currently, I'm making New Israel biologically close to Earth norms. (In fact, I'm going with the idea that a lot of worlds with life were influenced by space-born viri, allowing cloeser biologies that you'd expect from random chance abiogenesis.) We can eat the local life, and some of it can also eat us.

The Kosher arguments will keep rabbis happy and fully employed for the first few generations. Based on my li,ited knowledge, and a qick set of Google searches, the primary qualifications for the dinner table for animals is that they have cloven hooves and chew cud. The odds of evolution producing those characteristics on NI are slim, at best.

However, I could see where after much deliberation, the rabbis would decide that since the restriction refers to "beasts of the Earth" (Leviticus 11:2) that the animals on NI represent a new class, and need to be judged on a case by case basis.