For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?

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lumpley

  • 1293
For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« on: March 25, 2014, 04:44:17 PM »
So I've got Royal Blood, Blood of Eagles, the Old Blood. What would you suggest for Jews? None of your playbook names quite do it.

It doesn't have to be "blood," but I do want to emphasize genealogy over theology.

Should it mention the temple? That's where my instinct goes.

(The text that'll accompany it basically says that your ancestors were displaced here from far away by the Empire of Eagles, to disrupt their power base, which was how the Empire loved to do things.)

Any thoughts?

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lumpley

  • 1293
Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2014, 04:49:49 PM »
Oh, also, I definitely want to emphasize their coherence, memory, and continuing tradition, not their displacement. So not like "Blood of the Displaced" or anything.

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Munin

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Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2014, 05:58:31 PM »
Make a play on Passover traditions and go with Blood of the Lamb?

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As If

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Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #3 on: March 25, 2014, 06:11:05 PM »
If you want to be literal about the word "blood" (as in bloodline), then something like "Blood of (analog for) Abraham" would be fitting.  If you want to emphasize the Qabalistic aspect, "Blood of Sophia" (as in Gnosis) might be closer to the right general area.

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Lukas

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Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2014, 06:56:01 PM »
Blood of the Covenant, or synonyms for that... "Pact" has too bad connotations, but "Bond", perhaps? "Accord"?

Or just have that particular playbook be the weirdo that doesn't have the same kind of genealogy rules as the others, making them less of a threat to the inheritance of others and justifying their special trusted position.

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lumpley

  • 1293
Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2014, 07:22:58 PM »
(It's not for just a single playbook).

Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2014, 08:07:50 PM »
More thoughts than anything close to a solution:

if Bloodless Xristos/Noble(New) Blood is closest to a Christian equivalent, I could see Blood of the Ancients or some such. But considering there is already "Old Blood" , it seems a bit repetitive.

If you did go this route or something similar, I could see leaving the description open enough to be interpreted as having some similarities to ancient South American (incan,myan,aztec,etc.) religions - this if you wanted to include temples without being transparent that you are directly referencing Judaism. I only mention this because The Bloodless have a few "well it may not be exactly like Christianity bits"

Other thoughts:

Binded Blood (realize Binded isn't a word but sounded kinda cool) or The Binding Blood.  Could have allusions to be "Chosen" by a specific god without being completely overt and partially reference the process of  laying tefillin and what it represents. While at the same time having just an evocative name that could be interpreted several ways.

Similarly if one wants to go really off-kilter. Could go with the Stone Blooded /Blood of the Stone-Soil/ Stone Blood- obvious play on Iron Blood and obscure reference to Golems (I figured Clay was too obvious). Could provide a good segue to use of temples. (I mainly came to this through an attempt to figure out an alternative interpretation of bloodless..)

*shrugs* just some thoughts..doubt it's helpful but never know if it might spark a thought or something

Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #7 on: March 25, 2014, 10:34:29 PM »
"Blood of the Covenant" or "Chosen of the Covenant" seems right to me somehow.

Charles

Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #8 on: March 26, 2014, 12:51:17 AM »
the Memory Sibling
the Grimoire Bearer
Child of the Nameless God, or just the Child of the Nameless
Looking for a playbook? Check out my page!
http://nerdwerds.blogspot.com/2012/12/all-of-playbooks.html

Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2014, 03:45:48 AM »
"Blood of the Covenant" or "Chosen of the Covenant" seems right to me somehow.

I'd go with "Blood of the Covenant" or "Blood of the Chosen" myself. Being "chosen" is a big deal in Judaism; it doesn't necessarily give you any privileges, just a whole bunch of extra responsibilities, but it puts you in a select category, separate from non-members.

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lumpley

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Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #10 on: March 26, 2014, 08:12:52 AM »
Thanks, everybody! I think the word I'll use is "birthright."

Plausible fabulist, if you want to weigh in still, please do. Otherwise, everybody, I have what I need.

-Vincent

Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #11 on: March 26, 2014, 08:41:55 AM »
I like a lot of what's being suggested here. "Blood of the Covenant" makes a lot of sense, and suggests the literal bloodiness of circumcision (which is most often referred to simply as "the convenant" -- brit or bris).

The Jews very much thought of themselves as being a family of descent -- the House of Israel, Israel here being a person, Jacob, not a geographic area -- more than a religion or nation in the modern sense. A family you could join, thus not strictly genealogical in a biological sense (and indeed during exactly this period, the Dark Ages, there was enough conversion to Judaism to upset the Church authorities enough to constantly issue declarations against the practice).

In this sense it might be better not to make it "Blood of" because with the Old Blood, Royal Blood, and Blood of Eagles you really are talking about lineal descent, and "Bloodless Xristos" plays nicely on this to suggest a fellowship which anyone, of any birth, can join, irrespective of ancestry. 6th-century Judaism is something in between -- definitely a familial relationship of descent, not an anti-familial monastic-based utopian community, but one with specific rituals available for joining up.

"Children of" or "House of" might get at that better. "Children of the Covenant" or "House of the Covenant" would be a possibility. Or "People of the Covenant".

When the real-world Dark Ages Jews are calling themselves bet yisrael/bais yisroel, the House of Israel (and perhaps occasionally am yisrael, the People of Israel), they're referring to a specific ancestor. Israel literally means the Stuggler-with-God, and it's the epithet Jacob wins, after his night-long wrestling match with what's usually (and in my somewhat idiosyncratic reading of the text, euphemistically) referred to as "an angel". A plain reading of Genesis 32:22-32 suggests it's actually God he's wrestling with: "I give you this name because you have fought with God and with men, and you have won.”

I mention this in case  you want to make some pun on what exactly it is they are the house of, naming the ancestor by epithet, though nothing immediately jumps out at me there.

"Chosen" is also interesting, though more theological, and you want the emphasis to be genealogical, making it parallel to the various inheritance systems. (Interestingly, at least in Merovignian France, where Roman and Salic law were both in force, Jews were considered to be a special case of Roman law; where Jews went to court in disputes with non-Jews they had the right to adjudication under Roman law, while inter-Jewish disputes were handled under Rabbinical law).

The Temple is also an interesting option, but I feel like in a way it emphasizes precisely those things you don't want to emphasize -- dispersion and theology. The Temple largely figures in medieval Jewish thought as a symbol of loss and exile, of what we don't have any more. There's also a certain ambivalence in Rabbinical attitudes towards the Temple. On the one hand, it's central to the tradition that the Rabbis honor; on the other hand, the Rabbis grow out of the populist Pharisaic movement that grew up in opposition to Levitical/formal temple authority, and their writings quite often portray the Temple priests as dolts. One of the main Rabbinical images of the temple is that of Yochanan ben Zakkai slipping out of besieged Jerusalem, founding the first rabbinical academy at Yavneh, and teaching that what previously was attained by sacrifice in the temple could now be attained by deeds of lovingkindness and atonement. In other words, the Rabbis were most comfortable with the Temple when its rebuilding was positioned far off in the messianic future, as part of the world's final redemption.

Also, unlike the patriarchal traditions of Abraham and Jacob, the Temple doesn't really belong to all the Jews equally. If there was a "Blood of the Temple", it would be the kohanim and leviim, the Cohens and Levis, the hereditary priesthood and their cousin-servants, who the Rabbis seriously downgraded from a reigning ecclesiastical elite to a powerless group with a purely symbolic vestigial minor function.

"Blood of the Temple" would be analogous to "Old Blood" or "Royal Blood" in pointing to a specific subgroup of the people following that inheritance system as the hereditary elite justified by lineage; the problem is, within that subgroup, the hereditary elite had been already deposed for centuries, and the territory-based ideology privileging their role (sacrifices in the Temple) replaced with a portable ideology privileging the new, non-hereditary, technocratic/nomocratic elite (rabbinic exegesis and scholarship, legal rulings, prayer and ritual communal reading of the Law).

"The Law" might be another thing to work in there. "Children of the Law" would be another spin on "Children of the Covenant", pointing to the effective source of both power and unity within the dispersed Jewish community...

Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #12 on: March 26, 2014, 08:46:39 AM »
Not crazy about "birthright" both because, as noted, acquiring it post-birth through conversion was very much a relevant political issue in the Dark Ages ( http://tinyurl.com/merovignian-jewish-proselytism ), and also because of its unfortunate association with that contemporary free-trip-to-israel-for-teens propaganda exercise...

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lumpley

  • 1293
Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #13 on: March 26, 2014, 10:35:24 AM »
"House of"! Perfect.

Cool, thank you. I would have missed the contemporary association of "birthright" altogether.

-Vincent

Re: For Plausiblefabulist: Jewish Genealogy?
« Reply #14 on: March 26, 2014, 10:48:04 AM »
You are very welcome.