(Formerly Patron-Minette — now 100% more Jewish!)

My name is Hershel, the Geheymer Maggid. I'm a recent college grad, aspiring rabbi, and a budding/amateur Yiddish geek who is enthusiastic about all things Jewish and LGBTQIA-related. PM me if you really want to know more.

Location: עולם הזה (olam hazeh)

Favorite Books: Les Misérables, The Name of the Rose, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Chosen, The Brothers Karamazov, I Claudius, the Cadfael series, The Dybbuk, Tevye the Dairyman (טביה דער מילכיקער), The North of God, Ulysses, Doubt, Angels in America, the Torah, the Talmud

Favorite Authors Overall: Sholem Aleichem, Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco, Victor Hugo, Bernard Malamud, Ellis Peters, Chaim Potok, William Shakespeare, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Steve Stern

Favorite Musicals: Les Misérables, Fiddler on the Roof, Ragtime, The Secret Garden, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Little Shop of Horrors, The Phantom of the Opera, Parade, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, In the Heights, Avenue Q

Favorite TV Shows: Cadfael, Doctor Who (Classic - my favorite Doctor is Four), Sherlock, Blackadder, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Father Ted, Futurama, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Star Trek: TOS

Favorite Music: The Klezmatics, Jethro Tull, Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Janis Ian, Jefferson Airplane, The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, Joanna Newsom, Laura Marling, Fleet Floxes, Ougenweide, The Cranberries, Nirvana, Blind Melon, The Smashing Pumpkins, k.d. lang, Matisyahu, jazz, oldies, classical, klezmer, niggunim

Favorite Movies: Fiddler on the Roof, The Chosen, A Serious Man, Ushpizin, Gone With the Wind, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, An American Tail, Ragtime, the Back to the Future trilogy, Boys Don't Cry, Goodbye Lenin, The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Secret of Kells, Pi, The Prince of Egypt

Hobbies: Writing, doodling, reading, photography, listening to music, exploring urban spaces, doing Jewish things

Updates:
1/6/13: Still dreaming of my Patron-Minette magnum opus. Like that'll ever happen.

8/30/13: Like quite a few writers on this site, you can now find me on Archive of Our Own! I'll be migrating there slowly, although most of my new stuff (whenever I get around to writing it, that is) will be cross-posted here.

Fiddler on the Roof related notes:

1) My stuff is mostly based on the original Tevye the Dairyman short stories by Sholem Aleichem. Thus you'll see characters who don't appear in the musical or movie — Tevye's forgotten daughter Taybl/Teibl, for instance, or Menakhem-Mendl or Efrayim the matchmaker.
2) You may see unusual spellings for characters' names because sometimes I use the standard Yiddish orthography of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. For most of the major characters, however, I retain the more popular spellings.
3) Speaking of names, I'm keeping the musical's versions of certain names because they're more familiar. "Fyedka" is actually "Chvedka" in the stories and "Perchik" is actually "Fefferl" (Perchik is his father's name), but I don't want to confuse everybody.
4) If Tevye's talking, there will be a lot of Biblical quotations in transliterated Hebrew. You've been warned. (Also, if you read the original stories you'll realize that Tevye got his quotes right most of the time.)
5) On that note, translations of quotes or unfamiliar Yiddish or Hebrew words will be included at the bottom of a story or chapter. I study this material regularly, so why not educate others as well and really give a taste of Jewish shtetl life?

Les Mis related notes:

1) All my stories are based on Hugo's canon.
2) You will see a ton of Patron-Minette, since up till now that's all I write and they're my favorite group of characters. Oh, and occasionally Thénardier gets thrown in the mix.
3) Claquesous is my favorite member of the gang. People tend to think he's creepy; I don't, but maybe that's because I write him as an undercover police officer (a double agency only hinted at in the novel). Babet, Gueulemer, Brujon, and Panchaud/Printanier/Bigrenaille are super cool in my book, too. Montparnasse is OK, but don't come looking here for stuff about him — plenty other people have written those kinds of fics, and better than I could.
4) I like to flesh out extremely minor, mentioned-only-in-passing kinds of characters — e.g., the Patron-Minette associate Mardisoir, or the Jewish guy called the Changer (who in my head is named Léon Glück).