I've been itchy for a long time to share thoughts that are unrelated to Tanach, the subject of my other, more active blog, Tanach Thoughts.
I debated for a long time whether I should open another blog, until I remembered I still have this one. So, after a few years, here I am once again.
What's on my mind? Well, a lot of things. I mean, there's a war going on here in Israel. But in my private four amot, I'm impatiently waiting for replies from four different journals regarding academic papers I submitted.
One is on the topic of the Levitical Cities. I first handed it in to a certain Israeli journal a little over a year ago. A month later, the editor informed me that the paper was lacking for various reasons, but since I was new to the field, she was giving me the option to fix the issues and resubmit. It took about a year to go through all of the revisions, but I finally gave it in a little over a month ago. But then it took another month until I received the okay from the editor that she was sending it in to be peer reviewed. That's better than last time, to be sure, but who knows how long peer review wl take...
The second one, about the life of Rabbi Elazar ben Arach, was sent to a bunch of different journals. It has been rejected from three journals and is now in the hands of a fourth. It's been a little over a month since submission.
The third one, about Karaites and haskalah, based on an extensively-researches answer I wrote on Mi Yodeya a few years ago, was sent in as an experiment to a minor journal published by a major publishing company. The experiment was to see whether I would be able to get published on my own, without assistance from professors (as was the case with the first two papers). I figured it would be quickly rejected and I would move on to the next journal, but it has been piling dust there for over six months! Only a month and a half ago did its status change to "under review".
The fourth one, which is simply my seminary paper from last year on Jewish Messianic hopelessness in the 3rd-4th centuries CE, was sent in to an Israeli history journal which was created with the goal of publishing seminary papers, to give a leg-up to aspiring young history students. That was sent in some time last summer. I was quickly informed that the paper would only be read by the staff when the semester starts. The semester hasn't started yet.......though it will in a couple of weeks. However, who knows whether the staff are in the army or not, and when they might get around to reading it. Not that I'm optimistic they'll think it's right for the paper. I kind of invented a topic on that one, so the theory is a bit all over the place. I connected sources and situations that otherwise seem to have no relation at all. And it's super long to boot.
The fifth paper has not been submitted yet. It's still a draft. It's a particularly exciting research project regarding a fascinating manuscript that has hardly been studied before. One of my professors read it and thought it was worth publishing. He recommended I hold off with submitting it and try to use this as an opportunity to network, to get to know more experienced scholars. He suggested a number of ways to do this, each involves soliciting advice from more experienced scholars, in different manners. Right now I went with the simplest option, which is to send it to another professor of mine, who I had previously been too shy to ask for help in this. The first professor convinced me the second would be happy to help. And so, he agreed to read the paper as soon as he could. However, I took that to mean a few days at most. But it's been two weeks. Just a bit of a downer.
Anyway, here I am, waiting. I would really like to get something accepted for publication before I finish my degree. It'd be cool in itself, and I'd like to spread my ideas. Right now I needed to get all of these nerves off of my chest.
