1 November 2002 (26 Kheshvan 5763)
Recently I resumed davening in the local Orthodox shul in Kobe on shabes. Although I am more or less familiar with and accept the intellectual explanations about the importance of davening, especially communally, in Judaism, and this is not the first time to daven, I cannot feel enough spiritual significance in davening or spiritual elevation through it. And the more seriously I think about the act of praying, the more bewildered I become about its essence. Is praying innate or instinctive, or is it socially or culturally conditioned and acquired later in one's life? And why do people pray at all?
I find almost no significance whatsoever in spontaneous prayers as are practiced, e.g., in Shintoist shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan not only because they are essentially egocentric and narrow-minded, and are only to ask for mostly materialistic benefits for oneself, but also for other reasons. I understand why prayers in Judaism are according to the fixed formula in the form of siddur, and why they are superior to spontaneous prayers. But when it comes to the actual act of davening, I cannot help finding it rather dry and not appealing enough to my innermost soul. I may simply be inexperienced in the art of davening as it may require perseverance and experience so that it may become your second nature, and you may become comfortable with it, probably as is the case with other arts like playing musical instruments.
8 November 2002 (3 Kislev 5763)
I had a frantically hectic week. I have been emotionally exhausted by the issue of a certain mailing list in Japanese I manage though now I am supposed to concentrate all my energy on the preparation of a presentation I am going to make in mid-December at a very important conference.
The fact is that I had been bothered by and felt responsible for the state of this mailing list that had had little or no traffic for quite a long time. When I started it about a year and a half ago, it was quite active probably because many of the initial subscribers knew each other, hence the atmosphere was cozy. Ironically, the more people joined the list, the less active it became with the overwhelming majority of the subscribers silent and with few or no responses to what few messages posted there.
With some hesitation and after consultation with one of the oldest core members of the list I posted a series of messages in which I questioned the raison d'être of the list in its inactive state. Although the responses I received were mostly encouraging enough to convince me that there is some significance in the existence of such a list especially because the area it is concerned with and its neighboring areas are not institutionalized in research and teaching in Japan.
I am, however, still puzzled by the fact that only about one fifth of the subscribers expressed some sort of opinions on the list or privately to me, another one fifth of the subscribers. What bothers me more than anything is the fact that about one third of the subscribers who have never posted any message nor responded in any way to my open questions have not responded, with one exception, even to a message I sent them offlist, asking them to let me know what they think. I wonder why on earth they joined the list if they have nothing to say not only on the topic of the list, which may be understandable due to the fact that it is rather specific, and they are probably too shy to write anything in public, but also on the very raison d'être of the list. I am open to criticisms, but those who never verbalize their thoughts and emotions irritate and scare me.
I wonder why public a mailing list is. I do not know whether I am entitled to judge that these enigmatic subscribers are not interested in the list and mechanically cancel their subscription, leaving, of course the possibility of their subscribing to the list again whenever they want. I cannot find any other way to check what these silent people think.
15 November 2002 (10 Kislev 5763)
It is written in the Babylonian Talmud that who shames his friend in public is as one who sheds blood (הַמַלבִּין פּנֵי חֲבֵרוֹ כְּאִילוּ שוֹפֵך דָמִים). I do not know what to do with someone who makes fun of me in public and does not stop saying the very things I have been asking him not to say. Although I am not so sure about the motives for these verbal behaviors of his, he might be trying to draw the attention of others present to himself and become popular by making fun of me in front of them as he has nothing else to say for this purpose, or is showing his hostility or some other kind of negative feeling toward me in a subtle way by saying precisely what I have been asking him to stop.
Anyway, this embarrasses me, sometimes even offends me, and really makes me sad. Although I may not always be successful, I am trying to find good points in every person and like him or her. For this very reason I have offered my help to that person in question in the areas of expertise where I can in order to show not in words but in deeds that I do care about him. But I am afraid that this has not helped much in bridging a gap between us. Every time I hear him say those things, I feel as if I were forced to go back to the starting point and roll the rock up the hill again like Sisyphus.
What can I do so that he may stop these things, in addition to continue asking him to stop? And how should I treat him in return? Theoretically, I could either neglect him to or do the same thing to him. But it seems that by doing so I would degrade myself to the lowest level of self-dignity. As I cannot change his behavior instantly, solutions must also be sought in myself. Although his behaviors are not so justified, there must have something in my words or deeds that makes him have some negative feeling toward me. I am still looking for that something.
22 November 2002 (17 Kislev 5763)
Curiously enough, it often happens that when you are preoccupied with some thought, books or passages catch your eye as if they had been searching for you. Ever since I wrote what I wrote here last week, I have been feeling rather awkward about it. Just then I encountered the following passage in the Avot, which I have been reading with a student of mine in the original Hebrew with commentaries by later Jewish sages: הֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זכוּת. This is generally translated as "judge everyone favorably", but as everyone who knows Hebrew can see, the literal translation as "judge the entire person favorably" seems more appropriate as you have to know the totality of your friend and his situation in order to judge him favorably according to the commentary. Having read this passage, I even felt ashamed of my own small-mindedness and possible partiality. This feeling was intensified as I met the person I had talked about in the meanwhile again and found some positive character traits in him.
Ba'al Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, teaches that man is given the opportunity to view someone else doing exactly what he did, in a slightly camouflaged form, and in a fit of righteous indignation he passes sentence; only then is the facade lifted, and he realizes that is is he who will receive the punishment; the fashion in which man judges his friend is in reality the way in which he is judged from Heaven. The commentary says that therefore, one should not be in a rush to interpret his friend's action with severity, for he may actually be passing judgement for himslef; the reverse is also true: one who judges others favorably effects a favorable judgement for himself.
29 November 2002 (24 Kislev 5763)
This week it was I who had to be judged by others. As the present academic year is near the end, I had my English courses evaluated anonymously by the students. Although they were not allowed to choose which courses to take but had to come to mine as was instructed by the university, their feedbacks were largely positive and reinforced my basic philosophy of teaching in general and that of language teaching in particular.
One of the fundamental principles of my teaching in general is that courses must be based on verbal interaction between the teacher and the students on the one hand and among the students themselves on the other. What a teacher does in his class must be different from what a book can do to its readers. If he simply repeats what is written in a book with no or little interaction, he is nothing but a human tape recorder. But I am afraid that this is still a norm according to what I see in others' courses and hear from my students. Since asking a question is probably the only way to initiate verbal interaction on the intellectual level, I bombard my students with questions, some of which they have never thought of. Since most of the students in Japan are not used to this form of teaching, they are confused and embarrassed in the beginning, but they seem to get used to it gradually, and some of them even come to love and enjoy it, though of course there are always people who can never get used to it, not feeling comfortable to express their thoughts and feelings in public.
Another principle of mine is that the learning process must be fun. In order to infect students with intellectual pleasure, the teacher himself has to enjoy teaching his subject even when it is not exactly what he majors in. One Hasidic rabbi once told us that a man makes his condition, and not vice versa. This must also apply to the atmosphere in class. What the teacher feels, thinks and expresses does have a tremendous effect on how the students feel and think. So it seems totally wrong to accuse the students for the failure of your teaching.
As for the principles specific to language teaching I adhere to, one of them is that a modern language should be taught as a means of communication. Of course, it is important to teach adult learns the grammar of that modern language in question, but I am always trying in my language courses, even in the earliest stage of learning, to make what we learn as communicatively relevant as possible to our real life situations. I strongly believe that communicating with others is not only a pleasure but also a necessity for most of us. Unfortunately, there seem to be many students and some teachers who are poor at communication even in their mother tongue Japanese. In my opinion nothing is pedagogically harmful to students than to learn a modern language from a teacher who dislikes and/or is poor at communicating with others in any language.