3 February 2006 (5 Shvat 5766)
The first semester ended this week. As in the last academic year, I enjoyed teaching a course for freshmen most of all the courses I teach, though it is seemingly the driest and blandest in content. I think this has much to do with the fact that being still new in the university, they have not been infected with two "viruses" that seem to be rather rampant among students in Israel: 1) getting high scores as a purpose in itself in place of pure intellectual curiosity, 2) growing distance between them and us teachers as they continue their studies.
I am afraid that studying something for its own sake, which used to be part of the traditional Jewish culture, has mostly become a thing of the past among the majority of students in Israeli universities, except for those who are thinking of doing their doctorate and remaining in the academia. A good score must be something that naturally follows if you study diligently and not something you get by exercising pressure upon your teacher directly or indirectly. Unfortunately, being a teacher in an Israeli university partly implies having to cope with this intellectual pettiness.
These days I am forced to correct my preconception about what I have thought is still possible with Israeli students, i.e., intellectual interactions and dialogs. It is true that there are more interactions in the classroom here than in Japan, but true dialogs in and outside the classroom seem few and far between in Israel, too. Japan is said to be a closed society, and it is not easy to make students open their heart to us teachers, but I had the privilege of having several students who confided in me. Israeli society, on the other hand, is said to be open, but it seems to me that most of the people never go beyond the self-imposed limit, while in Japan there is no limit once they trust you. The same is the case with students. To be unable to confess your weakness sincerely (but not childishly) is a far more serious sort of weakness itself. Although there must be a mutual respect between teachers and students, I think the artificial distance between them is detrimental to academic discourses. I feel that in a sense this distance is even greater in Israel than in Japan.
10 February 2006 (12 Shvat 5766)
Time seems to have come to find a solution once and for all to an issue I have neglected since I was undergraduate, i.e., at least for the past 20 years: management of xeroxed articles from various academic journals. I think (and really hope) that they will all be digitized in the near future, but in this transition period I still have to continue to xerox the majority of the articles I need instead of receiving/copying and storing them digitally.
I consider myself well-ordered both physically and digitally, but I have to confess that I have done nothing systematical to manage these articles; I have simply been copying and stacking them on a pile of other articles. It is not difficult to imagine what a mess it is to find articles related to a specific topic from this pile; it is often even easier to xerox them anew than to find them there.
Although I speak quite freely with my colleagues, I have never asked anyone of them how they deal with this issue. Only once in my life time did I see anyone of my (ex-)colleagues write about this issue online; the solution an ex-colleague of mine in Japan reached seemed even worse than doing nothing. I really wonder what other researchers do to cope physically with this flood of information.
In the meanwhile I have come to a conclusion that there is no choice but to make a database of all the articles stacked on my bookshelves (and often forgotten) with XML, using either my custom-made vocabulary or some preexisting one. I am afraid it will take at least a year to finish this task in what little spare time I have. Actually, storing the metainformation of these articles is less of a problem; the real problem is how to manage them physically. To this question I have not found any satisfactory answer, especially because my apartment, unlike my hard drive, has a very limited physical space.
17 February 2006 (19 Shvat 5766)
Yehuda Hanasi, who compiled the Mishna, said, "I have studied much from my teachers, I have studied more from my friends, and I have studied most from my students." This famous saying, especially the last part, can be paraphrased as follows: the best way to learn something is to teach it to others. I have had some experience of teaching certain subjects I had studied before and learning new things about them, but have never taught a whole new subject I myself had never studied systematically.
There are two subjects I have long wanted to study: Jewish onomastics and Jewish humor. Both onomastics and study of humor border on linguistics, involve other disciplines, therefore are more interesting to learn but more complicated to teach. I decided to apply the above method of studying a whole new discipline by teaching it, then submitted a request to the head of our department to allow me to teach it in the next academic year, and had it approved recently. Although both subjects equally interest me, I chose Jewish onomastics this time, mainly because I have someone to ask for guidance. I was lucky enough to become acquainted with Prof. Edwin D. Lawson, who is a world authority on onomastics in general and on Jewish onomastics in particular. It is a great honor for me to correspond with him and receive advice directly from him; he has been very open-minded, benevolent and helpful.
It seems to me that my fascination with names in general goes back ultimately to the fact that I have had a hard time with my given name, i.e., not I but others around me have been having difficulties pronouncing and writing it correctly, not only here in Israel but also back in Japan since my childhood. It does not occur "every Monday and Thursday" that I encounter something that fascinates me so much; the more I know about the subject, the more excited I am. But on the other hand, I am sorry that I have not noticed its existence as an academic discipline until quite recently.
Perhaps no other nation on earth has such a variegated inventory of personal names as the Jewish people because of their wide dispersion in time and space. The study of Jewish names, or Jewish onomastics, can also be a kind of condensation of all the languages and areas of Jewish studies I have studied formally or informally. Naturally, I would only be able to dream of scratching the surface of this cultural wealth in this course of mine in preparation, and only from the viewpoint of a linguist at that.
24 February 2006 (26 Shvat 5766)
I am sometimes asked by Israelis what has attracted me so much here in addition to the languages I have been studying. I am not naive any more as to say that everything is good in Israel and everything is bad in Japan. Naturally there are both advantages and disadvantages of living in each of the two societies, but they are often mutually exclusive, i.e., there are not many areas in which both countries are either good or bad, at least as far as interpersonal relationships are concerned.
I always answer the above mentioned question by saying that what I like best here is that people are generally more open, spontaneous, flexible and probably warmer than in Japan. I am not sure whether this is ascribed to traditional Jewish culture or the origin of Israel as an immigrant society. Anyway I always enjoy speaking to or being spoken to by strangers who happen to be at the same bus stop, on the same bus, at the same party or dinner, etc. and often being invited by them later to their houses. Starting a conversation with a stranger is far less common in Japan, perhaps except during long trips where people are more ready for chance encounters; if you did so, you would probably be looked at with suspicion. Being single without a family and relatives here, I really appreciate the hospitality of some of my mentors, teachers and ex-teachers who regularly invite me for Sabbath dinner or lunch. Even in my place of birth in Japan where people know each other, hence more open at least to insiders, and houses are big enough to host guests, it is extremely rare to be invited for a meal at someone else's.
Unfortunately, this positive trait in human relations suddenly disappears in Israel once you move from the private domain to the public, including not only governmental and municipal offices but even the service industry. Although service in Japanese stores often seems a little exaggerated and too artificial, you can feel that they are serving you well. Those stores which fail to meet the norm of satisfying their customers with their service simply lose them. So many clerks and telephone operators in Israeli stores seem to me unqualified to work in the service industry. I often have an impression that they feel they are doing me a favor by offering their service or product; actually, they do in a sense, but I believe that customers should not be made to feel humiliated or even guilty; blaming their customers when some service cannot be offered should be the last thing people in the service industry should do.