3 March 2006 (3 Adar 5766)
There are two types of oral presentations I make in academic conferences: those that are based on what few prior publications or unpublished studies I have, and those on the basis of which I plan to write papers later. Since my academic survival in Israel depends on the number of (refereed) papers, I may as well publish what I have presented orally, unless it was criticized by my fellows in a conference. Failing to do so is failing to invest time and energy efficiently. It is true that extra investment of time and energy is required, especially for someone like myself who is slow and bad at academic writing, to convert an oral presentation into a print publication, but at least the basis is already there.
Struggling now to write a paper based on a presentation I made last summer, I realize that this strategy of postponing the writing for months, which I have been using for years, has been a grave mistake. Just to reconstruct the mental state I reached when I prepared a presentation, I now have to respend the same or even more amount of time and energy I initially spent then. I used to postpone writing these papers, and in many cases I never succeeded in doing so, partly because of my perfectionism-shmerfectionism and partly for lack of time.
I am learning two lessons now. First, perfectionism is not always a virtue. We, or at least I with my limited ability, will never be able to attain academic perfection even in a well-defined small area of research. Of course, we should strive for it, but if we wait for it as a precondition for start writing some academic paper, we will probably be unable to write anything at all. Second, postponing something for lack of time in the short term leads to waste of time in the long term. This may be similar to wasting money by purchasing cheap goods. The famous saying about money, "I am too poor to buy cheap things", can be paraphrased as "I am too busy to postpone things" about time management in general and writing papers in particular.
10 March 2006 (10 Adar 5766)
The biggest problem in living in a foreign country probably lies not so much in linguistic and social differences as in dietary differences. Our taste formed in our childhood is probably among the most conservative habits we have. Fortunately, I really like most of the Jewish/Israeli foods, so generally speaking, my stomach enjoys living in Israel. But temporal enjoyment often means a burden in the long run. When I am invited to two Sabbath meals on one Sabbath, I instinctively feel that my body has been damaged because of overeating. Then I often fast to regain my physical balance.
Not only after overeating but sometimes even without overeating, I also feel like eating something minimalist, i.e., foods that are cooked in such a way that we can enjoy their raw materials with minimal "makeup". Unfortunately, such dietary minimalism seems hard to come by in Israeli restaurants. I often find such "cosmetics" really "noisy" and preventing me from enjoying the foods per se, to say nothing of the fact that they are generally less healthy.
Israel is more minimalist than Japan in many areas of life, including, e.g., makeup of young women, but when it comes to foods, it is far "noisier". It is necessary to make special efforts to live without such dietary "noise" here, while in Japan it is fairly easy to do so. This "noise" relates not only to the quality of foods but also to their quantity. It seems to deafen the dietary instinct of so many people in Israel and make them overeat and become overweight.
17 March 2006 (17 Adar 5766)
Living in Israel, I come and keep in contact mainly with three groups of people, whether religious or secular: "Sabras", "Anglo-Saxons" and "Russians", i.e., Jewish Israelis who were born in Israel, the United States and the Former Soviet Union respectively. Although I know I am generalizing and I do not want to offend anyone, words that come to my mind as characteristics with which they impress me most are frankness, sophistication and warmth respectively.
Naturally, I enjoy their company in different ways. Strangely, however, I feel most at home with "Russians" emotionally, though my knowledge of Russian, which I consider the most beautiful language on this planet, has become quite rusty, and I know Hebrew and English much better. I somehow feel that I speak the same "language" with many of the "Russians" - a feeling I cannot always have with "Sabras" and "Anglo-Saxons" except with my close friends and mentors.
I remember having a very similar feeling when I used to teach Japanese as a foreign language back in Japan; then I had students from various countries, including Israel, the US and the FSU. In spite of the fact that the majority of the students from the FSU were not Jewish (i.e., there were even a couple of Jewish students!), I felt I had a more similar "language" with them than with Jewish students who were born and raised in Israel.
My explanation for this seemingly paradoxical feeling is their warmth peppered with sarcasm, which perhaps transcends linguistic barriers. Again I do not want to generalize too much, nor do I want to offend anyone, but I have met more warm and sarcastic people from the FSU than from Israel, the US and other countries, though of course this does not mean that everyone from the FSU is warm and sarcastic. I might simply have been lucky in this respect.
I find similar warmth and sarcasm among those who are connected to the traditional East European Jewish culture, whether they are religious or secular, regardless of whether they were born in Israel, the US or elsewhere. It is likely, therefore, that this warmth with sarcasm is something common to East Europe in general. Those Ashkenazic "Sabras" and "Anglo-Saxons" who are disconnected from the traditional East European (Jewish) culture may also have lost warmth in the process of a kind of acculturation to the mainstream in Israeli and American Jewries respectively.
24 March 2006 (24 Adar 5766)
I started, or to be more precise, was forced to start, drinking alcohol as part of the "initiation rite" as a university student in Japan. Without this "rite" and many subsequent occasions to drink with my friends and teachers, I may have neither started nor continued drinking as I did not like the taste of beer, which was and still is the most common alcoholic beverage drunk in this "rite" and many other social occasions in Japan, in the first place. It was only after a few years of being forced to drink beer that I really started to like it until I came to consider it - and I still do - as one of the greatest inventions of humankind.
Having been initiated into the world of university students or that of adults in general in Japan through alcohol, each one has to learn the maximum quantity of alcohol that his or her body can tolerate through a series of trials and errors on his or her flesh. Until one finds it and even afterwards, many people, including myself, overdrink and as a result, say or do what they may not say or do when they are sober. Each one has his or her own peculiar form of speech and behavior under the influence of alcohol.
When I started drinking, I often miscalculated and lost consciousness. But even when I did not, I often said and did stupid things that made me blush when I became sober again. Now I know my limit, so it seldom happens - i.e., it does happen nevertheless, though quite rarely - that I lose consciousness. But unfortunately, I continue to say and do things I may not be able to allow myself to say and do when I am not drunk. These things do not make me blush later anymore as they are not stupid things. I myself have noticed that especially in the past few years I have come to mainly say and occasionally do what I seem to think deep inside myself in a rather exaggerated manner, i.e., if I think highly of someone or something, my positive comments sound like flatteries, but on the other hand, my criticism against someone or something becomes really unsparing, if not unfair. Sometimes I am afraid of my own ability-shmability to be so harsh verbally when I am drunk (and sometimes even when I am not).
I am not sure any more which is my real self, when I am sober and controlled by reason and social conventions, or when I am drunk and freed from them. One thing I feel is that my "Mr. Hyde" is taking hold of my "Dr. Jekyll" more and more even when I do not consume any "special medicine" as in the story of Stevenson.
31 March 2006 (2 Nisan 5766)
Daylight time, also known as daylight saving time and summer time, started today in Israel. At the personal level I find more problems than benefits in this system. Actually, I have only problems and no benefit at all as I use the same amount of electricity for lighting regardless of daylight time. This is because I always keep the curtains closed and the light on in my study, where I work when I do not teach in the university, even during the daytime so that my books may not be burned by the direct and indirect sunlight penetrating through the window.
Other people may be able to save electricity, hence money, at home and at work thanks to daylight time, and this is the main rationale for implementing it in many countries in the temperate zone. In addition to those arguments against it that are common to all these countries (e.g., disruption in sleep patterns, increase in air conditioning costs in exchange for decrease in lighting costs, etc.), I see an additional problem specific to Israel, or to be more precise, to its religious Jewish sector: damage to health.
Social time can be adjusted to daylight time, i.e., people who work from 9AM to 5PM in the winter start and finish their work at the same hours in the summer. This is not the case with halakhic time, which depends solely on the movement of the sun (and the moon) and not on social conventions. So a certain conflict arises between social time and halakhic time. For example, the time for the evening prayer which is supposed to start, let's say, at 6PM starts at 7PM in daylight time.
Religious Jewish people eat their Sabbath evening meal after davening in the synagogue, i.e., approximately an hour after the sunset. So during the summer they start eating their heaviest meal of the week an hour later in daylight time, generally after 8PM instead of 7PM (almost around 9PM around the summer solstice), while the time to go to bed is generally determined by social time. What does this mean? They have less time interval between the end of their heavy meal and the beginning of their sleep - generally less than two hours unless they go to bed after twelve midnight and sleep less to get up early enough for the morning prayer, which generally starts at the same social time, i.e., an hour earlier than in non-daylight time.
It is generally said that one should stop eating two hours before sleeping for one's health. But daylight time does not allow religious Jewish people to be awake enough before going to bed; the "loss" of one hour makes this difference in daylight time. If this happens only once in a blue moon, it will not affect their health, but since it happens at least once a week for several months a year, it seems to have a negative influence on their health on the long-term basis. Perhaps this is partly why I seem to see more overweight people among the religious than among the secular in Israel. Considering the fact that obesity is a cause of various diseases, for which the government and insurance companies have to pay, as well as other possible monetary losses caused by other problems, I am not sure if the financial benefit is enough to justify daylight time in Israel.