1 December 2006 (10 Kislev 5767)
When I sprained my ankle a month ago, I realized anew how vulnerable a man is physically as the whole world around me seemed totally different with my physical limitation. Two more accidents that befell me last month have made me realize additional vulnerabilities of a modern man, who generally has a computer and an Internet connection at home and credit cards. I lost three of them within two weeks. I seem to have a Jewish luck (or to be more precise, lack thereof).
Two weeks ago the condition of my 11-month old laptop computer deteriorated so unbearably that I had to have it fixed. It seems to me that I have broken my personal record of living without a computer and an Internet connection at home. I had to manage to survive without them for as long as two weeks until my computer was fixed and returned this Wednesday. During these two weeks I faced two main difficulties: 1) being unable to work in a familiar environment with specific and customized programs for my work, including preparing materials for my courses, 2) being unable to communicate efficiently with my friends, colleagues and students by email.
As for the latter, I was forced to check email with a browser. Until I started to use a USB-friendly portable version of my favorite mailer Thunderbird called Thunderbird Portable, I had to spend at least five times as much time coping with about 50-100 email messages I receive every day. I really have to thank John Haller for the amazing job he has been doing in preparing various portable versions of popular open source programs. I strongly recommend them not only to those who do not have their own computers at home but also to those who do, if they also have to work with someone else's computer outside their home. You can shlep your favorite open source programs in your USB flash memory wherever you go. I still cannot understand how so many people, including those who have their own computers and Internet connection at home, are wasting so much time out of ignorance, checking email with a browser. Supposedly, they have more than 24 hours a day, or they do not have to sleep as much as I do.
The good news about the return of my computer was totally shadowed by the fact that I lost my purse, including two credit cards, in the bus on my way back home from work this Tuesday. I felt so miserable as I had no cash to eat supper, take a bus from the central bus station back home, and even to go to work on the following morning, until I managed to draw some cash using my own check for myself. I have to apologize to my students for having cancelled my courses for this reason.
I am still angry with the lost-and-found office of the company of the bus I took that night; they never answer telephone calls, and other workers of the same company do not even know where this office is located. One of them seems to have been right when he told me to say kaddish to my purse and credit cards. Once I cancelled my credit cards, I decided not to waste my time further, trying to find them back through this irresponsible company. If I had a choice, I would boycott them by not riding their buses, but unfortunately, they have a monopoly.
8 December 2006 (17 Kislev 5767)
As a born cynic, I have a tendency to be critical of everything, as can be easily seen from these pages. ;-) So it may be natural, though not always justifiable, that I also tend to judge others in the scale of demerit rather than in the scale of merit, often without knowing them and rationales for their seemingly unacceptable speech and behavior.
For a person like me email can be a two-edged sword in this respect; on the one hand, it has helped me deepen my relationships with a number of people as I generally answer private messages immediately and often at length, but on the other hand, I often did so in an emotionally aroused state of mine without thinking twice about my criticism, especially when I was not sober at night. I often felt a guity conscience on the following morning for what I had written criticizing them. I have made similar, though fewer, mistakes of this kind in face-to-face communication, too.
A certain incident I had this week has taught me how dangerous it actually is to judge others so hastily in the scale of demerit, as my criticism has often turned out to be based on my misunderstanding and/or lack of understanding. But it is often the case that I realize my misunderstanding about someone only as a result of my criticizing them and their subsequent explanations.
I am afraid that I am not morally mature enough to judge others, probably except for people I respect and trust, in the scale of merit unconditionally without quarreling with them first. Sometimes such quarrels with them have lead to our mutual understanding and even appreciation, but they have often ended up in irreconcilable mutual accusations and total disconnection of relationships.
15 December 2006 (24 Kislev 5767)
I am planning to make a three-week visit to Japan during the coming winter vacation in February. The three main purposes of this trip are 1) to see my parents in Akita and my sister in Tokyo, 2) to visit Kobe, my second hometown, and its shul, an "alma mater" of mine, and 3) to give a talk in a conference in Tokyo in order to meet and keep in touch with some of my colleagues in Japan. I am also very curious to see how I will feel in Japan this time and back in Israel after this visit.
It is about a year and a half since I visited Japan last time and two years and a half since I came to Israel this time to teach at Bar-Ilan University. When I still lived there, I used to criticize and complain about many things there, including noise, students, interpersonal relationship and society in general. In doing so then, I apparently idealized Israel, which, as I have realized, is far from being a rosy garden. I am not going to repeat the same mistake of idealizing Japan now. Since I am visiting there as a kind of tourist for only three weeks, I may not reexperience some of the things that I found problematic in Japanese society, but there will definitely be enough things I can reexamine there even as a quasi-tourist. They probably include the nature and degree of noise, academic discourse in formal and informal settings, and how the society is organized in general.
I am more interested to see how this short trip in Japan will affect how I feel about Israel, where I live now. I can more or less expect how I will feel in Japan, and even if I should have negative feelings about certain things, this will not bother me much as I do not live there. But I cannot simply predict how I will feel about Israel after the trip. In very simplistic and overall terms, there are three possibilities: 1) Israel is after all less bad than Japan, 2) Israel is actually worse than Japan, 3) both societies are equally problematic, though in different areas. Knowing myself very well, I do not believe that I will have the fourth possible feeling that both societies are paradises on this planet. The question I would like to ask myself during after this visit to Japan is what are the really important things that make a certain society a better (or less bad) place to live in permanently.
22 December 2006 (1 Tevet 5767)
One Jewish (?) joke says as follows: Four friends - an American, a Russian, a Japanese and an Israeli - are shmoozing over a cup of coffee in some coffee house. There comes a journalist into the place, finds them and asks them, "Excuse me, what is your opinion about the shortage of meat in the world market?" The American answers, "Excuse me, but what is 'shortage'?" The Russian says, "Excuse me, but what is 'meat'?" The Japanese says, "Excuse me, but what is 'opinion'?" And finally the Israeli asks, "What is 'excuse me'?!" I am not sure if you find this joke amusing, but if it does, you seem to know Israelis and Israeli society, or at least how they are perceived stereotypically. After all, this and other ethnic jokes cannot be funny if they are not based on some truth.
In my opinion one of the adjectives that characterize Israeli society most precisely is "stressful". I have been thinking that this results partly from the fact that people find it so hard to say "excuse me" or "sorry" (in Hebrew the same word סליחה for both meanings), especially in public; or it may be more precise to say that the reluctance or (inability) to use these expressions even as cliches causes stress in the society. Anyway, they are busy accusing themselves, instead of admitting that they are to blame. If you are "lucky" enough to live in Israel, I would like you to ask yourself when you were told so by someone working in the service industry.
I have no intention of claiming that Japanese society, where everyone in the service industry first apologizes even before thanking, is healthier, but you seldom or never feel irritated after speaking with them as you are treated as if you were a living god, receiving a flood of "excuse me" and "sorry". Israeli society neither has to nor should be like this, but nevertheless, it can probably decrease its stress level, hence the number of traffic accidents, by starting to sincerely apologize to others, especially when you feel you have some fault, instead of first trying to accuse others.
29 December 2006 (8 Tevet 5767)
I have had a constant fear of losing the key of my apartment. The fear is even bigger than that of losing money. When I lost my purse with two credit cards a few weeks ago, I was a little relieved to find that at least the key of my apartment was with me. Fortunately, I had never lost it (unfortunately, I have to write this in the past perfect tense), until I lost it on Wednesday night for the first time in my life.
On that night it snowed rather heavily in Jerusalem. As I grew up in a snowy region, snow is nothing unusual for me; on the contrary, it reminds me mainly of negative things. Nevertheless, I went out to take some pictures of my neighborhood covered with snow in order to send them to my parents in Japan. When I returned from this short midnight walk, I did not find the key with me. With no coat on and shivering in the snow, I spent the next one hour looking for it on the street in vain.
I had to bother my neighbor, who is also a good old friend of mine, with a request to allow me in and use his telephone to call my landlord (in such a situation even I could not help thinking that having a mobile phone was not such a bad idea after all), though I knew that he could do nothing, as he lives in another city and it was not so realistic to take a taxi and visit him, especially after I heard that he could not recognize the key of my apartment in the collection of his keys. I should have left a spare key at my neighbor's, but since I did not, I was left with no choice but to call a special service for breaking the lock and replacing it with a new one. Until he told me about this, I did not know that such a service exists. After about half an hour I found myself back inside my apartment.
The price for my stupidity and/or Jewish bad luck: 600 shekels (ca. 140 US dollars). But too many tsores in such a short period of time.