5 October 2007 (23 Tishrey 5768)
I have been leading a minimalist life not for lack of choice but as a result of conscious choice. By minimalist life I mean to have only minimal necessities of good quality. Minimalism seems to have become luxury in life as we are tempted to surround ourselves with more and more with unnecessary things. Recently I have come to be conscious of my growing tendency in dietary minimalism, which unlike other kinds of minimalism in my life, results from unconscious choice made by following my body tells my brain.
Most people around me, however, seem to be living an opposite life, i.e., life of dietary maximalism with more and more quantity of refined oil and sugar. I have just read two books that explain that surprisingly it is not our body but our brain that instinctively asks for these two kinds of quasi-poisons. In many other area we are educated to subjugate our body to our brain, but in this specific area we should listen to our body. But many people seem to have lost their ability in their childhood to discern the voice of their own body as it has been silenced almost totally by having been fed with foods containing a lot of refined oil and sugar.
The traditional Japanese foods as were eaten in the 60s and 70s are said to be the healthiest in the world, but unfortunately, many people in Japan, including its leaders and teachers, were brainwashed to erroneously equate this traditional diet with backwardness and encouraged to switch to less healthier diet with more oil and sugar. The situation in Israel is perhaps far worse as the Jewish people seem to have been unable to pay enough attention to diet, except for dietary laws, of course. Kosher foods are said to concern spiritual health, so physically they can be either healthy or not. It is not so easy to follow dietary minimalism in Israel. Since I do not eat anything sweet such as cake, I can easily avoid the danger of refined sugar, but I have to be careful not to consume too much refined oil, as it is contained in almost everything served at restaurants and private houses here. There is no wonder that those who look physically fit are far and few between after the age of 40.
Other two aspect of my dietary minimalism are to eat only two meals a day without breakfast and not to eat between the two meals and after supper. There are not many doctors who claim that it is healthier to eat two meals a day instead of three as we are taught since childhood. Recently I have read a few books that explain why this is so. As I am not a medical doctor, I have no professional knowledge to judge their medical explanations, but the fact remains that I feel better if I do not eat breakfast, even though I get up early and run in the morning. I do not remember exactly when I started to eat no breakfast. This must be probably a gradual process that started when I started to live alone; I simply followed my body little by little and ended up eating no breakfast and feeling better.
Many people may think that eating a lot is luxury, but for me to eat a minimal quantity of foods in high quality is true luxury. Of course, I have no intention of forcing this to anyone, but I often cannot help feeling sorry to see people with bad eating habits and imagine what results they will bring about inevitably to their body.
12 October 2007 (30 Tishrey 5768)
In about a week the new academic year starts in Israeli universities, which is the fourth year for me as a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. As always I have an ambivalent feeling at this time of the year. On the one hand, I am sorry that the summer vacation is about to end, mainly because I could not finish what I had planned to do. I was supposed to write two academic articles both of which happen to be related to the Hebrew Bible, but I have finished (and submitted for review) only one of them. I hope I will have enough time - if not, I have to invent it - to write articles between the teaching of courses during the academic year, but the delay of one article has a domino effect on other articles I plan (and have) to write.
Of course, I also have a positive feeling about the beginning of the new academic year. I have expectations for two kinds of encounters with a new subject and new students I am going to teach. Since I was offered this position here, I have been assigning to myself the task of initiating every year at least one new course I had kept in my "closet" for years. I initiated (Jewish) contact linguistics, (Hebrew) language planning and Jewish onomastics in the first three years, and this year I am teaching an introduction to Jewish languages, which really excites me as the subject has been very close and dear to me. One thing these courses have in common is the fact that they involve not only Hebrew but also aspects of Jewish linguistic experiences. I cannot thank Bar-Ilan University in general and the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages in particular too much for having enabled me to teach such courses that are probably imaginable only in Israel, at least in the way I want with a number of prerequisites. This humble initiative is for daring to instigate not my students-to-be but also myself and applying the method that the best way to learn something is to teach it.
Just as I appreciate those students who return to other elective courses of mine, so do I cherish encounters with new students, especially freshmen, who are still free from all kinds of preconceptions about linguistics. I must have looked weird back in Japan as I did not stop asking questions to my students. Many of them must have felt uncomfortable in class as this interactive method of teaching is not so common there. In this respect I feel like a fish in the water here as this seems to be a very common way for teachers and students to learn something new together and teaching something new to each other. I am really grateful to questions some students initiate without being urged by me, especially those that are seemingly naive as they give me a lot of material for thought and help me reconsider what I have taken for granted.
19 October 2007 (7 Kheshvan 5768)
Many women in Israel, mainly in their twenties, thirties and forties, who have non-traditional Hebrew names remind me that I seem to have a totally different esthetic sense about female given names than their parents who must have chosen their names. One of the phonetic characteristics that differentiate traditional and modern Hebrew female given names is that the former often end with the vowel a (e.g., Sara), while the latter have the suffix -it (e.g., Sarit) in many cases. The former sound far more esthetic than the latter to my ears, but these parents must have had either a different phonetic sense or a non-phonetic (e.g., semantic) reason to choose forms I find less esthetic, if not ugly.
I used to think that I cared about the character, intelligence and appearance of someone for an intimate relationship, but now I have to add a name that is not too unesthetic to my ears as the fourth condition. Many people may look at me as if I were telling ludicrous nonsense, but I simply cannot imagine having to continue calling someone intimate with a name I find totally unesthetic phonetically.
So what phonetic features do I consider beautiful in female given names? First of all, vowels sound more beautiful than consonants. I find vowels and consonants in the following descending order of beauty: a > e, o > i, u; nasals (e.g., m, n) > liquids (e.g., l, r) > voiceless fricatives (e.g., s) > voiceless plosives (e.g., t) > voiced fricatives (e.g., z) > voiced plosives (e.g., d). In terms of phonotactics, those names that consist of open syllables, especially in the word-final position, and have no word-initial consonant cluster sound more pleasing than otherwise.
This explains why I find many traditional Hebrew and Russian names (and/or their diminutives) most beautiful: e.g., Hana, Hava, Lea, Mira, Sara, Shoshana, Tova; Anna, Ekaterina, Elena, Katya, Maia, Marina, Masha, Misha, Nataliya, Natasha, Nina, Sasha, Tanya, Vera. I also have examples of Hebrew female given names I find unesthetic, but I might as well not mention them here so as not to offend anyone and her parents.
26 October 2007 (14 Kheshvan 5768)
Although strikes seem to be legal in many branches of the public sector in Israel, including universities, I am against them in principle. They may often be among the few means of setting your employers to a negotiation table and having your demands accepted, and the causes for them may be totally justifiable, but I cannot accept the (leftist?) idea that every justifiable cause automatically justifies any means of fighting for it.
Too many people depend on the services offered in the public sector, and strikes there cause the innocent to pay the price, which is seldom recompensed. If the strikers think only about their own cause without caring about these people, they seem nothing but egoists and not so different from kidnappers who take innocent people as hostages. I would rather hesitate to do something that might cause others to suffer as a result of my demand and my struggle for it.
In a number of countries even in the developed world employees in the public sector are prohibited from striking or rarely have recourse to it even though it is legal. I have not got used yet to such rampant strikes in the universities in Israel, whether by teachers or by students, which seem to have become part of the annual routine in the country. I wonder if there is really no alternative way of negotiation that does not cause innocent people to suffer for you.