1 May 2009 (7 Iyar 5769)
Israel celebrated its 61st Independence Day this Wednesday. I always have an ambivalent feeling about the way this national festival is celebrated. I love Israel both as a country and as a land, though I do not always feel connected with its (secular) culture. I have only good reasons to participate in this national joy as an official part of this nation. The more I think, the more amazed I am at this miraculous event of the establishment of the State of Israel and its subsequent development. It also warms my heart to see so many people, regardless of their political positions, pround of their own country, in sharp contrast to, e.g., Japan, where so many leftists seem more loyal to China and Korea than to their own country and even ashamed of it.
I think that to love one's own country is a very natural feeling that starts with physical love of one's neighborhood, then one's city, etc. Therefore it always perplexes me to find what I consider a contradiction between love of Israel as a country vs. disrespect for Israel as a land. Sacher Park, where I run every week day, is the biggest part in Jerusalem. It is where many people make BBQ parties with their families and friends on the independence day. It becomes the loveliest place in the city on this special day with many happy faces and voices, but the morning afterwards it becomes the ugliest place in the city with so much garbage many people leave behind after their parties.
I simply fail to understand why they dare to do such a thing. On the one hand they seem to show their love of their country by celebrating its independence day, but they do not seem to care at al about their contaminating it physically. How can I trust their love of their country? They are like people who claim to love books but dare to sit upon them or tear them. Their love must derive from something far less genuine. The independence day, therefore, is for me a day when egoists celebrate at the expense of the land, making sure that their egocentric behaviors of contaminating the land are inherited by their children as part of the Israeli culture and as part of the national customs on the indepencende day (and on other days throught the year).
8 May 2009 (14 Iyar 5769)
Since my ex-girlfriend left me two weeks ago, I have been making some old and new attempts not only to heal the pain of separation but also to restart emitting my positive energy to my surroundings and send even stronger and more focused messages to the Universe. In other words, I have been trying to apply more seriously and intensely the so-called "Law of Attraction" to my life projects.
One of the old attempts is to plan trips, though they are not purely for the purpose of tourism and healing but are part of my academic activities. This week I finalized my flight tickets to and from Poland and hotel reservations in Warsaw and Bialystok. Poland is one of the countries I have always wanted to visit most. The annual world congress of Esperanto will be held this time in Bialystok, where Zamenhof was born. Although I was thinking of revisiting the "Yiddish Week" in the suburbs of New York again, I have decided to do something untried first. What better occasion can there be for visiting Poland than this? I may also revisit the "Yiddish Week" to meet those I made friends with last summer, but I still have some hesitation as revisiting there also means meeting someone in whom I still seem to have my energetic hooks. I am afraid that if I see her again, my emotion may flare up again beyond my control, though deep inside me I already know that I should not expect anything in this respect for a number of practical and other reasons.
After my return from Bialystok (and New York) I will take part in workshops in Jerusalem on two things I have always wanted to learn - cooking and wine tasting. It is always a good thing to change our routine so that we may reconfigure our energetic field in a positive way, socializing with people who share the same interest. I believe that we are at our best when we are doing something we really like, totally forgetting other things, and radiating our most positive energy around ourselves.
This week I also started a totally new thing I have never done before, nor have I ever thought of - giving myself a gift as a sign of appreciation! What I like best to give to those who are dear to me as presents are flowers. I bought myself some roses. I never expected that this would give me such a nice feeling. I think I will continue this new custom, if not every week, but at least once a month. I have finally come to understand the universal truth that we have to love ourselves - naturally, not in the narcissistic sense of the word - to be loved by others. Giving ourselves a present is a good physical way to internalize this feeling.
For the past several weeks I have been reading various books on the Law of Attraction. One of the most impressive phrases I have encountered in the process is the following: "Living as if is a statement to the Universe that you're not willing to postpone your joy to some distant time in the future." How true when the author of this phrase also says, "When you live as if what you want is already your reality, you gain a whole new perspective on your life"! I really do!
15 May 2009 (21 Iyar 5769)
Ever since I started learning Esperanto by myself in February 1986, when I was still a graduate student in linguistics in Kyoto, my interest in it is all time high now. This is mainly because I am not only participating this late July in the annual World Congress of Esperanto in Bialystok, the birthplace of Zamenhof, but also supposed to give two talks there. Having been working on them (one is on the Jewish background of Zamenhof and Esperanto, and the other (in three parts) is a sociolinguistic comparison of Esperanto and Yiddish as two diaspora languages, especially on the Internet), I am fascinated anew with this linguistic experimentation which is only second to the revitalization of Hebrew in terms of its uniqueness in the history of humankind.
My fascination with Esperanto, however, remains mostly intellectual, or to be more precise, linguistic and sociolinguistic, though I have some emotional attachment to Zamenhof. I am not attracted in particular to what can be considered Esperanto culture, including customs during international gatherings. I may be wrong, but it seems to be nothing but a kind of the common denominator of (Christian) European cultures. I am interested neither in cosmopolitanism nor in all the cultures; only (specific) Jewish cultures appeal to me emotionally.
This annual World Congress of Esperanto as well as many (or probably all) gatherings of Esperantists, including those in Israel, is not friendly to observant Jews like myself and probably to observant Muslims as well, e.g., in terms of foods. I am not blaming the organizers; this is understandable as few Israeli Esperantists are observant, and there are not many Muslim Esperantists in the world. But this can be a vicious circle. I just want those Esperantists, whether European or not, who think that European cultures are the universal ones or being an Esperantist means behaving according to their norms not to take this for granted. Personally, I feel absolutely no self-contradiction between being an Esperantist and being a (more or less) observant Jew. For me being an Esperantist does not mean adopting Eurocentric Esperanto culture as mine. To proclaim this in public, I will wear a yarmulke during this world congress as I do in Israel, though I may hesitate to do so on the streets of Warsaw and Bialystok.
If there is any emotional excitement about this trip to Poland in general and to Bialystok in particular, it has much to do with things Jewish, rather than with Esperanto. Poland, including Warsaw and Bialystok, was one of the centers of Jewish (especially Yiddish) cultural creativity before the Holocaust. So this trip will also be a kind of homage to this culture that flourished there until before several decades.
22 May 2009 (28 Iyar 5769)
I decided to remain in academia because I liked to study. It did not take me a long time to realize that love of academic input is not sufficient to make an academic career. We are expected to make academic output in the forms of teaching and research (and to excel in them). I was poor at both teaching and research.
When I started teaching in the university, not only was I poor at teaching, but also did I not like it at all. Strangely, however, I came to love and enjoy it, if not always. There was even a time when I thought that teaching was my vocation. I write this in the past tense because I do not feel so any more.
A very strange thing is happening to me these days. To my great surprise, I have started to like research. This does not mean that I can write articles easily; on the contrary, every time I write an article, I still have to experience the pain of birth. But recently I have been enjoying research far more than teaching. I only have to make my best not to have this affect my teaching negatively.
I used to think that teaching something is the best way to learn it. This seems to be the case only when you want to cover a whole discipline or subdiscipline in a rather superficial way, i.e., when coverage is more important than depth. But if you want to deepen your knowledge about specific subjects, there is nothing like writing articles about them. Presenting something in a way that is both palatable to others and convincing to them helps you internalize it as part of your knowledge.
There is another feeling that research can give to you, but not teaching. It is a sense of accomplishment. Teaching is by nature a Sisyphean labor; it is rather difficult to feel that you have accomplished something. On the other hand, research, or at least writing an article on a specific subject, has a definite end.
28 May 2009 (5 Sivan 5769)
I spend almost all my annual research budget for trips abroad. It is enough only for two such trips every year. Since I visit Japan during the winter vacation, I can afford only one more trip, generally during the summer vacation. When I started planning where to go this summer, I was of two minds which alternatives to choose, the annual world congress of Esperanto for the first time or the annual Yiddish summer camp again. When I returned from the latter last summer, I was convinced that I would be there again this summer. But in the meanwhile various things happened in my life both externally and internally, and in the end I decided to try something I have never tried.
It is too late to reverse this decision, but while working on the talks I am supposed to give there in the world congress of Esperanto, this time in the birthplace of Zamenhof, I cannot help asking myself if I have made the right decision, not because I do not enjoy working on these talks, nor because I am not interested to be there, but because of something else that has nothing to do with Esperanto. Another reason why I have decided to opt for this alternative is to evade a certain encounter in the annual Yiddish summer camp. It is not that I do not want it; on the contrary, I have been dreaming of it since I returned from the last summer camp. I am just afraid that after that encounter I may find myself (again) in a very difficult emotional condition. Recently I dreamed of this encounter (while sleeping at night) and it was so vivid, which is why I wish I could reverse my decision.
There is also something that rather worries me. As far as I understand, the annual world congress of Esperanto seems to be based on the cultural literacy of Standard Average Europeans, of which I am not part. Having read reports about the past world congresses, so many things seem so foreign to me culturally. In the meanwhile I have also experienced online a kind of discrimination (or at least different treatment) by an enough number of European Esperantists solely on the basis of my name(s) in spite of the fact that they have never met me and know nothing about me except for my name(s). I am also worried where and what I can eat at all in Bialystok because of Jewish dietary laws. In the Yiddish summer camp I did not have this problem, and I also felt like a fish in the water culturally, too.
I have an impression that this participation in the world congress of Esperanto will make me more Jewish and appreciate more the fact that I live in the Jewish state, though it is far from being a rosy garden. But I can at least feel that I share more or less the same culture with an enough number of people here, if not with everyone.