7 August 2009 (17 Av 5769)
I participated in the 15th World Congress of Jewish Studies held in Jerusalem this week. This will remain in my memory as the least unforgettable of all the six World Congresses of Jewish Studies I have attended in the past 20 years. I was still dragging both physical fatigue and emotional baggage from the World Congress of Esperanto in which I participated last week. So I decided to go to a very limited number of sessions in this World Congress of Jewish Studies. What few sessions I attended were all interesting and even inspiring. I especially liked the session on Ashkenazic musical traditions where my dance teacher Prof. Walter Zev Feldman and his wife Prof. Judit Frigyesi lectured.
I noticed a fundamental difference between the World Congress of Esperanto and the World Congress of Jewish Studies. The latter is purely acacemic. This time I did not even make any effort to get acquainted with new people. In the former every participant was a potential interlocuter. The fact that you are an Esperantist was enough to start a conversation with a total stranger not only in the congress venue but also outside it. Such atmosphere was naturally lacking in the World Congress of Jewish Studies. Nevertheless I felt far more comfortable in this congress, as I know far more participants, speak the two main languages of the congress (Hebrew and English) much better than Esperanto, and felt that I share the same culture with many of the participants. What really frustated me in the World Congress of Esperanto was that words and expressions expressing Jewish content were totally lacking in Esperanto. In other words, Esperanto as well as other non-Jewish languages simply has no Jewish taste.
I never imagined that I would experience some culture shock in Jerusalem after living here for ten years. The festive banquet welcoming us participants was a total disaster for me. What few foods served there were terrible, and worse still, no wine or any other alcoholic beverage was served. I am aware that drinking alcohol is not part of traditional Jewish culture, but do the organizers have to be so stingy even in such a festive occasion? I could not help asking how they wasted the expensive fee we participants paid, and feeling that we were cheated. Of course, foods are not the main purpose of participating in this congress, but this lousy banquet on the first day definitely destroyed my festive mood.
Participating in two congresses one after another in two consecutive weeks has also taken a toll on my body. In the World Congress of Esperanto I could barely eat because of kashrut; in the congress venue I consumed mainly French fries, pickled cucumbers and beer, which I stopped drinking a few years ago for fear of gout. In the World Congress of Jewish Studies I had to eat lunch at those hours that are too late for me. Now I understand one of the reasons why there are so many fat people in this country. They eat lunch so late, so also eat supper late, continuing eating just before going to bed. The fact that I could neither run nor swim during these two congresses has also had a negative effect on my body. It will take me at least a few weeks to feel physically as I used to before them.
14 August 2009 (24 Av 5769)
It is two weeks since I returned from the 94th World Congress of Esperanto in Bialystok, Poland. Only now I am starting to appreciate it better and enjoy its fruit. I have always thought that it is worthwhile to learn Esperanto only in order to read Zamenhof's writings. But having experienced this unique annual event and met a number of inspiring people, I have come to think that it is also worthwhile to learn this language in order to get acquainted with such people. During this conference I made the acquaintance of about 40 new people. Some of them are world-famous Esperantists, and it was a great privilege and pleasure to meet them face to face and shmooze with them.
I was happy to have made the acquaintance of the following people in particular (in alphabetical order): Neil Blonstein, Moissej Bronŝtejn, Tomasz Chmielik, István Ertl, Christer Kiselman, Aleksander Korĵenkov, Tony László, Ulrich Lins, Anna Löwenstein, Claude Nourmont, Barbara Pietrzak, Esther Schor, Humphrey Tonkin, José Antonio Vergara, John Wells, and Louis Zaleski-Zamenhof. I continue to correspond with some of them by email. Having met them face to face has had a magical effect on our relationship in general and on our email correspondence in particular. Now I can see their face and hear their voice, as it were, when I correspond with them, and we are far less formal with each other.
Especially fruitful was my acquaintance with Prof. Christer Kiselman. Although he is a mathematician by profession, he has published a number of articles on linguistic and religious aspects of Zamenhof. We corresponded before this World Congress of Esperanto. It was he who invited me to give a talk in the Esperantology Conference held in this congress. The topic of this conference was Zamenhof, and I and Prof. Kiselman share the same interest in the Jewish background of Zamenhof. After we returned to our respective homes, we as well as Aleksander Korĵenkov, who also gave a talk in this conference and is the author of the newest and thus far the most reliable biography of Zamenhof entitled Homaranismo: la vivo, verkoj kaj ideoj de d-ro L. L. Zamenhof. Our email correspondence has led to the idea of starting a mailing list on Zamenhofology called Zamenhofologo.
21 August 2009 (1 Elul 5769)
Although I have been excercising regularly (running in the morning and swimming in the evening on weekdays) and trying to have a healthy diet, I have been suffering from one medical problem - prehypertension. I was diagnosed as having prehypertention last year when I went to a physical checkup here for the first time. I was diagnosed with the same problem when I went to an annual physical checkup this week. Unlike last time I was not surprised this time. I could think of two possible causes - one is what I was aware of, while the other is what I was not so aware of until this week.
The first possible cause seems to be high daily consumption of wine. I drink one bottle of red wine every weekday and three bottles on Sabbath. I have been trying in vain to reduce the daily quantity of wine to the permissible maximum, half a bottle a day. But especially when I teach, this effort becomes very difficult as I often find myself trying to relieve my physical and mental fatigue and stress after teaching by drinking wine (in addition to running and swimming). Stopping drinking wine altogether might be an ideal solution, but I am afraid that then the stress of refraining from my main source of sugar intake will outweigh its benefit. Anyway I would like to make an experiment of not drinking wine for a few days and see how this will affect my blood pressure.
The second possible cause is a high intake of salt. Since I was a child, I have been careful not to take too much salt, sugar and oil. Ironically, I seem to have ended up consuming more salt in the form of miso and soy sauce since I started cooking for myself at home in order to protect my body from typical dishes served at restaurants and homes in Israel, which in my opinion are too oily and unhealthy. I would also like to make an experiment here to see how my blood pressure will be affected if I do not take miso and soy sauce for several days.
These two possible causes of hypertension happen to be part of what few Japanese cultural "legacies" I still retain; Japanese cuisine is known for high consumption of salt and alcohol. I am not so particular about Japanese foods, and actually I prefer spicy foods, which are very uncommon in traditional Japanese foods I ate in my childhood. Miso and soy sauce are among the few foods from my childhood in Japan that I still like very much. As for alcohol, I am quite sure that if I had been born in a society like Israel where drinking is not part of socializing, I would not have become a heavy drinker, as I did not like the taste of any alcoholic beverage when I was forced by my peers to drink.
28 August 2009 (8 Elul 5769)
[no update due to a computer problem]