2 October 2009 (14 Tishrey 5770)

During this summer vacation I (re)found a new pastime - to watch Japanese TV dramas. Since the age of 18 I have been living with no TV set. In my last year in Japan before immigrating to Israel about five years ago I became fascinated with them. Since I had no TV, I watched them by renting their DVDs. With my move here I could not watch them any more, until I recently found a website where new Japanese TV dramas are uploaded and one can watch them online for free.

Their plots are rather simple, but this does not prevent me from enjoying the dramas. Actually I do not expect any deep philosophical message in such dramas (and movies). I simply experience someone else's life temporarily. My favorites are romantic comedies. These dramas often look almost like science fictions to me as the various lives described there are so different from my present life. I also (re)learn a lot about Japanese culture and its sociogrammar, including what and how (not) to say or do in various social contexts.

There is one context that frustrates me in almost all the Japanese TV dramas I have seen - verbal and physical expressions of love. I have no intention of claiming that some culture is superior to another in this respect, but I cannot help wondering how one can suppress one's strongest positive feeling so much, including a long interpersonal physical distance and lack of physical touch between a man and a woman in love even in private. Some people might find esthetics and sophistication in such a manner of expressing love, but I would definitely prefer a woman who expresses her affections more directly and warmly both in speech and in action. A transfer from cold to warm culture is easy, but a transfer in the opposite direction is difficult (or impossible for me).

9 October 2009 (21 Tishrey 5770)

I taught Hebrew (both Modern and Biblical), Japanese and English as foreign languages for about ten years in Japanese universities before immigrating to Israel five years ago. The longer I taught, the more difficult it became to repeat the same basic things every year. But there was one thing I liked at least about teaching Modern Hebrew. It is the fact that I also talked in passing during the course about cultural aspects of modern Israeli society as well as the Jewish world, including singing and dancing together in class.

I am glad that I can teach Hebrew linguistics in Hebrew without teaching my students Hebrew first. Such a thing would be totally impossible in Japan. But I have been missing the aforementioned sociocultural aspect of teaching a foreign language. Sometime ago I heard that Bar-Ilan University, where I have been working for the past five years, is about to open a new course in Japanese and looking for an instructor. So I proposed myself as a candidate. This year I will teach elementary Japanese together with courses in Hebrew linguistics here.

I do not feel so identified with Japanese culture, though there are certain things I still like, such as order, precision, punctuality and cleanliness. But I am glad that I will have an opportunity again to talk about various sociocultural aspects of a language I will teach. It is also a great pleasure to spend one academic year with those who are interested in learning a foreign language of a culture that is so different from their own and has not such a great practical value in their country. To my great joy, there seem to be quite a few students registered in this new course. I am curious to meet them, especially those who are religious, as religious people here generally do not study Japanese here. I only hope they will not treat me stereotypically as a kind of Japanese ambassador. What I have been fighting against all my life is a series of attempts by others to stereotype me.

16 October 2009 (28 Tishrey 5770)

There are three things I always wanted to learn: traditional Ashkenazic folk dance, wine tasting, and cooking. I was lucky enough to have found an amazing teacher of traditional Ashkenazic folk dance about a year and a half ago in Jerusalem. I am only sorry that his annual workshop in this amazing but endangered folk culture takes place only two or three months a year. As we still have several months until the next annual session starts, I looked for some workshop in (kosher) wine tasting here. I found one and participated in it.

The workshop consisted on four meetings, each of which lasted for three hours: 1) introduction to wine in general and kosher wine in particular, 2) kosher wines from the "old world" (especially, France, Italy and Spain), 3) kosher wines from the "new world" (especially, United States, Australia, Argentine and Chile), 4) kosher wines from Israel (including those by big wineries and boutique wineries). Unfortunately, the workshop ended this week; I hope there will be a continuing workshop. After this learning experience I have been left with two feelings: that I have only scratched the surface of this rich world; that this world had been hidden from me. I did not know that there are so many kosher wines outside Israel.

The days when kosher wines meant "syrups" are long gone, though some people continue to prefer these low-quality wines. I was especially impressed with Bordeaux red wines. I would like to investigate them further, but this can be a very expensive hobby. So in the meanwhile I have decided to try various red wines produced in Israel, which, as can be expected, is the largest producer of kosher wines in the world. I have already started to put in practice the criteria for tasting and evaluating wines we learned in the workshop. One of them is fragrance. Unfortunately, I have some problem with my sense of smell; since my childhood, I do not smell very well. I have realized that this is probably the main reason why I prefer full-bodied red wines, especially Cabernet Sauvignon, to other red wines or while wines. This also seems to explain why I like spicy foods. I seem to have been compensating lack of fragrance with strong stimuli in the mouth.

Now I am looking forward to a workshop in (healthy) cooking that will start in two weeks. Since I was a child, I have always liked cooking and serving others. I cook for myself at home, but I often get bored with what I cook, as it is limited in variety, perhaps except for soups. Besides, I do not always feel like cooking only for myself; I need someone to cook for. But this is something the forthcoming workshop cannot provide me with. ;-)

23 October 2009 (5 Kheshvan 5770)

The new academic year started this week in Israeli universities. For some unknown reason I could not enjoy teaching very much last year; I felt lack of enthusiasm on my side in the very first lesson of each course I taught, so that a not so positive atmosphere was born in the very beginning (and it lingered until the end). But this year I found myself at full power when I resumed teaching and also started enjoying all the courses I teach.

There are some possible reasons for this positive change. The main one must be that I had a very productive summer vacation academically - I gave five talks in conferences and wrote eight articles on respectful platforms during these four months. I ended the summer vacation with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. So when I resumed teaching this week, I felt fully recharged academically, paradoxically through output and not through input. As offense can be the most effective defense, output can often be the most efficient input intellectually. Another reason seems to be the fact that what used to be the main source of my constant headaches disappeared this year.

I have a different reason why I enjoy each of the courses I teach this year. For example, my new course in elementary Japanese gives me a new kind of intellectual pleasure I did not experience in the past five years. Somehow I was missing the opportunity to share with my students practical, and not only theoretical, knowledge about a language and its sociocultural background for putting that knowledge into practice, and not only for keeping it in the brain. It also fascinates me to be with a linguistically, socioculturally and academically heterogeneous group of students who gather together for a common interest. Generally speaking, those who are interested not only in the language and culture in which they happened to have been born but also in other languages and cultures are interesting qua human beings; such people interest at least me, as I am just like them. I feel I share the same "language" with them. This is a different kind of common "language" I share with lovers of Hebrew or Yiddish, be it their first or second language.

Joy on my side does not necessarily mean that I am also a good teacher. Actually, I started to think about things I may be able to improve in my teaching in preparation for a workshop in teaching that will take place next week in the university.

30 October 2009 (12 Kheshvan 5770)

This week I participated in a two-day workshop on teaching in the university. It consisted of theoretical and practical parts. In the first one an Israeli authority on university teaching lectured on what constitutes good teaching. She divided it into 1) quality of teaching and 2) approach to students, which were divided further into 1.1) organization, 1.2) clarity and 1.3) intellectual challenge, and 2.1) reaction to questions, 2.2) attitude to students and 2.3) availability outside the classroom. Her four-hour talk concentrated on the first three points, elaborating what constitutes organized, clear and interesting teaching. Some of the things were already known to me, but many other things, especially about clarity, were quite eye-opening.

As I imagined and expected, I have learned a lot more in the practical part - each of the participants was asked to teach for about ten minutes in front of the others and afterwards received comments from them and from the coordinator. I used to think that I was very organized, but most of the comments I received from them centered around (lack of) organization. The teaching material itself is well organized; I prepare a handout for each lesson, and this year I send it electronically in advance to the students of each course. But my problem seems to start here. Paradoxically because everything I would like to share with my students is already in my head, I tend to jump from one topic to another associatively, relying too much on an illusion that everything must be clear as it is all written in the handout. I should have also tell them the topics of each lesson in the beginning, the place of each topic in a bigger picture, and its start and end. I ask them all the time in order to arouse interest in the subject, but I should have planned in advance what and when to ask them and even written for me in advance the questions to ask and pay enough attention to their reactions and answers. Failing all these things seems to make my teaching unclear in spite of its seeming organization.

It was rather shocking to realize that having taught in the university since 1990, that is, for about 20 years, I still have so many things to improve in my teaching. But it is never too late to learn new things. I always knew that the best way to improve my teaching is to have it examined by other teachers. I was right in this respect. I have already started to implement the lessons I have learned in this workshop. I wish I could have participated in such a workshop when I started teaching. I am also convinced that every new teacher must be required to do so.

I also discovered something I had not been aware of before - some subtle cultural differences between me and those who were born here. I am neither willing nor even trying to deny and discard all my cultural baggage from Japan, but since most of my "clients" were born in Israel, I have to use their "language". Some of the participants commented about my teaching that I do not have enough eye contact with my students; this is certainly a Japanese legacy. In Japan too much eye contact with your students may make them uneasy, and almost none of the teachers I had there has such long eye contact with us, while here in Israel the opposite can be the case - lack of eye contact or short one may make your students uneasy.

Another surprising discovery is that those teachers who were born here had far less verbal interaction with their students than I and than I had imagined and expected. Actually, I have learned this from my learning experiences as a student here both in the university and at a yeshiva, and it was one of the few things about which I received a positive comment from the other participants after I demonstrated my teaching.