4 December 2009 (17 Kislev 5770)
[no update due to a busy schedule]
11 December 2009 (24 Kislev 5770)
Specializing in genetically unrelated (but culturally and historically related) languages such as Hebrew, Yiddish and Esperanto means that I am destined to have few colleagues who know all of them both practically and theoretically and no conferences where I can talk about the three languages at the same time, assuming that the audience knows them all.
When I participated in the World Congress of Esperanto this July in Bialystok, I felt I was more of a Hebraist and Yiddishist than an Esperantist. When I participated in a historic Yiddish conference this week in Jerusalem, it brought into relief my being a Hebraist and Esperantist. I can say the same thing about how I feel when I am surrounded by Hebraists.
What frustrates me in such conferences is that not only the audience but also my Hebraist, Yiddishist or Esperantist colleagues know and hear only one third of myself in conferences on Hebrew, Yiddish and Esperanto respectively. These three languages are integral parts of me as a researcher-shmesearcher. Paradoxically, however, this has convinced me that I should engage myself in those studies that involve all the three languages, as this can be my raison d'être.
My private life is a little more complicated, as I actively use Japanese and English in addition to these three languages. In my whole life I have met only one person who speaks these five languages more or less fluently (actually, we have a few more common languages). It goes without saying that he is a good friend of mine and I enjoy shmoozing with him in the mixture of all these languages; he even came all the way from abroad to participate in this Yiddish conference held this week in Jerusalem. I have already stopped dreaming of meeting a woman who knows all the five languages, but knowing even four of them in any combination could definitely be a great asset in my eyes.
18 December 2009 (1 Tevet 5770)
[no update due to a busy schedule]
25 December 2009 (8 Tevet 5770)
I am afraid that my life has turned into a set routine, repeating the same things every week. Although there may be some advantage in repetitions, I feel I have to break my routine from time to time to gain new intellectual and spiritual stimuli and grow further. Standing still at the same place is a form of regression. So I have been wondering how and where I can find more stimuli.
I know that one of the best way of being stimulated is to move to live in a totally new place. I cannot and do not want to relocate somewhere else (and repeat this every few years), but I am definitely ready to spend some time (between one month and one year) in some places outside Israel, including, first and foremost, New York, and other cosmopolitan cities where various languages and cultures meet each other. I also feel like spending a month or so somewhere back in Japan to see how I will feel there.
Since I am anchored in Jerusalem, I have to find what I can do here. I think that people, especially immigrants who are drawn to this city, are the greatest source of stimuli here. But otherwise, one has to work really hard to find intellectual and spiritual stimuli here. After all, I find Jerusalem a big shtetl; it is more like a provincial town than a cosmopolitan megalopolis.
This means that I should look for stimuli not outside but inside me. One of the things that have always worked for me is to learn a new language. But since I have studied more or less all the languages I wanted to, I am planning to brush up those languages I have already learned but have forgotten, including Italian, Spanish and Polish. Of course, this is not the same as learning a totally new language, but it is better than nothing. Learning languages is actually my starting point. The very fact of struggling with some language, whether old or new, always reminds me of my initial (and still remaining) enthusiasm with this blessed human faculty.