{"id":25,"date":"2024-05-05T16:35:57","date_gmt":"2024-05-05T16:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/172-232-57-64.ip.linodeusercontent.com\/?p=25"},"modified":"2024-08-10T22:15:50","modified_gmt":"2024-08-10T22:15:50","slug":"introductions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/172-232-57-64.ip.linodeusercontent.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/05\/introductions\/","title":{"rendered":"Introductions: Who is The Turjeman?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What does that word even mean? And what’s the point?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hi! I’m the author of this site, and if you’ve read this far all ready I want to thank you. I understand that what’s going on here is potentially confusing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article I’d like to describe what this blog is all about, and attempt to explain why I’m calling myself The Turjeman for the purposes of this site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moniker<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

“Turjeman<\/em>” means, in the most simple sense, an interpreter. This word is sort of like the linguistic equivalent of yucca, moss, or spruce: a hearty survivor from the ancient world that’s still going strong today. And like other words with long histories, it has taken on different forms in different languages and picked up different connotations. So it often means more than just “an interpreter”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In several Mediterranean countries, including here in Israel, Turjeman still exists as a common family name, usually designating that someone’s ancestor held the title and practiced the profession. In a separate posting I will go into the fascinating history of this word, the name, and the title. While I would love to geek out on the details right here and now, that would be beyond the scope of this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For now, let’s answer the questions at hand: What is this site about, and why do I use the term “The Turjeman” here rather than my real name?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Origin Story<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As I child, I was always fascinated by the existence of other languages, although I had no opportunity to learn them. For context: I grew up as a Baptist Christian in a white family in the US deep South. My parents had just barely left their family farms. So of course, the cultural assumptions at the time were that there was no reason to speak or be familiar with any language but English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Let the rest of the world learn English, if they want to live in America,” said the zeitgeist of the 1970-1980s US. And how incredibly ignorant and short-sighted it was. But sadly, my parents bought into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly, there were native speakers of other languages all around us \u2014 Spanish especially, a bit of Chinese here and there (probably Cantonese), but that was all chucked into the category of “foreign” and “unimportant”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back then, my family and I attended church services three times a week, and my favorite Sunday night church services were those in which a missionary to a foreign country would visit. (Note to Jews: this is how Christians use the term missionary. It means an evangelist who goes to a foreign country \u2014 not the way it’s used in Judaism, which is any Christian trying to proselytize a Jew to become a Christian.<\/em>) The visiting missionary guest speaker would describe the foreign culture to the congregation, bring some interesting realia from that country, demonstrate what the foreign language sounded like (if it wasn’t English), and best of all: the lights would be turned off, and they would show a slide deck of their travels. I couldn’t get enough of it! (And as a bonus, the regular pastor usually didn’t preach that night, which was a welcome relief.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was always too shy and scared to get involved in evangelism, so I never seriously considered becoming a missionary. But: learning a language and getting into a foreign culture? Traveling to exotic places? Let me in on that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I said, there was no foreign-language education in elementary school, but at age 12, I got fed up and started teaching myself French from a set of cassette tapes and a dictionary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, my life has been a slow but steady journey into more and more fascinating worlds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You could always just work for the UN.”<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In high school I did the best of the two years of Spanish offered, but that was the end of the line, educationally speaking. My teacher knew that I was craving something more than just the basic beginner’s level of French and Spanish. Even worse, I had no idea how I was going to make a career out of it. My mother was especially worried about this burgeoning interest of mine, and even forbade me from buying a dictionary of Italian musical terminology, because my French and Spanish hobbies were already too engrossing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does<\/em><\/strong> one make a career of linguistics? Frankly, no other adults around me had any wisdom about the subject, either. There was a piece of popular advice that I would get sometimes: “You could always just work for the UN.”

You know: as if becoming a UN interpreter<\/a> is the easy career path for the budding language professional. Let’s consider an analogy: a bright 16-year-old wants to major in Political Science in college, but has no idea what career to pursue. So the adults in her life recommend: “You could always just run for Congress. Or be a Senator. You could always just run for President.” You know: the easy path, if no other career opportunities work out.

Later in graduate school I discovered that many of my fellow language enthusiasts had received that same old chestnut by way of advice. We were all pursuing the subjects we loved, a small band of Graduate Assistants, meaning low-paid teachers in training, fully responsible for introductory language classes like Spanish 101.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the department of Romance Languages, we were all personally obsessed with some language and culture \u2014 Spanish, French, Portuguese, or Italian, depending on one’s chosen path. Becoming an educator was a means to an end for most of us. How else were we supposed to make a living? By pursuing a career as an educator of what we were studying, obviously. But we had all heard that UN thing from somebody along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I loved teaching. After I got through the fear of public speaking, I loved it. It was exhilarating, and I loved those “teaching moments” \u2014 when you see that at least one student just got it. You’ve been trying to demonstrate a difficult concept, and suddenly someone understood, and they cared, and you could see the look on their face when they got it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that’s what I did for the next eight years, both at the University of Georgia and in France. Needless to say, I did not become a UN interpreter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

{<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are few books published on the market titled, “Those who can, teach.” But let’s not kid ourselves: the reason there are books titled, “Those who can, teach” is because there is already a well-known expression by George Bernard Shaw in his play Man and Superman<\/em> (1905): “Those who can, do; those who can\u2019t, teach.” (Expanded by Jack Black in School of Rock<\/em> (2003): “Those that can’t teach, teach gym.”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make a long story short, I spent seven years in university with the goal of becoming a teacher, ultimately a professor. That gave me the opportunity to fully embrace and become an expert at the language I loved most. But I must be honest: I did not enjoy the culture of academia and the prospect of what was going to be required in order to become a successful professor. I was also insecure in my identity, between two cultures, and questioning my religious upbringing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

}<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speak the language of the Hebrewman<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

[Footnote to: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RdaWC9x9jMg<\/a>]
Somehow, as an immature and failed academic of Romance Language, I decided I should learn Hebrew, just to expand my limited linguistic horizons. And around the same time, unsatisfied with the form of Christianity that I was still trying to make sense of, I was drawn to Judaism. So I saw Hebrew as the way to go even further back in cultural history than what French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Latin had to offer me. Hebrew was, at that point in my life, the final frontier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I must admit, again, that I was not a great student of Hebrew. I knew I needed to learn it if I were going to understand Judaism. By then I understood that “the Bible” and all the other founding documents can only be understood with a working knowledge of Hebrew, preferably even fluency.

(This may sound obvious to some of you, but there are many people in the world who would reject that notion vehemently, and would maintain that Judaism can be understood through Yiddish alone, or through Hebrew adulterated with Yiddish words, or by a patois of Yiddish-English known as Yeshivish. They are wrong, of course.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I live in Jerusalem, Israel, which is a fascinating multilingual, multicultural world. I consider myself an observant Jew, albeit open-minded about religion and cultural differences, and constantly pursuing language-learning opportunities that continue to open doors to the unknown or unfamiliar. What once was feared, and then was exotic, is now cherished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why this blog<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

That sense of excitement and purpose is what this blog is all about. I am attempting something ambitious here. I want to write my story because many people have encouraged me to do so. My life has been full of big transitional experiences and cultural revelations, and I’d like to tell that story from that perspective: encountering new worlds by learning their language. As the Persian proverb says: \u201cYek zabaan-e jadid yek zendegi-ye jadid ast<\/em>\u201d (\u06cc\u06a9 \u0632\u0628\u0627\u0646 \u062c\u062f\u06cc\u062f \u06cc\u06a9 \u0632\u0646\u062f\u06af\u06cc \u062c\u062f\u06cc\u062f \u0627\u0633\u062a.) \u2014 “A new langauge is a new life”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this story, if I succeed in telling it, is not just how a Christian converted to Judaism. I want to go much bigger than that. I want to explore the topics that my formerly-fellow Christians can identify with, as well as Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and more. Because there really is a lot of common ground. And I keep moving, so the ground keeps changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope to make this a celebration language learning, culture hopping, and rethinking faith and organized religion. Plus a lot more of just trying to make sense of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why I don’t reveal my true name<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As I set off to describe my life journey, and discuss what is going on in the world today, I an facing a few dilemmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. First, the family I grew up with is still devoutly Christian, and it is still a source of anguish to them that the son who was carefully brainwashed to only believe in one specific form of Christianity, in one specific culture, with a specific set of baggage of opinions that included US patriotism and general xenophobia, would have the audacity to change his faith so drastically, date and eventually marry women who were neither American nor Christian, and to use a Hebrew name instead of the one given to him when he was born.

    My mother particularly has always been ashamed since I began publishing my opinions, jokes, and topics of interest since I discovered the internet around 1994. And she has never hesitated to let me know how unhappy she has been with my public persona, when I used my original name. So, that’s not going to happen here.

    Many devout Christians don’t take well to criticism, because many of them think that their beliefs are self-evident and beyond dispute. And in fact, many would prefer to be in the position of condemning beliefs that don’t align with theirs. But this is not limited to them: it’s only natural. The more that I make friends in other cultures (most recently: Muslim, Hindu, and Chinese), the more I realize that this behavior is normal for homo sapiens in all kinds of cultures.

    Many of my friends think this is a sad state of affairs, because I should ideally be allowed to just speak my mind and represent myself honestly. But even if I hate being shackled by my family members’ disapproval, I also do not want to blatantly cause anguish and embarrassment to that side of my family.

    That’s the first reason.
    <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Second, I now live in an Orthodox Jewish community in Israel.

    Many of my coreligionists (who are neighbors and friends, fellow neighbors and parents of children who are in school with my children) could actually be described as ultra-Orthodox (the preferred word in Modern Israeli Hebrew is \u1e24aredi<\/em>). And while I did choose Judaism over Christianity, I truly cannot agree with their set of baggage, either.

    In this case: I have no wish to embarrass my wife and children, their teachers and our neighbors, the wonderful rabbis and scholars: all the well meaning and deeply moral salt-of-the-earth people who make a wonderful community and are pleasant to live among. I simply disagree with some of their culturally informed opinions, their educational policies, some of their religious beliefs, and the practical ways that they live out their mistaken philosophies.

    They are a complex people, and among them are many who would agree with me, but who are afraid to speak out. Diversity of opinion is tolerated, but it’s considered impolite to talk about it. This is a community that promotes feelings of unity and solidarity, a general positive view of one’s neighbors, and that’s an approach that I appreciate \u2013 comparable to Metta<\/em> (as I understand it) in Vipassana Meditation.

    So there’s no way I want to destroy that. But I also wish to feel free to talk about these subjects without direct repurcussions.

    The history of Judaism has well documented how converts are outside influences, for better and for worse, and I’m no exception. While I am part of the Jewish community in general, there is no way that I can be \u1e24aredi<\/em>. (I personally believe that it’s nearly impossible for anyone from the outside to become one, as much as they might wish, but that point is beyond the scope of this post, and for another time.)

    I hope my second reason for anonymity is clear now.
    <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Conclusion<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    If you’ve made it to the end of this post, thank you! I hope you will enjoy the journey to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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