The truth is, I’m very bad at taking vacations, especially when it’s me all on my own. So when it turned out to be half the price to arrive four days early in Bali in anticipation of my next visit with the United Indonesian Jewish Community, I didn’t arrange to spend that whole time at the beach with a cocktail next to me. Instead, I booked in Indonesian language lessons for four hours each day.
I have been doing touristy things here—like having a massage, swimming in the pool, and exploring the neighbourhood bit, but a lot of my time and energy is going in to trying to becoming more fluent in Indonesian. Of course, the first word of Indonesian I learned was “thank you”—terima kasih. When I meet people from other countries, “thank you” is always the word that I want to learn from them. It just seems a matter of politeness to be able to say thank you in the language of the land I’m visiting or with those whose hospitality I’m enjoying. I think I can say “thank you” in at least fourteen languages now, and the list is still growing! I was explaining to my teacher, the very gifted, enthusiastic and patient Magdalena Uta, that the second word of Indonesian I learned was “Tuhan”--the word for God. This came during my visit here in July of 2015, as I was experiencing Jewish worship in Indonesian for the first time. I kept hearing the word “Tuhan” and asked its meaning. So began my efforts to learn to speak the language of Indonesia. After 4 ½ years of occasional study and 16 hours of intensive lessons, I know a lot more of the language but am still far from fluency. I am often reminded of what my friends Rabbi David and Shelley Kunin heard when they first started studying Japanese more than five years ago: it takes about six months to learn to ask questions, and at least five years to be able to understand the answers! Indonesian is a very wordy language, and so Indonesians speak extremely fast to compensate. Even my teacher admitted that there is a certain randomness to sentence construction. Every once in a while, I would throw my hands in the air and admit defeat, and that was just while trying to read and comprehend. Lucky for me that starting tomorrow, I’ll be interacting with a large variety of Indonesian Jews, most of whom don’t speak English. Lots and lots of opportunities to get better at listening comprehension! In Australia, there has been a trend away from learning languages other than English for a number of years. Most students graduate from high school with only one or two years of a foreign language under their belt. Some don’t begin a foreign language at all. My life has been immeasurably enriched by having first learned Chinese and then Hebrew. I have seen time after time how much it means to others when I try to speak to them in their language. Now as I try to master a third language, I appreciate not only how speaking Indonesian shows that I really care about this country, but it also stretches my ageing brain in helpful ways. It’s tiring, but very worthwhile. I’m going to probably sign off now until Sunday, with an exhausting three days ahead of me. I expect to have quite an amazing time in Jakarta and look forward to sharing the stories soon.
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Rabbi Shoshana KaminskyI've been the rabbi of Beit Shalom Progressive Synagogue in Adelaide since 2006. As part of the Council of Progressive Rabbis of Australia, New Zealand and Asia, I'm now on my fifth trip to Indonesia to teach, pray and celebrate with the communities here. Archives
July 2022
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