In my life, I have been fortunate to have some very special mentors.  Among those great teachers, none were greater than Fausto and Joachim, my great Italian teachers.  While Fausto was a father to me, Joachim was in many ways even more.   In addition to being one of the wealthiest men in Italy, Joachim was also trained as a rabbi when he was younger and he was also a former professor at the University of Naples.  He was an amazing man that I loved dearly.  One of the hardest things I’ve done in my life was to turn down a job working for him.   While working for him would have entailed great benefits, the greatest by far would have been the additional knowledge that I would have gained from him.  I spent eight months as his student, but I always knew it would have taken a lifetime to learn what he had to teach.   For me, the great decision of my life was to choose between returning to Italy and joining Joachim’s family business or staying in the States and pursuing my doctorate.   It’s obvious that I took the doctorate path in the States, with this said, I reflect on the lessons I learned in those eight months every day.  I’d like to share one of those lessons with you now.

A language is a Tool: Lessons from Ancients

Joachim had studied in Jerusalem, having delved into numerous topics that are not well known outside the circles where he learned them.  Many of those topics dealt with language.  For example, it was from Joachim that I learned what Gematria, Notarikon, and Temurah were and it was also from him that I learned that language, any language, is a tool.  One would think that a former rabbi would have spent most of his time discussing Hebrew but Joachim spent at least as much time discussing Greek, Latin, and what he termed “modern languages.”  He said it was important to study many languages as each language had a different basis, purpose, and accordingly it could be used in a different way to transform us.

Every principle that Joachim taught me seemed simple but they were really something to think about applying for the rest of one’s life.  These ideas of language have inspired me in my life.  Joachim never taught a principle without giving numerous applications.  For example, he taught me was that Hebrew is a language of morality that helped guide human action by its very structure and he said it should be viewed that way.   In these ideas, he went back to the Torah and in particular what is referred to in Genesis and would explain the specific moral meaning of things as simple as what has been translated as “days” in English (i.e., the world was created in six days).  He told me those were moral principles, not precise scientific principles, and if one learned that, one could use Hebrew appropriately. 

In contrast to the purpose of Hebrew, Joachim explained that Latin was a language of control that helped direct human action with precision.  He explained this with big concepts and very real applications, with words such as sacrifice and cohort while explaining their mistranslation into “modern languages.”   He explained that Latin was a command language that had allowed for a vast military empire to emerge, for the engineering of the Etruscans to be adapted and applied, and for an epic to be written that could cement a diverse people into one.  Just as Joachim had conveyed the Hebrew ideas to me via the Torah, he conveyed the Latin ideas to me via the Aeneid, the great Latin epic, something that Joachim was particularly proud of in that it was written in his native Naples.

Finally, Joachim taught me that Greek was a language of creativity that helped unleash the potential of mankind found within all of us.  He did this by analyzing names that I had often heard such as Heracles, Cleopatra, and Patroclus.   He said every word was meant to convey ideas as were the stories.   Joachim used examples from all Greek literature but among his favorites were the Iliad and the Odyssey.  He taught me that the Iliad was perhaps the greatest management book ever written and that the Odyssey allowed us to learn about ourselves and the journey we all must take.   It was also in these discussions that I learned that the stories we refer to as being written by Homer were well-known accounts sung by rhapsodes in ancient “rhap battles” (yes, my old professor knew of rap) that changed with every account, highlighting the creativity of the language in the very delivery.   

Zealots and Languages

In short, Joachim explained that languages are tools that should be viewed in the light of not only of what they bring to mankind, but of what they can bring mankind too.  He also explained that there were modern equivalents to these ancient languages, not missing the point that one could find these same characteristics in computer languages (although Joachim never programmed to my knowledge). One of the most amazing things was that while some people are very proud of the language of their own culture (people Joachim referred to as “zealots”) and there have even been wars fought over that concept, the best linguist and semiotician that I ever met was more agnostic on the subject.

That is something that I think about often, especially when I discuss computer languages (which I will do next week). Over my life I have run into numerous zealots about computer languages and not one of them seemed to really know what they were talking about; however, many seemed to at the beginning. That’s, of course, another concept that Joachim taught me: that many people substitute fanatism for true knowledge, confusing many people merely by the strength with which they profess their beliefs. Other than “zealots,” Joachim often referred to these people as “cretins.”

Next week I will discuss these concepts and their relationship to the ULISSES Project.