News Fast
אדיר במרום
Dear friends,
Ten days ago I was talking with Shai and Monica, two fellow New Shuler Israelis living in New York. Naturally, we got to talking politics. But I noticed that it was primarily a conversation between Monica and me. And then Shai explained why. A month ago, he said, he was in a terrible state of news addiction. Much like me, and most Israelis I know he was checking Israeli news sites many times every day. as well as the New York Times for good measure. And an extra glance a couple times a day at a few other American and international news sites. Then he found himself at a retreat on which he wasn’t allowed to be on his phone for a few days. Since then he hasn’t gone back to checking the news. And is more relaxed and much happier as a result. “Cold turkey,” he advised, “it's the only way.”
I decided to try it out. For the last week I did not check the news. Just like Shai said would happen, I got the main headlines from conversations or emails. And I also found myself much more relaxed, less agitated, more focused and in a better mood.
I learned a few things while on my news fast this week. First, that most of the times I check the news it is simply out of an addicted, bored habit. My news addiction is very much related to my phone addiction. Improving my relationship with one has a major impact on my relationship with the other.
Second, it taught me something about why I read the news. When I check the news many times a day, I tell myself that it comes out of an instinct for informed citizenry, care for my friends and family back home, and the desire to impact and fight back against horrors I see happening here in this country. All of that may be true to a degree, and I certainly did not come to the conclusion that we all need to stop being informed. That’s the last thing I would like to advocate for. But I do think that underneath the instinct to obsessively check the news there lies an unhealthy grasping for emotions and feelings that the terrible news we keep receiving often creates. A piece of the addiction is about feeding the dark emotional hole that sits there within our consciousness.
Feeding that monster drains us. We don’t emerge stronger from it most of the time, but more distracted, anxious, sad and despairing. These are feelings that, for the most part, make it harder to take a stand, to go to a protest, to sign a petition, to reach out and speak to friends we disagree with, to see the political world with a clarity that is connected to our instinctive and healthy sense of right and wrong.
The month of Elul is upon us. It is a time our tradition gives us to center ourselves and prepare for the righting of wrongs that have infiltrated our behaviors, before we begin a new year. During this month, I will invite those of you who are interested to join me in a number of fasts. News fasts will be one category. Speech fasts, a tradition developed primarily by Tunisian Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries will be another. Each of us might also decide to take on a personal fast of sorts by way of a vow. The traditional, biblical version of these Nazarite vows includes abstaining from wine and from cutting one’s hair, but we might each look for our own vow. What might we commit ourselves to abstaining from for part or all of the time of the month of Elul?
And then of course, there are fasts of food and drink. Many people around the world have been observing such fasts to express their solidarity with the people of Gaza. In Ireland, a string of such personal fasts, in which one person fasts for 24 hours, has been going on for 418 days. Some Israelis have been observing fasts for long periods of time, some in front of the Knesset , as a way to call on the government to do much, much more to return the hostages.
With the ongoing hunger and starvation in Gaza, a fast seems like a more significant and powerful response than reading more headlines and analysis as we prepare to celebrate a new year.
The world is a rushing river pulling us in with all it might. We need to look for the ways to step out of it, breathe and observe so that we can be energized, clear-eyed participants in it. Both for the sake of our mental health, and for the mental and physical health of this world.
The Psalm for Friday reads as follows
מקולות מים רבים
אדירים משברי ים
אדיר במרום יהוה
More powerful than the thunder of the mighty Waters
Are the frightening waves of the ocean as they crash onto the shores.
Above the waves sits the most powerful: The Eternal God of Being.
This Shabbat, try a news fast. You won't regret it.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha