Imagine the video-recording of one normal day of our lives: How long that movie would show us in front of some kind of screen: computer, tablet or cell phone?
Electronic devices are addictive. Our dependence on them is a huge concern. Even when the modern man distances himself from his work, when he rests and relaxes, he is still “connected” to the same devices that he has been using non-stop, on his job or on his way to work, from Monday to Friday.
In 2012, the average American citizen spent more than 12 hours a day connected to some electronic device. It is expected that by 2018 this number will increase to 15 hours. These figures are higher if you include multitasking media, for example: listening to music while you check your email. So it is possible to consume more than one hour of media in a period of 60 minutes.
Cell phones have become dangerously uncontrollable.
In schools, teachers and educators have no idea how to stop students to be connected to their cell phones.
Parents see with impotence as their young children prefer to take their iphones and androids in their hands, instead of the hands of the adults
“Separation anxiety,” a concept commonly used in psychology to define the distress experienced by young children when separated from their parents, defines today the trauma of adolescents when they are accidentally separated from their cell phones!
This constant bonding to our cell phones and other electronic devices does not allow us to use different parts of our mind. Unhooking our brains from the matrix of cyberspace is today, more important than ever.
But no one knows how to avoid this technological dependence.
With the exception of AM ISRAEL.
HaShem gave us the Shabbat. A “special day: that always, somehow, benefited us. In times of slavery, the Shabbat helped us to feel free. In times of persecution, we found rest during Shabbat. In times of poverty, we knew that at least for one day a week there would be no shortage of bread or delicacies at our table.
In modern times, part of the beneficial experience of Shabbat is the disconnection from the virtual world. Since on Shabbat, for a little more than 24 hours, from Friday afternoon until Saturday night, all contact with the electronic world is suspended.
This Shabbat, tonight, this detachment from the digital world will benefit millions of Jews, including many who will discover for the first time that on Shabbat, we acquire “the power of disconnection”, which was never more important than today.
Tonight we will again celebrate the “Shabbat Project”, a beautiful idea that encourages all Jews of the world to fully observe a Shabbat.
Disconnected from the virtual world, we will enjoy the pleasures of the real world. The aromas of Shabbat; singing with our family at the Shabbat table; conversations made of words, not of texts, in a non-binary language, with our children and family.
At the end of the Shabbat, we will NOT have an explosion of thousands of photos showing the beautiful Shabbat dinners or melas held in millions of Jewish homes around the world.
What we will live and see with our eyes this Shabbat will have the value of the unrecoverable. Images that, unlike what is now common, will NOT be shared in a video by WhatsApp but will become biological memories, recorded exclusively in our hearts.
In addition, we will enjoy an incomparable happiness of knowing, even if we do not see it in real time, that KELAL AM ISRAEL is observing a Shabbat as a whole.
This Friday, before sundown, let’s say goodbye to our cell phones; light the candles, and capture with the 94.5 Megapixels of our eyes the non-digital images of what promises to be one of the most memorable Shabbatot in modern Jewish history.
שבת שלום
