VIRTUAL or REAL REALITY?
Try to visualize the video-recording of a day of our lives: How much of that movie would be showing us in front of some kind of a screen, or connected to a tablet or a cell phone?
Electronic devices are addictive. Even when we distance ourselves from work in order to rest and relax, we do so by “connecting” to the same devices we have been using nonstop at work or on our way to work, Monday through Friday.
Currently, the average American spends 15 hours per day connected to some type of media. Just take any subway in New York city or walk thru its streets. You will hardly find someone who is not with his or her headphones in, connected to their cell phone or tablets.
A PROBLEM WITH NO SOLUTION
Digital technology has become dangerously additive and uncontrollable.
In schools, teachers and educators have no idea how to prevent students from disconnecting their cell phones.
Parents see helplessly as their young children prefer to hold iphones and androids in their small hands instead of holding the hands of their parents.
“Separation anxiety” a term that used to be used in psychology to define the anguish that young children suffer when they separate from their parents, is used today to describe the trauma of children and adolescents suffer when they accidentally separate from their cell phones!
This permanent connection to our electronic devices does not allow us to use different parts of our brain. Disconnecting ourselves from the cyberspace matrix is today, more urgent than ever.
But nobody knows how to fight against this technological dependence. With the exception of AM ISRAEL.
DISCONNECT TO RECONNECT
HaShem granted us the gift of Shabbat. Throughout our long history, somehow, Shabbat always benefited us. In times of hard physical work, Shabbat freed us from exhaustion. In times of persecution, we found refuge in the Shabbat as an emotional island that made us forget our sorrows. In times of poverty, we knew that one day a week, at our table there would be no lack of bread or the best foods we could afford.
In modern times, one of the greatest benefits of Shabbat is that it “forces” us to disconnect from the virtual world. On Shabbat, for a little more than 24 hours, from Friday afternoon to Saturday night, all contact with the electronic world is suspended.
“The power of disconnection” was never more important than today.
Disconnected from the virtual world, we can enjoy the pleasures of the real world. The aromas of Shabbat, the songs at Shabbat table, the time shared with our parents, and the conversations in a non-binary language with our children.
Shabbat was never so necessary as today!
SHABBAT TOGETHER
Tonight we will begin celebrating the “Shabbat Project”, a beautiful program that encourages all Jews in the world to fully observe Shabbat. During this Shabbat an even after this Shabbat ends, we will NOT have an explosion of pictures on our screens showing the beautiful Shabbat dinners or lunches that are celebrated in millions of Jewish homes around the world.
What we live and will see with our eyes this Shabbat will have a value that goes beyond the photographic image: the value of the unrecoverable. These are images and memories that will NOT be shared in a video by WhatsApp. They will be recorded in our hearts.
In addition, we will be inspired by knowing that, although we do not see it in our phones, millions of Jews are observing this Shabbat simultaneously .
Today, the gift of Shabbat is that it helps us to disconnect from our cell phones and allow us to reconnect with God, with our family and with our people.
Today, Friday November 15th before 4.30pm, say goodbye to your cell phone and be ready to capture with the 94.5 Megapixels of your eyes the non-digital images of this memorable Shabbat.
SHABBAT SHALOM
