This Yom Kippur was a very useful one for me. I thought a lot about the past year and reached some decisions that were meaningful for me. Some were big, some small. Two small ones of relevance to Twitter: 1. I’m going to converse a bit less with the big wide world and more with Jews and Palestinians. What they think matters infinitely more to my children’s future than the moral entertainment the world uses us for. I’m tired of investing time and thought in outsiders’ feelings about my existence. 2. If you tweet at me that you “ain’t reading all that,” you’ll get blocked. If you tweet at me crazy antisemitism, you’ll get blocked. If I write about religion and you respond with abuse surrounding the war, you’ll get blocked. It’s already begun, and my Twitter feed is already more interesting and useful for it. If you don’t want to read me, if you don’t think I can teach you or learn from you, if you can’t speak on topic so you sound off on whatever else crosses your internet-addled mind, that’s all fine. I just don’t want to be an enabler of your anger addiction and poor emotional regulation. This last one is a surprisingly difficult decision for me. It goes against my basic understanding of what teaching is: Everyone can grow and learn. All things worth saying are worth saying to everyone. But I’ve become convinced that online abuse is something truly sinister: A waste of time. Judaism teaches that time is sacred. The Sabbath, wrote Heschel, is the Jewish cathedral. With the exception of one small sacred space in Jerusalem, sanctity is nearly always given to time, not to objects or places. This is an idea that lies at the core of our mental world: You don’t waste time. Judaism also teaches that your soul is shaped by what it consumes through eye, ear and mouth. This too is a fundamental tenet. If you consume anger from your surroundings, your inner life will become angry. If you listen to lies, you’ll start telling them and seeing them everywhere. It warps your soul and your worldview. Dishonest people assume that everyone else is dishonest too. In a similar vein, if you consume pornography you’ll sacrifice some of your capacity for intimacy. If you eat without intent, you’ll eat badly. And so on. Guard what your soul consumes, the Sages teach, lest that thing consume you in return. And so I’m going to try to be more intentional, more curating and careful of what I consume and what I dispense. I’ll mostly fail, of course, especially at the start, but that’s the goal. To focus on the wise, not on the self-important and enraged, on Palestinians and Jews, the actual protagonists of this moment, and not on the emotional addictions of spectators who are not. Sorry if you find yourself blocked in the near future. Be assured you’re not missing much. Take your revenge on me by reading a good book. That’ll show me.
See Tweet