The columnist, David Brooks, recently published an editorial entitled, “Intimacy for the Avoidant”. In the piece, the author discusses friendship and deep social connection in this generation of pervasive social media and compares our generation to the previous one in this regard. One of the studies that he cites compares relative numbers of high-quality friendships.
Let me start by asking you. How many confidants – people with whom you can share everything – do you have? Do you want to guess how many confidants most Americans told pollsters in 1985 that they had? The answer is three. Today, the majority of people say they have about two. Furthermore, in 1985, 10 percent of Americans said they had no one to fully confide in, but by the start of this century 25 percent of Americans said that.
Mr. Brooks reports that according to the best evidence, the existence of social media is not necessarily the cause of the phenomenon – instead, research shows that social media is creating a divergence between socially engaged people who harness social media to further engage and lonely people use social media to mask their loneliness. But for whatever reason or reasons, deep friendship and social connectivity is in decline.
Apparently technology has had another impact on deep social relationships – prompting us to tend towards distraction. A recent British study reported that we check our smartphones on average 221 times per day – about every 4.3 minutes. The average American spends five-and-a-half hours per day with digital media and the young spend far more time. A study of female students at Baylor University found that they spent 10 hours per day on their phones.
These studies encapsulate the challenge of this generation in the social-emotional sphere. Our children tend towards a shallow sense of empathy, a diminished feeling of belonging and a higher incidence of despondency.
Even more relevant to us, this study underlines an existential challenge for this generation of Jewish children. How are we to teach our children to truly love their fellow if our children only have a primitive sense of empathy? How are we to prepare them to build meaningful relationships with a spouse and with children? How do we connect our children to our community and to the mesora community when they feel a diminished sense of belonging? How do we inspire our children to lead Jewishly-rich and engaged lives when they feel despondent?
As in every generation, the burden of addressing this challenge falls on our children’s parents, educators and communities.
I strongly believe that Margolin Hebrew Academy, in partnership with our community’s institutions, is in a unique position to help this generation of children cope with this existential challenge. We are inheritors of a blueprint to address this challenge and our school community has the experience and the knowledge to confront this issue head-on.
First and foremost – our chachamim say, barati yetzer hara u’barati lo Torah Tavlin – Hashem says, I created the evil inclination and I created Torah as its spice – Torah is the element that helps us to improve and overcome our challenges. At MHA, we teach our students to perform mitzvot and to incorporate them into their daily practice. Mitzvot such as tefila, tefilin, berachot and Torah learning, train our students to focus on their interaction with the world. Through intensive Torah learning, our students practice thinking deeply about ideas and values. We encourage our students to perform chesed and to be kind to one another – they learn to be empathetic.
Second, MHA has assembled an unbelievably strong cadre of role models – both Judaic and General. Our faculty members form deep learning relationships with our students and model consideration and empathy.
Finally, we are blessed with a ubiquitous community – in addition to interacting with our shul rabbis and members, our students see their own rabbis and teachers at shul on Shabbat and at many other times outside of school. This community offers our students a deep sense of belonging.
But, my friends, as you well know, there is no way around it – providing all of this for our students is a costly endeavor. We have a true dual curriculum - excellent General Studies and excellent Judaic Studies. We have a low teacher to student ratio. These essential features are expensive.
I want to conclude with a lesson from the mitzvah of hakhel which is presented in this past week’s parasha.
Every seven years, the Jewish People gathered at the Beit HaMikdash to hear the Jewish king read publicly from the Torah. The verse states: “Congregate the nation – the men and the women and the young – in order that they will hear and learn.” Our Rabbis explain why the Torah commands us to include the very young in this gathering – in order to give merit to those who bring them.
Rabbi Nasson Adler, zatzal, makes a very practical observation – the presence of the young will distract their parents from concentrating on the proceedings of hakhel. Think about your own experience when you bring your young children to shul! Rabbi Adler makes a simple deduction – the value of teaching children through exposing them first-hand to the gathering outweighs the value of the personal growth that the parent would have through listening to the teaching of Torah. From this deduction, Rabbi Adler explains that it is worth sacrificing a bit of your own spiritual perfection for the Jewish education of our children. Is it not certainly all the more true that it is better to sacrifice a bit of one’s material perfection in order to educate our children in the spirit of Torah!
The Margolin Hebrew Academy community understands the unmatchable gift that a Jewish education provides – particularly to the children of this generation – and understands, well, the sacrifice that it takes to secure this gift for our community’s children.
Thank you for your support of our students and for your continued contribution to MHA.
Let me start by asking you. How many confidants – people with whom you can share everything – do you have? Do you want to guess how many confidants most Americans told pollsters in 1985 that they had? The answer is three. Today, the majority of people say they have about two. Furthermore, in 1985, 10 percent of Americans said they had no one to fully confide in, but by the start of this century 25 percent of Americans said that.
Mr. Brooks reports that according to the best evidence, the existence of social media is not necessarily the cause of the phenomenon – instead, research shows that social media is creating a divergence between socially engaged people who harness social media to further engage and lonely people use social media to mask their loneliness. But for whatever reason or reasons, deep friendship and social connectivity is in decline.
Apparently technology has had another impact on deep social relationships – prompting us to tend towards distraction. A recent British study reported that we check our smartphones on average 221 times per day – about every 4.3 minutes. The average American spends five-and-a-half hours per day with digital media and the young spend far more time. A study of female students at Baylor University found that they spent 10 hours per day on their phones.
These studies encapsulate the challenge of this generation in the social-emotional sphere. Our children tend towards a shallow sense of empathy, a diminished feeling of belonging and a higher incidence of despondency.
Even more relevant to us, this study underlines an existential challenge for this generation of Jewish children. How are we to teach our children to truly love their fellow if our children only have a primitive sense of empathy? How are we to prepare them to build meaningful relationships with a spouse and with children? How do we connect our children to our community and to the mesora community when they feel a diminished sense of belonging? How do we inspire our children to lead Jewishly-rich and engaged lives when they feel despondent?
As in every generation, the burden of addressing this challenge falls on our children’s parents, educators and communities.
I strongly believe that Margolin Hebrew Academy, in partnership with our community’s institutions, is in a unique position to help this generation of children cope with this existential challenge. We are inheritors of a blueprint to address this challenge and our school community has the experience and the knowledge to confront this issue head-on.
First and foremost – our chachamim say, barati yetzer hara u’barati lo Torah Tavlin – Hashem says, I created the evil inclination and I created Torah as its spice – Torah is the element that helps us to improve and overcome our challenges. At MHA, we teach our students to perform mitzvot and to incorporate them into their daily practice. Mitzvot such as tefila, tefilin, berachot and Torah learning, train our students to focus on their interaction with the world. Through intensive Torah learning, our students practice thinking deeply about ideas and values. We encourage our students to perform chesed and to be kind to one another – they learn to be empathetic.
Second, MHA has assembled an unbelievably strong cadre of role models – both Judaic and General. Our faculty members form deep learning relationships with our students and model consideration and empathy.
Finally, we are blessed with a ubiquitous community – in addition to interacting with our shul rabbis and members, our students see their own rabbis and teachers at shul on Shabbat and at many other times outside of school. This community offers our students a deep sense of belonging.
But, my friends, as you well know, there is no way around it – providing all of this for our students is a costly endeavor. We have a true dual curriculum - excellent General Studies and excellent Judaic Studies. We have a low teacher to student ratio. These essential features are expensive.
I want to conclude with a lesson from the mitzvah of hakhel which is presented in this past week’s parasha.
Every seven years, the Jewish People gathered at the Beit HaMikdash to hear the Jewish king read publicly from the Torah. The verse states: “Congregate the nation – the men and the women and the young – in order that they will hear and learn.” Our Rabbis explain why the Torah commands us to include the very young in this gathering – in order to give merit to those who bring them.
Rabbi Nasson Adler, zatzal, makes a very practical observation – the presence of the young will distract their parents from concentrating on the proceedings of hakhel. Think about your own experience when you bring your young children to shul! Rabbi Adler makes a simple deduction – the value of teaching children through exposing them first-hand to the gathering outweighs the value of the personal growth that the parent would have through listening to the teaching of Torah. From this deduction, Rabbi Adler explains that it is worth sacrificing a bit of your own spiritual perfection for the Jewish education of our children. Is it not certainly all the more true that it is better to sacrifice a bit of one’s material perfection in order to educate our children in the spirit of Torah!
The Margolin Hebrew Academy community understands the unmatchable gift that a Jewish education provides – particularly to the children of this generation – and understands, well, the sacrifice that it takes to secure this gift for our community’s children.
Thank you for your support of our students and for your continued contribution to MHA.
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