02/10/2024
October 2, 2024/29 Elul 5784
Rabbi Michael Churgel
I recently started watching Time Bandits on Apple+, a reimagining of the zany 1981 film. In the opening episode, we are introduced to Kevin, an intelligent and thoughtful 12-year-old boy, and his neglectful parents, who spend most of their time sitting on the couch using their smartphones while the TV plays in the background. This is an all too familiar scene in households across our world.
Not so long ago, in the days before social media, the internet, and mobile phones, human beings communicated directly. We engaged one another through direct dialogue in person, over the phone, or perhaps, through an exchange of letters, not through terse texts, tweets, snaps, and wall posts. When we wanted to share personal information, we did so directly rather than blogging it for the world to see all at once. We received our news by reading the daily paper, listening to news radio, and watching the evening news broadcasts. We trusted these sources. We trusted each other.
Where has that trust gone? Perhaps it disappeared when we stopped connecting with one another directly, paying more attention to TikTok and Instagram rather than giving our full attention and benefit of the doubt to our family and friends, colleagues and neighbors, teachers and mentors.
As Kevin found his way back in time, may we find our way back to those “simpler” times and give our full and direct attention to those people that matter in our lives, and little by little, heal our precious world.
