TROUBLES ENOUGH: WHY AND WHEN WE SHOULD TAKE A STEP BACK FROM THE HEADLINES

Over the past few years Jewish communities across the world have been dealing with the rise in Jew-hatred. I dedicated my last two Shabbat presentations to its history and recent revival. Last week that global reality came home to our own community.

The attack on Temple Israel was no distant headline from another city. It happened here and touched people we know. One of our beloved synagogues—and, indeed, our entire community—just experienced this revival straight out of the darkest pages of our people's history. Though we are all filled with relief and gratitude for the outcome, the terrorist—and his supporters—achieved the goal of terrorizing us, bringing to our doorstep the same kind of anxiety and dread that has preoccupied our people for generations. It was real, immediate, and personal. Reassuringly, our community responded in the most Jewish way possible: with courage, solidarity, and an unshakable commitment to keep living openly as Jews.

There is an old Yiddish proverb that says, “You don’t need to look for troubles. They will find you on their own.” Last week’s troubles certainly found us and, sadly, may return as we join the growing list of Jewish communities under threat. But we already knew that, because we are Jews. What we may need to remind ourselves of is the other half of that wisdom: we should not go looking for additional troubles to burden us even more.

This, I fear, is what too many of us and other Americans are doing on a daily basis when we  take on the almost full-time job of immersing ourselves hour after hour in the non-stop news stream of international and domestic conflicts, most of which we have almost no immediate control over. Between television, radio, newspapers (online and on paper), and the constant drumbeat of debate, it never stops buzzing in our minds. The Torah famously instructs us to recite its words “when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you rise up.” CNN and Instagram and the endless parade of political media are not the Torah. So why do we consume their words from the moment we wake until we go to sleep each night?

This can't be healthy!

Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks—one of the world’s leading authorities on human happiness—addressed this in a piece he published this week at the online journal The Free Press. In it he observes that while we may think consuming political outrage all day long is a form of civic engagement, what it mostly does is damage our well-being.

Our modern political media thrives on emotional swings. One moment we are told everything is collapsing. The next moment we are promised that everything will be saved if the right side wins. This puts us on a roller coaster of anger, fear, and triumph that keeps people watching, clicking, and sharing. Mostly, it keeps us anxious.

We care about our country. (Of course we do.) And staying informed is part of being responsible citizens. But there is a difference between being informed and living inside the news cycle. It changes us and it changes the way we feel about others. I would go as far as to say it has become one of the primary generators of our political and civic divides.

These divides are harming us and our entire nation. We've all seen how destructive this is to our personal equilibrium. They are also harmful to our interpersonal relationships, large and small.

It’s no secret that I am a huge University of Texas supporter. I travel to Austin as often as I can. My love of Texas goes beyond the Longhorns. I spent my high school and college years there. It is where I grew into adulthood, a place that shaped me in important ways. And yet when some people hear about how much I love it, I often get groans or puzzled looks. Occasionally someone will say, “Well, Austin is different.”

When I ask why, the answer is always the same: the politics.

And yet everywhere I have traveled in Texas—and anywhere else in this country, for that matter—I have discovered that no matter their politics, people are just people. I have met Republicans, Democrats, and plenty of people (like myself) who don’t fit neatly into either category. At concerts, sporting events, restaurants, and casual conversations with strangers, the experience has almost always been the same: friendliness, curiosity, and basic human decency.

Today’s politics often encourage us to imagine that half the country is filled with people who are alien to us. But the real America we encounter in everyday life is usually much kinder than the one we see on television or social media. One of the greatest reasons to pull ourselves away from the anxiety-inducing 24-hour news cycle is that by reducing our obsession with our differences we can be more open to the people around us.

Everyone carries real worries. Jews these days perhaps more than some others. But whatever our burdens, be they personal, familial—or yes—even political, I think it's safe to say that they are burdens enough. Why then should we go looking for others, when they're going to find us anyway?

There is a lot of talk these days about resilience, a quality that is essential to our well-being. But resilience requires us to cultivate at least some peace of mind, at least about the things we can. When we can stop or curb our addiction to the news cycle, we will likely re-discover the calmer, kinder world that still exists all around us.

Stepping back from the noise will not solve the world’s problems. But solving the world’s problems was never meant to be a 24-hour news cycle occupation. There are far better ways to strengthen our communities and our country.

Most of them begin with the people right in front of us.