I guess I am like many others and Social Media took me down.
Well not quite shut down, but yes, its influences were making me feel down. Too much anger, hate, bickering and more, were all having an effect on me, and tremendously amplifying how I feel about the current tensions and negativity that are out there.
Now to be clear, I think that Social Media tools are a great way for staying in touch with people from far and near, sharing joyful and positive things, and sometimes an important personal or communal moment. The platforms are obviously tools that can have a tremendous impact on being able to bring people together and rally people for an event, for a holiday or to come together to cause something good to happen. Personally my favorite Social Media moment is the first night of Chanukah, when my entire feed is full of pictures of families and individuals bringing light and joy to the world.
Yet these days a lot of Social Media needs some calibrating and tweaking to make them platforms that enable the good of the above to happen, to bring people together, and not to divide and bring people down.
Which brings us to the Biblical plagues in Egypt…. The subject of the weekly Torah Portion.
Huh?
No Social Media was not one of the plagues, but there is an interesting commentary on the first two plagues that struck Egypt which contain a very important and pertinent message which I found to be very meaningful.
The first plague was blood, when all the water turned to blood for seven days and the waters of the Nile flowed like blood.
The second plague was frogs, when the frogs mobbed Egypt and went in to their ovens, bedrooms and everything else.
If you are squeamish, neither plague would have been to your liking.
Yet if you think about it, there was something profoundly interesting happening here.
The Nile and the rivers of Egypt were naturally cold and cool, yet they were transformed into blood, a warm liquid.
In the second plague it was the reverse, where you had cold blooded Frogs entering ovens which are warm, and in a sense bringing that coldness into the place of warmth.
Chassidic and classical commentaries point out that this is not by chance, but is actually conveying a very important point to the story, and in turn to us the readers of this message.
How did the Egyptian culture mess up so badly and how did they become such a tyrannical and oppressive regime? These things don’t happen overnight, but are rather a gradual process that are a result of a society allowing itself to get too caught up and overly involved in wrong things and at the same time, too careless and indifferent to things which are really important for a healthy society.
The cold Nile River turning into warm Blood, represented a message that they need to make an effort to transform their indifference and lack of care for what is right and important, to a more passionate and involved engagement for anything that is good and positive. In Judaism this principle is known as “Aseh Tov”, “Doing Good”, when you actively seek to be engaged in doing and causing good to happen and make an effort that this should be your passion and what you seek to live by.
The Frogs entering the ovens and bringing their cold blooded bodies into the warm places, represented the need to cool down and disengage some of the passion from things which are negative and pulling society or individuals the wrong way. In Judaism this term is known as “Sur MeiRa”, “Veer from Bad”, which is when you seek to move away and disengage from negativity and bad behaviors which are counterproductive for what we are trying to accomplish in the world.
Working on both of these in tandem, can bring spiritual and moral improvement to a person or society, and enable them recalibrate the focus of their life and what gets them going and drives their passion and their day.
It is these ideas which King David articulates in the beautiful Psalm 34 when he states “Shun evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.”, “ס֣וּר מֵ֖רָע וַֽעֲשֵׂה־ט֑וֹב בַּקֵּ֖שׁ שָׁל֣וֹם וְרָדְפֵֽהוּ”.
So if you are like the tens of millions of other people in this country who are more stressed out in recent weeks, let us take a lesson from the message of recalibration that is found in the weekly portion. Let us enhance our engagement and passion for constructive and meaningful things, for Mitzvot, Torah Study, personal development, and for acts of kindness and helping others, and at the same time let us disengage and cool down our passion for negativity and divisive conversations.
Between working on both of these elements, we can then also focus on the third mandate of King David’s verse “seek peace and pursue it”. In other words, making a conscious effort to disengage from negativity while consciously seeking to engage in positivity will allow us to seek and find inner personal peace, and also achieve peace in the broader sense, between people and society at large.
Good Shabbos & Shabbat Shalom
Yisroel