The Antidote to the Epidemic of Loneliness: Chaverut - Partnership©
Kol Nidre 5778/2017
Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh
Studies have recently found that social media is actually addictive, but I once heard a story about a man who tried to break his addiction. He decided to stop using social media and instead was determined to make friends without the benefit of Facebook but still using its methods. So he left home to take a walk and as he met people he told them what he had eaten, how he felt, what he did last night, and what he will do tomorrow. Then he gave them pictures of his family, his dog, and his garden. He also listened secretly listened to their conversations, jumped up from behind them, and told them he loves them. It worked! Soon he got new followers — two police officers and a psychiatrist!
Facebook, one of the most popular of social media platforms, is amazing. It has more than one and a half billion users, allows people to share details of their lives, and facilitates rapid communication with others. Sharing pictures, travel plans, arranging meetings and dates, and finding all kinds of information and advertising are so easy to do on it. With it, we can connect with our children and grandchildren no matter where they are, new interests can be explored, opinions can be exchanged, and we can follow happenings throughout the world. There is no doubt that Facebook and other social media play a transformative role in our society, but what are its effects on our children?
We spent the hurricane with friends as our home is going through some renovations and may not have been safe. We lost power pretty early on, so we had lots of time to fill, and our phones kept us busy. We made fake news reports about falling trees, and took some pictures of us and posted them on social media.
The kids knew we posted them, and although they aren’t on social media, they know about it – I will never forget the question the kids kept asking us, “How many likes did the picture get?” Hour after hour, “how many likes now?”
We live in a world of posting – of friends and followers, of likes and loves, and it all happens because of our smartphones. There was a provocative article that came out this summer titled, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”
I want to read you an excerpt from the article, but before I do that, for the Gen Xers in the room, do you remember where you hung out the most in middle and high school? Chances are, it was the mall. But not this generation, the generation after Millennials, whom she calls, iGen. In the article, the author Jean Twenge, interviewed a 13-year-old in Houston, Texas, named Athena. She writes, “Mall trips are infrequent—about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said. “We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people.” But it’s more than just about loving our machines more than our neighbors.
She writes, “Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation. Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements “A lot of times I feel lonely,” “I often feel left out of things,” and “I often wish I had more good friends.” Teens’ feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since. Twenge noticed another trend – in 2011, rates of teen depression and suicide skyrocketed. This corresponded to a milestone that in 2009, the proportion of Americans who owned smartphones surpassed 50%.
There is an epidemic of loneliness out there, it has real consequences and we are all suffering from it.
How many of us buy from Amazon rather than venture out to the store? How many of us stay in when we can go out?
On Yom Kippur, we openly proclaim our sins to the community. The sins are in plural – as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously said, “some are guilty, but all are responsible.” I wanted to focus on three of these sins:
For the sins of being lonely and separating from community,
For the sins of being followers instead of friends,
For the sins of taking too much, and not giving enough.
And I want us to think about this and make changes to our lives:
How we have to build face to face community this year
How we have to be friends for each other, not followers
How we are going to give more and take less
Teens are much more likely to spend their online time on Instagram and Snap Chat. In these social networks you don’t have friends, your cache is based on how many followers you have. We think friendship is easy, but getting followers is more difficult. To get more followers, you need to do outrageous things to get noticed, but friendship is easier, all you have to do is ‘friend’ someone, just a click. This might be true in the cyber world, but it’s untrue in the real world.
There is a famous line in the Ethics of our Fathers (1:4) -
. יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בֶּן פְּרַחְיָה אוֹמֵר, עֲשֵׂה לְךָ רַב, וּקְנֵה לְךָ חָבֵר, וֶהֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת:
Yehoshua ben Perachia says, "Make for yourself a mentor, earn yourself a friend and judge every person as meritorious."I tend to look at this teaching in the following way in our day and age. It's easy to make yourself a teacher, to find someone to follow. Teachers are vital – we need people to look up to, and to learn from. On Twitter, I have 1335 followers, but I really have very little relationship to them. I post and they read. If they don't like what I'm teaching or saying, they can unfollow me.
But earning friends, that's different. I'm not talking about Facebook friends whose actual faces we've never seen in person, I mean real friends. The Midrash says, “One only acquires a friend through great effort” (Sifre Devarim, Piska 305)
Real friendship is harder to earn.
A later commentary, Avot d’Rabbi Natan asks "How does one earn a friend? A person should earn a friend for himself by eating and drinking with him or her, by studying Torah and debating with him or her, by lodging with him or her, by sharing private thoughts with him or her- thoughts regarding Torah and life.”
Yom Kippur places a heavy emphasis on friends, chaverim. The relationship is so important that Mishnah Yoma (8:9 - https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Yoma.8.9?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en) states, “for sins between God and human, Yom Kippur atones, but for the sins bein Adam L’Chavero, between a human and his or her chaver, or friend, Yom Kippur can only atone until a person seeks that his haver or friend out. True chaverim, true partners, are just as important in our lives as God – and we need them if we are going to receive atonement.
In this day and age, true friends, chaverim, are hard to come by because we do less and less of the activities described by Avot D'Rabbi Natan. We eat fewer meals together; we study less Torah and our debates are usually online, rarely in person. We are more keen to share a recipe, an article about politics, our stances on politics, but rarely do we share real private thoughts about life and Torah with our so-called friends.
What I am describing is much more than friendship, it is partnership, and we need partners, many people whom we can share our lives with. This is what chaver really means – people who can know us and understand us.
There is a famous line in the Talmud, O chevrutah O mitutah - Give me friendship/partnership or give me death. We read this famous line from the Talmud - the story of Honi HaMa’agal - a man who falls asleep for 70 years and awoke to a new world, a world where no one knew or understood him - no one truly accepted him - he could not find partnership, chevrutah, and he died.
The Talmud exaggerates all the time, but in this case, I think our rabbis were right – partnership can kill, and conversely, it can lead to longer life. On Rosh Hashanah, I noticed two of our congregants embracing, a senior woman and a young mother in her 30's. They will forever be connected by one man – Irv Pomeranz.
Irv joined our congregation about four years ago with his lovely wife Elle. Irv was in his late 70's or early 80's by this point, but he was so full of life. He said, “Rabbi, I love the Hebrew language, I want to teach a beginners Hebrew class and then I want to run an adult bat mitzvah class, and I'll do it for free.” For free? What's not to love about that! I said of course. Irv was a pied piper of teaching Hebrew – people just loved to be around him and learn from him – he didn't just teach you Hebrew, he taught you about life. I would visit Irv and Elle at the club in his development by the beach, and I had a standing invitation, even with my crazy kids. I even got a great sermon when my kids and I got caught in the rain while at the beach one day. In just three years, Irv amassed many students, but they weren't just students, they were truly his partners in Torah. Irv had many medical problems during the three years I knew him, but he always downplayed them. “Rabbi, I've got Leukemia, but all I have to do is take a pill a day and I'll be fine.” He wasn't fine – his body was breaking down, but his soul was still as bright as it was before. He took many trips to the hospital, and I visited him many times. Last year, I got a call right before the holiday of Simchat Torah. “Rabbi, I'm in the hospital. Our new Hebrew class is starting and we are have our new adult Bnai Mitvzah course, but I may not be out by the first day of class, can you sub for me?” I said, “Irv, just concentrate on getting better, you'll teach the class, don't worry.” But he knew something, he knew he wasn't going to get better. At the end of Simchat Torah, I heard the news, he was going into hospice the next day. I visited him just an hour after he was admitted – he passed right in front of me.
Irv Pomeranz, the man who gave to others tirelessly until just days before his end - who brought people closer to the Hebrew language and Torah through classes – he asked for a raise in pay a couple weeks before he passed – he said, I want double, I said sure because anything multiplied by zero is zero.
But his students also gave to him – when he couldn't teach at night anymore, his students came to his home, they visited him when he was sick, and they became a part of his life. His widow Elle told me – had it not been for his students, Irv would have died three years ago – he gave others a new possibility for their lives, and they gave him a longer life, longer days on earth.
He transitioned to Olam HaBah after we celebrated one of his greatest loves – the Torah.
That experience was a reminder of who we are as a congregation. We aren't members of congregation in the same way people are members of country club. Members pay a fee and they take things that you can measure. Chaverim, or partners do something else – they give, and when they give, eventually, they will receive gifts that are immeasurable. That's why I stopped using the term member in describing us here at Shaarei Kodesh – we are chaverim, we are partners.
There's a famous teaching in the Mishnah (Peah 1:1) -
אֵלּוּ דְבָרִים שֶׁאֵין לָהֶם שִׁעוּר. הַפֵּאָה, וְהַבִּכּוּרִים, וְהָרֵאָיוֹן, וּגְמִילוּת חֲסָדִים, וְתַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה.
These are the things for which there is no measure: Peah, the corner of the field [which is left for the poor], the first-fruits offering, the pilgrimage, acts of lovingkindness, and Torah learning...וְתַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה כְּנֶגֶד כֻּלָּם:
And the study of Torah is equal to them all.There's something that binds all of these acts – they are things we give – charity for the poor, gifts for the Temple, acts of loving kindness for each other, Torah study. Torah is at the root of it all.
Chaverut, Friendship or partnership, means you are part of a brit - a covenant – and covenant means giving. Our chaverim are the centerpieces of our Panim el Panim program where I interviewed congregants in public last year once a month and shared their incredible stories; they are the givers of our Sunshine Team, our team of tireless givers who visit the sick, cook for those in our community who need some comfort food during a difficult time, they are the people who give in the kitchen, our congregants who teach Torah and read Torah, those who gave by beautifying our worship space, or those who change the light bulbs.
Our chaverim share their divine light in so many different ways. But more than anything, the chaverim in our lives can see us face to face.
Among the big news of the last couple of weeks, there was some big news that you might not think about as big, but will have a tremendous impact on us – another new iPhone is coming out. Isn’t it funny, the second Apple announces a new iPhone, your old iPhone suddenly becomes slow and crashes all the time? Well, the big innovation in this smartphone is that it will have facial recognition. Remember 13-year-old Athena from the article I told you about, the one who said, “I think we like our phones more than we like actual people”? This must be a dream for her – finally, her phone will be able to see her, Panim El Panim, Face to Face, and take away her loneliness. But no phone will take away our loneliness, no matter how much we use it, no matter how long we stare at that glow.
There's only one technology that can do that – each other, chaverut – partnership, friendship; and the only way to activate it is to be part of a community of partnership, a community where we give more, and take less, like our dear chaver Irv Pomeranz. The only glow that will light you up is the divine spark that resides in the people surrounding you.
Today is Yom HaKippurim. Our rabbis have an interesting play on words for this holiday – Yom HaKippurim, the day that is like Purim. How can this day, a day when we practice self-denial, when we are hungry and cranky, when we articulate our sins out loud, how can today, Yom Kippur, be a happy day? But that's what the Mishnah calls it – the happiest day of the year.
On Purim, we dress up in costumes, we pretend like we are someone else. But, nowadays, isn't every day like Purim? We wear costumes all year long in the form of rosy status updates and smiling pictures, but today, our costumes come off, we wear white, and we are truly looking at each other's faces. White encompasses every color – we all look the same, and we can all connect. And that's why today is the happiest day of the year – because we join together and we can see each other for whom we really are – beautiful and pure souls.
This year – let's try and bring more of Yom Kippur with us – tomorrow, leave your phones at home, try it, put them away, and during the year, put them down on the other Shabbatot – let's spend less time on social media, and more time together in face to face community, engaged in acts of giving – Torah study, Torah teaching, acts of loving-kindness, acts of tzedakah.
This year – let's take less, and give more. This year, our community is here to help you find your divine spark, and how you can share it with our community.
This year –let's be alone less, and together more. Instead of collecting followers online, let's make true friends, and let's do it here at Congregation Shaarei Kodesh, during the week, and on every Shabbat and holiday.
And let's not just do it for our own sake, but for the people around us who have untapped years that they didn't know they had left, like Irv and his students whose lives are changed for the better, but also for our children like Athena, and their children, because their lives depend on it.
Comments