Click (Everyw)here

At the end of the week, I embark on a weeklong meditation retreat. As the retreat starts, and for its duration, I will not be permitted to check e-mail or use my phone. Though I’ve gone on over a dozen silent meditation retreats, the prospect of a week away from these distractions still frightens me. I will miss seeing what news stories my friends are interested in and sharing on Facebook, and being able to text friends and family to say “hi,” or wish them a Shabbat Shalom. On the other hand, I worry sometimes that all this focus on building up my virtual self—“Liking” and “Sharing” the right things, posting enticing photos on Facebook, and trying to respond to all of my e-mails—prevents me from experiencing the world around me.

With Passover less than a month away, I am thinking about our relationships with the non-stop input of e-mail and social media (made more omnipresent by our smartphones) as a kind of slavery of habit: according to the Wall Street Journal, Americans between the ages of 18-24 check their smart phones 53 times a day. Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) was proposed as an official psychiatric disorder, researchers citing American and European studies showing that up to 8 percent of people have neurologic, psychological, and social dysfunction relating to their overuse of technology. Although about a billion people use Facebook, and about half log in daily, research is only now emerging about the effects of our constant use of Facebook on our well-being.

On the holiday of Passover we celebrate our freedom from slavery with matzah, a special flat bread. We often think of
matzah
and chametz (the leavened bread we are prohibited from eating during Passover) as opposites. It might surprise us to realize matzah is almost the same as the chametz: chametz is spelled ח,מ,צ, chet, mem, tzaddik. Matzah, the simple bread we eat on Passover, is spelled מ,צ,ה, mem, tzaddik, hei. The only difference between chametz and matzah is the tiny gap in the hei of matzah, versus the closed top of the letter chet. A Hasidic tradition teaches that this narrow opening in the hei is the place we let God in. The closed gap in chet represents being closed off to our Source, and by extension to the vitality and wonder of the world around us.

Every year, on Passover, I take a break from Facebook. The chametz of Facebook causes us to close ourselves to feelings of vulnerability or spiritual discomfort. This may not be such a bad thing every once in a while. Unfortunately, we are not discriminate: our smartphones are often still in our hands during a moment of joy, or of a natural welling up of compassion for the people around us. Through overuse, rather than helping us connect with a sense of wondrous connection with our vitality and its Source, these distractions become chametz. Habit. Slavery.

Why then is it a mitzvah, a sacred obligation, to go back to eating chametz at the end of Passover?

Taking a break from chametz forces us to do something out of the ordinary as we clean our houses, and eat special foods. By doing this, we can better see the habits we are enslaved to, and can return with more mindfulness to our daily actions. Similarly, the silence of my upcoming retreat is a stark contrast from the normal noise of my daily life. I know, even in the midst of this noise, that I will soon be plunged into silence. That—at least theoretically—this silence is available at any moment. I know I will return to the buzz of my hyperconnected life after retreat, the chet of my existence that too often closes me off to the world around me. All it takes is a narrow space in the hei to reconnect with our Source. With this tiny “gap” in the flood of input, I will restore a sense of genuine “connection” to my state of technological “connectivity”—and remember that all this sound is surrounded by a vast silence.

Hasidic

Pronounced: khah-SID-ik, Origin: Hebrew, a stream within ultra-Orthodox Judaism that grew out of an 18th-century mystical revival movement.

Shabbat

Pronounced: shuh-BAHT or shah-BAHT, Origin: Hebrew, the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.