Refreshing

Rabbi Avrohom Weinrib

I wish I could say that Covid was all about personal improvement and achieving great spiritual heights. While the pandemic definitely did spur growth, it’s brought significant spiritual challenges in its wake as well. For me, one area of challenge was news sites.

Until March of 2020, I’d never been a big news follower, but suddenly, I needed to know what was going on, multiple times a day. And while some of it may have been legitimate — what are the latest Covid protocols? Who’s unfortunately sick and needs tefillos? — there was also the curiosity, plain and simple.

What’s the latest word from Dr. Fauci? What do the Democrats say, how do the Republicans respond? And that’s just America, what about Eretz Yisrael — open or closed? Does it make a difference if you’re a citizen or the second cousin twice removed of a citizen? I wouldn’t call it an all-out obsession, but I was on news sites way more than ever before, certainly way more than necessary.

It was Lag B’omer in Meron that shocked me back to my senses. I’ll never forget the feeling of going on a news site and being bombarded with actual photos and videos of people getting killed in the most tragic of ways — and these were being shared and posted and commented on.