When I need a blessing, and I need it often, I have someone to turn to. I have already learned to skip northern cities, and find salvation close to me, too close.
One phone call, made directly to the salvation center, solves all problems, and bestows its blessings upon me and my offspring.
I know exactly what you're thinking. I even know the phone number you're running through your head right now.
But let me surprise you, you are not on track at all.
Rabbi Aharon Levi Ma'achim, Rabbi Zvieli Ben Tzur, and Rabbi Kobi Levi, are some of my Jesus centers. And maybe this is where they read this for the first time. Now they will begin to understand some unknown things, probably.
""A righteous man decrees, and God fulfills," everyone already knows that. But how many of you know the direct path, in the sense of a righteous man decrees and fulfills himself?
Let me introduce you to the new startup: "If you spend dearly from a glutton, so be it." Zero intermediaries, from importer to consumer.
God promises: He whose role and essence in life is to bring forth the precious from the profane, to bring back his children to the best, to bring forth the preciousness of man and transform him from profane to precious, is the hand of the Creator of the world. And if it were not for a written scripture, it would seem impossible to say. And now that it has been said, my secret has been revealed to the public. The Mikmazim Ltd. are my bestowers of blessings. It is always better to be blessed by the mouth of God Himself, over anyone else.
What Rabbi Aharon Levi does with values, Rabbis Ben Tzur and Levi do in the yeshiva world. If once, repentance belonged to a strictly secular genre, the world of technology has introduced repentance as a concept, even into ultra-Orthodox homes.
Rabbis Levi and Ben-Zur have managed to publish thousands of lectures, hundreds of personal conversations, and dozens of books, and more. And all of them, without exception, deal with one and only issue: the harms of technology.
Sometimes it seems like there is nothing left to add on the subject. What can be said that hasn't already been said? Everything is already written, everything is visible, and now everything is also backed up by research and authoritative findings – the Internet is the mother of all sins, and there is no end to its scourge.
Still, I have a little something to add.
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In the name of heaven and earth, from my many who have been mentioned so far. And with the prayer that no mistake will come out of my hands, I believe that one small thing is worth discussing.
I have read all their books and listened to their lectures, almost without fail. One point is mentioned there time and again with explicit determination.
""The heavy addicts cannot be saved," they say, and even sign off on every conversation.
The addiction to the Internet and smartphones is so great that all the conversations and encouragement are intended primarily for those who are clean from impurity, and hardly for those who have just begun their virtual lives.
The heavy users? Miserable, hopeless addicts.
I always wondered why this outcry was necessary. I never understood what benefit would come from this absolute declaration. Moreover, in the eyes of the little ones, this declaration is much more harmful than the positive it may contain.
In one of my meetings with Rabbi Zvieli Ben Tzur, I posed these questions to him, and I received an answer. The gist of the answer is that I have no idea what addiction is, if I'm being honest.
Possibly.
But maybe it's possible otherwise.
If I were addicted, to eating Cholent on a Friday night, for example, I would see no point in trying to quit, if I heard over and over again that I had no chance.
Moreover, I would be very satisfied with my actions. I would silence my conscience because from now on I am a complete compulsive, because I have no chance in the world of getting out of the great lust for beans and grits.
I also dare to disagree with the very claim that there is no hope for addicts.
It is possible that for Rabbis Levi and Ben Tzur - whose involvement in the field places them several steps ahead of me, the small and meager one, in the hierarchy of structures on the matter - purification means detachment, and this is truly impossible in the first stage.
But I believe that even a victory of one minute and ten seconds is a very welcome step on the path to returning to sanity.
To me, an independent decision not to put your hand in your pocket in the next second, and to postpone gratification by a hundred percent, is equivalent to a complete Baal Teshuvah. True, for a second, but he already has the name 'Baal Teshuvah'. And just before you tell me about heavy addicts, who can't hold back even for a single second, let me tell you about an emergency meeting, a visit to a doctor, and Shabbats, where necessity makes this option come true. So it's possible.
We all stand in this roadblock every year, we are all 'complete repentants' for twenty-five hours on Yom Kippur. No one will dare to dispute the coveted title on the 10th of Tishrei because of a stumble, however great, on the 9th of Cheshvan.
So where did the theory of relativity suddenly disappear to? Why a month, but not a single second?
Every decision, even the easiest and most foolish, that involves abstaining from addiction, gives birth to a new nature of victory. Every victory, even the easiest, creates one step on the ladder. And when the ladder is placed on the ground, its head reaches to the sky.
Addicted? Try it. What do you care about being rewarded for five seconds? What do you care about creating within you the addicted person, a new and bold creature that will grow at its own pace, and one day defeat the monstrous giant?
Did you read this text on your smartphone? Now turn on the cleaner.
They say it disables the phone to five hundred hundredths. Five hundred degrees on Jacob's scale.
Come back, naughty boys, come back.
• Menachem Mann is an ultra-Orthodox writer and publicist: [email protected]
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