Acts of kindness can inspire, on and off social media
This past week marked the end of the fall festival season on the Jewish calendar.
In the span of 23 days, Jews around the globe celebrated Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Sukkot (the Festival of Booths), Shemini Atzeret (an additional festival day that includes a special prayer for rain in its season) and Simchat Torah (the completion of the weekly cycle of readings from the Five Books of Moses — Genesis through Deuteronomy — and the beginning of a new cycle).
So, if you see any Jewish clergy walking around looking a bit tired, you might want to offer to buy them a cup of coffee.
Throughout these holidays, which were celebrated again this year with COVID precautions at the center of everyone’s minds, my social media feed was appropriately inundated with festivalrelated posts. People wished a happy new year to those celebrating, asked for forgiveness from anyone they offended in advance of the Day of Atonement and shared beautiful images of celebration.
One particular post caught my attention. It was a picture of a lovely, welldecorated outdoor hut, or sukkah, that a friend built to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot. By building a sukkah, we commemorate the 40 years that the Israelites spent wandering in the desert and the fact that they lived in these temporary homes during their travels. In the days of ancient Israel, those who were harvesting their crops at this time of year would also live in similar temporary huts.
I might have kept right on scrolling had it not been for the words in the post itself: “If it’s not on Facebook, it didn’t actually happen.”
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that an entire generation avoids using Facebook because they view it as being for an age bracket not their own, I find myself flummoxed by this perception that something must be posted on social media in order to prove that it actually happened.
As a rabbi, I delivered sermons during the High Holidays and throughout the year, and no videos of them are posted on social media. Did I still share those hopefully inspiring words, even though they never made it to Facebook? Obviously, the answer is yes. I did deliver the sermons, and I can even tell whether people found them inspiring without the positive reinforcement of likes and loves.
Without a doubt, social media serves a critical role in our lives, especially these past 18 months. We can keep up with friends from near and far with the touch of a screen – watching children grow up, celebrating new beginnings and even offering condolences when people lose loved ones.
At the beginning of the pandemic, my family did a nightly Facebook Live “Counting of the Quarantine” in which we shared one positive thing that had happened, despite the fact that we were on lockdown. We used social media because it allowed us the chance to reach our extended family and friends. Social media keeps us connected, and for that I am continually grateful.
At the same time, I still worry about our collective need to post about everything that we do, specifically, acts of loving kindness.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling good about helping others, and I do truly believe that when we share those moments on social media it has the power to inspire others to act in kind.
But not every moment needs to be shared. The choice to keep an act of loving kindness private does not in any way diminish the generosity we have shown. If anything, it elevates it because it proves that we acted not for our own benefit of seeing how many people like what we do; rather we acted solely for the sake of helping someone in need.
The festivals may be over on the Jewish calendar, but the work of performing acts of loving kindness never ends. I look forward to being inspired by the incredible works people do in our community and am thankful that we have digital platforms to help share these moments.
And if you choose to do something to help fix our world but choose not to post it on social media, rest assured, it still happened.