This morning as I was sitting in the park, a shocking thing happened.

I was talking to a friend on the phone, and from the corner of my eye, I see a child running toward the lake.

As he runs across the beach, his mother pursuing him, she yells, “Stop! Stop!”

Slowly, I understand what is happening.

He is carrying her cell phone, and as he gets to the edge of the water, he raises his arm over his head.

Before she can reach him, he launches the phone with all his might into the water.

Just a second too late, before retrieving the phone, she hits him on the head, yelling.

With a smile of deep satisfaction on his face, he retreats to where his sibling is sleeping in a baby stroller.

The mother goes to the water, searching, and picks the phone out of the dirty water.

Then she returns to her son where she chastises him again, but only barely.

This in itself shocks me. (If it had been me and my child…)

The boy stands there with the smile on his face never waning.

It is evident that he feels great power in this moment.

The family continues walking and stops at a bench further down the path.

I tell my friend blow by blow as I’m watching this all happen, and we begin immediately evaluating what has just occurred.

Is this some evil, sociopath with no care for how his mother feels?

My friend asks the child’s age.

I look at him: around five.

How can he have absolutely no sense of remorse, we wonder?

Or fear?

Then, another possibility: he is angry.

Why, then, is he so angry?

He must have a sense that this phone is his mother’s connection to the world!

Does he not know the gravity of what he’s done?

Now, in retrospect, it seems obvious.

The cell phone, for him, is the thing that keeps his mother occupied with everyone and everything—except for him.

On the other hand, for her, the cell phone, as it is for every parent, for every single person, is that which distracts her from what is right in front of her.

From what is present in the moment.

My friend and I started reminiscing about the old days when we were parents.

Before cell phones, before the omnipresent smart phone.

Would we have been the same kind of parent as we see others are today?

Constantly on the phone, talking, talking, listening, listening, reading, reading, not looking at their child?

We remembered the isolation.

The loneliness.

The difficulty in finding community as we cared for our infants and toddlers.

The intense need for adult interaction that did not exist in our way of life as American parents choosing (and with the luxury) to stay home caring for our own children.

We reminisced about the old corded phones, and cords so long that we could stretch them across the kitchen, or from one room to another.

Cords so long, we could wash dishes with the phone in the crook of our neck, pressed against our ear.

Ah, the old crook of the neck, hurting.

But how good it felt to have company while doing chores, but also to be multi-tasking.

How powerful and competent we felt.

How many times were we as parents talking on the phone while our children clambered for our attention?

Then the cell phone came along.

And they became smaller and smaller.

No more would they fit in the crook of your neck.

Now they are omnipresent in ear buds, but still represent one-sided, anonymous conversations.

And they sleep by our beds, if not in our beds, ever-ready with new information, ever-ready for “doom” scrolling.

There when we wake up, and when we go to sleep.

My friend then asked another question with some hesitation and discomfort.

What ethnic group did this mother belong to?

I understood her trepidation, because I had considered mentioning it, but then had changed my mind.

Why was this important, after all?

We talked about that, too.

That our children are right to push back and to question our need to know.

The need to resist the temptation to put people in a box, and type-cast them.

Yet, there was significance to the answer as well.

I told her she was an African immigrant wearing traditional dress.

And so we attempted to tell her story for her.

It led us to wonder about how this cell phone connected her, not only to others in the city, to employment perhaps, but also to family and friends across continents.

This cell phone was, in a sense, this woman’s whole world.

Her lifeline.

As they have become for all of us.

They have become our lifeline in a strange and disharmonious way that keeps us tethered to something ourside of ourselves, and outside the present moment.

They have become an object we cannot live without that brings us all the information we seem to need in the world.

And also information we don’t need but think we do.

A source of disinformation, misinformation, and panic.

Whether it’s the weather, or the air quality we can check on several times a day…

Or the pop-ups of “Breaking News” items that come in several times an hour.

All meant to grab our attention.

All meant to put us into a place of panic so we keep coming back for more.

This was the story we told about this particular mother and her little boy.

And about ourselves.

And now I come to the story of this week’s Parsha.

The story of the spies.

These are spies, or scouts, sent by Moses to scout out the Promised Land.

What kinds of vegetation and fruit is there to find? (And make sure you bring some back!)

What kind of people live there?

What kinds of cities do they have?

Are they strong or weak? (i.e. How hard will it be to conquer them?)

The reports are generally good.

Until the naysayers speak up.

“These people are so big, they are giants, and we are but grasshoppers to them.”

And panic sets in.

The people wail through the night.

“Why, God, did you take us out of bondage only to die here? Things weren’t so bad there! What is this false promise you made?”

But the panic uncalled for because the story is false.

What about our stories?

What about our panic?

There are very real, horrifying things happening in the world today.

And we need to take action.

But we must also be careful not to be sucked in by the media meant to simply get our attention by making us panic.

Do I need to know how bad the air quality is moment to moment?

Don’t I already know that, most of the time, it’s not very good?

Yet, it is so much better than it was in the 1960’s and ‘70’s when I was growing up in New York City.

So good things can happen.

We can effect change for the better.

We are capable of this.

Do I need to know that fascism is a real possibility in the (possibly near) future of this country?

Yes.

But I also need to find ways of disconnecting from the constant barrage that comes from my phone.

Yes, my phone is my connection to the world.

To my own little world, and to the wider world.

But maybe it shouldn’t take throwing the phone into the water to get back to the present moment.

And maybe we can rewrite the story of our country and our world.

Because our stories are very powerful.

And they can effect change for the better.

Shabbat Shalom, and please say Amen.