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“Speaking from someone who has a lot of social media spotlight, I feel like social media is very narcissistic and displays a life that isn’t really real,” pop star, Katy Perry told Cosmopolitan.com in a recent interview. She went on to say “I wish there was a thing like Shabbat that wasn’t particularly religious-based, that was kind of a worldwide day where we’re not on our phones — like a movement. I just think something like this would be really great for our minds, especially because kids today — if they weren’t born in the 80s — don’t even know what a life without internet is like. And I think it’s going to be really difficult for our focus and our attention spans moving forward. So I’d love if the world implemented an actual day of real rest.”

Growing up in a non-shomer shabbos family, I remember being so relieved that I wasn’t one of those Orthodox Jews who had to do the whole “boring” shabbat thing every week. I was “free” to do whatever I wanted on Friday nights and Saturdays. And here we have a major celebrity (who’s not even Jewish), who could have any material thing imaginable yet she longingly looks at the gift of shabbos and wishes that she and the rest of the world could have it too.

When I read this quote from Perry, I immediately thought of the prophecy from Amos from some 2800 years ago: “Hi’ne yamim ba’im, ve’hishlachti ra’av ba’arets lo ra’av la’lechem ve’lo tsama la’mayim ki im lishmoa et divrei Hashem.” (Behold, days will come that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.) We live in remarkably affluent times (at least in the Western world), but something is missing for so many people. With conveniences unimaginable in previous generations – all available at the touch of a button – there is a hunger for something else: to unplug and reconnect – “to remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.”

May we merit to see a world of spiritual hunger and fulfillment.

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