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November 16 • 2017
jn
and didn’t know what they were talk-
ing about in a Facebook comment.
Certainly, the incessant posting of our
own political ideology into the echo
chamber of Facebook isn’t a healthy
thing either. I’m terribly afraid that
the time of intelligent debate and the
exchange of well-thought ideas in a
respectable forum is over.
“I unfriended many people. Politics
was the main reason and, once I start-
ed unfriending people, I just started
to question what friendship means
at all,” said David
Calton of Southfield.
“I never vote and
disliked the politics
on both sides. I
unfriended people
on the right who
used racist language,
David Calton
and I unfriended
everyone calling on
people to support one candidate over
the other as a Jewish value. I figured
if we were really friends we could
resume our friendship after the elec-
tions.”
THINK BEFORE POSTING
So, is Facebook a great tool or is it
the worst thing to happen to us in
the Digital Age? I think Facebook
is a wonderful medium, but it must
also be understood to be a mega-
phone. When we’re on the social
network, our voice is amplified.
What we post goes out to many
more people than just the folks sit-
ting around our dinner table in a
prior generation.
We’ve all heard the admonition to
not talk politics at the dinner table,
and Facebook is the world’s larg-
est dinner table. With social media,
instead of sharing our political view-
point with our small group of dinner
guests or our friends waiting in line at
the supermarket or a couple guys on
the golf course, we are now broadcast-
ing our opinion to the world — and it
might not be a well-thought opinion.
It might be offensive to some. It might
be misinterpreted by others. We must
guard our tongue even more in the
age of social media.
Ken Bertin of West Bloomfield
recently quit using Facebook after he
became frustrated
by the political war
of words.
“I’ve really lost
only two people on
Facebook and one
was because of poli-
tics and the other
Ken Bertin
was because of other
things we disagreed
about. I really liked Facebook, but it is
a good place to demonstrate people’s
stupidity. People use bad behavior to
try to justify other people’s bad behav-
ior.”
In a Rosh Hashanah sermon at
Adat Shalom Synagogue, Rabbi Aaron
Bergman urged his
congregants to ask
themselves four
questions before
commenting on
someone’s Facebook
post or criticizing
another’s opinion:
“Does it have to be
Rabbi Aaron
said? Does it have to
Bergman
be said by me? Does
it have to be said by
me now? Does it have to be said by
me in this way?”
Several congregants have taken a
hiatus from the social network since
hearing Bergman’s sermon. He also
has sworn off Facebook.
Social media has become a part of
our culture and Facebook, with about
1.7 billion users worldwide, isn’t going
away. It’s one of the new ways we
humans communicate and engage
with one another. And, in doing so,
our political viewpoints are undoubt-
edly going to become part of the con-
versation. However, when we find our-
selves engaging with people who have
left civility behind, we must make the
mature decision to remove ourselves
from that toxicity. It’s unhealthy to
stay involved.
Rather than unfriending our friends
on Facebook or, worse, allowing our
friendships to be severed because of
political clashes, there are alternative
solutions. Facebook allows you to
simply unfollow someone’s posts and,
more recently, has offered a feature to
“snooze” someone for 30 days, provid-
ing some temporary relief from seeing
their posts if they’re bothersome or
inflammatory.
We should take proactive steps to
guard our speech in our online discus-
sions, thinking twice before comment-
ing. We can also make the effort to not
get sucked into explosive, insult-filled
and vitriolic debate. Finally, we can
aim to not allow the echo chamber of
our own Facebook communities to
deafen us to other opinions and hope
that others will make similar efforts.
The way we communicate with
everyone — from close friends to the
stranger commenting on our friend’s
Facebook post — says so much about
our own character. Let’s all seek to
make these conversations holier, both
on Facebook and in person. •
Rabbi Jason Miller is a local educator and
entrepreneur. He is president of Access
Technology in West Bloomfield and visiting rabbi
of Congregation B’nai Israel in Sylvania, Ohio.
Follow him at facebook.com/RabbiJasonMiller.