Community Magazine October 2009

20 Community magazine Dedicated in memory of Mr. Irving Semah     Of course, this development was accompanied by rapid technological advancements that drastically reduced the amount of time needed to do almost anything. A business trip was once a whole-month affair, but now a person can board a plane, fall asleep in a cozy reclining chair, and wake up on te other side of the earth ten hours later. Long ago, after a person sent a letter, it would take about a week for him to receive a response from his friend or associate. Today, of course, we send an e-mail and receive a response in minutes. In the olden days, it took almost half an hour just to get the oven warm enough for cooking, but today we can place a complete frozen meal in the microwave and sit down to eat minutes later. These, and certainly many other, advancements have resulted in an abundance of free time – time that needs to be filled. This need has given rise to a sizeable set of industries catering to leisurely activities. Collectively, these industries which include television, music, theater, sports, gaming, recreation, and travel, among others, constitute the largest and most profitable business sector in the country – all part of America’s response to the abundance of free time. People have hours upon hours of time that they desperately seek to occupy, and so the many entertainment geared industries furiously go to work, to provide activities to fill their time vacuum. And, as in Noah’s period, the availability of free time has led to destructive behavior. Over the past century, the rates of crime and addictions have risen at alarming levels as people fail to find constructive things to do in their spare time. Desperate to occupy their time, many people resort to drugs and alcohol, as well as all kinds of injurious mischief. Free time is also a contributing cause of the ever increasing decadence of society, which continues to widen the range of acceptable conduct. Behavior that had always been regarded with disgust has now become standard, as today’s consumers look for new ways to occupy their days and nights. Destroying Our Most Precious Asset There is a common expression that many people use today: “killing time.” This term pretty much sums up the root cause of so many of today’s social ills. People don’t know what to do with their free time, so they “kill” it. At best, they waste it on meaningless pursuits; at worst, they use it to engage in self- destructive behavior, perpetrate crimes, or participate in wanton indulgences. For a Torah Jew, nothing is more of an anathema than the notion of “killing” time. Time is our most precious asset, essentially our ticket to eternal life. Every moment of our lives can be transformed into eternity, if it is used for Torah and missva observance. Who would want to “kill” such a valuable opportunity? What greater travesty could there be than the intentional waste of something so precious? To further illustrate this point, let us consider a hypothetical halachic query. Imagine Eliyahu the Prophet appears and informs someone that the elderly person sitting next to him will die of We Specialize in Swanee!