Thoughts about Television

By Rabbi David Eidensohn

            It would seem that I am the wrong person to write about television. First, I have no television in my house, and secondly, I never watch it. Is it appropriate then for me to write about television? I am writing about two important articles, one by Pulitzer Prize New York Times writer Maureen Dowd, and the other, a new Gallup Poll. Put them together, and you will see why I am writing this. Before I get to them, however, I want to explain why I don't watch television. A few years ago, a fine child student started to falter. The school investigated and discovered that the parents had brought a television into the home. These parents, rest assured, did not watch anything awful. They were just like the rest of us very Orthodox Jews, but felt they wanted to take in the news, an occasional documentary, and sometimes, to relax with something appropriate… They did not let the boy watch anything even slightly raunchy. Yet, the smell of the television ruined his rhythm.

            Let me explain. A child has a voracious appetite for learning. As long as there are no distractions, a kid can belt it out. When I taught, the children did not want to go to recess, and they were little boys who had been in school from nine to six. If, however, I was not focused, and did not have the right rhythm, the kids would eat me alive. A child is about rhythm, and so is everybody. A TV has the wrong vibes, not only because of what it shows, but also because of what it is. Sitting down to listen and watch for a few hours, or even less, is a surrender, and changes the person. A human being is not designed to sit, listen and watch. My children and grandchildren are busy studying most of their young lives, but when they study, they study! A Yeshiva study room is very noisy. People argue, they swing their arms, they are at war—they are alive! Of course, there are lectures, but rarely does the audience just listen. People learn by living the learning, not by just sitting there. The Talmud calls it study "war."

            A prominent rabbinical educator once interviewed a son of mine for admission into his school. "He fights," said the rabbi. "That is what I want to see." Why not just sit there and listen to superior wisdom? Why does a student have to fight and argue to learn? Learning, what we learn, how we learn, is development of the personality, the total being. If we are passive, others mold us away from our own tendencies and abilities. If we are active, we take what we need and mold other ideas before they enter our systems. A person who sits and watches television is in a passive state.

The TV networks are constantly looking for increasingly unnatural stimuli, because a normal person doesn't live in front of a box. The double whammy of sitting passively and taking in unnatural stimuli turns off a person's proper rhythms.

            The networks must have people sitting there, as long as possible. They must hook people, and do it with sex, violence and other unnatural things. Even in cartoons, the cute little things are doing violent things. A person who tastes television loses the natural taste buds in his essence. He will live differently than the natural person he could have been.

            A religious man came to the rabbi to divorce his wife. The rabbi was shocked. "But Stan, you've been happily married all of these years, and you have children. What happened?"

            "Rabbi," said Stan, "I was always happy with my wife. Then, one day we bought a television and I saw what a real woman looks like. I want a divorce."

            The rabbi told Stan, "Divorce your television." That saved Stan and his family. This story sounds silly, but unfortunately, it is not. Watching glamorous people professionally trained to arouse sexual ardor creates an artificial stimulus, an unnatural one, so that a person may not find it in his wife. A society saturated with sex cannot have sex. Some studies put the failure rate of married couples to enjoy sex at eighty percent. Sex cannot survive a television and sex society. There is a therapy for pedophiles, which has a person arouse the bad desire and then keep the pleasure going too long. It's like eating too much ice cream. The first five plates are great, but the tenth plate is awful. Eventually, a person learns to eat too much ice cream and hate it. He no longer has the desire for ice cream. A person who sits in front of a TV to be socked with sex for an hour dulls the natural stimuli and needs increasingly more. Any unnatural pleasure can only end in destruction.

            Having said my piece about television in general, let's turn to our main topic, the two articles, by Dowd and Gallup. First, let's quote Maureen Dowd, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the New York Times. In " 'Will & Will,' 24/7", Ms. Dowd writes, "Here in television's capital (Pasadena, California), in NBC world, children don't exist. NBC sitcoms and dramas focus on quirky and unsettled singles, battered by work and dating problems, with friends serving as family." What you watch is what you are. All sights and sounds are recorded in the amygdala, and influence you. Young people, especially, sitting relaxed in front of the TV, are in a semi-hypnotic state and take it all in. It is no wonder that marriage can't work, and no wonder children, raised by NBC, shoot other children. NBC teaches them that that if you are not a quirk you are a jerk. Only problems without family make it to the big time TV.

            "When MTV and Showtime disclosed last week that they were creating a gay channel for cable, one NBC executive joked that there already was a gay channel—and he worked there." Ms. Dowd laments that "once families sat in the blue TV light, laughing or crying together" but not today. Today is there family?

            We now turn to the Gallup Poll, and its recent revelation that 70% of Americans like to spend the evening at home, and that watching TV is the preferred activity. What can be the result of a nation devoted to television, when television is devoted to anti-people?