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When Awareness Becomes Idolatry: A Call to Restrain Our Tongues and Our Feeds

by Ram ben Ze’ev


When Awareness Becomes Idolatry: A Call to Restrain Our Tongues and Our Feeds
When Awareness Becomes Idolatry: A Call to Restrain Our Tongues and Our Feeds

One might think that simply knowing about evil inoculates a person against it. That seeing depravity and cruelty on a screen somehow fortifies the spirit to resist. But the opposite is true.


Each time we click, comment, share, and amplify content steeped in wickedness—even under the pious pretense of “awareness”—we energise the very forces we claim to oppose. We help weave the web that ensnares our neighbours and ourselves in a culture of outrage, despair, and distraction.



I have addressed this before, yet the message seems to slip from our collective memory as swiftly as the next scandal approaches. In When Commentary Becomes Collusion, I wrote that our habit of endless commentary on evil is not harmless observation; it is collusion dressed in moral concern. When we fixate on the vileness of others, we extend the reach of their corruption. We lend our voices to their chorus.


This is especially true for the Jewish People, a nation entrusted with a mission far holier than the gossip of the digital bazaar. We are called to be a people apart, not a people adrift in the tides of public sensation. Yet, as I observed in A People Apart, or a People Adrift?, many have lost the courage to distinguish between genuine vigilance and the idolatry of perpetual reaction.


Indeed, there is something idolatrous about this reflexive indignation, this compulsive display of moral superiority. In The Idolatry of Outrage, I warned that such behaviour ultimately serves the agenda of the Nations—to scatter our focus, to steal our strength, to drain our faith in the possibility of goodness. When we enthrone outrage as our guiding purpose, we abandon the Divine mission to elevate life rather than wallow in its darkness.


Some insist they are simply keeping others informed. But sharing every detail of depravity does not protect our community—it corrodes it. Consider how social media has become the marketplace of evil, a phrase I used deliberately in The Marketplace of Evil, because it perfectly captures this commerce in the worst impulses of humanity. Every share is a sale.



Every like is an endorsement. Every outraged comment is free advertising for the Yetzer Hara.


And when the subject is terrorism or violence, the cost is even greater. In How Public Talk of Terror Strengthens Our Enemies, I demonstrated how every re-posted atrocity validates the perpetrators in their own eyes and magnifies their impact in ours. We grant them precisely the recognition they crave and cloak it in the language of caution.


Where does this leave us? Should we never speak of evil? Of course not. Torah does not ask us to be blind. But there is a profound difference between awareness and obsession, between vigilance and addiction. The test is whether our words and our clicks serve a purpose higher than our own emotional gratification.


Before you share, ask: Will this lift anyone closer to the Divine? Will this strengthen resolve or only feed fear? Will this inspire a holy response, or is it merely a gesture of impotent rage?


The habit of consuming and amplifying darkness is not merely unhelpful. It is corrosive to the soul and corrosive to the mission of the Jewish People. It weakens our ability to bring light into the world.


If you truly wish to confront evil, then do so with deeds of lovingkindness, with words that uplift, with Torah learning that refines the heart. Let your days be a testament to discipline rather than a showcase of every passing horror.



It is not enough to claim that we are making others aware. That excuse has outlived its usefulness. In this age of relentless spectacle, restraint is a revolutionary act. May we find the courage to practice it.


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