Our era, ironically, has been called the age of communication.  When I was young, making a phone call from Israel to the United States cost a great deal and was not simple, so one might speak to their relatives abroad only rarely.   When my oldest was in Israel about 5 years ago calling was so much easier but still required a phone call and could only be initiated by whichever party had the right cell phone plan for calling internationally.  Then there was skype, a step up from the phone but worked best at a desktop computer and needed to be scheduled.   Today though, each morning, usually on my way walking back from Shacharit to my house, I receive a video call via Whatsapp from my daughter in Israel.  Often she is walking in the street as I am.  It works seamlessly, and the reception is so clear that even the crew of the Starship Enterprise would be jealous.

And yet. Our age of communication, as everyone knows, makes many of us more distant, and less aware of others and their opinions.   Instead of expanding our minds and encouraging us to think differently, our social media communication, and even the wide array of  newspapers we can choose to read (because we can choose, we choose what we agree with), make us even more monolithic in our thinking, ever more narrow minded.  Watch a youtube cat video and the algorithm will ensure that is all you watch, watch a video which reflects one political or philosophical point of view and the application will not encourage self analysis, but of course, will just enforce what we already believe.  How do we become more open minded?  How do we bring ourselves to hear others?   What, besides cat videos, is truly holding us back?

In this week’s parsha Moshe tries to convince the Jewish people to change their thinking.  They have been slaves for 210 years, are set in their ways and can not break out of the slave mentality to imagine themselves as free.   The Torah says, “And they (the Jewish people), did not listen to Moshe due to shortness of breath  and hard labor”.  The Torah is teaching us what makes people close minded, what stops us from thinking in new ways that we are not accustomed to, what prevents us from hearing and considering the beliefs of others.   It is “shortness of breath.”  But what does this mean?

The Hamek Davar, Rabbi Naftoli Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (19c Poland), gives an amazingly modern explanation.  He says: “From shortness of breath”-”One who only takes short breaths finds it hard to tolerate long talks, which are required for understanding and for paying attention, this all requires longer breaths.”  Rabbi Berlin is saying that if one can only toldertae sound bites, and can not take deeper breaths and have longer conversations then they will be, like the Jewish people were under slavery, unable to hear or pay attention to a new idea, a new way of thinking.

Today we suffer from this age-old affliction that Bine Yisrael suffered from in Egypt, Kotzer ruach, shortness of breath.   Just as they could not see something which was not already part of their world view, so too many of us today can not.  The solution, our parsha is teaching, is to take a deeper breath, to slow down, to express ideas and not repeat sound bites, to engage in conversation, to talk “with” not “at”.  When we can become “orech ruach”, “long of breath”, rather than “kotzer ruach” “short of breath”, then we will be able to find our way out of the enslavement which perhaps we do not even know we are in.