“Put down the device. Talk to a real human. Protect your soul”

Mandatory Warning [Guestlines / Issue 1096]

In response to Rav Lopiansky’s penetrating article about AI, I’d like to suggest the following: A mandatory warning for all AI users. It would read as such:

WARNING: This is not a person! Use entails the following hazards:

Fake friendship: AI does not care about you. It is a computer program mimicking a human to keep you using it.

Addiction risk: This tool is designed to make your life so “easy” that you might stop talking to real people or solving your own problems.

Loss of brain power: Over-reliance on AI will weaken your ability to think, struggle, and grow.

Hidden danger: This machine puts its own “logic” to extend its reach into your life, above your human needs. It is a phony “monolithic light” that can blind you to what is real.

Put down the device. Talk to a real human. Protect your soul.

Menachem Azari

Disappointed at Sensationalism [Nursing Wounds / Issue 1096]

I haven’t yet read the feature article on urgent care, but I want to address the cover of this week’s issue. Most things slide off me. I’m not someone who gets huffy or enraged. I was fine with your October 7 coverage. I seriously don’t like it, but I’ll handle the faces of resha’im gemurim and difficult realities when they are presented as such.

This week’s cover image was different. An IV bag staged as a hanging noose is seriously disturbing. It felt beyond the pale to have something like that sitting on thousands of frum coffee tables around the world. I tore the cover off and threw it in the garbage because I didn’t want to be subjected to casual glimpses of that that image.

In my opinion, printing this shock image crossed a line that difficult reporting does not. It suggested a set of values that prioritizes provocation and visual impact over discretion, emotional responsibility, and respect for the kedushah of life. This felt like a serious and fundamental misalignment of values.

I’ve never felt this way about anything you’ve delivered, even when I disagreed or cringed. This time, I feel you owe your readership an apology.

Name Withheld

Embarrassed and Empathetic [Nursing Wounds / Issue 1096]

Like many others, I noticed the headlines about the nursing strike while scanning the news. With so much else going on in the world, it barely registered. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even open any of the articles.

Embarrassed, because after reading your excellent feature, I realized how significant this story truly is. I’m not trying to compare or rank the many painful issues competing for our attention, but on a human level, this piece brought home just how far-reaching this strike is and how many lives it touches, on both sides of the picket line.

Your article also made me aware of something else. Thankfully, I don’t currently have anyone close to me in long-term medical care. But as I read, specific people I know immediately came to mind, families who do have a relative in hospital, and I realized how much additional stress this situation must be adding to an already fragile and emotionally loaded reality.

Thank you for giving space to this issue, and for doing what good journalism does best: slowing us down, widening our lens, and deepening our empathy for what is happening around us,  even when it’s easy to scroll past.

Name Withheld

Our New Normal [Great Expectations / Issue 1096]

I love the new poll feature. It’s always fun to see what other people think about the everyday realities we’re all navigating.

Which is why I was both amused and unsettled by the recent poll asking about sending children to sleepaway camp before seventh grade. Wait a minute, does that mean that camp after seventh grade is simply a given?

That assumption made me laugh, though not entirely humorously.

Don’t get me wrong — I love camp just like the next person. I had truly amazing summers there as a child, and I understand exactly why parents want to give their children that experience. Camp can be magical, formative, and deeply positive. But the level it has reached today is simply out of control.

I’m not naive. I know how entrenched this has become, culturally. But do we ever pause to acknowledge that sleepaway camp at any age before staff, when it becomes free, is completely off the radar for many families?

And yes, that includes families who technically “send.”

Between tuition, clothing, travel, tips, visiting days, and multiplying all of that by multiple children (fine, seventh grade and up), the costs quickly become unsustainable. For many parents, this isn’t a question of values or priorities; it’s a matter of basic arithmetic. There has to be another way to think about summer, and figure out a safe, wholesome, genuinely fun option for our children that doesn’t require

parents to take on third and fourth jobs, or quietly roll over mounting debt with vague promises to deal with it “next year.” Summer should not be a source of chronic financial stress.

I appreciated the poll not just for the answers, but for what it exposed: How something can become so normalized that opting out feels almost unthinkable. Perhaps the real question isn’t what age children should go to sleepaway camp, but whether we can imagine and legitimize alternatives that work for more families, without stigma.

Worried Parent

The Value of Disconnecting [Double Take — Offline / Issue 1094]

The Double Take story about the woman whose short vacation caused a work crisis struck a nerve. As someone with the seniority, and explicit management approval,  to go offline when necessary, I’m keenly aware that this trust was earned through years of consistency, availability, and carrying responsibility. I value that deeply. But the flip side of that same dedication is that taking time off “stam,” without an externally sanctioned reason, feels nearly impossible.

Unless there’s a simchah, a birth, children’s vacation, or some other clearly defined justification, disconnecting isn’t rest — it’s a logistical operation. The amount of work required beforehand to anticipate every possible issue, arrange coverage, and ensure no resentment or fallout in my absence is so extensive that it often feels barely worth attempting.

And yet, over decades, the very few times I’ve done it (usually just for a few hours) have been profoundly restorative. They create an appetite for more, and underscore the idea that recharging isn’t just new-age nonsense. Still, it almost never happens. Not because I can’t, but because my conscience doesn’t quite allow it unless I can defend it as “legitimate.”

I gladly step in for others when they take their time off, and I know they would do the same for me. But there’s an unspoken expectation that senior people are always available, and that opting out, even briefly, requires an explanation. Over time, that expectation becomes self-policing.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: Is this actually sustainable?

What if high-value employees weren’t merely permitted to disconnect, but expected to do so regularly, with systems in place that support it, rather than relying on personal guilt tolerance and heroic preplanning? If we truly value judgment, longevity, and clarity, then rest can’t be treated as an indulgence that requires justification.

Beyond the specific scenario depicted in this story, it highlighted how much our ability to rest depends on permission, and how often that permission is missing, even when policy says otherwise.

Name Withheld

Downright Judgmental [Unsustainable / Issue 1092]

I can’t be the only one who found the feature “Unsustainable,” quite frankly, laughable. To those who believe that the general community is struggling with a financial crisis due to peer pressure, I’d like to open your eyes to a very different reality.

My family and I live in one of the outlying towns surrounding Lakewood. Our community is comprised mainly of bnei Torah who, to the world at large, would be considered middle class. Couples are working hard to get by, generally on two incomes. They live in simple homes, with few to no luxuries.

This may come as a shock to the professional analysts, but guess what? Many of us are struggling to pay for basics (think groceries, gas, health insurance premiums, medical bills, tuition, childcare, etc.). We are living hand-to-mouth, not even month-to-month. Keeping up with the Joneses is the furthest thing from our minds!

The insinuation that those struggling financially have no backbone and are incapable of saying no to themselves and their children was incredibly painful and judgmental.

Another question: Who in our society at large isn’t dealing with some sort of emotional baggage surrounding money? And here we’re judging them? It’s quite sad.

To the professionals who have all the answers, I say: Start giving more and judging less. Start seeing people, not issues. Start understanding instead of analyzing.

We’re not specimens in a science lab.

Name Withheld

The Next Frontier [TLC Talks / Episode 6]

I want to start with telling you how much I enjoy your podcast. As the mother of a gifted child, I was so happy to see that you had Devorah Pinkus as your guest. I truly feel that this is the next frontier for Jewish education.

I found myself increasingly disappointed as I listened. I say this with utmost respect, but as long as menahlim believe that being gifted equals a ticket to Brisk, great shidduchim, and a happy life, we will never fully serve these boys.

I’d like to give some examples of what it’s like to be a gifted child and parent one. My son in ninth grade has an IQ between 140 and 150.

In third grade, during the Covid lockdowns, he taught himself Gemara. So when fifth grade started, he was already so far ahead. The boredom he was contending with in school got much worse, but  everyone I talked to just said to be grateful he didn’t need tutoring.

In fourth grade the menahel told us he was smarter than half the rebbeim. Again, this was invalidating and not helpful.

In seventh grade, his rebbi’s main focus was preparing them for mesivta. This is wonderful, but my son did not need the material explained 15 times. It really affected his mental health and minyan attendance because how do you wake up on time when you have nothing to look forward to?

In eighth grade, his yeshivah tracks the kodesh classes and he finally got a higher level academic experience. But it took ten years of school to get there, and he was still bored.

No mesivta on his academic level would take him. He was not socially perfect enough and fell through the cracks.

I consider myself very grateful to live in a community with a thriving community kollel where he was able to find his people.   But finding an adult who wanted to learn with my then-12-year-old who was probably smarter than them was not easy. Once we found someone, it changed his life. He has amazing role models of what his life can be one day. They tell me he has the mind of a generation. Im yirtzeh Hashem, he will go very far. But raising a gifted child isn’t the rosy picture portrayed.

I know both sides of this coin. I have a son in fifth grade who struggles academically. He works very hard for his Bs and Cs and has wonderful friends. He is learning grit and determination that will take him very far in life.

He gets small group instruction in yeshivah and he gets tutoring out of yeshivah. The gifted child needs access to the same opportunities.

Again, thank you for starting the conversation. I hope it’s just the beginning.

Mollie Magill

The Challenge Is Real  [TLC Talks / Episode 6]

In the recent episode about gifted children, Rabbi Garfield pushed back strongly against the notion that under-stimulated smart kids getting 95s are at risk in any meaningful way. As someone who was in that category throughout grade school, I was very disturbed by what I perceived as his almost mocking disregard for the issue.

While I would never  say that I (or most kids like me) struggled in a way that even comes close to the way many other kids struggle in school, there were serious long-term consequences to the fact that I wasn’t challenged in school. Yes, I went to good yeshivos, no, I never got suspended or involved in anything bad, but I didn’t build an ability to push myself in learning until I was in beis medrash. I have always succeeded in yeshivah, I still do, but I have fallen behind many of my peers who weren’t quite as smart as me but knew how to push themselves from a young age.

Is that the biggest issue in our schools today? Of course not. But it is something worth watching out for. And when Rabbi Garfield says, and I quote, “they go to Brisk, and get great shidduchim, boo hoo,” that didn’t feel like he was saying that the issue is allotment of limited time and resources. It felt like he was saying he doesn’t care. He would never have been so dismissive of any other issue, and I was very bothered to hear how he clearly views the top of the class as unworthy of attention, just because they’re unlikely to end up in a yeshivah for struggling teens.

Name Withheld

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1097)