In direct and uncompromising words, Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto addressed in his weekly lecture the spiritual damage brought about by the digital age. He spoke about a culture in which every detail becomes content — a new house, new shoes, a trip abroad — and the destructive impact of constantly watching others’ lives on a person’s soul.
According to Rabbi Pinto: “A person lives in sorrow. He opens his phone, he looks at it — this one bought a new car, that one bought a new house, and someone else has new shoes. A new house here, and that — and the person feels miserable. He says to himself: everyone has — only I don’t.”
But the reality, he explains, is very different from what appears on the screen.
Rabbi Pinto continued: “Go to that person — you’ll see he borrowed the money for the house; it’s not even his.”
According to him, a person jumps from one image to the next, from one story to another, and remains empty inside.
The next step, Rabbi Pinto says, is moral decline. That ongoing feeling of “I have nothing” — when it seems like everyone else has everything — leads a person down a negative path, both spiritually and socially.
“This thing brings a person to transgressions. It leads to bad behavior,” he added. “Friends start doing bad things, speech becomes corrupt, and thoughts with the wrong people lead to more negative actions.”
Rabbi Pinto offers a clear alternative: “Turn inward. Don’t look for life in others — build yourself from within: through learning, through faith, and through self-acceptance. And when a person focuses on themselves — on Torah, on holiness, on fear of Heaven — they grow, and they become strong and stable.”
This article was written in cooperation with Shuva Israel