How can I tell when something like my phone, money, or approval has too much power over me?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau explains that campaigns don’t happen every four years. “They happen every day.” Your phone is campaigning, money is campaigning, people’s approval is campaigning, and they all want the same job: “to make your decisions for you.”
How do you know when one of them has become too powerful? “Not necessarily when you use it, when you can’t say no to it.” If you cannot put down your phone, cannot lose a deal, or cannot disappoint people who expect something from you, “that’s not freedom.”
Freedom, he teaches, “is not doing whatever you want. Freedom is being able to decide what you will serve.” The world says to follow whatever pulls you, but the question Elul asks, “now and always,” is: who is actually pulling you?
He ties it to the commandment לֹא יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים עַל פָּנָי, you shall have no other gods before Me. “The throne never stays empty. If you do not decide who sits on it, something else will decide for you.”
Related concepts: Freedom you can hand over · The phone that owns you
In A Soul at Peace: The Seat Is Never Empty
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Rabbi Landau teaches that the phone, money, and approval all campaign every day for the job of making your decisions.
Fear, vulnerability, or tension
When has something become too powerful?
The sign is not that you use it but that you can’t say no to it: you can’t put the phone down, lose a deal, or disappoint someone.
Underlying need or longing
A person wants freedom, which Rabbi Landau defines as being able to decide what you will serve.
Deepest human truth
The throne never stays empty. If you do not choose who sits on it, something else will choose for you.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: The Cycle of Renewal: Elul, Holidays, and Light · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz