The Lesson of CNN

CNN was the first 24-hour news network to update you moment to moment on what is going on in the world. It is an indoctrination center for spreading their brand of political ideology. They teach you how to view the world by reinforcing their lessons a thousand times a day.

If you follow their network long enough, your mind will be reprogrammed to think exactly the way they want you to. The technology to do this may have emerged this past century, but the idea came long before.

The concept of continuous education comes from Hashem. He knows the short-term nature of our thinking. We are commanded to remember the Exodus from Egypt, from the day we received the Torah to this morning.

Why?

The true challenge for us is to remember these events as if we witnessed them first hand. It requires a day to day reinforcement of everything Hashem wants us to learn.

It's like a Facebook news feed. Once you set up your political preferences, you will be bombarded with hundreds of posts that fit with what you believe. As you read each post, you are self-indoctrinating with your own opinions. It's the steady minute to minute flow of posts that reinforce it to the point of being brainwashed. In the media it is blinding and dangerous. We are trusting in ourselves only.

Hashem created a system to remold our thinking towards Him:

Torah. Daily prayers. The mitzvot.

Every day, we read one of the seven sections of the week's Torah portion. There are many recurring messages. "And G-d said to Moshe…" "You are to possess the Land…" "Hashem's decrees, ordinances, and statues…"

These are not statements mentioned in the Torah just once. They are repeated over and over again all throughout the Five Books. As we read the portion each day, these moment to moment messages are reinforced into our minds to the point that our entire thinking is renewed.

"And G-d said to Moshe," is repeated to jam through the message that all of the mitzvot come from Hashem. Whether they are "obvious" mitzvot such as not to steal, or more subtle ones like separating linen and wool, all come directly from G-d.

"Possess the Land" is a constant reminder that it is not our job to settle the land, settle in the land, or make the world happy with how we live in the land. It is to own the Land. To make it our own with our own system of laws given to us by Hashem. To secure the borders G-d gave us, and to conduct ourselves in the Land the way an owner acts in his own home. He doesn't care what others think, it's his home and he will do as he sees fit.

Following Hashem's decrees, ordinances, and statues serves the same end. From the moment we wake up, we acknowledge that Hashem gave us our life back. From the first morsel of food we eat to the last, we acknowledge that Hashem fed us. When the food is done refueling our bodies and we discard the excess, we recite a prayer reminding ourselves that every function of our body is created, maintained, and protected by our King.

All of this puts us in a mindset that everything comes from Hashem, it is good, and our Father in Heaven loves us and is doing everything for our benefit.

If we focus on the words of the prayers, the message in every line of Torah, and on the meaning of each mitzvah, we will be Divinely brainwashed with the holy waters of wisdom to see the world as a Garden of Eden, and everything that happens to us a blessing.

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Dovber Halevi runs the website www.proudlycandid.com. On it you can find 1,001 Reasons to Love Israel and the logistics behind How to Enjoy a Better Life in Israel.