Even vilaine fille, irreverent wench that she is, must bow before cosmic alignments.
Pesach, the festival of redemption from bondage, and TV-turnoff Week coincide this year. The Sages teach: "In every generation, we are commanded to view ourselves as if each one of us was personally brought forth out of Egypt." This article about TV-turnoff Week, inviting people to pull the plug on television, Internet, and video games, struck a nerve. The organization that sponsors TV-turnoff Week
argues against TV as the culture's default mode, challenging the ever-more-entrenched assumption that illuminated screens should always be within sight.
With that in mind, TV-turnoff Network fights two different battles: In the home, where TV, whatever the dosage, is self-administered; and in the rest of the world, where TV is a forced-fed intravenous drip.
In public spaces—whether stores or schools, arenas or elevators, airline seatbacks or downtown sidewalks—TV has staked its claim as an electronic overlay, mediating and often competing with the real life that accompanies it.
In honor of Pesach and TV-turnoff Week, and excepting brief article call-outs, vilaine fille is turning off, tuning out, and dropping out. She returns on or around 2 May.
Speaking of the Exodus, please visit Progetto Mosè to learn about the restoration of Michelangelo's Moses. Giorgio Vasari wrote of this work:
The beautiful face, like that of a saint and mighty prince, seems as one regards it to need the veil to cover it, so splendid and shining does it appear, and so well has the artist presented in the marble the divinity with which G-d had endowed that holy countenance. The draperies fall in graceful folds, the muscles of the arms and bones of the hands are of such beauty and perfection, as are the legs and knees, the feet being adorned with excellent shoes, that Moses may now be called the friend of G-d more than ever, since G-d has permitted his body to be prepared for the resurrection before the others by the hand of Michelangelo. The Jews still go every Saturday in troops to visit and adore it as a divine, not a human thing.
"Moses may now be called the friend of G-d more than ever, since G-d has permitted his body to be prepared for the resurrection before the others by the hand of Michelangelo." Who but Michelangelo deserves such praise? And who but Vasari has uttered it so eloquently?
P.S. Learn why Moses is not mentioned in the Pesach seder.
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