http://thepartialview.blogspot.com/2012/02/weekend-without-frum-weeklies.html After much thought and contemplating we finally did it. We did not buy any of the frum weeklies , newspapers or magazines etc. It was a shabbos with no Yated Ne"eman or Hamodia no Mishpacha, Bina or Ami magazine not even the new issue o Zman or occasional other Jewish newspaper. Its not about the money or the $25 saved rather it was just spending shabbos like it used to be when there was only one paper.
Instead of reading forced or filler articles, having the kids hit the couch after the gefilte fish to read up on their favorite features. we had a nice shabbos meal with more participation than usual. It was actually not easy, giving up our addiction to the frum papers, but after the Friday night meal I had time to be Maavir sedrah, with some more insight on the parsha. My daughter dusted off a artscroll book we had on the shelf and read a nice biography of a Jewish family.We sat around the couch and spoke to one another, instead of all of us sitting there and each one engrossed in their favorite paper or waiting for next on a particular magazine.
Our dependence on newspapers and other magazines has started taking over our life and become a staple and a must, that we just can not do without. Unfortunatelyit has become that forgetting to buy the paper is equivalent as forgetting to buy Challah.
While this was a one time experience, yesim not looking to deprive myself of oneg shabbos, I'm actually going to buy the papers on Sunday. However its refreshing to know that we can appreciate a shabbos together with more quality time. We also didn't miss out much, by not knowing what was written in a paper that was almost a weeks old news anyway.
I’m surprised at you, RY that you have not yet equated Artscroll to the hamodiah, Yated etc.
ReplyDeleteI did not read in your article about sitting and learning something REAL, which Shabbat was meant for.
Well. You can still fix that by just adding to your well intentioned post.