Like many of you, for the past few weeks I have felt a cloud over me due to the events in our homeland. The need to keep a constant watch over events in Israel, checking and rechecking my news and social media feeds, has led me down the rabbit hole of despair. Thank God for Shabbat when I can clear my mind and refresh my soul, my moments in prayer both personal and communal, and my teaching where I have tried to keep a strong face for the benefit of my students.

I have noticed this same cloud over many of my teenage students. This has been exacerbated by the pervasive presence of social media. As I have written in the past, social media is highly addictive and often unhealthy for teens even during the best of times. The disturbing videos and images flooding our social media during the current war can have serious detrimental effects on our children’s mental health. Even as adults, we need to work hard to curtail scrolling through these images; for our children, even moreso. In fact, my school has been advising our students to stay away from social media, especially the more immersive video-based apps like TikTok and Instagram. But telling someone not to look, by definition, can make them look even more. Let’s do a thought experiment. Close your eyes for 30 seconds and don’t think about elephants. Now open them. What did you think about? Elephants, of course. You can’t tell someone not to do something without making that something even more enticing.

So, what can we do for the sake of the health of our younger children and teens in these troubling times?

I found an answer in the story of Noah and the ark in this past week’s parsha. God decides to bring a flood so the world can have a reboot due to the pervasive evil, robbery and violence. He tasks Noah with building a teiva, an ark, as a refuge for the last vestiges of humanity, himself and his family and the animals needed to repopulate a new world. The Torah describes this first maker, DIY project of Noah in detail, including the ark’s dimensions, levels and building materials, all necessary information for Noah to construct the ark. God also adds a seemingly superfluous detail saying:

Make a tzohar for the ark, צֹ֣הַר תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה לַתֵּבָ֗ה

(Parshat Noah, 6:16)

The commentators struggle with what this tzohar is and why God needs to command Noah to make it.

Rashi provides two explanations.

צהר. יש אומרים חַלּוֹן וְיש אומרים אֶבֶן טוֹבָה הַמְּאִירָה לָהֶם (בראשית רבה):

Some say this was a window; others say that it was a precious stone that gave light to them (Genesis Rabbah 31:11).

Rashi first brings down the simple interpretation that the tzohar was a window. This explains the presence of a window later in the story which Noah opens to first let out the raven and then the dove to see if there is dry land after the flood. However, this translation has its own problems since the usual word for window is a חַלּוֹן, the word used later in the story. The word used here is צהר. Rashi then provides a second explanation that the tzohar was a precious stone which could give off light either by refracting light from the outside or perhaps through some special power to produce light on its own.

This explanation is based on the opinion of Rabbi Yohanan in the Talmud in Sanhedrin 108b.

צוהר תעשה לתיבה א”ר יוחנן אמר לו הקב”ה לנח קבע בה אבנים טובות ומרגליות כדי שיהיו מאירות לכם כצהרים

With regard to the verse: “A tzohar you shall make for the ark” (Genesis 6:16), Rabbi Yoḥanan says that the Holy One, Blessed be He, said to Noah: Set precious stones and jewels in the ark so that they will shine for you as the afternoon [tzohorayim] sun.

The word tzohar comes from the Hebrew word for afternoon, tzohorayim, the brightest time of the day. Tzohar is also closely related to the word zohar, the Hebrew word for illumination and the title of the most basic Kabbalistic text, the Zohar, since the Hebrew letter tzadi in the word tzohar and zayin in the word zohar are often interchangeable.

The Chizkuni reconciles the two opinions cited in Rashi stating that God was commanding Noah to build a window which can be opened later to let out the raven and the dove but which during the darkness of the flood when the sun was not shining, was covered by a tzohar, a precious stone which illuminated the ark even during the darkness.

However, this still does not explain why God would command Noah to make this tzohar. Wouldn’t Noah know on his own that the ark needed a window and source of light? Furthermore, this cannot possibly be the only light source for such a large structure.

One could answer by thinking of the many purposes of a window. A window is used to provide light. It is also used as an opening to the outside. A window is often made of glass or some other see-through material so it can be used to look outside. The Torah Temima explains that God was careful to command Noah to make a window that was a tzohar, made of a precious stone that was not transparent. It was important that during the flood, this time of evil and destruction, Noah did not look out into the abyss of the darkness. Later in Parshat Vayera, when Lot and his family are saved by the angel from the fire and brimstone of the destruction of Sodom, the angel commands them not to look back. And Lot’s wife who defies this command and looks back at the destruction of Sodom is turned into a pillar of salt. Similarly, God is commanding Noah and his family here not to look at the evil and destruction. If they do, this could have tragic consequences.

This can provide a framework for us in dealing with our current times of darkness. We are to try our best not to look into the darkness. Those who do, rarely emerge unscathed. But I believe the tzohar is not just a negative command of what not to do but can also provide us with a positive framework for achieving clarity and clear headedness even in these dark times. The tzohar might not be transparent, but it is translucent. It is a source of light either refracted from the outside or shining from within due to its unique qualities. We are commanded not just to avoid looking out at the darkness, but to create for ourselves an inner source of light.

Our Chassidic masters have interpreted this verse homiletically based on the teiva, which not only means ark but also means word. They interpret צֹ֣הַר תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה לַתֵּבָ֗ה, that one should make a light for the word. As Rebbe Nachman of Breslov explains in his classic work, Likutei Moharan:

The difference between a window and a precious stone is that a window has no light of its own. It is simply [a medium] for the light to enter through. But when there is no light, the window does not give light. With a precious stone, however, even when there is no outside light the stone shines of itself. So, too, there are people whose words are [like] a window, incapable of giving them light on their own. This is [what Rashi means by] “some say.” Their “saying” becomes a window. And there are some whose “saying” becomes a precious jewel and [their words] radiate. (Translation: Sefaria)

I saw a similar message from that sage for talking to kids, Mr. Rogers. In responding to the upheavals of the late 1960s with the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Mr. Rogers had a heart-to-heart conversation with his young viewers. He said, instead of looking at the bad people and what they did, one should look to the helpers, the people who run in to help others in times of trouble.

This can be a message for us in these trying times. We need to try our best to look to the helpers, those who are a source of radiance in the darkness, and to impress upon our students how they too can become helpers themselves and radiate their inner light to others. Instead of filling our social media feeds with images of grim destruction, find the positive actions that we can do to make a difference, to build our own personal ark as a refuge from the raging sea of darkness.

In my school there has been a constant flow of such initiatives. Some have used social media campaigns to spread awareness of the mitzvah of tzitzit for their classmates and the soldiers fighting for our survival. Others have been learning mishnayot or taking it upon themselves to be more careful to say Shema before going to sleep at night or Asher Yatzar after going to the bathroom. Others have been baking cookies or selling flowers to raise spirits and funds for our people. Still others have been writing thank-you notes to President Biden for his unprecedented support during our time of need. And others have been creating video interviews with teachers and faculty who were in Israel when the war broke out so they could share their experiences and editing them into a news magazine to post for our community on various platforms. And the list goes on and on.

The key is that all these projects are student-driven ways for them to become the helpers, creating their personal tzohar, their inner light and hope in the darkness.

As Rav Tzadok Hakohen of Lublin says, “a little of the light repels much of the darkness, and when light enters the house, the darkness runs from it.” We can all utilize our skills and passions together with the tools that our social media world provides to spread light to, with the help of the Almighty, vanquish the forces of darkness.

Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky is the director of Educational Technology at Yeshivat Frisch. He is also the author of the Parsha Memes which appear weekly in The Jewish Link. You can email him at [email protected].

You can view a source sheet for the Torah sources in this article here: http://tiny.cc/innerlight