Rabbinic Reflection: Rabbi Taylor Baruchel

Seeing Beyond 

Last Sunday, many of us found ourselves sending the same text messages. 

“Were you there?” 

“Did you make it home safely?” 

“Are you okay?” 

Those were not hypothetical questions. The violence at Salsa on St. Clair happened in a neighbourhood we know well, at a festival built around music, food, dancing, and the simple joy of being together. 

In the days that followed, I found myself doing what so many of us do after something terrible happens. 

Reading. 

Refreshing. 

Scrolling. 

Lamenting that this is not the Canada I grew up in. 

Somewhere amid my doomscrolling, I realized something uncomfortable: I had begun to mistake what was demanding my attention for the whole of reality. 

Today, countless voices compete for our attention. Some are human. Others are algorithms designed to keep us scrolling by feeding us whatever provokes the strongest emotional reaction. Fear. Outrage. Conflict. The more frightened or furious we become, the more of ourselves we give away.  

Not every story competing for our attention deserves our trust.  We know headlines can distort. Images can be stripped of context. Misinformation can travel around the world before truth has tied its shoes. Repetition can make falsehood begin to feel familiar, and familiarity can begin to feel like fact. 

Without noticing, we can allow the loudest, most frightening, and most frequently repeated stories to become the lens through which we see everything else. 

And yet, once again, I find myself amazed by how Jewish time meets the moment: This Shabbat is Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of Vision, which precedes Tisha B’Av, when we gather to remember destruction, exile, and generations of Jewish heartbreak. 

Shabbat Chazon does not ask us to look away from what is broken. 

But vision requires more than staring at the wound. 

Vision is not the refusal to see what is broken. It is the refusal to believe that brokenness is the whole story. It means recognizing that what fills our screens may be incomplete, distorted, or simply untrue. 

The violence is real. 

So is the neighbour who checks in. 

The fear is real. 

So is the stranger who steps in to help. 

The hatred is real. 

So are the countless acts of kindness, decency, and quiet courage that will never trend, never go viral, and never make the evening news. 

We cannot choose the events that unfold around us. 

But we can choose which stories shape us.  

Because the stories that shape us shouldn’t be the loudest ones. 

They are the ones worthy of returning to, again and again. 

The stories that remind us not only what the world is, but what it can still become. 

The ones that teach us what is worth grieving. 

What is worth protecting. 

What is worth building. 

Every story teaches us a way of seeing the world. The question is which stories we choose to live by. 

My prayer this Shabbat Chazon is not that we see less of what is broken, but that we become more attentive to what is true. 

May we refuse to surrender our imagination to fear. 

And may we never confuse what demands our attention with what truly deserves it.