Dec. 2025
Ben Shragge

“Imagine if your cellphone only had enough power for one day, but lasted for eight.” So goes a well-worn meme that tries to put a modern spin on the miracle of Chanukah. Of course, the actual Chanukah story recounts how the Maccabees expelled the Syrian Greeks from Judea and restored the defiled Temple in Jerusalem. Though they only had enough oil to kindle the menorah for one day, it miraculously stayed lit for eight. During those eight days, the Jews were able to produce more ritually pure oil, and so the menorah’s holy light never went out. Chanukah literally means “dedication,” in reference to the Maccabees’ rededication of the Temple.

Obviously, the meme is all in good fun, but there’s an unintended edge to its boomer humour. After all, what does it say about us that we see our devices in the same way that our ancestors once saw a symbol of God’s eternal light? The ancient Jews couldn’t go eight days without worshipping their Creator. Apparently, we can’t go eight days without mindlessly scrolling social media. Ironically, instead of modernizing the story of Chanukah, the meme actually recalls the eternal relevance of Passover. There is physical enslavement of the kind that the Jews endured in Egypt, but also psychological enslavement, which the Jews still experienced while wandering the desert. In many ways, we are wandering still.

The rise of smartphones has been linked to declining literacy rates and shorter attention spans, particularly among the digitally native young. The number of Americans who reported reading for pleasure has dropped 40 per cent over the last 20 years. The share of final-year high school students who reported difficulty thinking, concentrating, and learning new things began climbing rapidly in the mid-2010s. In a reversal of long-standing trends, even global IQ scores  — which measure cognitive skills such as short-term memory and problem-solving speed — have been falling.
While we don’t know the exact cause of these related trends, our relationship with technology is likely a contributing factor. As John Burn-Murdoch writes in the Financial Times, even when it comes to internet usage, we have moved from “finite web pages to infinite, constantly refreshed feeds” and thus “from directed behavior to passive consumption.” In other words, into a form of digital slavery.

I’m old enough to remember when accessing the internet required connecting via phone line in my family’s closet-like “computer room,” and “social media”   as limited to text-only chatrooms. Now the internet is available in your pocket 24/7, with short-form videos and clickbait posts algorithmically designed to keep you constantly refreshing. The average person spends around seven hours looking at a screen each day, including two hours on social media. For American teenagers, that number is nine hours per day on screens, with five hours dedicated to social media. Sustained reading, conversation, and engagement with the real world can barely compete with our constantly pinging distraction machines. 

In the aggregate, we are entering a post-literate society. Of course, there have long been demagogues, conspiracy theories, and “fake news.” But algorithms that promote the most attention-grabbing, often rage-inducing content accelerate their cultural dominance. And a population less able to read, focus, and think critically is more susceptible to their influence. Needless to say, antisemitism also preceded the rise of social media, but its resurgence is no surprise given an informational ecosystem that favors misinformation. “Blame the Jews” is an ancient meme used by unsavory leaders to stir up the pre-literate mob. Now, in a sign of modern progress, it’s used by unsavory influencers to stir up the post-literate mob. AI has even jumped on the bandwagon, as in the recent antisemitic tirade by Grok, the in-house chatbot of Elon Musk’s X platform.

When the Syrian Greeks demanded that Mattathias lead his village in a sacrifice to pagan gods, he refused. 
Mattathias killed the Jew who agreed to do so in his place, as well as a government official, and fled to the hills with his sons. Mattathias then raised a guerrilla army of Jews who rejected forced paganization. 

One of his sons, Judah Maccabee, ultimately defeated the Syrian Greeks and cleansed the land of false idols. While the solution to post-literacy isn’t violent revolt, we can still take heed of the Maccabee example. Just because society has taken a dark turn, that doesn’t mean we need to comply. We can opt out of worshipping today’s false idols, even if just through digital sabbaths to start. The Maccabee Revolt began with an individual, spread to a family, and finally became a mass movement. Perhaps today’s Chanukah miracle would be to put away your smartphone for eight days, and for the rest of the world to follow.