How to read the news without losing your mind

The job of a journalist boils down to this: gathering information from a variety of informed sources, choosing the most relevant data and quotes, organizing all the information, and presenting it as clearly and objectively as possible in an engaging manner.

Veteran journalist and public speaker Jane Eisner is using this process, which she knows so well, to prepare two presentations for the annual Scholar-in-Residence program sponsored by Adath Shalom Synagogue and Temple Beth Am in Morris Plains on March 21 and 22.

Ms. Eisner, who worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years, was editor in chief of the Forward from 2008 to 2019, and then directed academic affairs at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism until May 2023, said she chose topics that address “challenges I feel, and I suspect others do as well.”

One talk will delve into “how to engage with the news without losing your mind and how Jewish spiritual practices help you do that.” The other will examine ways to understand and observe the last of the Ten Commandments, “You shall not covet.”

Ms. Eisner graciously agreed to elaborate a bit —enough to whet our appetites without spoiling the meal, so to speak.

“News engagement is something I’ve thought about and worked on for decades, though in the past it was framed in terms of how to increase our circulation and readership, how to get people to care,” she said. “The specifics are different now.

“I’ve been researching the phenomenon of news avoidance syndrome. When the news is so difficult to absorb and coming at you all the time, there’s a human tendency to turn away. For many, the political situation in United States and the war in Israel have caused us to kind of cringe and avoid the news.

“The tendency to feel overwhelmed by the news has probably been with us for some time, but I think it’s reached an acute level now. I feel it myself.”

Some news avoidance is healthy, she continued, but too much is problematic in her opinion. “I’ve been a journalist for 45 years and I care about the news,” she said. “I believe an informed public is crucial to democracy.”

This is a top-of-mind issue for Ms. Eisner. She is the author of “Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy,” published in 2004. In March 2024, she released a report on youth voting supported by the A-Mark Foundation, followed up by articles on the topic for the Los Angeles Times.

Her talk in Morris Plains will explore the question of how to “maintain your health and wellbeing under the barrage of news while still becoming the informed citizen you need to be. There are teachings and practices in Jewish tradition that point to ways to deal with this.”

One “obvious but really profound” strategy, she said, “is the tradition of celebrating Shabbat, however you celebrate it. Setting aside a time once a week to remove ourselves from the world outside and focus on what our faith teaches us, and on family and friends, is a really good model. Scholars and researchers are pointing to it, without naming it, and we have it already available in our tradition.”

Regarding her own news consumption habits, she said she is “still emerging after the election into trying to read and absorb and listen to more news.”

Ms. Eisner peruses the print edition of the New York Times daily and regularly reads the Washington Post and listens to National Public Radio, though “if I used to listen to two hours of NPR, now I’m listening to one. I feel badly about that. I’m committed to learning, but sometimes I need to modulate how much I’m getting, and sometimes it’s better to switch over to the classical music station.”

Ms. Eisner lives in Manhattan; she also reads the New York Jewish Week and The City online and tries to vary her news diet with a sprinkling of news and opinion sources that are “out of the Upper West Side bubble,” she added. The Times of Israel is her go-to for “steady middle-of-the-road” coverage of Israeli current events.

The second topic she chose for the Scholar-in-Residence Shabbat reflects her active commitment to Judaism. Among other positions at nonprofits, she’s on the leadership team of Minyan M’at, an independent, traditional, egalitarian community within Ansche Chesed, a Conservative Upper West Side synagogue.

“I think the Tenth Commandment is the hardest one to follow, at least from my perspective,” she said. “A lot of people don’t focus on it or write about it. But it’s a real challenge that I’ve always been curious about and fascinated by.

“Most of us in civilized society understand what the other commandments mean. There is a Jewish teaching that the first five commandments are essentially emblematic of our relationship with God, and the second five, which don’t mention God, are about how we should behave in society. But how do you not covet, especially in a society built on the capitalistic notion of acquisition?

“How do I deal with the feeling of ‘I wish I had such and such’? I don’t want to act on it and yet I also feel it’s not bad; it’s human nature. What’s brilliant about this commandment is how could it possibly have predicted the kind of life we have now? And yet it does. It speaks to something deep inside of us that we have to grapple with in modern life as much as in ancient life, I think.”

Ms. Eisner has been investigating classic and contemporary Torah commentaries “to try to understand how scholars have interpreted this commandment against coveting and if these interpretations can enhance my life, help make me a better citizen and help me observe Jewish tradition.”

Both lectures, she said, “are trying to make sense of things that are part of our lives, even if we don’t realize it. I’ve approached these topics with a certain degree of humility. I don’t pretend to be an expert on everything, but I do think I’m a good reporter and I know how to find and process information.”

Indeed, Scholar in Residence co-chairs Charlotte and Steve Frank said they were impressed by Ms. Eisner’s “reputation as a journalist and author and the timeliness of the topics about which she offered to speak.”

Her lectures are scheduled for Friday night and Saturday morning after services; preregistration is required. (See box.) Each lecture will be followed by a Q&A session.

“I’m honored and grateful to have the opportunity to explore some subjects that are new for me and that I hope will resonate with the congregation,” Ms. Eisner said.

Attendees may also be interested in hearing about her current project, a book about the singer-songwriter Carole King for the Jewish Lives Series of Yale University Press, due to be published in late September. The genre of this series is “interpretive biography,” which incorporates the point of view of the author.

Though she did not interview Ms. King directly — “She’s had an anguished relationship with fame and really guards her privacy,” Ms. Eisner explained —over the course of her career she has interviewed such notables as Barack Obama, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Her many works have appeared in the Washington Post’s Book World, Columbia Journalism Review, the New York Times, the Atlantic, AARP Magazine, the Boston Globe, Zocalo Public Square, Religion & Politics, the Los Angeles Times, Time, NPR, the Jewish Chronicle, and other major news outlets.

Who: Journalist/editor/educator Jane Eisner

What: Adath Shalom/Temple Beth Am’s Scholar-in-Residence program

Where: 841 Mountain Way, Morris Plains

When: On March 21, Shabbat dinner ($36) at 6 p.m. followed by services and lecture at 7:15. On March 22, services at 9:30 a.m. followed at 11:30 by Kiddush lunch (free for members; $18 for nonmembers) and the lecture

Deadline: Registration is required by March 10.

Information:SIR@adathshalom.net