c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Riding my exercise bicycle each morning is physically rewarding, but incredibly boring. For years, I watched the morning programs on television to overcome the tedium of pushing pedals without going anywhere.

But morning TV gabfests are now so depressing or so saturated with plugs for new books and movies that I have returned to (gasp!) the traditional Jewish morning prayer service to start my day. And while the loss of a single viewer does not a bad Nielsen rating make, the networks have only themselves to blame for my defection.

Instead of achieving psychic exhilaration following a workout _ one of the promised benefits of regular exercise _ I was frequently mentally depressed when I got off the bike. The source of my blues was clearly not the exercise, but the content of the programs I watched.

While pedaling one morning, I learned that every food was bad for human consumption. The dire prediction began with these familiar words:”A new report issued today by researchers at Nevereatanything University warned that people who eat pasta, tofu, fruit, meat, fish, vegetables, nuts, fowl, flour, and dairy products are putting themselves at risk. The researchers urge that only water be consumed, but here, too, there are potential dangers because of the high lead content in most drinking water.” On another morning, I was grimly warned not to engage in any form of travel _ including planes in crowded skies, defective cars, aged subways, infection-ridden cruise ships, buses with incompetent drivers, and trains with sleep deprived engineers. And don’t forget roller blades, ice skates, and horseback riding. The solution: become a hermit in my apartment even though the previous day it was ominously announced on the same show that most serious accidents occur at home.

While I always knew that walking in a city is a high-risk endeavor, one morning show advised against taking”quiet walks in rural areas”lest a sudden flash of lightening strike us dead.

I was told that being overweight brings on strokes, diabetes, and heart attacks. However, thirty minutes later on another channel, I was happily reassured that”weight isn’t the problem, fitness is …”And, of course, the torrent of frightening words about”good”and”bad”cholesterol is unending.

And let’s not overlook TV therapists who, in 90-second soundbites, confidently teach us how to control anger and jealousy, get a salary increase, improve dull sex lives, and best of all, live sanely in a dysfunctional family. Think what insights could be gained if the Doctor Feelgoods of TV land were given another 30 or 60 seconds of air time.

But now it’s goodbye to all that; no more morning TV for me.

Instead, it’s the Jewish prayerbook that prepares me to bravely face the world each morning, and, no surprise here, the authors of the prayerbook got it exactly right with their distillation of thousands of years of life experience.

Instead of perilous reports and menacing statistics _ the staples of morning TV _ the prayerbook allows me to thank God for”removing sleep from my eyes and slumber from my lids.” It exhorts me to express profound gratitude that my”system of veins and arteries”are adequately functioning and it provides an attainable agenda of reflecting on what is truly important in life:”honoring parents, practice of lovingkindness, hospitality to strangers, visiting the sick, providing for the widow and orphan, rejoicing with a bride and groom, attending the dead to the grave, and making peace between human beings.” Every morning I am reminded to”clothe the naked, assist the blind, and set the captives free.”Above all, I am commanded to study Torah because from this flows everything else in life.

Is turning off the modern media a cop-out, a retreat into religious obscurantism? Hardly. Nor are Jewish morning prayers some kind of New Age mantra to be recited each day or a spiritual rabbit’s foot to be uttered for good luck. Just the opposite.

We require stretching of our bodies before beginning physical exercise. So, too, we need mental and spiritual stretching each morning. And TV shows, with their relentless focus on the dangers and superficialities that surround us, offer no stretching of the soul.

But someday, just maybe, we’ll hear these words on morning TV:”Researchers have confirmed that physical exercise, when combined with traditional morning prayers, provide an excellent way to start the day …” MJP END RUDIN