Sept. 3, 2025

Holy FOMO: Why Your Phone Has No Place in Prayer

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Season 8

From the neon lights of Las Vegas emerges an unexpected spiritual lesson about presence, attention, and our relationship with technology. When a family member attended a concert in Sin City, they encountered something revolutionary – the "Yonder pouch," a lockable smartphone container that prevented audience members from accessing their devices during the performance.

This revelation struck me profoundly. If a secular entertainer recognizes the sacred nature of undivided attention enough to physically secure it, shouldn't we approach our prayers with even greater intentionality? The phenomenon of "phubbing" – ignoring someone to their face while using your phone – has become so normalized that we barely notice it anymore. Yet when we bring this distracted mindset into our prayers, we're essentially phubbing the Divine.

Science confirms what we intuitively know: the mere presence of smartphones creates a "what-if factor" that splits our attention even when we're not actively using them. During prayer, this manifests as impaired concentration precisely when we seek deeper connection. As we enter the reflective month of Elul, this Las Vegas lesson offers a powerful challenge – to create technological boundaries around our spiritual practices that honor the profound importance of being fully present before the King of Kings. What distractions might you need to place in a metaphorical "Yonder pouch" to experience the transformative power of undivided prayer?

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Questions or Comments? Please email me @ michaelbrooke97@gmail.com



00:00 - A Family Trip to Vegas

00:55 - The Yonder Pouch Revelation

01:36 - FUBBING: Ignoring People for Phones

02:45 - The Call for Spiritual Presence

03:55 - Elul Lesson for Deeper Prayer

WEBVTT

00:00:01.643 --> 00:00:18.493
The Torah commands that you can't judge a person until you've walked a mile in his shoes, so I hope that you won't judge me as I tell you a personal story about a very close family member that went on an all-expenses paid trip and vacation to Sin City, to Las Vegas.

00:00:18.493 --> 00:00:33.374
It was an exciting trip that they were looking forward to I believe it was actually an anniversary, a wedding anniversary trip excursion and they were also given free tickets to a certain male R&B pop star.

00:00:33.374 --> 00:00:55.472
His last name his first name actually is here on the paper, but it doesn't really matter Someone who was singing music in an effort to entertain people and make some money, a Gentile singer, my extended relative was given $1,000 front row tickets to this concert and they were then greeted at the front door of the concert hall with a shocking rule.

00:00:55.472 --> 00:01:04.490
I heard about it after the concert, but apparently the rule was that when you go into the following concert, you need to put your phone into a yonder pouch.

00:01:04.490 --> 00:01:08.504
You heard of this Yonder Y-O-N-D-R pouch.

00:01:08.504 --> 00:01:21.212
What it is is a unique, patented, lockable smartphone pouch that basically takes away the technological smartphone distraction so that you're fully engaged in the concert.

00:01:21.212 --> 00:01:25.932
Apparently, phones were causing brain drain at the concerts.

00:01:25.932 --> 00:01:37.709
This Gentile's Las Vegas Sin City concert wasn't having the Sam Ring bunch, just an entertain-engaged crowd, so he employed the yonder pouch so that people would be there at the concert.

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Apparently, the concert was great, but the point that shook me up and should shake you awake is today's Musser lesson.

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Is that, at somebody, a Gentile in Sin City, he's smart enough and committed enough to his craft that he doesn't allow the smartphone into his concert because it causes distraction and people to be disengaged.

00:01:59.140 --> 00:02:01.067
So he makes them put them into a yonder pouch.

00:02:01.420 --> 00:02:08.242
How much more so that we need to be sensitive to how our phones can distract us in the most important moments.

00:02:08.242 --> 00:02:09.185
God forbid.

00:02:09.185 --> 00:02:16.449
It is so frequent that people can suffer from the horrible, horrible, wretched illness called fubbing.

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Have you heard of this?

00:02:17.312 --> 00:02:21.984
Fubbing means ignoring somebody to their face while being on your phone.

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Fubbing people were fubbing the R&B rock star and so we put them in yonder pouch.

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It feels like we all could use, sometimes, a yonder pouch so that when we go into pray in front of the king of all kings, we are involved in something that's at the center of the universe that our lives, our very lives, depend on, all the more so that we may be so inclined to put our technology distraction inside of the yonder pouch.

00:02:49.274 --> 00:03:00.931
Our phones are scientifically proven especially if you have a phone that has many, many different applications and accessibilities on it that you can suffer from being distracted from it when you have it at you at the wrong time.

00:03:00.931 --> 00:03:02.667
There's something called the what-if factor.

00:03:02.667 --> 00:03:06.229
What if you get something that's important that could distract your brain attention?

00:03:06.229 --> 00:03:13.650
What if, with anticipation of a previous or future coming notification that could distract you from your schmackoleno?

00:03:13.650 --> 00:03:21.540
And, god forbid, if you're in the middle of prayer, you can suffer from impaired notification, brain drain, memory worrying.

00:03:21.981 --> 00:03:34.290
All this all part of the God forbid fubbing of Hashem, which is to be standing in front of the King of all Kings and talking to him honestly about your day, asking for things, asking for your life, praising him.

00:03:34.290 --> 00:03:38.082
But instead we could be, god forbid, sucked into a distraction.

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If the R&B pop star in Sin City, las Vegas, asks his friends and colleagues and concert goers to be fully focused on the concert, how much more so should we put our phone in the yonder ended pouch when we're standing in front of the king of all kings?

00:03:55.193 --> 00:03:57.669
This Elul, take the lesson to heart.

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Let us all encourage ourselves to be fully present.

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We stand there davening to Hashem, the King of all kings.