Rabbi Levi Wilansky is the assistant director of Chabad of Maine. He and head Rabbi Moshe Wilansky invite Jews of all backgrounds and affiliations to join Chabad for the high holidays this year. For more info, please visit chabadofmaine.com/highholidays.

In 1878, Portland was one of the first cities in America to install telephones. Back then, operators had to manually connect every call by plugging wires into switchboards. Over the past few months, Portland has made national headlines again for several phone-related stories. This time, however, it’s about how residents are reducing their phone usage.

On Sept. 3, the approximately 6,500 students at Portland’s public schools filed into their classrooms for the start of the school year. However, when the bell rang, for the first time in over a decade, there was complete silence in the classrooms — no phones buzzing, no notifications chiming, no screens glowing in backpacks. The bell-to-bell cellphone ban that the Board of Education passed last June had taken effect, and while it initially faced some resistance, it eventually met with acceptance by parents and students.

This ban is part of a growing nationwide trend of schools prohibiting cellphone use during the school day to promote a more focused academic environment. 

At the same time, the Atlantic magazine ran a story about a group of South Portland parents who replaced their children’s cellphones with landline phones. Around 15-20 families created a “landline pod” where their kids could stay in touch with their friends without the risks of getting addicted to smartphones at a young age.

The kids, reluctant at first, actually enjoyed this experiment, and reported feeling better and being able to actually focus on what their friends were saying when speaking with them.

What seemed farfetched just a few years ago — replacing smartphones with landlines or banning them altogether — turned out to address kids’ needs for authentic connection and learning. Perhaps in order to make progress, what we really need is to take a step backward. 

There’s an old story about a professor who puts on a demonstration for his class. First, he fills a jar with golf balls, then adds in smaller pebbles, and finally fills in the gaps with sand. The balls represent life’s most important things — family, health, purpose, faith — whereas the pebbles signify secondary matters like work and possessions, and the sand is the small stuff. His point was if you put the sand in first, there’s no room for what truly matters. 

In our digital age, distractions seem to fill every available moment. For some, it can be easy to lose sight of the golf balls such as genuine connection, meaning and community.

The upcoming Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah (Sept. 22-24) is a time of introspection and reflection where individuals look back on the previous year. We ask ourselves where we made mistakes and how we can make positive change going forward, examining what “sand” can be removed from our buckets and what golf balls need to be put back.

A powerful tool we have used over the millennia to help with this process is the shofar — a curved ram’s horn blown on Rosh Hashanah. The shofar’s piercing cry is at once meant to stir up our souls into a mood of reflection and repentance, and acts as a herald for the new year. Like those corded phones in South Portland, the shofar represents a direct, unmediated connection with our deepest essence.

This year, we invite the entire Portland community to join us in experiencing this moving ritual on Tuesday, Sept. 23, from 5 to 5:30 p.m. at Fort Allen Park’s Eastern Promenade. We will be hosting a special “Shofar in the Park” event where we will sound the shofar, pray for peace and connect with our community. The event is open to all, regardless of synagogue membership or denominational affiliation.

In our world of constant digital attention, perhaps what we need most is to actually take a step back and look at what really matters. As technology marches forward, the most progressive step we can take might be to prioritize authentic human connection.

Just like the professor and the golf balls, we are called to do the work asking ourselves what’s really important in our lives and what we can remove. With the help of ancient traditions and communal support, we can make positive changes that influence not only ourselves, but the entire world.