A Jewish and Neuroscientific Perspective on Living in a Time of Moral Noise

Many Jews I speak with lately say some version of the same thing: “I’m not just angry or afraid — I’m tired.”

Not the ordinary kind of tired. A deeper fatigue. A sense of being constantly on alert, constantly defending reality, constantly absorbing hostility that feels irrational and unrelenting. This exhaustion shows up in different ways: irritability, withdrawal, sleep disruption, difficulty concentrating, a loss of joy in things that once felt grounding.

As both a rabbi and a psychologist, I hear this not as weakness, but as a predictable human response to a sustained psychological environment that is deeply dysregulating.

Judaism has language for this. Neuroscience does too.

The Nervous System Was Not Built for Moral Siege

From a neurobiological perspective, human beings are designed to handle acute threats, not chronic moral assault. When the brain perceives danger, whether physical or symbolic, the amygdala activates, mobilizing fight-or-flight responses. This is adaptive in short bursts.

But when the threat feels constant, for instance when social media, headlines, and public discourse repeatedly........

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