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Online Anarchy?
There is No Converrient
Time to Lose p
For haredi Orthodox, Internet threat
hearkens back to the Enlightenment.
ER
Ben Sales
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New York
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30 June 7 • 2012
Wett Ribornftetd
o the outside observer, the haredi
Orthodox anti-Internet rally at
New York's Citi Field may have
looked uniform: a single mass of black
hats, white shirts and brown beards. But
the crowd at the May 20 event was far
from homogeneous.
Yiddish speakers sat next to
Anglophones. Chasidim from Brooklyn
mixed with "yeshivish" haredim (non-
Chasidic) from Lakewood, N.J. Bobov
Chasidim cheered along with Satmars.
These groups, while similar, usually stay
within their own communities.
As speaker after speaker at the rally
made clear, the Internet is the latest in a
series of threats dating back to the Jewish
Enlightenment, or Haskalah, which first
opened up a path for Jews to leave tradi-
tion for the secular world.
"Just as they fought tooth and nail
against the Haskalah, they're fighting
again against this;' said Samuel Heilman,
a City University of New York sociology
professor who studies haredi communi-
ties."They live in a singular world. They've
tried to keep all the doorways locked from
the inside, but you can only lock some-
thing from the inside if the people are
willing to keep it locked."
Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman, a promi-
nent haredi lecturer, made clear at the
rally that they view the Internet as a
profound challenge to the haredi way of
life: "This issue is the test of the genera-
tion that threatens all of us. Your strength
at this gathering will determine what we
look like a few years from now:'
Changing Times
The Internet has become a necessity for
many haredim: They use it to conduct
business, communicate with each other
and even to promote Jewish observance.
"In the sense that they have already
used the Internet to spread their mes-
sage far beyond the local community,
the Internet has been good for them as
well',' Heilman said."They're going to use
it, going to say that the end justifies the
means:'
The late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem
Mendel Schneerson, famously embraced
technology as a means of spreading the
faith. The Chabad-Lubavitch movement,
which did not officially participate in the
rally, was an early adapter to the Internet
age and has used online tools effectively.
"Everything God created in this world
could be used for good or the opposite"'
said Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, director
of Chabad.org ."It's our responsibility to
channel the enormous powers of technol-
ogy in a positive manner:'
But the Internet's dangers — not just
pornography and the window it provides
into the secular world, but even its poten-
tial for distraction — present the haredi
lifestyle with the challenge of how to use it
for good while keeping out the bad.
Jason Miller, a Detroit-based
Conservative rabbi who maintains an
active Web presence, said the Internet
challenges anyone who
cares about ethics.
"To some extent,
we all need to have
the Internet moder-
ated for us," Miller said.
"Beyond modesty,
there's content that I
don't think is healthy or
Conservative
beneficial
for individu-
Rabbi Miller
als to see or read!'
A Diverse Take
Adrianne Jeffries, a female blogger who
snuck into the rally disguised as a man,
wrote that although not haredi, she
found herself agreeing with some of the
speakers' points at the rally.
"There wasn't much I could quibble
with in the speech," wrote Jeffries, who
blogs for BetaBeat, a technology blog asso-
ciated with the New York Observer.
"The Internet is about instant gratifica-
tion? It's 'fleeting and empty'? It causes us
to waste productive hours? It threatens
the preservation of isolated communities
with strong traditions, such as the ultra-
Orthodox Jews? Well, yes, but ..."
For a community whose survival
depends in part on maintaining its isola-
tion, the Internet can be pernicious.
"Jews should separate themselves from
the general community,' Rabbi Yechiel
Meir Katz, the Dzibo rebbe, said at the
rally. "The great rabbis have done so in
order to safeguard future generations."
Alan Mittleman, a professor of Jewish
thought at the Conservative movement's
Jewish Theological Seminary in New York,
said the haredim are winning the battle
against the Internet just as they survived
the Haskalah.
"It's a problem that they've already
solved," he said of the Internet. "Its more
powerful and invasive, a new kind of
threat, but it's the same kind of thing."
See related editorial on page 32.