Asifa and the knife

I did not want to write immediately after Asifa gathering in Citi Field for various reasons:

- the preparations for Shavuot

plus

- I wanted to ponder, listed to many opinions and eventually make my own opinion.

At the end of a couple of hours of watching, listening, thinking and reading, I am tempted to utter a very balanced opinion.

I am convinced that the Internet is a very useful tool and, if used correctly, it is a very efficient outreach instrument for spreading Judaism and Jewish learning. There is an amazing volume of valuable information available for free and helping Jewish individuals and communities to connect.

Sometimes, as it is the case with everything human, the sources are not correct and the interpretations should not be taken as the ultimate truth. It is always important that the base of your knowledge is built outside the Internet or at least that you have a reliable source of information and inspiration for a correct perspective. Thus you need a rabbi.

The Internet is equally a source of immodesty, abuse and dangerous anti-Semitism. But, this is an example I was very often thinking about: a knife can be used for cutting your cake or for killing your neighbours. The latter option does not prompt us to forbid the use of the knives at all. 

Some of the examples mentioned in the very well designed leaflet distributed on Citi Field - 100% processed on the computer - were not out of context: there are people destroying their marriages because spending too much time on the net or getting engaged in illicit behaviour. More than once, I realized that Internet addiction could be similar to any other addictions, because we, as humans, prefer to kill our time doing nothing than being engaged in 100% active behaviour.

But, in perspective, I see this debate compared with what the discussion about the dangers of TV were in the 70s. Nowadays, I can survive without TV, even if I grew up in a household where life without TV was considered a proof of poverty.

I had the chance to work hard to build my freedom and I am free to live without Internet, if needed. The power of living for at least 25 hours connected with the spiritual world, during Shabbat, is an example that we can save our soul from time to time. But the confrontation between yetzer hara and yetzer hatov is never ending. 

The conclusion: I will continue to use the Internet, cautious to keep my spiritual freedom and avoid immodest online gatherings. In comparison with men, women are sometimes too busy to get lost in the idle online world. 

Who's afraid by the Internet?

May 20, Sunday in the evening, it will be a mass rally against the Internet on Citi Fields in Queens, New York City. When I first saw the news I had a deja-vu feeling: I am familiar with the strong opposition against Internet in many haredi circles. Recently, while I was trying to explain how many opportunities you have nowadays to learn about Judaism through the various online shiurim I was cut short that you cannot have a virtual Rebbe. I was explained that you should follow your Rebbe and be close to him and his way of being and behaving. Perfectly right, I thought, but what you can do when you live somewhere without direct access to a Rebbe and with no possibilities to attend a shul.  

I owe at a great extent my baal teshuva process to the resources that I found online and to the possibilities to connect with Orthodox people that were nowhere to find where I was living at the time. I know there are many people, including in the world of yeshiva bochurs misusing the Internet, but in my opinion you do not need to forbid Internet in order to eradicate the evil in the world. You better think about how to teach people how to fish their yetzer hara tendencies and win over their animal soul. This discussion has many common points with the debate about how a man survive in a world where there are women otherwise than by isolating themselves by huge walls. If one cannot control himself do not accuse the women. Very often, one of the reasons I prefer to daven in an Orthodox shul is that I have the mechitzas preventing men to start at women while davening. It is human nature and whether it is manifested online or in the cave, we humans are no much different from an epoch to another. 

It would have been better to invest the money used for organizing the rally in more educational programs, eventually an online program.