We previously saw how Orthodox Jews in New York prevailed upon the government to get rid of bike lanes in their neighborhoods to protect them from the sight of women on bikes. Now almost 40,000 men gathered in Citi Field to call for an end to the Internet as a danger to their faith. Women of course were not allowed to attend because that would also be an affront. They were allowed to watch . . . you guessed it . . . on the Internet.
The seven hour event cost $1.5 million and featured prominent Jewish leaders who railed against the Internet as corrupting the faithful by exposing them to outside ideas and influences. One participant is quoted as denouncing “unadulterated freedom” as a threat to religion.
One Rabbi warned that the “internet is a fire that burns a person’s body and soul.” Much like their counterparts in Iran, the religious leaders warned that having Internet access without approved filters and limiting software is immoral and violation of faith. Information going to them and their families must remain closely controlled and approved by their religious leaders.
Moreover, any family breaking these rules are to be “shunned” as corrupted.
The effort to keep roughly one million Orthodox Jews in self-imposed isolation is no easy task in a pluralistic and modern society. Yet, “unadulterated freedom” has been known to lead to . . . freedom.
Source: New York Daily News and Gizmodo
Hey, old ‘fundamentalist’ ancient thinking Jews…. I’m Jewish, although I got smart more than 40 years ago and threw off the 3,000 year old thinking that still rules your lives….. and I have the Answer to your problem, the problem of ‘Unadulterated Freedom’ that you seem to be suffering under. Go, possibly out in the desert, in Death Valley, perhaps, and build your own Concentration camps. Starve yourselves, beat yourselves, get down on your knees and pray to your ‘never answering’ Ghod……. And then, you will be truly happy! And I will smile for you……. And for ‘heaven sakes’ leave your EVIL computers home….. or better yet, sell them before you go and only take your prayer books with you. We wouldn’t want you to have the opportunity for any ‘outside’ influences to sully your experience with Jahovah…….You people disgust me! You are one of the major reasons for me to become an ATHEIST!!!!!
If these backwards men don’t like the Internet…. let them not use it, especially on Saturday, and sit home and twirl their sideburns and STFU!!!!!
I heard the stuff about the evils of electronic communication ages ago in a meeting of Mormon women in New Jersey (they meet separately from the men on Sundays after a common service); I heard this same stuff from other groups of extremely religious people, zealots and fanatics. The point is simply that once you have free access to what others are saying, you might hear something you’re not supposed to hear — and then — trouble in Paradise. For instance, there is a website called failed-messiah.com that daily lambasts the ultra Orthodox communities that protect their own no matter what they do: Firebomb a guy in his own home for not praying where you want him to pray, sure, and count on the community for protection; molest the children who go to the school and keep the Brooklyn DA from intervenine, no prob, count on the community for protection; try to utterly destroy a mother for trying to protect her child from abuse, neglect and starvation, go right ahead, the community will not only protect you but jump on the bandwagon.
But if you go on-line, somebody might put up a post. They might say Amy Neustein is a heroic woman who deserves honor; they might say teachers in a religious school are doing what Catholic priests are doing and they might say Hynes is keeping all this under wraps.
The Internet is dangerous for the very reason that you can read whatever somebody puts up, and you can judge for yourself. Perhaps some Patriarchs do not want that to happen…
It would be prudent for this group to create their own firewall service within their community and remember that policing each and every household is a violation of these citizens right to access the press freely. That is why the internet is what it is–full of everything and full of nothing. It’s not so much that these guys can’t trust the congregants–it’s more about being unable to trust themselves and their own levels of temptation. And, as one of those who studied the Bible as Literature, I can unequivocally opine that the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is nothing that I want a young child to read because the stories are all about violence, oppression, adultery, sodomy, incest, and everything that children don’t need to read. What is presented is as provocative as the daytime soap opera. Guys, if you removed your yarmukels, you would get a hint of the world instead of attempting to shield yourselves from it. And, at least one of you makes your living purveying something to the rest of the world that would cast you as a sinner if you partook yourself, and that makes you just as guilty because you promote it. You can’t hid inside the temple bowing to the Lord when you do not behave as you preach.
Well, first the Islamofascists, then the Westboro Baptist Church, and now these idiots! This is proof, if anybody needed it, that religious fundamentalism always turns into tyranny. It’s high time that some enlightened judge told bigots like these that, yes, they have a right to be offended by any-damn-thing they want to, but nobody else is obliged to be offended with them — so they can just go ahead and be offended. In America, nobody is obliged to live by the dictates of anybody else’s religion.
–Leslie < Fish
I know the solution to this. Let them become Amish. No electricity, no net. They wouldn’t even have to change their wardrobe much. Although the Amish can get a little wild with the color blue sometimes.
hahah,
I like the peeing dilemma junctionshamus. But I gotta ask: do you read the paper while peeing(like the Germans), or do you pee on the papers?
as far as the phone booths, I admit I’m guilty as well…
“I’ve heard that some of them say that a Jewish doctor’s saving a Gentile’s life on “Sabbath” is sinful.”
Really? I know Orthodox Jewish doctors that work on the Sabbath. The best doctor in my local ER is a skullcap wearing Orthodox Jew. What you are quoting is jewish legal theory, or the Talmud which poses the theoretical question of whether it is permissible for a jewish doctor to save a “Worshiper of the forces of nature” or a Pagan. The answer to the question is yes, a jewish doctor may save a pagan. SO if you are a Pagan breathe a sigh of relief. Noteworthy is that the Talmud discusses theoretically whether a jewish doctor may save a fellow jew’s arm or leg on the Sabbath.
@BarkinDog – No pay telephones or newspapers? Kinda cuts your peeing options in half, don’t it?
So how does erasing a bike lane prevent a woman from riding her bike? Cue Queen’s Bicycle, followed by Bohemian Rhapsody.
Who cares what they want? I’ll use the internet if I damn well feel like it. I’m not having superstitious old fools ordering me around. Or anyone else.
I’ve heard that some of them say that a Jewish doctor’s saving a Gentile’s life on “Sabbath” is sinful.
Oh well, let them rot in their ignorance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_1Ry44K-MM
La Boheme: Jussi Bjorling
V.S.
La Boheme: Caruso
Lol at some of the speeches. Ever heard of “A day late and a dollar short”? You can’t kill the internet and it’s damn hard to regulate.
An interesting dichotomy is that the O’dox have all banned TV from their homes. The internet is probably worse for your soul than American television , but they cannot ban it.
My sources tell me that after years of attempting to ban the internet, a prominent American Rabbi changed his position and intends to regulate the internet in Orthodox Jewish homes. The result is this gathering or Asifa in Hebrew.
Do you know you can listen to Caruso on Spotify? I love the internet!
As the poets and anarchists like to say: “Freedom means absence of restraint. License means taking advantage of it.”
“The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside world (all that he sees and hears, reads and writes, experiences, and expresses), but also – in its penetration of his inner life – over what we may speak of as his communication with himself. It creates an atmosphere uncomfortably reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984” — Robert J. Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a study of “brainwashing” in China
So here we have a kosher 1984, writ small, where Joseph Goebbel’s Number 2 principle of propaganda holds sway: namely, that “propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.”
Right on idealist7.
Of course “it’s fine, as long as…..”
These people are free to be unfree.
Sometimes our perception of what freedom is makes us wanna preach it (making us fanatics of “freedom”)and so we feel bad that other groups don’t see it the way we see it.
What’s wrong with this group of people coming together to express their fears, and to define their own freedom?
I don’t see a problem.
In fact I don’t think of myself as free. I think I’m ok…I dabble in this life, and try as much as I can not to judge others(yet I’m doing it now).
But I never consider somebody who drives a prius and shops at wholefoods market any freer than anybody else.
I also happen to think that there is a lot of ideological intolerance among the so-called moderates…even when they quote Plato.
Cheers
Take the pay telephones off the street corners too. And message flags on ships at sea. And tee shirts with messages on them. And newspapers.
sounds like little bibi is playing too much world of warcraft
@JCtBT – “Its just like Catholics being peeved about birth control… If your people aren’t supposed to take it, convince them of the ‘sin’ of it…don’t go for legal recourse to MAKE them stop it.”
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A lot of us just nod graciously and move on to a more reasonable discussion topic.
And did we not recently hear from someone here how they handle sexual abuse of children?
We need a universal term, to take from them their hiding behind a god. Let’s just call them insane-OrthodoxJew, insane-Protestant, insane-Catholic, insane-muslims, insane-Sikhs, insane-whatever-freak-religion, etc——for they all are. And that’s find, just as long as they keep off
my rights.
And thanks Dredd for the Nietzche.