The Internet Is Not The Problem

So 40,000 ultra-orthodox Jewish men pack into a baseball stadium. No, this isn’t the start of a joke—although that entirely depends on your definition of “joke”. It was a rally held at Citi Field on May 20, organized by a newly formed organization, Ichud HaKehillos LeTohar HaMachane, or the Unification of the Communities for the Purification of the Camp (catchy name, right?) The event was a fiery and even tearful gathering designed to raise awareness about the dangers of the Internet.

Rabbis fervently cast the Web as a threat to children and ultra-orthodoxy as a whole. As diatribes boomed through the stadium speakers in both Yiddish and English, stadium staff looked on, probably wondering if they were high.

Eytan Kobre, a spokesman for the event, declared, “The Internet brings out the worst of us!” Rabbi Don Segal, who cried while addressing the crowd in Yiddish, told a story about an ultra-orthodox man who used the web professionally before “it destroyed his yiddishkeit,” or his Jewishness. Perhaps the evening’s most heated rhetoric came from the Rabbi Yisroel Avrohom Portugal, known as the Skulen Rebbe, who asserted, “This is a battle being waged against dark negative forces…and God will help us wage this war against those negative forces.”

But waging a war against the Internet is waging war against technology—and that’s a war you neither can nor should win. The earliest indication that the battle was already being lost was evident as many in attendance fiddled with their Blackberrys, iPhones and digital cameras—even as their rabbis’ fervently denounced technology.

But technology can enhance our lives (click here) or give the impression that we’re members of the world’s least intimidating street gang (click here). It’s all about how you apply it, right? Ultimately, it comes down to individual responsibility. A hammer can be used to build a doghouse, or kill the dog. But it’d be absurd to suggest a ban on hammers in response to a sudden increase in hammer-related canine deaths. That’s simply shifting the blame and focus from the wrongdoers to inanimate objects that are harmless without human interaction.

It’s simple: If you’re afraid that your kids will be exposed to inappropriate material online, install and maintain web filters, or even monitor your kids’ web use. You know? Like responsible parents do. If you’re concerned that in spite of being an adult, you cannot help but click your way to hardcore porn sites (or worse), then grow up, learn some self-control and get off your structurally unsound soapbox. If I had to guess whether Rabbi Yechiel Meir Katz’s statement, “There is not sufficient integrity among the generation today for people to decide what is acceptable and what is not” was based on hard data or pure assumption, I’m going with the latter (and assuming that when he says, “the generation today” he’s really referring to himself.)

If the ultra-orthodox community is serious about protecting its children, perhaps it ought to start by amending positions like that of Rabbi Shmuel Kamentizky, vice-president of the Supreme Council of Rabbinic Sages, who advocates banning ultra-Orthodox Jews from reporting child sexual abuse to police. Kamentizky also advocates threatening victims and witnesses, forcing them to remain silent or report abuse to rabbis only, not the police.

And if the ultra-orthodox community is serious about the kinds of online content being viewed at home, perhaps organizers of the rally should have invited women to join.  Instead, women could attend viewing parties with live streaming of the event (Hmm. Organizers must have discovered a new form of technology-free streaming). A somewhat empty gesture given that many of these women (like those in New Square) don’t drive. But with these men’s libidos seemingly so fragile, perhaps that’s a good thing, especially when you consider that billboards advertising Cholula Hot Sauce had to be covered with white plastic to hide the demurely clad woman pictured on the Cholula bottles.

Here’s my point: If you’re an adult, behave like an adult. Appreciate that world is a diverse place in which you will inevitably be exposed to some things that appeal to you and others that require you to keep walking, look away, change the channel or click elsewhere. Oh, and if you consider yourself a responsible adult, for God’s sake, do the right thing by your kids and report pedophiles to police.

Never forget, if you’re looking at “inappropriate” content online, it’s because you chose to do so. If your kids are, it’s because you weren’t paying close enough attention. The Internet is not the problem.