Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men attended a mega-rally in New York on Sunday to discuss the dangers posed by the Internet. The event took place at the Citi Field Stadium in Queens, New York, home of the Mets.
After years of oft-flouted rabbinic bans on Internet use, a group of both Hasidic and non-Hasidic rabbis presented a novel a approach on sunday. More than 40,000 Orthodox Jewish men were expected to attend; women were not invited.
Without letting up on their severe condemnation of technology and the Internet, the rabbis behind the event are accepting the Web’s inevitability while instructing their followers to use Internet-filtering technology.
“No one here is a Luddite who denies the manifold benefits that technology has brought to mankind as a whole,” said Eytan Kobre, spokesman for the event. “But at a certain point, a mature, thinking individual stops and says, ‘I’ve got to make a… cost-benefit analysis… [of] what ways it is enriching my life, [and] in what ways it is undermining it.’”

By Haaretz and Josh Nathan-Kazis

Haaretz.com