{"id":380,"date":"2012-05-23T20:31:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T20:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/05\/blogosphere-heats-up-over-haredi-internet-rally.html"},"modified":"2012-05-23T20:31:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T20:31:00","slug":"blogosphere-heats-up-over-haredi-internet-rally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/05\/blogosphere-heats-up-over-haredi-internet-rally.html","title":{"rendered":"Blogosphere Heats Up Over Haredi Internet Rally"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The non-Jewish press has taken a great interest in the Haredi internet sobfest held on Sunday.\u00a0 I guess that\u2019s bound to happen when 40,000 black-suited men take over a baseball stadium on a hot day in May and no bats or gloves are involved.<\/p>\n

Over at Jezebel, Katie J.M. Baker and Sam Biddle have a scathing post<\/a>.\u00a0 Leaving aside a few of their inaccuracies (not all Haredim are Hasidim), they hit the nail on the head by identifying misogyny at the core of all of this:<\/p>\n

According to the Guard Your Eyes<\/a> organization, the so-called \u201cnumber one resource for dealing with the growing problem of the struggle with\/addiction to\u00a0inappropriate\u00a0materials on the Internet,\u201d more men struggle to \u201cbreak free of lust related behaviors\u201d than women. (But divorce is not a \u201cproper solution\u201d for the wives of porn addicts because<\/a> \u201ctemptations are so great, it is easy for a man to get hooked.\u201d) It\u2019s easy to see why the Orthodox community would be puzzled at the idea of porn-loving women, because that would imply that women are sexual beings, a theory that doesn\u2019t fly in a community where women who are menstruating are considered so impure that they are forbidden to touch even their husbands. \u2026So when the Hasidic community pushed to ban women from the Asifa (Yeshivish for \u201cgathering\u201d) because the stadium could not be divided for men and women as according to custom, few people complained.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I\u2019ve pointed out about a million times, it\u2019s not just about misogyny, though it is very much also about it.\u00a0 It\u2019s about knowledge in general.\u00a0 They might cite sexual imagery as their primary reason for \u201cshrying gevalt,\u201d but they\u2019re just as scared (maybe more) of Talk Origins<\/a>. \u00a0In Israel, where they have more power, they\u2019ve even managed to get \u201ckosher\u201d devices that block internet and even text messaging.<\/p>\n

One person who just doesn\u2019t get it is Chaya Kurtz.\u00a0 Blogging at \u201cXOJane\u201d she writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When you slam Orthodox Jews because you think you\u2019re defending or somehow liberating the women of our communities, you\u2019re actually doing us a huge disservice.<\/p>\n

Hi. I\u2019m Chaya, and I am a Chassidic Jewish woman. I am also a media professional with a degree in Women\u2019s Studies from a large, very liberal university (magna cum laude, baby!).<\/p>\n

In the past few days, I\u2019ve been reading the backlash against \u201cthe asifa,\u201d a recent mass meeting of religious Jewish men meant to draw a few boundaries around Internet use in our homes (meaning religious Jewish homes; not your house).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She goes on to talk about how wonderful life is for Haredi women and all the usual drivel you hear about that.\u00a0 (See Dvora Meyers at the Forward for a rebuttal.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what Chaya doesn\u2019t understand.\u00a0 Maybe she\u2019s had the privilege to attend a liberal university and make up her own mind about the world.\u00a0 And perhaps she\u2019s also so wonderfully insulated from Haredi reality that no one in her shul minds that she writes for a blog that features posts about tattoos or labiaplasty.<\/p>\n

This is not typical of most frum women\u2019s (or men\u2019s) lives.\u00a0 And newsflash for Chaya:\u00a0 The men who were screaming and crying out to the Lord for protection from the evils of the internet were talking about you.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The non-Jewish press has taken a great interest in the Haredi internet sobfest held on Sunday.\u00a0 I guess that\u2019s bound to happen when 40,000 black-suited men take over a baseball stadium on a hot day in May and no bats or gloves are involved. Over at Jezebel, Katie J.M. Baker and Sam Biddle have a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13,26,31,38],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-haredim","tag-misogyny","tag-orthodox-judaism","tag-science-and-reason"],"yoast_head":"\nBlogosphere Heats Up Over Haredi Internet Rally<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The non-Jewish press has taken a great interest in the Haredi internet sobfest held on Sunday.\u00a0 I guess that\u2019s bound to happen when 40,000 black-suited\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/05\/blogosphere-heats-up-over-haredi-internet-rally.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blogosphere Heats Up Over Haredi Internet Rally\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The non-Jewish press has taken a great interest in the Haredi internet sobfest held on Sunday.\u00a0 I guess that\u2019s bound to happen when 40,000 black-suited\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/05\/blogosphere-heats-up-over-haredi-internet-rally.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-23T20:31:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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