Jerusalem Meeting

A major meeting called by rabbonim was just held in Jerusalem to apprise the chashuve oilom that there are fourteen (14) internet cafes ringing the chareidi sections of Jerusalem and hundreds of bochurim are found there nightly. Some are said to walk in with a 'Ktzos' in hand.

There was a call for volunteer mashgichim to stand in front of the entrance to these establishments, thereby inspiring guilt and embarrassment on the part of the bochurim.



File: jews internet

Satmar Levaya II

Well, my son tells me it was peaceful, dignified, very farshlepped, with many hespidim. Thousands of police were present.

File: satmar Moshe Teitelbaum

Rebbes and Roshei Yeshiva for the Internet

Well, not exactly.
But I was talking with a good friend, a distinguished mechanech, and of course came around to my pet peeve, the main subject of this blog.
He mentioned that the Stoliner (Karliner) Rebbe of Jerusalem, formerly of America, detests the Kol Korahs prohibiting the internet because:
(1) The internet is a done deal, and the prohibitions are a distraction from whatever can be done, and
(2) Blanket prohibitions of all sorts reduce respect for Daas Torah and Rabbonim, and lead to ignoring Daas Torah and Rabbonim.

Any other talmidei chachamim out there thinking along these lines?

File: jews internet

B & H Take Note!

Wall Street Journal:

Surfing at Work: It's Okay
Is surfing the Web the same thing as reading the newspaper or talking on the telephone? According to John Spooner, an administrative law judge in New York, it is indeed. In recommending only a light punishment for a city worker accused of disregarding warnings to stay off the Internet while at work, the judge wrote that "It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work.''

Satmar Levaya

As all know by now, the Satmar (nee Sigheter) Rebbe, R' Moshe Teitelbaum was just niftar.

The levaya is taking place as I write this. I will update when my son returns from it.

File: satmar Moshe Teitelbaum

Secular Education IV

I'm reprinting an entire Thomas Friedman article (strictly forbidden - please forgive me, NYT), and wondering about the effects of the trends he unearths on our haimishe education systems and our community economics.

Gut Moed!

Thomas Friedman:

Worried About India's and China's Booms? So Are They
Published: March 24, 2006

The more I cover foreign affairs, the more I wish I had studied education in college, because the more I travel, the more I find that the most heated debates in many countries are around education. And here's what's really funny -- every country thinks it's behind.

Tony Blair has been fighting with his own party over permitting more innovative charter schools. Singapore is obsessed with improving its already world-leading math scores before others catch up. And America agonizes that its K-12 public schools badly need improvement in math and science. I was just in Mumbai attending the annual meeting of India's high-tech association, Nasscom, where many speakers worried aloud that Indian education wasn't nurturing enough ''innovators.''

Both India and China, which have mastered rote learning and have everyone else terrified about their growing armies of engineers, are wondering if too much math and science -- unleavened by art, literature, music and humanities -- aren't making Indira and Zhou dull kids and not good innovators. Very few global products have been spawned by India or China.

''We have no one going into the liberal arts and everyone going into engineering and M.B.A.'s,'' said Jerry Rao, chief executive of MphasiS, one of the top Indian outsourcing companies. ''We're becoming a nation of aspiring programmers and salespeople. If we don't have enough people with the humanities, we will lose the [next generation of] V. S. Naipauls and Amartya Sens,'' he added, referring to the Indian author and the Indian economist, both Nobel laureates. ''That is sad and dangerous.''

Innovation is often a synthesis of art and science, and the best innovators often combine the two. The Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, in his compelling Stanford commencement address last year, recalled how he dropped out of college but stuck around campus and took a calligraphy course, where he learned about the artistry of great typography. ''None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life,'' he recalled. ''But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography.''

Fifty years ago the Sanskrit scholar was respected in India, Mr. Rao noted, but today it is all about becoming an engineer, a programmer, an M.B.A. or a doctor. ''More people will get Ph.D.'s [in the study of] Sanskrit in America this year than in India,'' Mr. Rao asserted, ''and Sanskrit is the root of our culture!''

Why all this ed-anxiety today? Because computers, fiber-optic cable and the Internet have leveled the economic playing field, creating a global platform that more workers anywhere can now plug into and play on. Capital will now flow faster than ever to tap the most productive talent wherever it is located, so every country is scrambling to upgrade its human talent base. When everyone has access to the same technology platform, human talent, as the consultants John Hagel III and John Seely Brown wrote, is the ''only sustainable edge.''

Hence the concern I found in India that it must move quickly from business process outsourcing (B.P.O.) -- running back rooms, answering phones or writing code for U.S. companies -- into knowledge process outsourcing (K.P.O.): coming up with more original designs and products.

''We need to encourage more incubation of ideas to make innovation a national initiative,'' said Azim Premji, the chairman of Wipro, one of India's premier technology companies. ''Are we as Indians creative? Going by our rich cultural heritage, we have no doubt some of the greatest art and literature. We need to bring the same spirit into our economic and business arena.''

But to make that leap, Indian entrepreneurs say, will require a big change in the rigid, never-challenge-the-teacher Indian education system. ''If we do not allow our students to ask why, but just keep on telling them how, then we are only going to get the transactional type of outsourcing, not the high-end things that require complex interactions and judgment to understand another person's needs,'' said Nirmala Sankaran, C.E.O. of HeyMath, an Indian-based education company. ''We have a creative problem in this country.''

My guess is that we're at the start of a global convergence in education: China and India will try to inspire more creativity in their students. America will get more rigorous in math and science. And this convergence will be a great spur to global growth and innovation. It's a win-win. But some will win more than others -- and it will be those who get this balance right the fastest, in the most schools.

Chag Kosher V'Someach

Now that all of us have done our best to do the work, may H' help us all with understanding and feeling the meaning and bringing the ultimate goal.

Iran

Typical sharp and perceptive analysis from Mark Steyn here.
Here's a short quote:

If Belgium becomes a nuclear power, the Dutch have no reason to believe it would be a factor in, say, negotiations over a joint highway project. But Iran’s nukes will be a factor in everything. If you think, for example, the European Union and others have been fairly craven over those Danish cartoons, imagine what they’d be like if a nuclear Tehran had demanded a formal apology, a suitable punishment for the newspaper, and blasphemy laws specifically outlawing representations of the Prophet. . . .
Four years into the “war on terror,” the Bush administration has begun promoting a new formulation: “the long war.” Not a reassuring name. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs—our strengths. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower—their strengths, and our great weakness. Even a loser can win when he’s up against a defeatist. A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it’s dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us? If you add to the advantages of will and manpower a nuclear capability, the odds shift dramatically. . .

File: Iran

Monotheism 3.0

In a recent radio interview, Thomas Friedman noted perceptively:

"If you have been raised to think that Judaism is Monotheism 1.0, and Christianity is Monotheism 2.0, and Islam is Monotheism 3.0, and then you look at the accomplishments and position in the world of the adherents of version 1.0, v2.0, and v3.0 respectively, you get very thin skinned about perceived insults."

Kosher Phones for America

A new committee is hard at work making a deal with Sprint for Kosher phones in America, similar to the kosher phones in Israel. Rav Matisyahu Solomon and Rav Rosenbloom of Shaarei Yosher are directing the effort.

If the pattern of Israel is followed, the phones will not only not be able to receive unwanted lewd solicitations, but also unable to receive SMS and e-mail messages.

In Israel, only a very basic phone (though it's high-tech looking) passes muster.

I'm uncertain if Blackberry and Treos with their e-mail capabilities are as popular in Israel as here, but I can say from experience that mobile e-mail capability is a must for those hoping to succeed in business.
Particularly for us small fry.
The big guys will always be ahead of the game and within the strictures of takanos, because they get somebody else to do it for them.



File: kosher phone, Mattisyahu Solomon, Rosenbloom

The Army of the Doctrinally Pure

A few weeks ago, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein published a piece on Artscroll in Cross-Currents. The piece dealt with how talmidei chachamim and thinkers such as the top echelon in Artscroll are cowed, or at least wearied by those who, while having little or no accomplishments of their own, are the self appointed bearers of the true and pure hashkafa.

I know for a fact that at least one of the two top people in Artscroll agreed with the gist of Rabbi Adlerstein's post.

The Cross Currents Adlerstein post ended:

The zealots are hardly the majority of the community, but their tactics give them more power than their numbers would predict. I don't think that it is fair to ask the decision makers at Artscroll to risk their incredibly wonderful accomplishment or even their personal sanity– by standing up to the Army of the Doctrinally Pure.

The phenomenon of the doctrinal purity is at its heart an attack on Daas Torah. While I was a bochur in Eretz Yisroel there was a joke, the basis of which I didn't myself see, that Neturei Karta posterniaks hung on Rabbeinu Yoel M'Satmar the epithet " Rabbeinu Sur Min Haderech" (Our Rabbi has strayed from the Path) for some perceived breach of doctrine. And Rabbeinu Yoel was the only 'Daas Torah' Neturei Karta had.

If Gedolim themselves have to watch their backs (as implied by the Adlerstein post) as well as the Artscroll proprietors, who are the greatest Marbitzei Torah of recent generations, then in effect Daas Torah is being neutralized, at least to an extent.

This, in turn, allows the poster maniacs to run our community, at least from the outside. While the rest of us do what we want or dare, and subtly become hypocrites on the inside.

Or perhaps I, too, am becoming overly doctrinally pure.

Secular Education III

Philadelphia Yeshiva is noted for having a strong secular studies department. The Roshei Yeshiva have, as in most yeshivas, little contact with the 'lowly' Mesivta students under normal circumstances. But a talmid once said that the sure fire way to get an 'invitation' to R. Elia or R' Shmuel's office was to disrupt English. In fact, the Roshei Yeshiva made a practice of occasionally strolling down the classroom hallway during the beginning or end of English, or between sessions, to make a point of emphasis.

Good way to develop midos, huh?

A famous Rosh Yeshiva, no longer with us, didn't agree.

He once said: "R' Elia and R' Shmuel will have to account in the world of truth, (asid litain din) for why they made such a quality English program."



File: yeshiva secular studies