Dear Rabbi Solomon

In the spirit of 'eish es ray'ayhu ya'azoru', here is a letter to Rav Matisyahu Solomon, Shlit"a, upcoming speaker on 'blogs' at this year's Agudah Convention. If anyone knows of an e-mail or other means to get this to him, or can give it to him, I will be grateful.

Dear Rabbi Solomon,

For over 23 years I have listened to your droshas with interest and with enjoyment. While I truthfully cannot remember in detail the content of your speeches at those early Agudah conventions more than 20 years ago (I'm sorry), the content of your Brooklyn speech about five years ago at the Asifas Hisorerus still affects the quality of my tefila today, and I have benefited from your thoughts and emotions on other occasions as well.

I understand you are speaking at a convention session dedicated to the subject of 'blogs' on Thursday night of the upcoming Aguda convention. If people are showing you isolated excerpts of blogs, I can appreciate your concern about this phenomenon.

As you know, anyone can put anything on a blog. Some of what is written, and some is false. Some is indeed osur.

However, over time, blogs are self editing, and faster and more efficiently than verbal or print media. This has been proven time again in the secular media, and irresponsible blogs have simply lost the bulk of their readership.

Prohibiting blogs without a sophisticated system of deciding what is mutar and what osur cannot succeed, because like the internet itself there is simply too much reason to go there. Professional information, neighborhood news, Torah and chizuk, all are to be found there. My difficulties in Daf Yomi are answered there, at a time of my convenience.

Min Hashomayim it was apparently decreed, just as Torah Sh'Baal Peh needed to be committed to writing at a certain point in history, printing (with all the loshon hora and motzai shem ra and pritzus which is printed) was decreed at a later point, and automobiles and other forms of transportation with their physical and spiritual dangers were even later decreed to appear on our historical scene, that our generation would have internet and its derivations.

Do you feel we can stop it?
Do you feel it is like television, a useless diversion?
Do you feel that all the yunger leit who feel forced to use the internet and its toldos, first for parnosa, and later for convenience, for chizuk (theshmuz, for example, a true lifesaver for many), and for Torah (see prior posts) have their emunas chachamim enhanced knowing that what they are doing is prohibited or strongly discouraged?
And do you feel that the yunger leit who muche for parnosa and faithfully refuse to sit down in front of a computer screen have their emunas chachamim enhanced as they become more and more embittered and helpless?

Rav Solomon, I know that you are far more sophisticated. And our approach to this very real danger must also be.

The time is not far off when blogs, or something similar, will replace newspapers!

As a 'fan' of yours, I am counting on you to help us all out with an enlightened and Jewish proposal. One which will cause us to sit up and say 'Who has such enlightened and caring leaders as your people, Yisroel!'.

Signed,

A Sincere Blogger and Internet User

File:Rabbi Matisyahu Solomon, Agudath Israel, Agudah