Metro

Thou shalt not text

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More than 40,000 Orthodox Jews are expected to pack the stands at Citi Field today — with an overflow of 22,000 in nearby Arthur Ashe Stadium — to take swings at the “evils of the Internet and the damages caused by advanced electronics.” The Union of Communities for the Purity of the Camp raised more than $1.5 million for the controversial, male-only assemblage. Here, event spokesman Eytan Kobre, 52, explains the group’s rationale.

The known dangers of the Internet include the pervasive accessibility of pornography online, which has reached epidemic proportions. But we don’t view this in strictly Jewish or religious terms. It is an assault on human dignity, eating away the fabric of society. It debases and objectifies women, at times leading to violence against women, and the break-up of marriages.

We can also talk about aggression, or the verbal violence the Internet has released. Look at the comments section of any newspaper or blog and you see how the anonymity and the lack of accountability allows people to savage each other with words. This pollutes the societal atmosphere, and ratchets up the aggression tearing at the social fabric of the country.

There’s a trail of casualties inside and outside the Jewish community — marriages that have crashed and burned, spouses who have walked away from their families because of people they met in chat rooms or social networking, through something as seemingly innocuous as texting. It’s the anonymity and lack of accountability, the 24/7 accessibility, that breaks down our natural human barrier of shame and fear of consequences.

Studies show what the Internet is doing to other areas of human life, to privacy, and the damage these sites have done to our ability to have real relationships with people. We replace relationships with superficial connection, and we’ve replaced conversation with tweeting and twittering our way through cyberspace.

We have the evidence, we hear what professors are telling us, what the Internet is doing to the brains of students. There’s no research anymore — just Google it — no retention of information. Now academia is a mile wide and an inch deep.

No one lives in the moment anymore. No longer are people able to be alone with themselves and comfortable without being connected to other people. Gadgets are supposed to free us, but ironically, they have enslaved us and left us with much less time for ourselves, our families and the things that are important in life.

It’s a subtle but very nefarious assault on us as a people. On the one hand, we want to be connected, but it’s creating alienation. People don’t want to get involved on a one-to-one basis anymore.

All community members will be urged to adopt as a minimal base line of protection the installation of a filter on every computer at home and the workplace. It is fully recognized that this is far, far from the conclusive answer to the problems the Internet poses — it is merely a first step evidencing our seriousness and resolve to find the best solutions and implement them.

This is just a first step — the beginning of a journey toward protecting ourselves. It will be followed by technology expos around the country, reaching out to other faiths — and society as a whole.