The Rabbis are Right to Be Afraid - Hasidim vs teh Internets

The Rabbis are Right to Be Afraid | Religion Dispatches
"...Unfortunately, as secular and moderate Israelis have long known, the ultra-Orthodox minority is not content to keep its morality to itself. These people aren’t Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof: as soon as they gain enough political power, they use that power to change laws, segregate the sexes, fund their religious schools, and foist their vision onto the rest of us.." (If you've ever been caught - as a woman - in a Hasidim demo in NYC, and been spit upon - you know what this is about..)

40,000 people at Citi Field? Can’t be for a Mets game—no, must be an ultra-Orthodox rally/teach-in/info session on the dangers of what you’re doing right now: browsing the Internet. And so it is: tonight, with overflow seating at the Arthur Ashe tennis center (yes, the event is sold out) and simulcast to schools in Borough Park... Maybe what’s ridiculous here is the irony: tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men using technology, cramming into Citi Field, and learning why they should fear technology. Then again, no ultra-Orthodox authorities can really ban the Internet, and the Hasidim are not like the Amish, willing Luddites rejecting “modernity.” They’re rejecting certain aspects of modernity—cultural and moral ones, in particular.  

Or maybe it’s just the futility of it all. Surely, as the proposed reality TV show “The Unchosen Ones” and Hella Winston’s similarly-titled book, Unchosen, show, ghetto walls are highly permeable these days. There’s something almost quaint about 40,000 middle-aged men thinking they can stop their teenagers from tweeting. Even if they can.