[Be-Ahavah U-Be-Emunah –
translated by R. Blumberg]
The
Internet really is a serpent. It’s the evil impulse. That serpent in Eden
looked friendly. It promised things that were very fine: “You will be like G-d”
(Bereshit 3:5). Yet all of that is the counsel of the evil impulse. Just so,
the Internet looks friendly, but it is the evil impulse.
The
Internet makes for a lot of problems. Yet the worst problem is the plethora of
filthy videos which have gotten so bad that the paper is ashamed to bear their
description. A study done a year ago at Tel-Chai College revealed that 90% of
youth watch those videos, in other words, high school age boys between fourteen
and eighteen. True, it says on the side that viewing is permissible only above
age eighteen, but in actual fact nobody is checking and many boys start
watching at age ten. True, girls watch it less, but they watch it as well, and
religious youth are no exception.
All this
involves a two-fold evil. First, the very watching involves a severe prohibition,
as is explained in Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 307:16, which states that it is
forbidden to read books that provoke the evil impulse. This applies all the
more so to those vile videos, whose prohibition does not just constitute a
stricture but an outright law to which every upright Jew and every upright
non-Jew will agree. Second, those videos truly do arouse the evil impulse and
corrupt the thoughts of youth, creating a distorted image of women. These
videos encourage men to view women as sexual objects, entitled to offer themselves
sexually to many men. They likewise encourage men to mistreat women sexually.
Instead of learning what the pure and moral relationship between a man and a woman
is from their parents or their school, the youth learn it from these deviant
videos.
At one
time people knew that one’s home is a shelter and the street is dangerous. Now,
the Internet has brought the street and its filth right into the home.
Moreover, social
networks such as Facebook have also taken the home outside, spilling
the trash
from one’s home into the living room of another. The book Mesillat Yesharim warns
us that the greatest moral danger is corrupt society (Chapter 5. See also The Vilna Gaon in his Igeret).
Our
conclusion must be that we take the Internet and throw it out of our homes.
True, it
has some good things in it, but it also has evil, and what we gain is worth far
less than what we lose.
We managed
throughout the generations without it, didn’t we? True, it’s got Torah lectures
as well, but it’s a source of sin, and you don’t do a Mitzvah at the cost of
committing a sin. Sexual license is not the only sin involved. There is also
forbidden gossip, violence, insult and falsehood, not to mention the awful
waste of time. True, theoretically speaking the Internet can bring a blessing.
After all, G-d’s ways are upright, the righteous follow those pathways and the
wicked stumble on them. Here, however, we’re not dealing with theory, but with
the sad reality.
So, the
best thing is to cut oneself off from this modern device. This is the ideal. Many
people, however, need to use it for work, for study, etc. In that case, one has
an outright obligation to use one of the filter programs, and, obviously,
without the possibility of going around it.
There are
various programs, each with its pluses and minuses.
--
Moreshet (with five levels).
-- Rimon,
with its five levels: 1) Protected 2) Protected Plus 3) Protected Squared 4)
Guarded
and 5) Hermetically Sealed. Besides these options of Rimon, there is also
Etrog, the most sealed of all.
--
Incognito.
--
Webchaver, in which every unconventional site visited is reported to a friend.
That recalls the Talmud in Berachot: “Who sees me?”
-- There
is also a simple solution: a password, half of which is known to one spouse and
half to the other. Only with your spouse's knowledge can you thus access the
internet.
Yet even
all of this is not enough. All this is only a ruse. Amidst all of this, you
need inner fortitude as well.
When the
Vilna Gaon was going to set out onto street, he prepared himself psychologically
by learning the four chapters of Mesillat Yesharim dealing with Zehirut - Caution,
Chapter 2-5.
So
everyone should write a summary appropriate to himself, and read it before he
goes on the Internet - just like the officer who recites the same instructions
each day before battle.
And
indeed, this is a battle. It’s war.
One should
write himself a prayer before entering that battle: “G-d and G-d of our fathers,
help me to remain pure.”
