Can a woman give online visual lessons aimed at women?
I'm addicted to inappropriate websites and want to get out of it, what should I do?
Is it permissible to write talkbacks under different identities to arouse positive public opinion?
Is there educational value in reading books like '3 Kings' and 'Seven Mothers'?
Is it worth pursuing a degree in Jewish thought at university?
Is the emergence of religious bars and pubs a good thing?
Is it allowed to play snooker? And poker? Is it allowed to visit the wax museum?
Is it appropriate for my wife and I to go for a walk while there is a war and there are casualties?
Is watching modest and decent films about the Holocaust abrogation of the Torah?
Should I travel to Poland out of identification with the Holocaust? I heard it's forbidden, but we need humane treatment?!
Are several couples allowed to hang out, travel, and eat together?
Is it permissible on religious television for a woman to give a lesson or be interviewed?
This very partial list of questions was directed, along with tens of thousands of other questions and various requests, to one of the umpires of the period.
How is his status as one of the 'poskim of the period' expressed? In the established and recognized criteria. He was ordained by the great men of the previous generation, served in the rabbinate and as head of the yeshiva for decades, raised an entire generation of poskim and mu'tzim, and answers dozens or hundreds of questions every day.
Only this man is not called the Gaon, the rabbi of the generation, the pillar of teaching, or even our teacher and rabbi, one of the most important rabbis. He is only called Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, the rabbi of the Beit El settlement and the head of the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva, one of the greatest rabbis of the national religious community.
This article, for those who may be wondering, is not intended to deal with the character of Rabbi Aviner, nor with the answers he gave to his questioners [hint: very strict, in my opinion more so than a Haredi-Lithuanian rabbi], but with the nature of the questions.
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In recent years, a significant influx of new-generation Haredim has been growing on the Haredi street. They are referred to by various names, from "the new Haredim" to "the modern Haredim," and they are also the target of quite a bit of insults and harassment, but it is clear to everyone: they are here, and they are also influencing the Haredi mainstream.
For example, everyone knows that despite the rabbinical directives, tens of percent of the Haredi public has internet access at home [which is not necessarily filtered], a phone that is not 'kosher', and watches movies and television series at various levels - from 'Shtisel' and 'Oshpizin' for the strictest, to more general content for the more permissive.
News programs and entertainment segments have long appeared in all WhatsApp groups, and there really aren't many Haredim, exposed to the Internet, who don't know what 'Eretz Nehederet' is or who 'Lior Schlein' is.
This new reality may give rise to quite a few halakhic, moral, and social questions that halakhic and educational leadership will be required to address.
The questions cited in the opening are just some of the questions that this type of Haredi faces, but questions about types of films for children and adults, travel abroad, various types of Internet connections, academic studies in various content, and consumption of culture that is not 'holy' may also be relevant to them.
Someone in authority should deal with this on the assumption that this is the new Haredi field, and it is certainly different from that of 1986.
The perception that a social reality that is not addressed does not exist, and thus, for example, questions of racism, dropouts, and leisure are not addressed, is no longer very practical in the global era of the 21st century.
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For example, the Internet.
Isn't that good? There will be quite a few who will agree with this, but we cannot ignore the 41 percent of the entire Haredi public that, according to the Israel Democracy Institute, has access to the Internet. This is an empirical figure, which, according to experts, is simply an underestimate.
Now all that remains is to ask: What do we do with those forty-something percent? Should we give them halachic-educational guidance, create a discourse on the phenomenon at a Torah level, or ignore these numbers as if they were "kicking the wicked one and he will die," or perhaps even hope for a utopian world in which everyone will repent and throw away their "disgusting iPhone" and disconnect from the "impure Internet"?
Movies and television series, even those who watch them will admit, do not necessarily fulfill the spiritual needs that Jews need, but would it be right to ignore the fact that over 50 percent [intuitively, the numbers are only higher] consume them to various degrees? How should we address this, should we just say that this is forbidden and serious behavior, or should we think about religious solutions and avenues for the issue, when one of the options is to admit that there is no satisfactory solution, for example?
I probably don't have good answers to these difficult questions, but this statement is also a kind of ignoring.
Here, you don't have a comprehensive and effective solution, and therefore there is no benefit in upholding the rule, let them leave it to Israel that if they are not prophets, they are the sons of prophets.
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