NET BAN
Israel has a white-hot, Net-savvy tech sector. But leaders of the country's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community (numbering in the hundreds of thousands, roughly 10 percent of the total population) view computers, and the Internet in particular, as something of a mixed blessing. Although many of the nation's Haredim support their families by working in high tech, the Council of Torah Sages, a group of Talmudic scholars, recently banned the Net from most ultra-Orthodox homes. In a harshly worded edict, the panel branded the Web "one thousand times more hazardous than television," which was cast out of ultra-Orthodox homes about 30 years ago.
Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Halperin is one of the few people with the power to relax the ban. He founded the Jerusalem-based Institute for Science and Halacha, which develops technologies that conform to Orthodox law. But even though Halperin maintains a Web site (www.machon-science-halacha.org.il) to facilitate his institute's fund-raising efforts, he sees no way the law might permit Internet use in the home. Hunched over a leather-bound volume of Judaic teachings, Halperin justifies the ban as a means of shielding children from online pornography and violence.
But other Israelis say it may go deeper. "The Internet is the Haredim world's latest fear," says Laura Sachs, spokesperson for Hillel: The Association for Jews Leaving Ultra-Orthodoxy. "They fear exposure to the outside world - a threat to their way of life - and I think their fears are correct. The minute these walls come down, they'll have a lot of problems keeping people inside."
Some are already quietly defying the rabbinical order. Joshua, a 22-year-old yeshiva student from Jerusalem's Haredi enclave of Mea She'arim, reports that his parents are communicating with their American relatives via email, even though they signed a pledge to keep their home computer-free. "My parents know it's dumb, but they signed anyway," Joshua says, swinging a black plastic shopping bag containing new Nikes. "Why go head-to-head with the rabbis?"
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