This coming Sunday will see the gathering of hundreds of community rabbonim from across the chareidi spectrum at a special assembly called to fortify our Torah community by seeking tactics to combat the inroads of Internet and technological devices which have already claimed too many victims, and to preserve the sanctity of our camp from further damage.
"Extract me from this terrible Net!"
The yetzer hora is surely sitting back and enjoying its victory these days, having employed its full power of enticement to the lustful eye and greedy heart, through its very efficient agents which entrap the victims through the mega-machine called the Internet and other polluting technological devices.
The first and most lethal pitfall is the self assurance that "it won't happen to me." But the facts sadly point in the opposite direction, for many are the victims entrapped and felled. There is no safety guarantee against the danger, no one is immune: neither the talmid chochom nor the unlearned Jew, man nor woman. The damage is tantamount to the burning of the soul within the body, a loss of one's sense of direction and a destruction of one's whole life and family.
Many tend to think that this danger is relegated to "pursuing the [lures of the] eyes" but the truth is that the heart is no less in peril. An atmosphere of heresy and wantonness pervades every direction where a person turns in this technological Net. The generation of Haflogoh and of the Flood are virtually represented, laying in wait to seize souls and plummet them into the abyss. Slowly but inevitably, those who enter the gates begin to lose their moral equilibrium as well as the good taste of mitzvah-observance; their backbones become wooden and hollow, without a vestige of the sap of spirituality.
Initially, the yetzer hora appears like a hair, a single barrier dividing life from doom, and fortunate is the one who separates himself from it totally.
The Rabbinical Committee for Preserving the Walls of Religion - Vaadas HaRabbonim leBitzur Chomos Hadas - will be convening for the first time in history in order to establish and fortify our homes against these threats, as has been the practice throughout Jewish history, and hopefully, the salvation will be forthcoming from their collective counsel.
