On Cars and Kefira

As the commenters noted on my post - 'We live in a crazy world', I didn't propose shutting down blogs. While it would be nearly impossible for regulations to be enforced, there's a clear need for bloggers to raise their level of responsibility and standards.

At the anti-Internet convention in Lakewood, R Solomon used the 'car' analogy. Driving a car is dangerous. Every day, every hour (maybe even every minute?), people get bruised, hurt, injured, suffer financial loss, hit with lawsuits and tragedly, even death via the mighty automobile. Do we suggest banning cars? Of course not.

But it isn't a free for all either. First, you need a permit, written test, driving test, license, insurance, and vehicle inspection. There's books full of regulations on speeding, signaling, DUI etc etc To top that off, there's cops all over enforcing the laws, with risks of fines, license suspension and even imprisonment!!!

With that said, I'd like to address another 'blog concern', which Little Foxling - our resident in house Kofer (those are his own words) alluded to in the comments. There's much to debate about the current Yeshiva curriculum, but the fact is that the RW Yeshiva system doesn't teach much about the "proofs for God and Judaism". God and TMS is a given. Its pashut. While we can argue and debate if this is the correct approach or not, that isn't the subject of this post.

The subject is that being that the average Charedi Yeshiva guy never heard of DH, or that the 'Mabul never happened', or all the other biblical criticism out there (at least I never knew about it), his Emuna is simplistic. He isn't disturbed and mind boggled by the mounds of so-called 'evidence' and rational arguments which supposedly prove that our holy Torah isn't divine.

So what happens when such people start reading blogs? Like when they read a guest post on the well known orthodox blog hosted by our dear Dovbear that: "God did not dictate the Torah. The Torah was not God's effort to communicate His ideas to us mortals. The Torah was written by ancient men, and the Torah documents their writing efforts."

Hey! That's Kefira! Even DB agreed that such Kefira doesn't belong on his blog! But the Satan doesn't let him rest. The evil Satan stirs up his curiosity, he starts following link after link, and next thing he knows, he's confused, flooded with questions and doesn't know where to turn.

Understandably, the college-going-Jews doesn't suffer so much from this, since they've been exposed to much of this already, and they've somehow managed to workout a mindset which works for them.

But to the Yeshiva guy who is naive to these issues, reading blogs is akin to a 13 year old kid driving an uninsured, unregistered car. While he might luck out and arrive at his destination unharmed, what he's doing is unquestionably dangerous. The risk that his Neshoma might get bruised, hurt, injured, and sometimes, even spiritual death Rachmana Litzlon.

Blogs aren't a toy. It requires much caution and responsibility. From the blog owner's end, and from the readers end.