At the very least, Betabeat will be attending a Jewish rally against the Internet.
“If you find an Orthodox Jew in Williamsburg or Boro Park and offer him $50 for a ticket, I bet you could get one,” said the wise Rabbi Eliyahu Fink. Another source said that tickets went on sale today at a synagogue near the BQE.
With those two hot tips, Betabeat hopped on the subway and headed straight to Brooklyn. As the synogogue came into view, so did a gaggle of Hasidim crowding around two tables on the sidewalk. Betabeat stood in the crowd just like we would at any other disorganized ticket outlet, wondering if anyone would notice our lack of peyot. They did.
“Are you registered to vote?” one Hasid asked.
Beatabeat told them that, yes, we were registered to vote and just wanted tickets.
“Tickets to what?” he asked. What other tickets were they selling, we wondered? “Do you know what it is?” another asked as we handed over our $20. Even another asked, “How did you know we were selling them here?”
Apparently the Citi Field event has garnered so much interest that a second venue had to be added at the National Tennis Center in Queens. As Betabeat walked away with tickets (they came with bus passes!) to the National Tennis Center secure in hand, another Hasid called after us to get “the real reason” we wanted to attend. We responded that we were press.
At that, he became adamant about the fact that they didn’t want to “drop a bomb” on the Internet and that it was simply an issue for their community. “The world is what it is,” he said.
So is the Internet. And no amount of filters or blocked pages will stop a motivated kid or Hasid from sinning with the mouse.
