Betabeat might be having trouble getting the “Jews Against the Internet” organizers on the phone, but they’re apparently returning the New York Times‘ calls. And it sounds like the campaign against filth and Internet-inspired anomie is going quite well: The paper of record reports they’ve booked the home of the U.S. open, nearby Arther Ashe stadium, to handle the overflow.
That is a whole lot of dudes. But isn’t some fly-by-night event, either. It’s being backed by community leaders in Borough Park and the Lakewood, N.J. yeshiva Beth Medrash Govoha. Plus, the Times reports that organizers are papering Williamburg with promotional posters “playing off biblical themes.”
Nor are women entirely excluded, as the rally will reportedly be simulcast to women gathered at community schools and event halls. (Good luck getting in that ball field, though.)
The organizers also clarified their position somewhat. They don’t want to ban the Internet, exactly:
but rather to raise awareness about how, unmonitored, it poses a grave risk to the community, said Eytan Kobre, a spokesman for the organizers. The risk, he said, comes not only from pornography, but also from social media and the addictive pull of the Internet, which can limit human interaction, reading and study.
[Betabeat looks up guiltily from checking Twitter.]
“These are the same concerns that people across society — in academia, in psychology, parents, spouses — have about the Internet,” he said. “But here is a community that is actually standing up and coming together and putting our money where our mouth is, to express a unified communal resolve to address the issues.”
This Southern-raised reporter has wondered where the Baptists were on this one. We can’t imagine St. Paul being too jazzed about Internet pornography, either.