Ultra-Orthodox leaders are targeting a new threat to their
community: the smartphone messaging service WhatsApp.
Orthodox Jews have swarmed this service ever since a 2012
anti-Internet campaign tightened communal restrictions against social
networking sites like Facebook. Now, some leaders are launching a new crusade
against WhatsApp, an SMS-like tool that allows users to share digital media.
“The rabbis overseeing divorces say WhatsApp is the No. 1
cause of destruction of Jewish homes and business,” read the headline of a
January article in Der Blatt, the Yiddish-language newspaper published by
members of the Satmar Hasidic group.
Programmers at Meshimer Filter, a Satmar-linked Web
filtering firm, are seeking to block filtered phones from sharing video, photos
and audio through WhatsApp, according to a member of the Satmar community who
uses the filter and who spoke with employees.
The firm did not respond to a
request for comment from the Forward.
“It’s not under the radar anymore,” the Satmar community
member said.
At a massive June 2012 rally at CitiField in Queens,
ultra-Orthodox rabbis set down a firm position against unfettered Internet use.
The leaders called for the use of Web filters on all computers used by Orthodox
Jews, and discouraged the use of social networking and video sharing sites.
Satmar Hasidic schools now ban children whose parents have
Internet access in their homes, and require that parents use Web filters on
their smartphones.
Ever since the bans, followers have sought to skirt these
rules, and WhatsApp has emerged as a popular dodge.
Sources were generally unwilling to be quoted by name for
this story, citing both general communal aversions to appearing in the press
and specific concerns about being embroiled in the coming internal debate over
WhatsApp.
Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn told the Forward that the app acts
as a closed social network that provides quick communication among community
members with little information let in from outside. “It’s self-created media,
it’s not the outside media,” said one member of the Hasidic community in the
Boro Park section of Brooklyn. “[It’s] an inside ghetto media, not outside.”
WhatsApp is similar to the built-in text messaging app on a
smartphone, but the messages are free and can be easily sent to large groups of
friends. The group messaging function seems to drive Orthodox use of the app.
Private, invitation-only groups exist among friends, relatives, neighbors and
fellow yeshiva alumnae.
The Boro Park Hasid said that he is in a group with
family members, and that they use it to debate current events and Talmud.
Others described more mundane uses. “Saturday night, my
friend sent out a message: ‘Anyone have [jumper] cables? I need a boost,’” the
member of the Satmar community said. (He drove over and helped.) Two Hasidic
men described friends using it to alert each other to police speed traps in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Use of WhatsApp spans the ultra-Orthodox gamut, from
relatively liberal Boro Park to the highly strict and secluded town of New
Square, in Rockland County, N.Y. Even former members of the Hasidic community
use the app.
“I’m sick and tired of it a little bit,” said Lipa
Schmeltzer, the Hasidic pop music star. Schmeltzer said that the number of
groups he’s joined — most of them apparently music related — have become too
much. “It’s not an easy task, to keep up with all these messages,” he said.
Hasidic users said that their WhatsApp groups don’t focus on
national news, but do discuss local stories. The groups were exceptionally
active following the disappearance of Menachem Stark, the Satmar developer
kidnapped and murdered in early January.
“It was very popular during the whole Stark story,” said Joseph Oppenheim, a member of the Satmar Hasidic community and the owner of the iShop, a computer store and Internet cafe in Williamsburg. “You couldn’t get it on the radio and stuff, so this was the main source [where] people got the news.”
“It was very popular during the whole Stark story,” said Joseph Oppenheim, a member of the Satmar Hasidic community and the owner of the iShop, a computer store and Internet cafe in Williamsburg. “You couldn’t get it on the radio and stuff, so this was the main source [where] people got the news.”
The software is free for the first year, then continued
usage costs $1. The app claimed 400 million total monthly users as of December
2013. It’s slightly less popular in the United States than its competitor
Facebook Messenger, but is widely used outside the United States, particularly
in Africa and South America.
Read more at: Forward
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