Interesting Posts and Articles #243

It has been a while since I have put up one of my roundup posts ("interesting posts and articles"), not because nothing interesting has happened, but because I've been busy. I'll try to put together a mix.

1. The Jewish Worker notes the Satmar Rebbe's instruction -- for his own followers -- that
   
   

    that children should not be sent for music lessons. He also prohibited any kinds of videos at public events such as dinners.
   

   and besides wondering about the why, wonders what the impact will be for Satmar kids for whom music is a lifeline.
   
   
   
2. So some Gedolim banned the chareidi Web. What is the impact?
   
   Well, Etrog closed down in deference to the Gedolim, though 30 people were put out of work.
   
   The Chareidim website followed suit, to comply with the words of the Gedolim. This despite the fact that the Gedolim are being manipulated in this by Askanim with an agenda who are trying to take revenge against them:
   
   
   
   וודאי יהיו בין הגולשים כאלו שיתקוממו על המהלך, יראו בו כניעה ל”גחמות של עסקנים”, ל”יצר נקמה של ראש עיר חרדי שהושפל” או ל”קומבינאטורים שמונעים מאינטרסים אפלים”. חלק מהטענות צודקות. ואכן, בידינו חומרים שעלולים לגרום לכמה “עסקנים” לרדת למחתרת לעולם, אך אנו נמנעים מלפרסמם
   
   
   This is difficult to believe. I suppose they are willing to follow the Gedolim like a Sanhedrin, but if they truly believe that the Gedolim are not in possession of full knowledge of the facts in order to put forth a ban, then indeed it is not the Gedolim who are saying this but the Askanim. Haman has somehow gotten a hold of Achashverosh's ring. Who says they need to listen to Haman? Unless the point is social, that they cannot be seen by their constituents as defying the Gedolim.
   
   Quite likely related to all this, Rafi G. of Life In Israel notes that Chareidim is being hypocritical, by not shutting down their phone-based interface, and are indeed updating in that venue. If you want to see this website for yourself, you can go to http://wap.haredim.co.il/. However, first you will need to install this Firefox addon, of a WML browser. This only gets to the front page, though, I think.
   
   And what about BeChadrei Charedim? The known frum people in control quit, leaving it in control of a secular Jewish fellow, who then hired frum anonymous editors to manage the site. And so it is still up and running.
   
   All in all, a rather successful ban!
   
   {Update: Now Life In Israel reports that Yated is upset that a secular Jew is running BeChadrei Charedim, and cites it as evidence for the necessity of the ban. But, as he notes, they are responsible for this precise situation!}
   
   
   
3. According to this article in Web MD, swine flu is less severe than was feared:
   
   

   H1N1 swine flu won't be as severe as was feared, but the pandemic is nothing to sneeze at, new predictions suggest.
   

   When the fall/winter wave of H1N1 swine flu is over, it will have been no more severe than an average flu season, predict Harvard researcher Marc Lipsitch, DPhil, and colleagues from the U.K. Medical Research Council and the CDC.
   

   "The good news is that ... the severity of the H1N1 flu may be less than initially feared," Lipsitch says in a news release.
   

   but with some asterisks. See inside.
   
   
   
4. I was annoyed by an anti-blogging screed in the Five Towns Jewish Times, and was going to post something about it. Didn't have time. But I see that DovBear discussed it, and made several of the points I was going to make. (I don't know that he would be too pleased with my blog, however. But I was thinking of Rabbi Gil Student as a doer and not just a blogger, among several others.)
   
   
5. Hirhurim with a defense / explanation of Rabbi Riskin's Jesus comments. Here is the video under discussion:
   
   
   
   
6. The latest Haveil Havalim, hosted by I'll call Baila.
   
   
7. Here on parshablog, prepare this week's parasha, Vaychi, with Vaychi sources. And see my roundup of previous parshablog posts on this parsha.