The Internet Shiur Part 1

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The Internet Shiur is a discussion of critical information every Orthodox Jew needs to know about the internet. It provides a comprehensive worldview as well as specific technologies and detailed tips to enable safer internet usage. Featuring Rabbi Gil Student and organized together with Dovid Teitelbaum, this lecture gives you the ability to take control of your and your children’s internet experience.

Is the internet lechatchilah or bedieved, meaning is it a positive opportunity or a necessary evil? Should you let your children access the internet? Should you give them mobile devices? Can a man and woman who are not married communicate online? What do you do about the shmutz on the internet? All this and much more are addressed in The Internet Shiur.

Below is Part 1. Subscribe at TheInternetShiur.com for updates on future installments. Access the handouts here: link. The text of this part and outline of future parts are available here: link.

Special thanks to Dovid Teitelbaum for his encouragement, video assistance and technical expertise and Nachman Mostofsky for his technical review.

About Gil Student

Rabbi Gil Student is the Editor of TorahMusings.com, a leading website on Orthodox Jewish scholarly subjects, and the Book Editor of the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Action magazine. He writes a popular column on issues of Jewish law and thought featured in newspapers and magazines, including The Jewish Link, The Jewish Echo and The Vues. In the past, he has served as the President of the small Jewish publisher Yashar Books and as the Managing Editor of OU Press. Rabbi Student has served two terms on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America and currently serves as the Director of the Halacha Commission of the Rabbinical Alliance of America. He serves on the Editorial Boards of Jewish Action magazine, the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society and the Achieve Journal of Behavioral Health, Religion & Community, as well as the Board of OU Press. He has published five English books, the most recent titled Search Engine volume 2: Finding Meaning in Jewish Texts -- Jewish Leadership, and served as the American editor for Morasha Kehillat Yaakov: Essays in Honour of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

30 comments

  1. Loved the shiur, just wish it was longer.

  2. Exactly what I and lots of others have been saying/thinking. Thnaks

  3. Can we please make this available as a podcast or vodcast? It’s very simple to do, let me know if you would like a hand.

  4. Thank you. Real good and positive advice.

  5. Amazing!
    Perfect.

  6. This seems like a very important and necessary project.

  7. You can access an audio-only version here (Google Docs): link

  8. Well done.
    Well scripted to make your important points.

  9. To cite Chazal: ‘במקום שאין איש, השתדל להיות איש’

    Thank you R’ Gil.

  10. Suggestion: I found the glare in your glasses distracting. Perhaps there’s a way to adjust the lighting to reduce it.

  11. why is wasting time reading books ok? how come people don’t get addicted to bad novels?

  12. Wasting time reading books isn’t OK. Read books productively (and see the discussion in the latest issue of Tradition about “fun”).

    I’m not aware of any data about addiction to books but I’ve never heard of a single case of real addiction. Internet addiction is a documented problem: http://www.netaddiction.com/

  13. From the picture of you with the aron kodesh in the background, looks like a CCHF 17th of Tammuz video production 🙂

  14. “Don’t turn into an internet hermit.”

    1) Is there an issur to be a hermit?

    2) What is the source for it?

    3) What about a non-internet hermit?

  15. I think R. Gil wasn’t saying it בתורת איסור, רק עצה טובה קמ”ל.

  16. I did not mean it as an halakhic imperative but if you need a source: לעולם תהא דעתו של אדם מעורבת עם הבריות (Kesuvos 17a)

  17. לעולם תהא דעתו של אדם מעורבת עם הבריות (Kesuvos 17a)

    Contra R. Shimon Bar Yochai.

    (OT: Oy, if he knew what is being done to ‘honor’ his ‘yahrzeit’)

  18. The reason people get addicted to the internet but not to books is simple – a book ends. Either it actually ends, or you finish reading and put it down. On the internet, once you’re done with one thing, you have infinite links taking you anywhere else you want to go. It’s endless, and people can fall in.

  19. This is beyond excellent. Well reasoned, well argued and simply put. ישר כח.

  20. thank you so much for an excellent shiur

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