Not So Kosher Cell Phones

The latest hype among chareidim are kosher cell phones. Every cell phone provider in Israel offers them starting this year. Basically you get a defeatured phone with a defeatured service, with a mehadrin hashgacha label printed on the phone (not kidding), and a separate phone number to indicate so. You can read all about them here: http://chareidi.shemayisrael.com/TZR66acellphn.htm

If you ask me, I really don’t care for this whole nonsense, except here is the problem. The kosher phones have different prefixes after the area code to signify that they are kosher, so everyone knows which service you subscribe to. Even if your regular service doesn’t have any of the content that the kosher phones prevent you’re in trouble.

So now people are getting harassed constantly if they don’t have a kosher phone. There are signs sprouting up around religious neighborhood. People get calls from the “moral religious squad” that they better switch or else. Chareidi newspapers will not print your ad if you don’t have a kosher phone, and I am sure soon (if not now) you will need to sign a paper when you sign up your kid to a chareidi school that you only use kosher phones.

All these phones have accomplished is that more Jews hate and abuse more Jews than before, nothing more.

Here is a prime example.

I was driving home with my Sofer Stam teacher, a prominent sofer in the area. He gets a phone call on his cell phone while we are in the car from some stranger who starts screaming at him about how dare he teaches safrus and doesn’t have a kosher phone. He basically politely told that he is not his mother to tell him what to do, he doesn’t understand his hashkafos and this guy doesn’t have to come and learn from him, wished him a nice day and hung up. Then he told me he gets these phone calls almost daily and even SMS messages (which cannot be sent from a kosher phone) about how he is violating the psak of the Gedolim and has no business teaching safrus. It’s terrible, but that’s kosher phones for you.

Sinas chinam is alive and kicking, and it even has a kosher label now. The Gedolim said it’s ok.