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It’s the text, stupid!
Mobile phones, religious communities, and the silent threat of text
messages
Hananel Rosenberg
Menahem Blondheim
Elihu Katz
Paper in press for
New Media & Society
Note: This is the pre-proofed version of a paper in press for New Media & Society. The
proofed, published version of this paper can be found on the journal’s website
Abstract
This study explores the phenomenon of the Jewish haredi (ultra-Orthodox) “kosher
cellphone,” a device that can be used only for voice calls. It asks why the leadership of
this highly textual community didn’t stop at blocking internet use over the kosher-
cellphone and went on to block texting messages as well. Using both interviews with
haredi anti-cellphone activists and content analysis of online discussions among
community members, the study analyzes the perception of threat that underlies the
prohibition of texting, and explores how this prohibition is received in the community.
The findings show that in contrast to the threat posed by improper content which effects
the external boundaries of this enclave community, blocking texting stems from a
perception that the technology’s configuration threatens intra-communal monitoring and
the control of the dissemination of information within the communal space. Our findings
add a number of dimensions to the current understanding of the nexus of new media,
social control, and isolated religious communities, and to their modes of the
domesticating new technologies.
New media and enclave cultures
Over the past two decades, many researchers have dealt with the challenges that (the)
new media pose to traditionalist religious communities and their “enclave cultures”
(Sivan, 1995). The fascination appears twofold: First, this encounter provides a compact
and focused perspective on how change in the media environment can effect deeply
entrenched social norms; a concern we all share. But further, it can enrich our
understanding of the media side of the nexus, by providing unconventional critical
assessments of new technologies by peripheral groups—in effect, counter-cultures. Their
readings of new media, based on highly-developed and sharply articulated standards, can
be unexpected, insightful and intriguing. In this article, we focus on precisely such a case:
the way a particular religious group—ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel (introduced below)—
constructs cellular telephony. It zeroes in on the perplexing rejection of texting over the
cellphone by this group, whose culture is uniquely text-oriented.
In their encounters with new media, religious communities engage in a deliberate,
though not formal, technology assessment (Van Eijndhoven, 1997), which divines the
technology’s affordances as they see them. Then, juxtaposing the meanings that emerge
from the technology assessment with the group’s media theology (Blondheim &
Rosenberg, 2017), its notions concerning the morality of media (Fader, 2013) and the
social constraints considered imperative to its ethos, the group arrives at a media ideology
(Gershon, 2010a). It represents their beliefs, attitudes and strategies concerning the new
medium, which in turn informs its modes of use.
The forces of convergence elemental to digital (Jenkins, 2006), have created a
dilemma for enclave communities. On the one hand, the new media can enhance
communal connectivity, but on the other they raise the specter of interpenetration, or
“scalable sociality” (Miller et al., 2016). National and international mass media content
and the values they represent can infiltrate the community, endangering its particularistic
culture in the process. Such exposure is perceived harmful to the religious world of the
believer (Rosenberg & Rashi, 2015; Fader, 2017) and threatening to the traditional
hierarchy (Campbell, 2007a; Neria-Ben Shahar & Lev-On, 2011). Much previous
research has focused on this tension. Studies tended to explore the ways religious groups
“domesticate” new communication technologies and their uses (Silverstone, 2006;
Campbell, 2007b), in response to the challenge of exposure to mass mediated content via
legacy media channels and later on the internet.
When facing the threat posed by the internet, religious groups find themselves in a
quandary. As dangerous as it is perceived to be, its added value to the professional and
economic lives of community members doesn’t allow for its total rejection. The dominant
response to this dilemma has been, as noted, a process of domestication. In the case of the
Amish communities in the United States, the solution involved permitting internet use in
the workplace while maintaining restrictions on access elsewhere (Rheingold, 1999;
Neria-Ben Shahar, 2017a). In the case of Hutterite communities in Canada, domestication
included implementing a technological system for filtering websites (Katz & Lehr, 2012;
Katz, 2015).
The present study of Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews goes beyond the threats inherent
to external content. It looks inside: at dangers lurking in the group’s communal sphere of
communication. We also consider the interpersonal sphere, zooming in on
communications between the sexes, a significant aspect in other enclave cultures too
(Hijazi-Omari, & Ribak, 2008; Costa, 2016). Accordingly, we address the ways ultra-
orthodox Jews (known also as “haredi”; pl. “haredim”) have assessed, constructed, and
regulated cellular telephony within their social environment. We probe haredi perceptions
of the cellular phone’s fundamental communicative affordances, namely its attributes as a
medium (Shifman & Blondheim, 2007). These attributes include the scalability of
addressees (one, some, many); nodality, or the nature of its terminal (e.g. stationary or
mobile, see below); synchronicity of information (real-time, delayed, both); and
particularly the morphology of transmitted content (aural, visual, scripted). In this context
of technology assessment, we focus on haredi leadership’s intriguing preference for
talking rather than texting over the cellphone, as part of regulating interpersonal and
intra-communal relations.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews and the contemporary media ecology
Israeli ultra-Orthodox groups comprise more than 10% of the adult population in
Israel and a much higher share of the country’s youths. They seek isolation from most
influences of modernity, rejecting Western ideologies, sensibilities and practices
(Friedman, 1991; Brown, 2017). They comprise three major clusters, each of them further
splintered into distinct segments.
One cluster is the Hasidic movement: East European in its historical origin and
oriented to religious experience more than to learning, it is characterized by the central
role of the “rebbe”—the authoritative religious leader—who is usually a scion of the
historical rabbinic dynasty of the group. Another cluster, the “Lithuanian” group (also
referred to as mitnagdim), was originally formed in Europe in opposition to Hasidic
Judaism, but in recent decades they seem to have adopted the dominant role of
authoritative rabbinic leaders from Hasidism. The third cluster consists of haredi
sephardic Jews from Asian and African countries. They tend to be more open and tolerant
than the other ultra-Orthodox clusters, though the status of charismatic religious leaders
among them, dead or alive, is at least as high as in the other two groups.
Notwithstanding their social isolation, the haredim exert considerable power in Israeli
parliamentary politics. There are haredim in the Jewish Diaspora too (mainly Hasidim
and Lithuanians), but both their social isolation and political engagement are lesser than
in Israel, and their communicative interface with general society tends to be less
regulated.
Uniquely important in this society are the religious laws shaping the behavioral
practices of the community, as updated and decided by the rabbinic leadership. Highly
significant, too, are expectations for rigid self-control and self-restraint, particularly when
it comes to sexual behavior. The latter behavioral standards are buttressed by far-reaching
segregation between males and females (Stadler, 2009). The community’s attitude to sex
and sexuality is extremely conservative. It is confined to the performance of marital
duties, and it includes a taboo on any spontaneous premarital interaction between men
and women (Kissil & Itzhaky, 2015).
In addition to expectations for strict self-discipline of group members, all three
clusters of haredi Jews feature an authoritative leadership that maintains strict control
over group members’ lives and communal affairs. This includes the regulation of the
group’s media environment and the communicative practices of its members. In the case
of communications, unlike other fields of religious observance (such as kosher
certification or dress code, let alone politics), the three major ultra-orthodox clusters tend
to cooperate. This owes not only to the syncretic notions of media morality (Fader, 2013)
but also to the strong links and the intensive traffic connecting all sub-groups of ultra-
orthodox Jewry, requiring shared platforms for smooth interconnection.
The haredim’s conservative moral values as well as their self-segregation and isolation
have yielded a complex attitude towards new communication technologies (Cohen,
2011). The community leaders’ original position was a sweeping rejection of the internet
as a corrupting and defamatory tool that could expose its users to forbidden content
(Cohen, 2011). Over time, however, the internet's advantages and the growing
dependence on it made a categorical rejection impossible to maintain, and despite the
official position it infiltrated the community slowly and persistently (Campbell & Golan,
2011). Other voices, too, began to be heard, including those of senior rabbis who
explicitly permitted filtered access to the internet when necessary for earning a living and
under certain other circumstances (Cohen, 2011). Just as in the case of the Amish and
Hutterite communities, economic motives led to the erosion of the ban that was initially
imposed (Neria-Ben Shahar & Lev-on, 2011). Some ultra-Orthodox groups also
encourage engagement with the internet to spread their religious message to the un-
initiated (Pearl, 2014).
The kosher cellphone: just for talking, not for writing
Like the internet, the mobile phone has also evoked a dual attitude among traditional
communities (Campbell, 2007a). On the one hand, the communal features of the medium
could server to extend religious life and deepen the relationships between community
members, as well as between religious leaders and their communities (Campbell, 2006;
Ho, Lee & Hameed, 2008). Moreover, unlike television and the internet, its main
function—dyadic interaction—is permissible, telephony having been adopted full-
heartedly by the community and used for generations. Yet on the other hand, cellular
telephony signals danger: The smartphone can serve as a terminal for internet access, and
its particular attributes as a medium make the specter of exposure to unwanted content
especially severe (Campbell, 2007a).
Specifically, the unique characteristics of the medium’s nodality make communal
control over its use problematic. These characteristics can be shorthanded as the “three
Ps” of the mobile telephone’s node: its personal nature, its being portable; and the
device’s prosthetic dimension, reflected in its proximity to the human body (Ito, 2005;
Vries, 2005; Rosenberg, 2019). The cellular phone is distincly personal, in that calls over
it are always “person to person” rather than “station to station.” Moreover, the device
itself now serves as the gateway to one’s digital persona, which contains ever increasing
fragments of one’s biography and identity. But further, each mobile node tends to be
moved in space by a certain individual (portability) that minimizes the terminal
limitation, that is, the need for access to a static communications terminal (a limitation of
most electronic media to date; Mascheroni & Vincent, 2016). These two affordances,
taken together, shape a new physicality to the communication experience: The body
morphs into a communications terminal, the cellular phone serving as its communication
organ, hence prosthetic.
Taken together, the 3Ps provide a sense—and also the real option—of uncontrolled
connectivity. They enable users to conceal transgressions in seeking and receiving
illegitimate content from the outside, making social supervision of its use difficult
(Deutsch, 2009). An additional danger lurks in the interpersonal sphere of
communications: Given the portable and personal nature of the node, it can be used
beyond the inquiring eyes and ears of communal surveillance. The cellphone thus carries
the specter of enabling clandestine communications and relationships. As noted, haredi
society is particularly wary of secret interaction between females and males.
Obviously, a more formal religious technology assessment process was called for,
which would properly remediate the cellphone, updating the group’s media ideology
(Bolter & Grusin, 1999). Indeed, at the beginning of 2005, representatives of the three
main clusters comprising ultra-Orthodox society formed the “Rabbinical Committee for
Communications.” It was a forum that included rabbis, public figures and activists, who
convened to deliberate the "cellphone threat.” The solution reached, after a complex
process of negotiations, was resistance through accommodation. They decided on a plan
of action that would adapt the new medium to the ideology and acceptable uses of their
religious community (Campbell, 2007a).
The same dilemma was confronted by Amish and Hutterites, and their response was a
process of domestication (Katz, 2015; Rheingold, 1999). In some of these communities,
personal cellphones were forbidden and their use was limited to community
representatives or community members in the presence of the representatives, as well as
specific contexts such as business trips to the city. But the Haredi community’s approach
to domestication was radically different in its proactive nature. They sought cooperation
with the corporate powers in the cellular industry, and with them shaped a tailored
medium that they could approve.
This solution implied an innovative institutional move, rather remarkable in the annals
of adapting media technologies to the special needs of religious groups. The Rabbinical
Committee on Communications called on cellular service providers in Israel to produce
and market the “kosher cellphone.” To begin with, the telephone numbers of devices that
received the Committee's kosher seal would have an additional three digits. These digits
identified a telephone line as kosher and would allow recipients to know whether they
were receiving a call from a kosher cellphone owner, i.e., from a fellow member of the
ultra-Orthodox community (Rosenberg & Rashi, 2015). This was an extension of the
“personal” nature of the cellular node to the communal sphere, identifying calls as
belonging within or without the communal pale. Significantly, this dimension of the
medium shaped by community leaders was embedded in the technology itself.
Moreover, the kosher cellphone as designed by the committee and the leading
technology and service providers in Israel featured only an attenuated range of cellphone
affordances. Changes to the standard cellphone were most noticeable in the scalability
and morphology attributes of the device. While it was not surprising that the adapted
device did not provide access to outside content services, to include internet surfing or
video services, the kosher cellphone did include a surprise in the realm of message
morphology: Texting was stripped from the kosher cellphone’s functions. This taboo on
scripting is particularly perplexing when one recalls that ultra-Orthodox Judaism
privileges the morphology of script as perhaps no other culture does. Possibly based on
the ancient ban on images and suspicion of sight (Jay, 1994), language is the dominant
medium of this culture, particularly in its modulation to written form (Blondheim &
Blum‐Kulka, 2001). Indeed, the study of texts is considered the top and main religious
calling of the group; and its children are expected to be taught how to read and write from
the age of four.
The rhetoric of ultra-Orthodox leaders has obscured how important the ban on texting
was to the Rabbinical Committee on Communications. That rhetoric framed the
opposition to the cellphone as a contest against exposure to improper content (Rashi,
2012), and has led most researchers to understand their strategy for domesticating the
cellphone through this prism. Most previous studies of the kosher cellphone have
therefore focused on the efforts to combat the problem of surfing the internet on the
cellphone (e.g., Campbell, 2006, 2007a; Deutsch, 2009). But if the issue was blocking
internet content and visual representations, why was texting over the kosher-phone—in
SMS or other text messaging applications—blocked too?
Moreover, upon surveying the Rabbinical Committee on Communications’ early
activities against the “cellphone threat,” it turns out that written messages were in fact
seen as the main menace that instigated the campaign. Opposition to internet-over-the
cellphone was added to the cause only later on (Levinson, 2005). Indeed, when “kosher
smartphones” of the best and newest models began appearing, the rabbis allowed the
inclusion of music players, still photos and video cameras, but text messages and text
applications like WhatsApp were banned. Thus, Israeli cellphone company Rami Levy
Communications, which offered the ultra-Orthodox public a kosher smartphone without
mobile surfing but with text applications, was met with stubborn opposition by the
Rabbinical Committee on Communications (Goldman, 2016).
This feature of the kosher cellphone—a device shaped in an extremely deliberate
technology assessment process—therefore begs an explanation. It is necessary to try to
understand (a) what danger the ultra-Orthodox leadership see in cellphone text functions,
that may explain its campaign to block them completely; and (b) how ultra-Orthodox
cellphone users perceive and respond to this obstruction. Is there opposition to the ban on
texting, and are there alternative ideological opinions with regard to it?
Methodology
In order to understand the motives that led ultra-Orthodox leadership to prohibit text
channels, as well as the way the prohibition was perceived and received by the public,
this study integrates two main research methods (Fontana & Frey, 1998):
(a) Semi-structured interviews. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted to try and
understand the mindset of ultra-Orthodox leadership. Two were held with senior
members of the Rabbinical Committee on Communications (the body that initiated the
kosher cellphone); three interviews were conducted with rabbis of mainstream ultra-
Orthodox communities in Israel; and five interviews were conducted with rabbis in
yeshivot (Talmudic academies) for ultra-Orthodox youth and young adults.
Interviews with members of the Rabbinical Committee on Communications were
an obvious starting point for understanding the motives and the thinking leading to the
decision to block text channels. But the other two groups of interviewees are at least as
important. In the modern hierarchical structure of ultra-Orthodox society, a limited group
of rabbis who acquire uniquely high professional and social prestige (referred to as “the
great ones of the generation” or simply “the great ones”), are viewed as having the
authority to decide all major dilemmas facing the community (Katz, 1997). However, it is
community rabbis, and the highly prestigious rabbis in yeshivot, who ultimately stand
before the public and explain the decisions of the great rabbis to the community. Thus,
the manner in which community rabbis and yeshiva educators perceive the cellphone
threat is crucial for further understanding the issue. All the interviews were conducted
face-to-face and their duration was between 40 minutes to two hours. As per the
interviewees’ requests, their names were changed to protect their anonymity.1
1 This preference for anonymity by all our interviewees—each holding a prominent position within haredi
society—is intriguing, though not unusual. It would appear to stem from deep tensions between currents of
isolation and integration in haredi society today. Programmatically rejecting academic scholarship, particularly
in the humanities and social sciences, these rabbis may feel that extremist members would oppose their
discussing internal issues of the group with researchers. On the other hand, these leaders are aware of the
significance and implications of their image within broader Israeli society and want to make the community’s
ways better understood. Less ideologically, our notion is that these religious leaders find personal interest and
challenge in discussions and interaction with scholars who come from a foreign intellectual milieu and who do
(b) Content analysis of posts on two major ultra-Orthodox sites:
The ultra-Orthodox forums site BeHadrei Haredim (lit. ‘In ultra-Orthodox
Rooms’, but alluding to ‘room within room,’ i.e. ‘in secrecy’) – we studied
discussion threads archived on the site that dealt with the topic of kosher
cellphones between 2005-2015. Out of those, we selected for close study 21
relatively extensive threads in which the discussion attracted significant attention
on the site. Each of these 21 posts generated dozens of responses, ranging from 20
to more than 100.
The ultra-Orthodox news website Kikar HaShabbat (lit. ‘Sabbath Square’–
alluding geographically to the historical central public square of the haredi
community in Jerusalem). We studied hundreds of readers’ responses to more
than 30 articles on the kosher-cellphone and kosher-smartphone, posted on the
website between 2009-2015.
The content analysis of the fora and talkbacks was conducted with awareness of
the methodological challenge inherent in trying to learn about the ambience in an
ideologically closed group. The two websites under study are very popular among
ultra-Orthodox online users and are not under direct rabbinic supervision (David &
Baden, 2018). The content on the BeHadrei Haredim and Kikar HaShabbat websites
is for the most part open to the general public; the latter website is considered the
most successful in the ultra-Orthodox community (Cohen, 2015). Both sites are
perceived as semi-subversive due to their freedom from rabbinic supervision. A
number of attempts were made to boycott them in the past, but ultimately their
activities were not harmed. The anonymity of the forums and talkbacks on these sites
brings to the surface authentic voices that are unlikely to be heard in in-depth
interviews or focus groups (McKenna, Green & Gleason, 2002). Although it cannot
be taken for granted that opinions on the site represent ultra-Orthodox public
sentiment (after all, the more pious do not use the internet), a wide range of authentic
voices can nevertheless be identified within the very extensive threads and materials
not owe them a priori subordination and respect.
posted on these sites. They can illustrate a wide range of opinions and the complexity
of the issues discussed as well as their implications.
The interviews and texts were analyzed using a thematic analysis in order to
identify and map key themes that emerged from the data.
Findings
The silent threat of the scripted text
The interviews and texts analyzed for this study yielded two very different clusters of
reasons for banning text messaging on the kosher phone. One related to the interpersonal
communications sphere and the other to the communal communications sphere. Some of
our interviewees and posts related to one sphere, some to the other, and some to both. As
we shall see, each cluster of reasons, whether individual-oriented and ethical, or more
community-oriented and socio-political, would seem to be sufficient for haredi leadership
to strip the kosher-cellphone of the text affordance. Although some voices sounded the
two danger alarms jointly, we here present them separately.
The first argument was summarized succinctly by Rabbi Reuben, one of the heads of
the Rabbinical Committee on Communications, as an attempt to block “non-kosher text
relations” between the sexes. It should be noted that chastity and ever more stringent
separation between the sexes have established themselves as a central crusade in
contemporary ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Stadler, 2009). To the rabbi’s mind:
The basic problem with the text messages was that we did not want things that
could not be said between boys and girls sent via written messages, due to
modesty. The understanding was that from there the distance would begin to
break, since there is total separation from the age of three in the ultra-Orthodox
community and suddenly there is a device that can be used to break this distance,
because when using it one doesn’t expose oneself to the other sex…. Some
people do not have the courage to speak, but to court in writing – yes. Suddenly a
phenomenon of non-kosher connections began. That was the beginning of the
Rabbinical Committee for Communications.
The stringent norms of gender segregation create a double-barrier to the feasibility of a
“forbidden relationship.” One is a psychological barrier, stemming from the
internalization of the prohibition and from the embarrassment that accompanies a
conversation with a member of the other gender. The other is a social barrier, deriving
from the fear of being detected in such a liaison—a situation that could harm a person's
standing in the community, particularly of women in this traditionalist society.
Communication via written cellphone messages could conceivably bypass these two
barriers and create contact with members of the opposite sex. When it comes to the
psychological barrier of shame in initiating the forbidden contact, synchronicity is a
powerful element. Unlike a spoken conversation which requires temporal co-presence,
the text message as an asynchronous medium requires much lower exposure and much
room for play with presenting the user’s self (Yoon, 2003). Nevertheless, the use of text
messages can create an intimate atmosphere among strangers (Grinter & Eldridge, 2001;
Ling & Yttri, 2002) while requiring less courage than a face-to-face approach, or even a
phone call (Cho & Hung, 2011). Indeed, text messages often play a significant role in
romantic relationships, especially at their beginning, when shame barriers or rigid social
norms may hinder spoken or face-to-face wooing (Lin & Tong, 2007; Gershon, 2010b).
In this sense, text messages have particularly great potential to diminish the
psychological barrier and launch relationships that are considered “inappropriate.”
Without the written channel, many such encounters would be inconceivable, or so at least
some of the rabbis think. For instance, Rabbi Simeon, a community rabbi in Jerusalem
who in the past used un-kosher phones, avers that:
The SMS [text messaging] communication experience is a lot nicer [than voice].
It lacks the obligation of a spoken conversation. The SMS makes the connection
between a boy and girl very easy from a psychological standpoint and provides
tools for sending messages that commonly would never be uttered aloud by the
good and the best. For example, a swaying [i.e., “problematic”] yeshiva student
gets a girl's phone number from another friend and sends her an SMS, “Hey,
what’s up?” ... What does he care? If it doesn’t work it’s only a little gaffe and
nothing more. That same person would not dare do such a thing in a spoken
conversation.
The approach presented by Rabbi Simeon is echoed in public deliberations of the
haredi community. In fact, it was supported by a personal testimony in a heated debate in
a BeHadrei Haredim forum. The thread began when rumors (that turned out to be false)
circulated that the Committee was about to allow the cellphone companies to create new
models of the kosher-cellphone that would support text messaging. This sparked a heated
debate, in which most participants welcomed text messaging and said they did not
understand the reason for its banning. In response, “Shoshi” (a feminine tag) attacked the
men in the forum and described the potential implications of eliminating the
psychological inhibitions that the messaging channel enables:
How naive, you are just lying to yourselves and to us as if you don’t know why
they banned the SMS. As a woman who works with quite a few people who know
my phone number, I received many approaches via SMS, or people pretended to
mistakenly send me a message to see how I would react and see if I would “go
with the flow” and cooperate. And now I have changed over to a kosher
cellphone, and all those who tried via SMS have disappeared.... They wouldn’t
dare to call. There is a limit. So thank you to the rabbis for forbidding it (Shoshi,
BeHadrei Haredim, 9.4.2011).2
This is the silenced feminine perspective that adds an angle to the problem of
communicative boundaries between the sexes. In the case of the external threat of the
internet generally and pornography in particular, women did exercise their agency by
imploring the avoidance of the internet and preventing its entrance to their homes (Neria-
Ben Shachar, 2017a). But when it comes to the internal threat of “immoral
communications” between the sexes (Fader, 2013), women have direct agency and real
power, though once again through avoidance (Lovheim, 2011; Mahmood 2005). By using
kosher phones, women can prevent men from silently approaching them via text. The
symmetry afforded by the cellphone gives them actual power to avert male courting
rather than only the power to protest men’s pursuit of online pornography.
2 The names that appear alongside the quotes are the names of the users on the website, which appear in their
comments on the website and in its discussions, and are accessible to the general public.
It should be noted that given the bi-directionality of texting as a channel, breaking
the psychological barrier is potentially a two-way affair. The same attribute of a-
synchronous contact would lower the shame-barrier for a woman trying to establish a
relationship with a man. However, we found no reference to such a constellation in our
interviews or in intra-haredi discussions. It maybe that discursive conventions prevent
commentators from even raising this possibility. But it may also be that the aggregation
of taboos makes this possibility un-realistic. The more so since texting provides a record
documenting the transgression, the sanctions for which would be much more severe in
the case of a woman.
Not only can text messages make it easier to overcome the psychological barrier,
they can also help bypass the fear of detection (Cho & Hung, 2011). This is especially
relevant to the living conditions of ultra-Orthodox youth, most of whom live in their
yeshivas’ dormitories, and share all accommodations, including the study hall and even
bathrooms, 24/7. In this kind of space, any deviation from normative behavior can be
monitored by yeshiva colleagues, educators, and “supervisors.” A voice call on a pay
phone or a cellphone to or from a “forbidden” partner may be overheard or merely attract
attention, especially if done on the sly during late hours, away from the common space,
or at suspicious frequency. In contrast, the quiet and nearly invisible nature of text
messaging makes it possible to conduct such communicative activity under the social
radar (Hijazi-Omari & Ribak, 2008; Costa, 2016).
Yeshivah educators are certainly aware of these circumstances. As Rabbi Levi, a
Yeshiva instructor in the town Beit Shemesh explains:
In the yeshiva and at home the boy is always surrounded by other people: rabbis,
parents, friends, so if they hear him speak a lot, or even secludes himself on the
street near the yeshiva and talks endlessly, they will immediately realize that
something wrong is going on there. But with text messages it is possible to
conduct a whole relationship in concealment, both at the yeshiva and at home. He
can lie in bed, lift the blanket over his head, and send messages without even his
brother, who is sleeping in the same room, noticing.
While this excerpt from the interview relates specifically to males, the bi-directionality of
the medium implies that similar circumstances are at work on the other side of the elicit
conversation.
And indeed, being able to conduct communications without social supervision is
one of the reasons for text message’s popularity among young adults in mainstream
society, who feel they are supervised at home and at school (Ling, 2010). Text messages
allow young people to create a private space and an experience of freedom even in
surroundings that are under constant supervision (Goggin, 2004).
In ultra-Orthodox society, however, the liberating effect of text messages is
relevant not only to youth but also to adults, who are also under close social supervision
(Hechter, 1987). As one of our interviewees commented:
With SMS you can have a hidden relationship right under the whole world’s nose,
a relationship with women that no one sees or hears. This is true at the yeshiva,
but it is also true for someone who is married who wants to “take a break” from
his relationship. A phone call is binding, you need to be extra careful that no one
will overhear, because you are more exposed in a conversation, it is more
restricting. But to receive a message whenever you want, no one will know you
got it, and to return a message, which can even be done in the bathroom, you are
not on anyone’s radar (Interview with Judah, a yeshiva rabbi in Jerusalem).
In an open society whose members aren’t closely monitored, the mobility of the
cellphone allows for considerable privacy through the choice of the conversation
situation (Geser, 2004). But in a highly dense population, in a close-knit social
environment such as that of ultra-Orthodox society, privacy depends not only on the
medium being personal but also on the mode of its use. This is particularly true when it
comes to the morphology of the message: The mere use of one’s voice makes practically
every conversation public and impossible to conceal. Text messaging, in contrast, can
elude eavesdropping and create a “virtual cafeteria” (Lin & Tong, 2007), where anyone
can speak to anyone. This in a society that forbids any interaction between men and
women, even cafeteria-style.
Gossip and subversion: the text message as a broadcast medium
But there was another kind of major danger that prompted the Committee on
Communications to eliminate texting. It relates not to the morphology of the message but
to its potential scalability and synchronicity (Shifman & Blondheim, 2007; Miller et al.,
2016). Put simply, text messages by cellphone can be “broadcast”: disseminated instantly
from one to many. This potential of broadcasting unauthorized information represents the
other major reason the Rabbinical Committee on Communications prohibited text-over-
cellphone. Here is how Rabbi Reuben, a member of the committee, sees the issue:
Aside from the forbidden connections, we saw that a gossip thing had also begun.
News, rumors, and gossip began to pass via SMS and then we said: Is that what
we need? Another electronic tool to spread gossip? Suddenly with one click a
person can send all the gossip to 30 of his friends without having to print on paper
and to mail.
The problem of the uncontrolled spreading of information via text messages is related
to the broader issue of control and supervision of information flows within the communal
sphere. Dawson (2000) stresses that the reluctance of conservative societies to adopt new
media technologies for unrestricted use stems from the potential they provide religious
opponents or renegade community members to spread “false and misleading”
information. Alternatively, interpersonal messages scaled to groups can be misleading
and damaging due to context collapse (Marwick & boyd, 2011). Indeed, and as noted, in
ultra-Orthodox society mass media are under strict supervision. Watching television,
reading secular newspapers, and listening to radio stations serving the general public are
prohibited, while the sector’s radio stations and newspapers are subject to the control of
“supervisory committees,” which consist of representatives of the leading rabbis who are
naturally situated within the system monitor these media (Cohen, 2015). Interpersonal
means of communication, such as landline telephones and early versions of the cellphone
did not present any problems, but the introduction of the text message function changed
the rules of the game. In this sense, text messages, especially messaging applications like
WhatsApp, are within the communal media sphere, in-between interpersonal
communication and mass media, and can be considered meso-media (Jung, 2016). Unlike
a voice call, which is usually limited to two participants, the text message has the
potential of unlimited distribution, it is fast, accessible, and uncontrollable. The easy
production and distribution of information in the digital age turns every user into a
potential journalist who is not under the supervision of the regulatory committees.
Indeed, prior to the diffusion of the kosher cellphone that blocked the SMS function, the
phenomenon of semi-institutionalized cellphone distribution-lists had emerged. They
conveyed gossip and news from amateur journalists to haredi sectors (Levinson, 2005).
The move to block text message channels was intended to preserve the cellphone as an
interpersonal medium and prevent it from becoming a mass or communal medium; in
Rabbi Reuben’s simple words: “SMS is a group thing and we wanted the phone to remain
interpersonal.”
Dissenting voices
The public campaigns against the penetration of television and video into the ultra-
Orthodox home were received by a broad consensus of ultra-Orthodox opinion. The
campaigns against the computer and the internet were only partially successful, but
nevertheless no public dissent was heard (Neria-Ben Shahar & Lev-On, 2011). In
contrast, the decision to block the cellphone from receiving and sending text messages
was met with considerable resistance. This is very unusual: Obedience to rabbis and
leaders, as noted previously, is a dominant value and a central psycho-social theme in
ultra-Orthodox sector today, and especially in its public discourse (Hechter, 1987).
Dissident voices began to be heard as early as in the first few months after the
formation of Rabbinical Committee on Communications. In an unusual step, public
petitions were sent to the committee asking to relax the ban on texting. One such
initiative was launched by a petition on BeHadrei Haredim:
Dear friends! Those who are interested in joining the petition for text messages in
the kosher [cellphone] track, please add your name at the bottom of the following
message:
To the Rabbinical Committee on Communications: We are very pleased with the
development and wish to join the new and kosher cellphone program as instructed
by our rabbis, but we have unfortunately learned that these devices do not have
the ability to send text messages. Therefore, we appeal to you with supplications
and ask that you do not turn us, heaven forbid, into people who do not obey our
rabbis’ opinion, because this decree is a decree that the public cannot abide by.
Please! Permit text messages, if not group messages then at least messages from
one individual to another. (Hirschel-Tamim, BeHadrei Haredim, 10.3.2005)
The petitioners’ request presented “with supplications” and using “Please!” underscores
how unusual was this kind of appeal. As was the solution suggested: “Permit text
messages, if not group messages then at least messages from one individual to another.”
The wording shows that the petitioner fully recognizes the second danger we discussed:
the potential of broad distribution of texts; and hence the proposal to neutralize the
specific problem rather than completely block the channel. He also realizes and adopts
the committee’s notion of domestication: adapting and shaping new technologies to fit
the group’s needs rather than adjusting group practices to fit permissible uses of a given
technology.
The petitioner’s position was hardly an aberration. In an analysis of 21 main
discussion threads dealing with the kosher phone on the BeHadrei Haredim website, as
well as a review of hundreds of talkbacks on the Kikar HaShabbat news site, we found
only a handful of posts objecting to the rabbinical decree blocking internet services on
cellphone devices. But there were many dozens of responses expressing opposition, at
times vehement, to the committee’s decision to block the text messaging options of the
kosher-cellphone. It should be noted that the subversive threat of texting is amplified in
this case by another subversive use of script: written petitions, posts and comments on
websites.
But unlike the petitioner who tried to divine the committee’s reasoning for
rejecting texting, most hardi respondents opposing the decree were more blunt. Many of
them believed that the committee’s decision was groundless; some even suspected that its
members simply didn’t realize the great benefits of texting. A sizeable group of dissenters
even suspected foul play. As noted previously, it is extremely unusual for a spiritual
committee to arrive at direct deals with players in the high-tech communications industry,
as it did when specifying and implementing the kosher-cellphone. It was therefore
inevitable that to many discussants the only explanation for the “absurd prohibition” of
text messages had to do with economic interests, not spiritual considerations. Objectors
believed that economically interested parties led the members of the Rabbinical
Committee to specify the kosher cellphone from among existing devices in the market
that did not completely block text channels. In this reading, the economic interests of
schemers caused deception, and the naïve rabbis supported a move that was counter-
productive to their constituency. Beyond these criticisms, quite a number of responders
argued that the ban on text messages had caused a “double devices” phenomenon:
numerous ultra-Orthodox people who own a regular smartphone in addition to their
kosher device. They use the kosher device in public, and to call other “kosher”
subscribers, who can tell by the caller’s number that a kosher-cellphone is being used.
In response to the considerable volume of dissident voices, the Rabbinical
Committee on Communications re-engaged the issue, trying to find ways to solve the
problem. As noted, the very existence of a dialogue, even if virtual, between haredi
establishment and dissenting voices is highly unusual, indicating the extent of public
discontent over the texting issue. One of the ideas was to replace the complete blocking
with supervision over the content of text messages. Since it is impossible to approve each
message individually, it was suggested to compile a list of a few dozen predetermined
text messages (such as “I’m in class, will get back to you”; “On my way home”; etc.),
thus enabling the use of the SMS channel while ensuring maximum control and
supervision. This proposal (which ultimately wasn’t implemented) was also discussed in
ultra-Orthodox forums online and was met with mixed responses. Some viewed this as
taking the community’s needs into consideration, but others were critical and even
cynical. The mere idea of authorities and committees taking control over the content of
interpersonal communications was apparently too much even for this highly disciplined
group. Such control over free social expression appeared even more objectionable than
the actual blocking of the text channel, the initial source of discontent.
Reader posts on the two sites we surveyed demonstrated the unpopularity of both
the initial ban on texting and the attempts at remedy. The following were all posted in the
same thread on Behadrei Haredim:
Good news for kosher cellphone owners: One of the large cellphone companies
will soon be launching a package of pre-made messages (templates), such as “I
am in prayer,” “I am at the yeshiva,” “We will talk in the evening,” etc. It should
be noted that this breakthrough is sanctioned by the Rabbinical Committee on
Communications. Thank G-d that the rabbis sitting on the various committees
began to understand that they needed to compromise. (Enoshi, BeHadrei
Haredim, 11.1.2011)
This sounds terrible… maybe in the future they will also determine templates for
voice calls? (Engineer, BeHadrei Haredim, 11.1.2011)
It's not so delusional.... We ultra-Orthodox are skilled at living according to
templates for a long time... (Sweet Kineret, BeHadrei Haredim, 11.1.2011)
How can they permit texting “I am in prayer”, after all, people can determine
codes between them, and a guy can write to a girl “I am in prayer” and mean
something entirely different.... Really, they should stop with these bans. (Yarkoni,
BeHadrei Haredim, 11.1.2011)
Notwithstanding the satirical tone of some of the responses, it should be noted that the
question of the Committee’s authority was hardly the issue; it was rather the nature of its
supervision. And further, it appears that the transition from control over media and modes
and communication to control of message content represented the crossing of a red line.
We mentioned on top how dominant the interpretation of written texts is in this enclave
culture. This sensitivity could well have contributed to the ridicule with which controlling
and determining message content by the Committee on Communications was received.
The committee obviously miscalculated the tolerance of the members of this culture-of-
texts towards control over linguistic encoding and dictating the meaning of language.
General conclusions
In this research, we analyzed the reasons for the decision to block text messaging on
kosher cellphones and the responses and objections that this move generated among
members of the ultra-Orthodox community. Observers and scholars usually see the
negotiation of a new media technology by an enclave culture as a battle over its external
boundaries, those separating it from general, secular society. Such a struggle represents
an attempt to maintain the community’s ideology and social structure, to include its
hierarchy of authority, monopoly of knowledge, and cultural seclusion (Campbell, 2007b,
2010; Rosenberg & Rashi, 2015; Neria-Ben Shahar, 2017a). And indeed, certain
elements of the campaign for the kosher cellphone may be constructed as a response to
perceived threats coming from outside forces (Campbell, 2006). However, this study
shows that the sweeping prohibition on the use of messaging applications derives
primarily from threats in the communal and interpersonal spheres of communications,
representing a defense of intra-communal boundaries, supposedly threatened by the new
channel. Moreover, in this case it is not the content that can be conveyed by the new
medium that is the ultimate threat, but rather an aspect of the medium itself—the modes
of communication that it affords (Bordewijk & van Kaam, 1986). In other words, the
kosher-cellphone case demonstrates that domestication processes may serve to defend
either external or internal boundaries (or both), from threats inherent in either content or
modes of communication that a medium enables.
The internal dangers that the architects of the kosher-cellphone responded to by
banning the text mode of the medium, were themselves two-fold. One danger concerned
interpersonal communications, specifically the possibility of texting messages on the sly,
without having to “face” the addressee in real-time. In a society based on constraint,
restraint, and clear and controlled gendered spaces, text messaging has the potential of
undermining psychological inhibitions and enabling unsupervised media interactions.
The intimate nature of text messaging could thus reshape the boundaries of interpersonal
interaction, lowering the psychological and social barrier between the sexes (Hasinoff,
2013).
The communicative universe of the kosher cellphone—a technological innovation—
thus serves the most traditionalist instincts of haredi society in regulating gendered
communications. In general society, new media are thought to usher in new kinds of
social relations. They are seen as agents of change that enable new forms and new
textures of social interaction in the school and workplace, in politics and in leisure, in
flirting and parenting, and one could go on. But in the case of ultra-Orthodox Jews an
opposite dynamic seems to be at work, inverting the relation we expect between new
media technologies and social change. Haredi society is currently experiencing change in
the role of women as increasingly they join secular workplaces. Yet as this change is
taking place, the group’s innovative kosher cellphone paradoxically serves to reinforce
traditional norms regarding women’s social place and veteran standards for relations
between the sexes.
The other damning feature of text messaging concerns the patterns of distribution and
diffusion that it enables in the communal sphere. The ease with which textual information
can be broadly distributed in an instant, from one to many and from the bottom up, could
undermine information control by the group’s leadership and its monopoly of knowledge.
This issue pertains to the boundary between the individual and the group, and poses a
challenge to authority and leadership.
Campbell and Golan (2011), who discuss the establishment of online religious
communities on the internet, claim that these communities create “digital enclaves” to
gain social control over the nature of the distributed information and to try and create a
risk-free domain in the dangerous virtual space. In this respect, the ostensibly innocent
analog cellphone can be more dangerous than the internet, because in the absence of
supervision it enables the creation of uncontrolled sub-networks and the distribution of
unmonitored and even subversive internal information.
What appears to emerge here is a new perspective on the response strategies of
conservative societies to new technology (Campbell, 2010). It suggests that traditional,
conservative, and hierarchical societies can feel threatened by direct, unmonitored intra-
communal and inter-personal communication, no less than by exposure to external mass-
society generated content.
The kosher-cellphone also provides a unique perspective on a general theoretical
debate concerning the cellphone and its role in building social connections. Some see the
main social use of the medium as creating new connections and the strengthening of
loose ones (Boase & Kobayashi, 2008; Wilken, 2011); others see its main role as
deepening existing connections and establishing an active social network (Campbell &
Russo, 2003; Ling, 2008). The two sources of opposition to the cellphone in ultra-
Orthodox society appear to point to either side of this debate. The inter-personal threat
would point to the device’s great power in creating new (and possibly illicit) social
connections and building them. The communal threat would seem to point to the
cellphone’s potential for utilizing existing social networks for new purposes, such as the
transmission of unregulated, possibly subversive information.
Conspectus by way of a comparison: Amish, Hutterites, Islamists and
ultra-Orthodox Jews
A religious community can respond to a new medium in various ways: rejection,
adoption, adapting the technology or adapting to the technology (or both). Generally
referred to as “domestication,” these responses derive, as noted, from the group’s
technology assessment that in conjunction with its media theology and its distinct
traditions, leading to a particular understanding of the nature of the technology. That
understanding, when applied to the group’s needs and goals, shapes a media ideology that
reflects the advantages and threats it sees in the use of the new medium.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, similar to the Amish and Hutterites, completely rejected
“content biased” media technologies, such as television (Neria-Ben Shahar, 2017b) and
the internet in its initial stages. Over time, however, these groups found ways to allow
limited internet use for economic and work purposes (Rheingold, 1999; Katz, 2015).
However, when it comes to the cellphone, religious communities appear to differ in their
attitudes and practices. The differences may in fact be traced back to these groups’
approaches to the landline telephone. While ultra-Orthodox Jews adopted the landline
telephone quickly and without resistance (Deutsch, 2009), the Amish perceived it as
harmful to the intimacy of the home and detrimental to the togetherness of families. It
was also seen as a threat to the traditional nature of intracommunity relations by giving
precedence to relationships with people at a distance and by spreading gossip and rumors.
Most fundamentally, the telephone was seen to empower the individual and foster
individualism. Its use was therefore allowed only in telephone booths located in public
spaces, and later in the work place too (Zimmerman-Umble, 1996). Similar resistance
greeted the cellphone (long before the advent of the smartphone): It was seen to go well
beyond stationary phones in empowering the individual at the expense of family ties and
communal bonding.
In this sense, the Amish had no particular quarrel with scripted messages.
Telecommunications, whether by voice or by script encroached, they believed, on the
intimacy of the community. But two religious groups—Muslims and ultra-Orthodox
Jews—thought otherwise, and created a sharp distinction between the morphologies of
voice and script. Muslim religious leaders perceived the social effect of text messaging as
impairing the close, intimate connection desired between believers. It was viewed as a
negative symptom of alienation and anomie characteristic of Western society, which
should be rejected by members of the community (Campbell, 2006; Hussain, 2013).
Leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community viewed text messaging in a diametrically
opposite way. Unlike the Muslim groups just discussed, and unlike the Amish, they found
no fault with the interruption of intimacy by telephone. What they feared was in fact the
opposite: the creation of illicit intimacy by telecommunication media. However, they
estimated that voice communications by telephone—whether stationary or mobile—
precluded intimate communications. The crowded living conditions of community
members, predominantly urban and poor, provided a sufficient check on voice
communications. But the morphology of script was different: There were no safeguards
on the silent threat of intimate scripted messages, and much lesser inhibitions in striking
up, enhancing and maintaining relationships by writing.
Religious groups differ not only in their analyses of the potential impact of media
penetrating the community; they diverge also in the coping mechanisms they shape. The
Amish domesticated cellphone use in a way quite similar to their adaptation to the old
landline telephone. The wired phone, as noted, could only be used in visible public
spaces, and similarly the cellphone would be limited to use in a geographical context that
is not the intimate space of the family, for example in a work vehicle or in the home of a
community leader (Katz, 2015). The ultra-Orthodox community adapted not the context
of cellphone use but the device itself, by blocking the text messaging options on the
kosher-cellphone. Despite this difference, the two strategies—attenuating the usage
sphere and attenuating the usage mode—have a similar impact: transforming the
cellphone into a public, exposed, and supervised medium (Gilard, Wale & Bow, 1998).
Another aspect of comparison relates to the second danger the Rabbinical
Committee identified in text messaging: the mass distribution of unauthorized
information. This concern characterizes traditional communities that view the free
transmission of information as undermining the hierarchical-authoritarian structure of
their society (Campbell, 2007b). However, traditionalist communities differ in their
response to this threat as well. In the Amish community, the problem is cast as part of its
anti-individualistic campaign: its fear of the disintegration of the community due to the
easy distribution of gossip via the telephone and cellphone (Zimmerman-Umble, 1996;
Rheingold, 1999). The domestication of the cellphone and landline telephone in this
context was intended to shape them as communal devices, not personal ones (Rheingold,
1999). Here, too, the contrast to ultra-Orthodox society is diametric: The latter
domesticate the cellphone in order to preserve it as a personal device, and are opposed to
the text option that allows the device to be used as a community medium.
These differences show that when dealing with the attitude of a religious
community to a new medium, it is necessary to understand the community’s assessment
of the medium and of the threat it may pose. For instance, to the general public the
cellphone is considered a liberating device because of the mobility it allows (Katz &
Aakhus, 2002; Ling, 2004). However, in ultra-Orthodox society which, as noted, is
geographically concentrated in certain dense residential neighborhoods and its youth
educated in institutions that are under constant supervision, the experience of mobility is
very limited. Therefore, the liberating potential of the cellphone is the text messaging
features, which enables the stationary silent challenging of the social norms becahdrey
chadarim—in inner rooms—that can serve not only young people (Hijazi-Omari &
Ribak, 2008), but adults too. In other words, the medium’s liberating potential is not in its
portability but in its being personal. This is particularly significant in the case of haredi
women, who can gain a measure of individuality by merely owning a cellphone
(Lovheim, 2011). As we have seen, however, the phone’s kosher aspect paradoxically
empowers women by blocking “scripted catcalling.” Yet on the other hand, blocking
texts prevents potential scalability of messages sent by women and keeps them in their
place as audiences (Hess, 2013), never as speakers in the haredi public sphere.
Future studies in the field should survey the continuing negotiation of the smartphone
and the deliberations over permitting and prohibiting new applications. Such
developments point to the reality that negotiating a new medium and shaping media
ideologies are an ongoing process. Like in the case of the internet, this process is
primarily driven by economic considerations, as new media use becomes crucial to many
occupations. Considerable added research is necessary on an issue that has heretofore
been a glaring blindspot (Lovheim, 2013) in the study of haredim and the cellphone.
While we tried to highlight the gender issue throughout this article, we did it primarily by
way of conjecture: We found only minimal reference to women and gender in our
sources. Nevertheless, women’s cellphone ownership and use in haredi society is
burgeoning and it has highly significant implications on women’s integration, agency,
autonomy and even individuation.
Another issue that calls for attention concerns accommodation of the community’s
media policy to members with special needs. Research shows how the speech impaired
(Rosenberg & Kohn, 2016), hearing impaired (Pilling & Barrett, 2008; Bitman & John,
2019), and people suffering from social anxiety (Pierce, 2009) use text messaging to
bypass their communicative difficulties. To such groups, texting is a crucial tool for
effectively coping with their disabilities. This channel is blocked to haredim with special
needs, and even if they do use it, they can’t communicate through it with most members
of their community whose kosher-cellphones do not facilitate text messaging.
Finally, this study suggests the need to build a more nuanced and more solid
theoretical framework for analyzing issues of media perception, assessment, adoption,
rejection, and adaptation by religious and other social enclaves. Such a framework should
be responsive to varied constellations, to include adapting technologies for particular uses
by the devout, and adapting uses to available technologies. As this study shows,
“domestication” is much too fuzzy and ambiguous: It’s one size that simply doesn’t fit
all.
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