Whenever I hear about kosher phones, I hear about them not allowing the owner to text and I am a bit troubled by this, I am not bothered to the core because anyone who knows me – knows that I don’t text, but for all those types who “wanted to get your machine” when they called, texting is great and I was trying to come up with ideas of why it may be considered assur.
It’s pretty obvious that anyone who has access to texting will be tempted by the yetzer harah to text message their friends instead of actually calling them, which means they won’t ask how they are doing and which means that there will be many less Baruch Hashems being said and this could be very probalamtic for those trying to fulfill their 100 brachos a day regimen. I bet you all didn’t realize that people said Baruch Hashem to often because they really want to hold steady at 100 brachos a day – brachos are like vitamins, you need to stick to the schedule or else all sorts of maladies may happen. For instance when I stop saying brachos before I eat food, I forget to say after brachos and then when I get to shabbos I realize that the only time I bench all week is on shabbos and I wonder if all the eating I did covers me from the last time I benched.
Sexting is also a huge problem (phone sex through text), especially amongst folks who keep strictly to niddah, sexting can be so tempting – I just wonder who they are sexting. Are they sexting with their wives? That should be fine right? May be problematic if they met some girls on craigslist or at shul and they are sexting with them, but the neo chossid in me thinks that sexting is in fact better than the real thing because you are not really sinning. Sexting is rarely done in loshon hakodesh (modern hebrew isn’t the way God intended it) and that means you are not really communicating, it means that you’re too much of a wuss to call her/him up and have some real phone sex and halachically that seems better and farther removed from real sex.
I was thinking that those chain emails and forwards that people send around may be assur. I mean, there is nothing more terrible than getting a non-personal mass text on erev rosh hashanah and deciding not to be mochel the sender, thereby sending him straight to hell.
What about the massive amounts of porn that people send through text message? That can’t be good, although I have never in my life received a message containing porn – I am sure they exist. Wherever there is a screen there is porn, except I have never seen porn on those digitalized z’man screens in shuls – someone should hack them and everyone can watch some porn while they are repeating shemona esrei or something.
What about Torah texts? I see how they can be assur, if you text in Torah that means you aren’t really learning and the only worse thing than being bittul torah is mixed dancing.
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