The Kaspersky internet security firm announced on Thursday that it has detected of a new kind of computer virus that has been targeting computers in Lebanon, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. According to the firm, the new virus, called Gauss, was designed as a spy tool, and that it was programmed using the platform of…
Break-dancing Hasidic robots in metal yarmulkes. The anti-Internet rally meets Toy Story in a Lady Gaga video. Those seem to be the general concepts behind this new English/Yiddish music video by Hasidic pop superstar Lipa Schmeltzer, which you really need to watch. Schmeltzer, the biggest act in the Hasidic world, is a long way from…
It’s not too late to save Michael Fromowitz. Fromowitz, 18, and a pack of his yeshiva classmates had come to the ultra-Orthodox anti-Internet rally at Citi Field in Queens from the Hasidic enclave of New Square in upstate New York. A redhead with long side curls, Fromowitz doesn’t have his own email address. He does…
On the G train home from the ultra-Orthodox rally at Citifield last night, I talked Zionism with a passel of Hasidim headed for Williamsburg. A rabbi named Yechiel Meir Katz had drawn an implicit historical parallel in his address earlier in the evening between the rejection of Zionism by the Orthodox and the need to…
It’s Yentl for the 21st century. A female reporter from The New York Observer’s tech blog, BetaBeat, snuck into Sunday’s ultra-Orthodox, men-only rally against the dangers of the Internet by dressing up — apparently rather convincingly — as a man. Adrianne Jeffries bought a pair of cheap loafers at Payless, borrowed her brother’s white dress…
Joseph Oppenheim’s iShop, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, looks more or less like any other computer store. Oppenheim sells laptops and iPads, and charges for Internet access at a few Web kiosks in the back. That Internet access, however, is heavily filtered. The porn site Playboy.com is blocked, but so is Yahoo! News. That’s…
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis talks with Washington correspondent Nathan Guttman about a growing sense that the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict may no longer be possible. Then, Josh is joined by opinion editor Gal Beckerman to discuss a new deal that may see ultra-Orthodox Jews serving in the Israel Defense Force…
An upcoming ultra-Orthodox mega-rally in New York about the dangers posed by the Internet has a promotional Twitter account. The event’s box office has an email address. Speeches will be live streamed. And one of the event’s organizers owns a Web marketing company specializing in search engine optimization. This isn’t your average anti-Internet demonstration. After…
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