I would like to share with you my very sad story, so that you, Rabbis and the Jewish community in general will be able to learn from it. I am what the public calls a truly “Choshuva” “Avreych”, and with all due “modesty” I view myself as such as well. Nevertheless I fell terribly by viewing (and even worse…) from the worst sites available on the sticky web trap - The Internet – the Satan’s pitfall net! Am I truly Charaydi, or even Dati ? Where is my “Da’at” ?! May Hashem please forgive me and strengthen me in the future. It all started with my being on the Internet for business purposes. Before I started, I asked my highly respected Rabbi if I am Halachicly allowed to use the Internet even though I would not have a filter, (because I was not using my own computer), if it is clear to me that I surely won’t slip into the non Kosher sites and I have no other practical choice (”Lekah darkay achreena”).
I received a “Heter” to do so, being that this Rav knows me to be this “great” “Yorey Shamayim”. Now this worked out fine for quite a while, until one evening when I was tired and feeling a bit down, and my guard and wits were at a low, I “decided” that “let’s just see how easy it is to view inappropriate sites, and how bad is it after all”. Now you can guess the rest of the story. I got caught in the web time after time. I strengthened myself again and again, but now whenever I was in a weak state I got caught in the net. Then one Avayrah led to another, and even when I was not in such a weakened state I sinned. When our Rabbis Chazal say “Ayn apitropis l’arayos” they really meant it ! There is really no foolproof guardian to keep away by oneself from succumbing to lust without the right protective measures. One can convince himself that he will be clean, but so many times he is not himself ! Few are those that are keeping Hashem in front of their eyes all the time! One should not trust himself until his dieing day say Chazal. Who can say truly that I am so pure with the fear and love of Hashem, that I won’t ever get caught in the smaller pitfalls that abound in the web, that they too are so “Assur”? Who will protect someone from not being pulled from one small peak to another one and from just this slightly off-color advertisement to another, spiraling deeper and deeper onto the abyss of the web? One of the great Poskim of our time has declared, that using the Internet without the proper precautions has the Halachic ramifications of the Issur of Yichud. Unfortunately many of our even Orthodox Rabbis are too lenient in this regard, mostly because of the pressures of the public, causing them to view the situation as a “Gezarah sherov hatzibur aynam yecholim la’amod bo”. In reality almost all the pitfalls of the web are Assur MidiOraysah, or lead to it quickly, so one can not use this “Heter” ! Clearly if we would be in the times of “Chazal”, our Sages would prohibit the use of the web without the most stringent precautions! Our greatest Rabbis of our time do just that, so how can we ignore their warnings?! To end my story, with Hashem’s help, I finally caught myself quite a bit, got myself a strong recommended free Internet filter and kept myself clean for quite a long time. The problem is that just recently, being that my strong free filter was a non Jewish type, I stumbled again by testing out the filter in a weak state of mind and heart, and falling once again. I see that half a protection for an individual, is like no protection, because you just get hit on the other side. I guess that the only solution is to get one of the Kosher filters, which I hope will be truly sufficient, even though I still try to convince myself that I “surely” won’t fall again. That’s about it for now, I hope I will have good news in the future.
Lishonah Tova ! “Yossef”
P.S. I hope that this letter does not cause anyone to think that if such a “Choshuvah Avreych” can fall in such a fashion, then I’ll be in “good company”. Just remember that Korach and other originally great individuals were very Charaydi-Yeshivish etc. and it didn’t help them or their company that they had a “Yeshivashe” “Minyan” – you know where…!