Don't answer that iPhone

I had intended to write about the IDF today but ever since I read about Rav Chaim Kanievsky's announcement last week that anyone married by a rabbi with an iPhone was not legally married, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It's bothering me.

(ADDENDUM: When you post on Thursday, you get to hear what everyone is thinking about your post on Friday while we are all out doing our pre-Shabbat errands. And one of my own personal Gedolot B'Schuna told me today that she thinks that Rav K didn't make this announcement, but that rather someone asked him a tangentially related question and then extrapolated what they wanted from his response. She said this because "the way it was publicized in all the newspapers is not the way Gadolim announce such important statements." And she continued to say that Rav K really is a Godal Ha'Dor. I see what she means and in all fairness I do not have concrete proof that Rav K said this -- I read it in the papers as well. So, while he may not be the one who said it, the fact that one of his misguided followers may have taken something someone as important as Rav K said out of context and proportion is even worse. That person is besmirching his good name. Plus the fact remains that it seems that rabbis with iPhones are OUT, but rabbis without iPhones who are criminals of a worse kind are still IN. Riddle me that please.)

What I didn't realize until last week was that if a Jew owned an iPhone or had unfiltered internet access on a smartphone, then that person could not be a chazan (a cantor in a synagogue), blow the shofar, or HEAR the shofar in certain synagogues. That is ridiculous but it doesn't get me riled up because a) I don't want to be the chazan, b) I don't want to blow the shofar and c) unless I plug my ears and go running from the services on Holy Days, it's hard to miss the sound of the shofar.

And then last week, an 85 year-old rabbi, who, with all due respect, probably is a little behind on technology advances in the past ... 50 years, decides that if the rabbi who married you also happens to own an iPhone then you are not legally married... and your children are born out of wedlock. Oops.

Frankly I think it is an excellent loophole for anyone who wasn't happy in their marriage but didn't want to go the expense and effort of getting a divorce. I guess, for them, it was literally, a gift from heaven.

According to the Jerusalem Post (Sept 24, 2012), Rav Kanievsky is one of the five most influential rabbinical authorities. That's nice. I have a few questions:

1. Most influential where? Israel? Jerusalem? Mea Sharim? His own mind? Minds of equally misguided people?
2. Most influential by whose standards? Jews in Israel? Jews worldwide? Haredim in general? Haredim in Mea Sharim? Jews for Jesus? Reform Jews? Conservative Jews? Modern Orthodox Jews? Extreme, cloistered Jews who still wear their ancestors hand-me-down clothes from Poland in the middle of the Israeli summer? Or with the Iran-loving extremist Neturei Karta and the Ayatollahs?
3. When was he influential? In the 50s? In the 60s? In the 70s? In the 80s? In the 90s? In the 00s? At some vague point-in-time in the past when he was lucid? When Jesus was knee-high to a grasshopper?
4. How influential is/was he? Is he more influential than the other rabbis who steal from the charities they pay lip service to? Or perhaps, the rabbis who either hide pedophiles or are pedophiles? Or the rabbis who run around with lead pipes beating up the scumbags who won't give their wives gets ... for a price of course? Or the rabbis taking drugs? Or the rabbis who tell people who do not observe as they do that they aren't Jewish? 
5. And finally, why is he influential? Because he knows the Torah and Gemara inside out? Because he has the longest beard? Because he won the title in a poker game? 

I am pretty sure I am going to go to hell for writing this, but before I leave on my journey to the ninth level of whatever Dante was describing, I have to say one last thing.

Whatever happened to the idea that Jews are here for the sole purpose of leaving the world a better place than they found it? What about Isaiah 1:17 (I know I am scaring some of you now, spouting off chapters and verses like I know what I am talking about):  "Learn to do good, seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan and plead for the widow? 

Chief Rabbi (UK) Sir Jonathan Sacks once said: "One beginning from God. One source of morality and truth. Oneness first, with rich diversity evolving from that initial Divine creative burst. Faith — not blind but searching, questioning — is at the heart of what it is to be a Jew."

The God of Abraham is a God of Justice, a God that inspires His people to do great things. I have a funny feeling that I am going to have lots of Jewish company in Hell.