Oh Lazer, we can always count on you...

For a laugh. Or eighteen.

The dear rabbi (who obviously means well) has set his sights on yet another... um... interesting, target: World of Warcraft. Before we start, let me just state that I had a friend drop out of school because of WoW, so I'm well aware of its effects.

That said... this is stupid.

Lazer:

expressly forbidding the use of a computer for anything other than commerce or word processing, and specifically prohibiting the use of a computer for games and movies by adults and children alike. In addition to their sources in the Gemorra and Rishonim, they write: "Allowing a child to absorb himself in computer games turns his mind from Torah and his heart to idleness… this creates a drastic setback in a child's spirituality."

Hey, what about fun Christian games like Saints of Virtue? Just because the rabbis don't KNOW about games that combine spirituality with... um... computers, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You know, like how the Talmud says lice come from sweat. Same thing.

As far as movies go, the Rabbeim cite Shulchan Oruch O.H. 307:15 that prohibits "war books" (adventure stories) because of tomfoolery

So, no book of Judges? What about the upteenth story about how the Baal Shem Tov defeated the Wolfman, the Mummy and Shabbetai Zvi, or how Reb Nachman convinced a prince that he was really a reverse-vampire rooster trapped in the body of a moron? Or Joseph Karo and his daemon? Or Nachmanides winning a disputation with the Inquisition, or Rambam doing pretty much anything? Hey Lazer, what about this, or this? Berel Wein says they're kosher. Does that make him a heretic?

But don't trust the rabbis, let's go to Rav Lazer's own favorite kind of compelling evidence- anecdotal!

In every single case I ever handled of a boy or a girl that went off track, the parents were viewers of DVDs and/or the kids owned computer-game or watched DVDs themselves.

Hey, Rav, I have bad news for you- you know that whole "Haskalah" thing? It happened before computers. Before TV, even. See, it turns out people have this thing called a voicebox... well, never mind. Besides, what about the rate of people who return to Judaism from secular lifestyles (or, God forbid, are even raised secular) who are raised in homes with computers and DVDs? The way you're talking, you'd think only Amish kids became Baal Teshuvahs.

Computer games and DVDs kill time and murder brain development.

Arguable. It depends on the game, the gamer, and how they play, as well as a whole list of other things. You can make almost any activity into a brain-suck if you try hard enough. Even studying Torah. Just ask the kollel-prisoners in Israel, haredi men who could care less about learning Talmud and who are stuck there because they don't have job skills and don't want to serve in the army.

A passive brain – like a passive body – becomes flabby and lazy.

Ah yes, I forgot about the world famous "Shlomo's Gym", of Bnei Brak. Tell them the Vilna Gaon sent you (in a dream, of course) and get half-off your first weight-training session.

You can't learn Gemorra with a flabby and lazy mind, so if your child is a computer game or DVD freak, forget about sending him to a Yeshiva; it's a miracle if he or she will remain Shomer Shabbos. Computer games/DVDs and Torah simply don't mix.

You know, Lazer, this would be a lot easier to swallow if your site didn't have this nice sidebar that hawked EVERY single CD you've ever accidentally touched. As a tech-savvy person, presumably you understand that the media itself is not the problem, it is how it is used. Any hobby can become an addiction, any activity can potentially become a time-suck. (And yes, opinions on exactly what constitutes a time suck can be relative.)

I'd post more on Lazer's actual WoW post, but having read his newest quiz, feel I should really go to bed. (Will next week's quiz will be "Is your beard out of control? How untrimmed is too untrimmed?" Oh, the joys of a post-Cosmo magazine world.)

More tomorrow.