New York City – Bloggers Are The Center Stage For Charedi Disscusions and News.

New York City – In March, Madison Square Garden played host to home games for the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus,

One event on the Garden calendar, however, failed to come to fruition: “The Big Event,” a blockbuster show scheduled for March 9.

The Big Event” was planned as a Jewish religious-music extravaganza, featuring the genre’s biggest star, the Hasidic singer Lipa Schmeltzer, in his largest venue to date. Buzz was steadily building when a bombshell struck on Feb. 20: 33 of the most prominent rabbinical authorities in the American haredi community had issued a kol koreh, a religious ruling stating that attending such a concert was strictly forbidden. Organizers of the event, and Schmeltzer himself, scrambled to accommodate the kol koreh, but it was too late. The concert was scrapped, and Schmeltzer became the latest casualty in the ongoing battle between traditional haredi culture and the secular influences that the haredi (sometimes called ultra- Orthodox) rabbinate view as harmful.

Indeed, the banning of “The Big Event” is just the latest shot across the bow. In 2005, Rabbi Natan Slifkin, known as “the zoo rabbi” for his interest in the intersection of religion and science, found his books banned by haredi leaders for their inappropriate content. More recently, in March, actor Abe Karpen, a Hasid from Brooklyn, quit his job as Natalie Portman’s onscreen husband in the upcoming film New York I Love You after being threatened with the expulsion of his children from their religious school if Karpen acted in the film.

The Schmeltzer and Karpen controversies in particular have provoked a backlash in some corners of the haredi populace, nowhere more so than online, where haredi blogs have given voice to opinions and sentiments long hushed.

“I think most of the outrage has been from the perceived violations of process, the unfairness,” says the blogger, who declined to provide his real name, as did other bloggers interviewed for this story, for fear of professional repercussions.

I think he’s a very brilliant and talented guy, but he went a little bit out of the way,” says a haredi journalist who wished to remain anonymous. “I believe he’s the best in the industry, but he could make all this with more calm, not moving into the hip-hop-type pop music. I think the ban was specifically on Schmeltzer because he started to become very, very looked up to by teenagers, the way he behaved. I have seen him [on] many times and occasions; he was a quite wild guy.”

For still others, the debate is moot because preserving the propriety of religious Jews’ behavior is the only issue at hand. “As the rabbis of the Talmud put it,” notes Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel, the rabbinic authority whose membership includes numerous signatories to the kol koreh, “‘One can be distasteful even within the bounds of halacha.'”

This explanation of events, well hashed on the blogs, has not mollified those who judge the rabbis’ actions unfavorably. “Is that accurate as to what happened? Yes,” says Hasidic Musician. “But it represents an abdication of responsibility by rabbinic leaders that they’re allowing themselves to be manipulated.”

Rabbi Shafran, though, says it is important to maintain religious priorities. “Haredi Jews who truly respect rabbinical rulings respect them even when those rulings do not confirm those Jews’ assumptions,” he notes. “So I think the community generally recognizes that these recent happenings were statements, and valid ones, that entertainment concerns do not trump more important ones.”

While some in the haredi community are pleased with the recent crackdown, many are confused as to the rabbis’ plans for a community that is growing ever larger and coming into contact with secular culture on a daily basis.

For Schmeltzer, Karpen, Slifkin and others like them, their position as intermediaries between the haredi world and the frighteningly uncontrollable secular world is being challenged by a rabbinate on the offensive. The ever-more-available presence of technologies like the Internet has only exaggerated the dissonance between the segment of the haredi community taking its first steps, however tentative, toward secular culture and a rabbinate intent on forbidding all such activity.

“My hope,” says Rabbi Slifkin, “is that it will eventually dawn on everyone that these bans are counterproductive.”