Television: A Cry of Anguish and Appeal to Our Jewish Brethren 📺

“kol yisrael yesh lahem chelek b’olam habah”

you need to know how to learn Gemorah. there are many ways to forfeit it.

if you are riding along thinking you are guaranteed a portion in Olam Ha Boh, you better study the matter more completely,

before its too late.

Feivel,

but wich one (or more) of the issurim that watching T.V. transgresses causes you to lose your chelek in olam haboh?

ilini07 – You are a Rasha. I’ve never seen anyone besmirch a tzaddik like you.

illini – sometimes when a a rav makes a psak – that’s it. you don’t even get up to the stage of asking your own (probably small-time) rav his opinion.

and even if you did – is it worth the risk? how can you possibly sleep at night knowing you’re ignoring 35(???) major rabbonim?

i have a lot of relatives with tvs. some are frummer than others. but none of them say that it’s really allowed. at least they’re aware that it’s a problem! maybe their portion of hell will be smaller…

Joseph, Ujm, The Big One,

Since when does questioning a statement of R’ avigdor miller make somone lose there chelek in olam haboh?

Why do you have a right to belittle any statement by any M.O. Rabbi Or rabbi who’s hashkafos are to liberal for you but no one can question a radical statement that no one can bring a mekor for made by one of the rabbis you go by?

Just a thought….before worrying about losing Olam Haba…does it occur to those who consider themselves thinkers that watching TV is losing Olam Hazeh?

Hashem has given us the gift of time (not hours, minutes, days—that’s how we measure time)—time is about being and doing. Taking time and literally killing it by watching TV, and ingesting what it has to offer is losing this great gift of life that Hashem has given us in this world.

After chewing on this concept, than one can really give honest thought to one’s own portion in Olam Haba……and I leave it up to the Gedolei HaDor and Einei HaEidah to decide what it is that causes a person to lose their Olam Haba.

(I’m hoping this will redirect the fierceness of where this thread has been heading i.e the personal attacks)

This entire line of the thread is getting insulting to some of the posters and bordering on offensive. ONLY Hashem gets to decide who loses his chelek in Olam Haba -not you, not I, not anyone, including rabbonim. It is upsetting to see some of the smug remarks that have been posted here. One does not require the haskama of YOUR rov that TV is OK to have in the home, if his personal rov does not asser it. There is a very huge difference between ALLOWING something and actually condoning it. You may not find a rov of note who is willing to say it’s a GOOD thing to have a tv, but you will find many who will tell you it is nonetheless not an aveira, particularly if one uses the

V-chip and monitors closely (as I have always done) what the family is watching. Many secular educators also believe it is not a good thing to have a TV, but neither do they say it is a terrible thing to have one. It is a subtle difference, but if you think about it, it is still a difference. There are many excellent educational, nature-oriented, and newsworthy programs on TV, besides the things that concern our rabbonim. As with everything in life, the key is to use moderation, seichel, and know when enough is enough. My children learned a great deal from PBS, when they were toddlers, and there are still many fine programs on nowadays. This entire conversation will be moot for many in February, when the TV signal goes digital, and many people do not upgrade their tvs to be compatible with the new format.

Hate to say it, this thread is full of Lashon Hara about both Rav Miller and Rav Soloveitchik and should be closed.

I do not believe Rav Miller, who we (my family) have been close with since he was Rav in Rugby, would say such a sweeping statement about Klal Yisroel just for the ownership. As far As I am concerned, it is Lashon Hara/Motzi Shem Ra to repeat it.

Same with Rav Soloveitchik, I don’t know the answer, but its Lashon Hara to discuss.

Please close the thread.

Will Hill. Your question to me is silly. It is what they call a Red Herring. It deflects the discussion from the crux of the discussion to some side point.

The Rabbonim named on this letter about TV (those who are still alive), also declared that one should not have internet access. I am not aware that the Rabbonim have stated it is muttar to have internet access IF…..

The same way you have a hetter to be online (work, filters, whatever), people use the same argument to have a TV in their home. Only news, etc…

That you do not like their decision is not their problem. They never suggested you go out and by a television, not you are or anyone else. To categorically state that someone will lose their olam habbah because they own a TV is, in my opinion, stupid, ignorant and dangerous. None of the Rabbonim cited above would ever make such a comment. We all know it.

The conversation was good and productive but has gotten out of hand.

Thanks for reviving this CC. I gave up TV more than 20 years ago, and the once in a while that I do see what is on today (parents / friends, ect) I am shocked at what is shown today. Yet when I point it out, the TV owners don’t see the big deal. That I would guess, is the result of acclimation. If it creeps up on you slowly, you don’t sense the decay.

(great interpretaion of the possuk, by the way!)

Clearly, since I’m on-line the majority of the 9-5 day (both work related and CR hock), I must agree with you. Useful tools are just that, useful and need to be handled with care.

But would I keep a loaded pistol in my home? Or live downstream of a coalmine? No, because the risk to my family’s health makes it too big a gamble. Both very useful things, but one’s best kept very far away from.

I may not be able to see the side effects of exposure right away, but the experts say its harmful, and hindsight seems to back them up, so why risk it? True, with proper safeguards technology can be a wonderful thing, but at home? That’s a risk I’d prefer to avoid.

Rav Avigdor Miller constantly said (and can be heard on many of his tapes) that by someone having a television in the home he will lose his chelek in Olam Haboah.

It is well worth listening to these tapes, available at many Torah Tape libraries.

You can listen to one such time by CLICKING HERE.

To quote: “No question, anybody who has a TV in his house should know beforehand that his life is wasted. He has no chelek L’Olam Haboa. No question at all about it.”

Max well, may as violate shabbos, kashrus, THM and everything else since I have no olam haba. So that you for elucidating. I’ll now go to the cafeteria dress scantily cladd and eat a bacon cheeseburger.

One who has lost his chelek in olam haboa, can re-earn it.

Like Rav Miller zt”l says, take the TV and throw it out the window.

(Please do so after insuring no one is anywhere near that window below.)

There is really no need for some of these comments. All Max well did was quote somebody-he didn’t make it up. Otherwise it sounds as if you are bashing R’ Avigdor Miller.

I did not bash R. Miller. I challenge you to show me where in this thread I did so. I may disagree with what he says sometimes (and I didn’t do that in this thread either), but to bash him? Never.

I certainly have my faults, but that isn’t one of them.

The Wolf

And while I don’t want to enter the fray re: who has / lost a chelek in Olam habah, SJSs comment was really funny!

(Wolf was very witty too, just not as funny)

Wolf-my turn to apologize-I should have been clearer-“bash” was not the word. Maybe ‘cynical’ was better though my comment was really aimed toward the poster after you. Again im sorry I should have been clearer.

Wolf –

Sorry, I missed this post:

“Even if I throw my TV out of the window…I’m missing the first, essential step of teshuva”.

Perhaps. But you’ve made step 2. Plus, getting out of the sun, (while you may not regret being out in the 1st place)will still protect you from a sunburn

“getting rid of a TV is like trying to bail out the Titanic with an eyedropper”.

never underestimate the power of a 1st move. (open for Me a door as wide a the eye of a needle, and I’ll open, ect)

I rarely go head to head with you, but when you talk down about yourself, that cannot go unchalleged.

To quote: “No question, anybody who has a TV in his house should know beforehand that his life is wasted. He has no chelek L’Olam Haboa. No question at all about it.”

When gedolim makes statements like this they expect them to be understood using seichel and not taken completely at face value. There is a chazal that if one learns 2 halachos per day he is guaranteed olam habah. Does this mean that if I learn 2 halachos every day and then go and purposely violate them I will still go to olam habah because, after all, I learned 2 halachos per day? Of course not. The point in the segula of learning 2 halachos per day is that if one does so he will, over the course of time, come to know a lot of halacha and will then hopefully follow it. It is the following of the halacha, the doing of the mitzvos properly and the avoiding of the aveiros, along with the zechus of his daily learning that gets a person to olam habah.

Same thing here. It is the consequences of owning the TV that R’ Miller ZT”L claims will make one lose their olam habah. If I own a TV but I and my family never use it, I am sure that R’ Miller will agree that it will not affect my Olam Habah.

I do not know whether or not it is true that the Rav had a TV in his house, but if he did, he probably did not waste away his life watching it, nor did he use it to watch things that he shouldn’t be watching. He was probably also very careful not to allow the other members of his household to let the TV ruin their lives. A gadol like the Rav was on the level to control himself and his household in this way and is therefore not subject to R’ Miller’s claim that he will lose his Olam Habah. It is therefore not a stira to say that the Rav had a TV and that R’ Miller said that a TV takes away Olam Habah. Seichel will tell you that R’ Miller was speaking to the hamon am, not to yichidim like the Rav.

I see a few problems with an individual owning a TV.

First of all, even if everything he is watching is completely appropriate, it can still be a big waste of time. The time spent watching TV will take away from learning Torah and doing other mitzvos which will cause a person to have a much smaller chelek in the next world than they would have otherwise.

Secondly, there is the content itself which has deteriorated over the years. I used to enjoy occasionally watching sports but nowadays there is so much shmutz even in that. The commercials are all completely inappropriate and even during the games themselves the cameras will often focus on inappropriate things.

Theoretically, if the content was clean and the time spent is minimal it would be OK to own and watch a TV. But, our gedolim know that this is not the case. The content is not clean and watching TV can be addictive. You might start out watching one baseball game per month, it will then progress to one per week then one per day. Then you will want to watch the pre-game and post-game and Sportscenter as well and eventually it will take up all of your time and you will waste away your life. The yetzer hara for this addiction is even greater when it comes to inappropriate programming.

There may be some yichidim who have enough control over themselves and their life to be able to resist the temptations and use the TV appropriately. But, even for those people who can control themselves, the chances are that they cannot control their families. Having a TV in the house might be OK for these people if they were living alone but if they have children it is another story. It sounds to me from the discussion above that the Rav had a TV in his house during his older years. He used it to keep up with news and sports so that he could better connect with the people in the world including his grandchildren. From this I conclude that at the time he did not have young children in his house to worry about them using the TV inappropriately. It was also a time period when TV was not as bad as it is nowadays. I highly doubt that he had cable, etc. If he did have a TV he used it for occasional news and sports only and even that was all done leshem shamayim.

When it is time for my neshamah to part company with my body, I believe that Hashem will decide my future. It doesn’t matter how much TV I have watched in my life – nor what the content was, but rather, how I lived my life. Attending shul, studying various Judaic topics, giving tzedakah to the best of my ability, and doing kind things for others will be the deciding factors. No one person has the right to sit in judgement of how other people choose to live their daily lives (as long as it doesn’t involve illegal activities – then one certainly may be judged). We all do what is right for ourselves and our families. Yidden are often far too quick to point out even minor variances in lifestyles as being harmful. Many of us spend so much time pointing out differences that they forget how much alike we are. It seems the fact that we are all Bnei Yisroel gets left behind. We should be more united and quit quibbling over lifestyle differences. It just serves to be divisive. Accessing the various forms of media available to us is far less harmful than all of the Lashon Hora that arises from from many of these blogs.

Wolf – I agree with BP Totty. Perhaps they somewhat are more analogous than you realize. Just like you won’t get anymore sunburn if you leave the sun (even if you don’t regret), you won’t lose the future olam haboah you earn after you rid your home of the TV.

How do you know that I have any future Olam Habah? You’re making an unwarranted assumption.

The Wolf

“How do you know that I have any future Olam Habah?”

Thats easy – Its the opening line of each week’s Pirkei Avos. We all have a chelek. Its part of our contract.

Wolf, you just slipped up and showed that you are much more learned than you care to admit recently.