First "Kosher" Yiddish-Language Smartphone Unveiled

An Israeli telecom company is offering haredi clients a kosher smartphone with Hassidic folk music ringtones and a menu in Yiddish, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

 

Israel unveils 'first sin-free Yiddish smartphone'
Bangkok Post

An Israeli telecoms company is offering ultra-Orthodox Jewish clients a kosher smartphone with Hassidic folk music ringtones and a menu in Yiddish, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

While other firms have tapped into the religious market by offering phones free of Internet access, with no email or access to Facebook which could lead users into temptation, none has so far offered its services in Yiddish, Yediot Aharonot said.

"This phone has no text messages, Internet access, Facebook or email. It doesn?t even have a camera," said the paper.

"And if you call from it on the Sabbath, you will pay an exorbitant price of 10 shekels ($2 euros) per minute."

And all the menus are in Yiddish -- the traditional German-derived language still widely used by ultra-Orthodox Jews, with the local market estimated at between 350,000 to 400,000 people, the paper said.

Local importer Accel Telecom said it took four months for a pair of ultra-Orthodox translators to come up with the interface which is written in Hebrew characters and uses words such as "Klingen" (ringtone) and "Schirm Verteidikung" (screensaver).

But to win rabbinical approval for the device, which is based on an Alcatel T-701 handset, Accel had to first prove that tech-savvy users would not be able to work their magic to circumvent the safeguards and succumb to sin.

"It is not simple to make the phones kosher and bring them to a level in which you prove that the phone cannot be breached or changed in such a way that it will be possible to send text messages or surf the Internet with it," Accel CEO Mark Seelenfreund told the paper.

[Hat Tip: Michelle.]

Comments

[jancsipista]

lets see if they can understand this in yiddish , zai kenen mih kishen in tohes:)

[Dr. Davd]

These aren't smart phones, they're shoteh (moron) phones.

[Michelle]

B"H

Q: What's the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish?

A: Hebrew knows it's not Yiddish.

[Gevezener Chusid]

Another difference between Hebrew and Yiddish is that Yiddish was spoken as a real living language for about 800 years, whereas Hebrew had already been retired as a vernacular language 2000 years ago. Yiddish was by far the mother tongue spoken by the vast majority of the 6,000,000 Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. It has a rich and interesting body of literature, and is second to none in its ability to express very subtly nuanced ideas.

[Barry]

GC, you are kidding yourself if you think that Yiddish's body of literature is particularly rich or interesting or is second to none in expressing subtly nuanced ideas when compared to English, German or even French.

[Alter Kocker]

Another company gets rich selling trinkets to the ignorant. Good on them!

[David]

The phone is still too smart and not "kosher" enough.

1) It should not be able to play musical ringtones - this may lead to dancing - and we know where that leads = and we DON'T want any more charedim.

2) It should not be capable of making calls on Shabbat, whatever the cost.

3) Calls to emergency services should also be disabled. Let them call the ambulances and fire services the old-fashioned way. Calls to police don't matter as we know they don't call them anyway. We don't want to have too many concessions to modernity.

[David]

I trust the phone will only be available in black?

[A E ANDERSON]

It sounds like a pathetic bad joke rather than a real product. First of all, using the phone on Shabbes isn't a common aveyrah for haredim (unlike sneaking into the bes haKiseh for a ciggie on Shabbes, onanism, or pilfering the pushke). If a haredi uses the pelephone on Shabbes, it can almost guaranteed to be a situation of pikuach nefesh (saving a life), for a medical or similar emergency when such use it not at all deemed sinful. Therefore, the added tariff is illogical. Indeed, such calls should be free!

As to the absence of text messaging, which for most adults is simply a means of conveying specific information and data (such as addresses, airplane gates, arrival times, and so on), there is no inherent evil in text. Unless the Torah itself, a text product, is evil too. Without text messaging, moreover, you wouldn't be able to receive your pasuk-a-day subscription from Tikkun Klali, the Tanya or Mussar Shmuesn-R-Us.

What's more, without a camera, you might buy the wrong thing while shopping for shabbes, causing you and your ashes hayil to argue. Has vehalilah that you might as a result have to slap her a bit (Rambam: without a whip!) to get her to follow your orders as all good yiddishe hausfrauen do.

As to browsing porn on the tiny 3.5 inch screen, yashar koach if your eyesight is so good that you can actually get aroused viewing postage stamp-sized figures doing each other! You may use your cell phone as a kosher marital aid! Be fruitful and multiply.

[Bench Kvetcher]

Perhaps the porn actors will be
Fully dressed and speak Yiddish.

[Yechiel]

Someone mentioned to me that Israeli haredim now have two phones; one for למען ישמעו and the other for למען יראו...

[Michelle]

@Gevezener

Another difference is that Yiddish is not the language of the Torah, it never was, it never will be.

My people spoke Ladino as they were gassed. I guess that makes a whole lot of difference in the "holiness" of the language, right?

I don't know about you, but I am a Jew, not a Holocaustian.

[Gevezener Chusid]

To: Michelle:

With all respect to the Greek, Yugoslav, and other Jews who spoke Ladino, Yiddish most certainly WAS the language in which the Torah was studied and discussed by the majority of Jews who were murdered by the Nazis (and centuries of their ancestors before them.) Texts were reviewed of course in the original, but the big discussions were always done in Ashkenazic circles in Yiddish. I am sure that Ladino-speaking scholars used Ladino, and in fact, there seem to have been more Torah literature written in Ladino than in Yiddish, since Yiddish speaking laypeople apparently were better versed in Hebrew than their Ladino brothers. Rabbonim were rabbonim everywhere, and the writings of many latter-day Ladino speaking Sephardic gedolim were studied (in Hebrew) by Ashkenazim as well. (Historically, the sisters mostly read Yiddish, I am afraid.)

My point is more that Ivrit was NOT their language than that Yiddish was. Zionists try to bury 2000 years of Jewish history and development by dismissing it as גטאיזם "ghettoism" rather than recognizing it as being part and parcel of Jewishness - Not Holocaustism (which I agree is too prevalent, and along with political Zionism, erroneously viewed as an inextricable part of Judaism)

To Barry: Obviously you do not speak Yiddish well enough to read I.B. Singer, for example, in the original and I doubt that you speak or read French or German, (I do, and Russian as well). Yiddish is remarkable in its flexibility, which enables highly nuanced thought to be produced. Perhaps your English is faulty as well, as I had not said that the "body of literature was second to none..." I said that the language is. Big difference. I would say that it is the thought of the heart of the common person and not that of the academic that Yiddish expresses so beautifully. Every language is beautiful in its own way, especially those natural languages that have grown out of people's national experiences.

The Israeli Hebrew language is an interesting and valuable development and it too is beautiful in its own way, but that doesn't mean that Yiddish, Ladino, Judaeo-Persian, and Fors (the dialect of the Bukharian Jews) are worthless and ought to be discarded.

[a]

What market do they have - a overlyfrum guy wouldn't buy a phone, and a businessman would buy a normal PDA.

[Barry]

Maskilim and assimilationists not Zionists were first to attack Yiddish. One maskil put it this way: "Yiddish grates on our ears and distorts. This jargon is incapable in fact of expressing sublime thoughts. It is our obligation to cast off these old rags, a heritage of the dark Middle Ages." (Osip Aronowich Rabinowich [Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air We Must Speak Its Language])
The maskil David Friedlaender considered Yiddish as corrupting the intellect and most likely the manners of the people who spoke it.
It is not Zionism which ended Yiddish in Western Europe, in the Soviet Union or the USA. It is not that Yiddish created Ghettoes rather than Ghettos created Yiddish. The fact that Jews cast off Yiddish when they had the opportunity to do so show that Rabinovich may have been right. The fact that Hareidim now use Yiddish as a tool to close their minds to outside influences again support Rabinovich since Hareidism is a reaction against reason and enlightenment.

[Levi Keller]

@Barry: Abramovitch, Asch, Aleichem, Ansky, Cahan, Edelstadt, Gordin, Grade, Halperin, Hirschbein, Libin, Leivick, Peretz, Pinski, Singer (x3), Weissenberg, Winchevsky and thousands of others proved them wrong.

For such an "enlightened" person, you seem awfully adept at bandying about the most outdated and inane fallacies.

[Michelle]

B"H

Dear Gevezener,

A well-reasoned argument, until you, once again, included the very strange attribution to the Holocaust.

Why is that?

I have no idea why it is somehow a "holy language" because more Yiddish speakers died in the Holocaust.

Are you trying to make the argument that Yiddish is more "Jewish" than Hebrew or Ladino? Or that, somehow, Yiddish speakers were better Jews or more enlightened than those who spoke Ladino?

I simply cannot understand the need to include this very strange attribution.

Do you want me to come back with the numbers of Ladino speakers who were killed so we can compare in some creepy way, because, to me, one life is enough.

Are you trying to assert that you are more "Jewish" than me because more people died in the Holocaust speaking Yiddish?

It simply makes no logical sense.

It would be like me saying that I had more of a right to assert that Ladino was more important to the Jewish people than Yiddish because more Ladino speakers died in the Inquisition.

Can't you see that the ongoing and weirdly twisted logic of Holocaustism has completely warped your argument?

Hebrew is the language of the Torah, period.

You can argue all you want about any Halacha or Pilpul in whatever language you want, but the fact that Hebrew is Jewish and was Jewish before the first Yiddish word was ever spoken will never change no matter how bad you want it to.

[Gevezener Chusid]

What I said was that "Holocaustism" is TOO prevalent as a philosophy that people mistake for Judaism (along with political Zionism which also has very little to do with Judaism.)

I believe that Ladino is equally as holy as Yiddish. They are indeed both holy and ought to be preserved and appreciated by the descendants of those who spoke those languages.

Hebrew is indeed the language of the Torah, (as is Aramaic if we are talking about the Talmud), but from a linguistic, cultural and historical perspective it can be argued that the Israeli language is NOT the language of the Torah (although as a distinctly Jewish vernacular in which Torah is studied, it has become one).

Historically, as evidenced by the Talmud and many other sources, Jews had basically abandoned the use of Hebrew as their language of discourse centuries before Israeli Hebrew was constructed, and both Ladino and Yiddish (along with many other Jewish languages) predate it by centuries.

All of this is of little importance when viewed through a different lens: The Vizhnitzer Rebbe once said, with respect to this discussion that "di Loshon darf zayn koydesh" ... the tongue has to be holy. In other words, what is important is what we say and how we say it, not the language that we are speaking.

[Barry]

Midrash Vayikra Raba 32:5 states that amongst the things that kept the Jews from losing their identity in ancient Egypt were Hebrew names, language (they only spoke Hebrew among themselves) and distinctive clothing.

Maskilim however appreciated the costs that such social divisiveness had in that it kept Jews backward and brought Jews into conflict with those they live with. The Jews backwardness would mean that inevitably they would lose any such conflict. The strong (the modern and advanced) will always attack the weak (the backward and primitive), be they Spaniards in the Americas, Belgians in the Congo, or Germans in Eastern Europe . Assimilation into modernity is necessary for physical survival. This 'Darwinian' outcome was appreciated by Jewish immigrants to the USA. They did their best to ensure that their children assimilated so as to save them from the dangers of failing to do so. If it came at the cost of their religion (which they generally no longer believed was worth dying for or even being poor for) or the loss of Yiddish language and culture then that was a price worth paying.

Those Hareidim who push Yiddish are pushing social divisiveness. Indeed kedusha needs to be understood as separateness or social divisiveness.

GC, you are of course correct that political zionism has little to do with Judaism. Indeed political zionism appreciated the (literally) dead end (as proved by the Holocaust) that the 'ghettoism' ie Hareidi insistence on following the Midrash Vayikra Raba model would lead to.

Of course political zionism is only the second best solution from escaping the legacy of the backwardness resulting from social divisiveness encouraged by Hareidism. The best answer is assimilation into a first world society. When Jews have had that opportunity the majority of them will grasp it with both hands as the history of US Jews shows.

It does not matter which particular language Jews speak. It only matters that there should not be a particular language for Jews.

[Gevezener Chusid]

Apparently, Barry, you believe that we should assimilate ourselves out of existence as an "am kadosh" ?

[A Yid in Dixieland]

Jews need to adopt innovative survival. I'm a Jew living in the Goyishe southern USA, amid bible thumpers. I'd love to bring yiddish cell phones to the masses.

[WoolSilkCotton]

GC, I don't see what advantage there is to the mindset of thinking ourselves as an 'am kadosh'. It only leads to the ghetto mentality practiced in Williamsburg, Crown Heights, and Boro Park. Religious fanatics of all faiths think of themselves as God's favorites. The frumma are no different. Include yourself among them if you so desire.
But as for me, thanks, but no thanks.

Most people, Jewish or not, who came to America years ago did so to escape religious fanaticism and/or other oppressive dictatorships.
If you wish to go back to that, be my guest. But please, as Yogi said, include me out.

Jews who came to the USA in the 1870's-1930's made far more difficult choices than you can ever imagine. Do not dare to judge them. You are not worthy to even crawl in their shadow. The world of the eastern European shtetl was horrific poverty, illiteracy, real antisemitism, constant fear, hunger, cold, and dread. In many shtetlech, religious fanatics controlled the lives of shtetl Jews, not unlike what you see in the frumma neighborhoods of today. Why you are nostalgic for that can only be accounted for by your ignorance of the horrible realities that Jews of that bygone era faced.

[WoolSilkCotton]

And what is 'smart' about these frumma 'smartphones'?

http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=
Smartphone&i=51537,00.asp

All these frumma phones are is just a basic cell phone with yiddish menus instead of English. Just take your old cellphone from 10-15 years ago, make the menus yiddish, and this is what these phones are.

[Adam Neira]

Does it do predictive text in Yiddish ?

I wonder how it would go with the word "luftmensch" ?