Yeah, that's right, the Rabbi, Aaron Feinhandler (אהרן פינהנדלר), is (with protective eyewear) smashing a perfectly functional PC, after which the yeshiva students all jump on it to further destroy it beyond repair in a ritual seeming like a cross between drunken frat boy antics and a good, old-fashioned book-burning. The yeshiva is oriented towards ba'al teshuvas (those born Jewish but not born/raised Orthodox/ultra-Orthodox who have embraced that lifestyle). He is talking about how computers are in general not kosher, and how the destruction is intended to be some kind of a healing process for the treyf of the computer that had belonged to one of the ba'al teshuvas.
And lest people think that this was just a stunt pulled in the spirit of Purim and the month of Adar, Vos iz Neias contacted Rabbi Feinhandler and, in an exceedingly disturbing interview, he makes it clear that it was done entirely in earnest and that computers are pure evil.
Some choice excerpts:
On the Internet you see women without their hair covered ... The reason we send our children to chareidi chinuch (education) is because we want to keep out everything that is out there. ... This is the 3rd time we've shattered a computer. The first computer we broke was a $1,000 computer ... Our boys visit homes voluntarily to try to get people to remove their computers
Perhaps the most twisted part was about the guy who had owned the computer being smashed in the video.
The computer we broke this time belonged to a photographer. He used his computer to develop his pictures, but then he realized it was causing him to fall spiritually. He decided he's better off taking pictures with a camera and then he'll develop the film in a photo shop.
Note to the rabbi. You cannot remove the 'untzius' elements that may have gotten into your photo if you "develop the film in a photo shop". But you can do that easily with Photoshop.
Needless to say, 'unkosher' cellphones and home computers are prohibited for anyone attending the yeshiva, and they will not marry off anyone who doesn't promise not to use computers.
He gave an interesting answer to "computers for work" question:
They need to work on the Internet for their parnossa? It's better to clean streets and dirty your body than to work on the Internet and dirty your soul.
Of course, few to no Haredim do those jobs either. Feinhandler certainly doesn't. Which leads to the question: Where does he get his funding from?
From the American government (via tax-exempt status), for one:
An article from Aish HaTorah's website, somewhat ironically, gives more details about who may be enabling this terrible yeshiva with funding, by providing addresses for "charitable donations" both in the U.S. and Canada.
Machane Yisrael.
9 Leib Str.
P.O Box 5666,
Beit Yisrael,
Jerusalem, Israel.
Tel: 972-2-537-0290
Fax: 972-2-537-4224
For charitable Donations:
CANADA:
Press Foundation
ATTENTION OF MACHANE YISRAEL
P.O. Box 19
Station T,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
USA:
To: American Friends of Machane Israel,
c/o: Gotlieb,
4901 - 18th Ave, Brooklyn NY, 11204.
Tel: 718 - 436 7826
I'm going to do some searching and post another post (which I'll link to) once I've found out more.
