Although there could be circumstances in which such a thing is helpful, I do not like the narrowing of halacha to a single dot of practical instruction. For the website [
www.practicalhalacha.com] to be useful, the circumstances would have to be rather simple, and there is no chance to have a conversation about various aspects with a live posek, which might lead to a different psak. When I was in Sweden last week, having been booked specially into a hotel with ordinary keys and then realising one hour before Shabbat that a bell rang every time I came in through the front door (grr!!), I would not have been able to look up this up on this site. Fortunately I am friends with a posek who is very attached to his smartphone, and was able to get an instant answer.
Speaking more broadly, the phenomenon of halacha on the internet is one of the most interesting ones we are witnessing in our day, in my opinion.
Halacha on the net serves to both narrow halacha to its most practical and concrete aspects, such as in the case of the website under discussion, or to expand it to include grassroots discussions that put sometimes ivory tower halacha through the wringer of lived experience (as well as often mangling psak through second-hand reportage, or through writing something given as an individual psak).
The comparison to what people do before they go to the doctor, suggested by Michael Broyde, is also one that is apt and is very interesting to explore. Medical websites will often shy away from making absolute diagnoses, and frame suggestions, with encouragement to see the local doctor. Few medical websites would be constructed as
Both the above points, as well as questions of Information and Individualism, are touched upon in a blog post "Rabbi Google and I", for those interested [
morethodoxy.org]
Yael
www.yaelunterman.com/hidden-of-things
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/09/2015 05:47PM by mlb.
