BE warned: the Internet is bad for your (spiritual) health. Some of Israel's most venerated ultra-Orthodox rabbis have issued a religious ruling, barring God-fearing Jews from surfing the web.
Also off-limits are computer games. Indeed, the truly devout are being ordered to restrict their use of any and all computers to an absolute minimum.
The rabbis are concerned at what they call the corruption of youth via their computers. Most ultra-Orthodox families prefer not to have televisions in their homes, because the small screen is regarded as a poisonous intruder. But a recent survey showed that about 40 per cent of ultra-Orthodox households do have computers; indeed, many ultra-Orthodox Israelis earn their living in the country's burgeoning high-tech industry.
Because of that reliance on computers for work, the rabbis have not issued an all-out ban. What they have done, in advertisements placed on the frontpages of ultra-Orthodox newspapers and on billboards in ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods, is outlawed the Internet, warning teachers and parents to keep children away from computer games.
Nothing less than the future of the Jewish people is at stake, they insist. It is their obligation to preserve "a fence of modesty" within which devout Jews must live, and the Internet, they say, constitutes "a breach in that fence".
The signatories to the ruling include many of the most influential figures in the ultra-Orthodox community, which constitutes up to a tenth of Israel's population of six million.
Conspicuous among those who have not signed, however, is Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef, the spiritual patron of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, whose followers hail from the Sephardi community of Middle Eastern and North African origin. He has made astute use of the latest computer technology in maximising his party's electoral pulling power.