Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Being Careful with the G-d's Name on The Computer - A Question for the Rabbi

My Q:  How do Jews treat hard drive ROM if it contains permanently stored sacred information?  Should it ever be deleted?  Should a name of Gd be saved if it is encoded in data?  We are careful with languages other than Hebrew.  Why would the readable language a computer processes be any different?  Some software is more powerful than other software when it comes to file deletion, which opens up a similar question: If the computer code for a word such as “Gd” enters a computer, is it okay to delete any of its sacred contents at all?  Perhaps, computers should be made more sacred by programming them to remember every key stroke, or use picture recognition to save words such as Gd, such that Gd never ends up deleted.  Even images of words in the refresh rate of a monitor could be saved.  Why not?

Rabbi's A:  It's an interesting question that was raised right when various forms of media were coming out. The general consensus of the Halachic authorities was that electronic information that needs to be opened, played, etc is not considered holy texts to the extent they can not be thrown away or deleted. (Once opened, etc. it should not be read/listened to in bathroom or similar place in which Torah is not allowed(

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