If you thought the kosher cellphone market was just to control usage and access, as well as making some people some money by deals for packages, supervision and unique devices, it turns out you were only partly right.

Ynet recently reported on, and Kikar has expanded on it a bit, a recent discovery that the Committee for holy communication, or whatever they call themselves, that cotrols and supervises the kosher cellular market, has blocked the ability to make phone calls, from kosher phones, to emergency hotline centers for reporting child abuse, violence, kids at risk and other similar national emergency hotlines.

The Ministry of Communication has passed off any responsibility for this, saying the law defines certain numbers as official emergency numbers, and those are all open on available on kosher phones. These other numbers are less clear in the law how these other emergency hotlines are defined, but they will look into it. As well, people sign up voluntarily for the kosher service, and the rabbinic committee does what it does with the agreement of the haredi community. There has not yet been a response from the representative of the committee.

What is lacking in this response of the Ministry of Communications is that people do not sign up for it necessarily voluntarily. While some do, many are forced to sign up for it, or risk being thrown out of schools, yeshivot, etc. As well, people probably do not know that they will be limited in these ways by signing up for it, and even if they do, when they sign up they probably don't think they will ever need access to those numbers so are willing to accept that condition. Only when they unfortunately need it do they find out they can't access it.

The kosher cellphone is not just blocking access to the internet and to SMS messaging...