What is the purpose of the group? Could you expand a bit and define it?

I just want to raise awareness, because some of our rabbi’s students are in distress and straits under the rule of the strict rabbis, and therefore are prevented from receiving information from WhatsApp, which is not available on “kosher” phones.
Therefore, extra care should be taken to pass along any important information through the websites as well, that is, on this holy site.

Our brethren, the whole house of Israel, who are in distress and captivity… may the Omnipresent have mercy on them and bring them from distress to relief, from darkness to light, and from bondage to redemption, now, speedily and soon.
And in truth, it seems to me that the Omnipresent will take them out if they take themselves out. In my experience, bondage, like tango, is usually created by two sides.

Maybe the Rabbi will join? There are discussions there that really need that.

I thought about joining. But now I’m convinced not to. 🙂 I don’t want to conduct discussions on WhatsApp. Both because of lack of time and because that medium is hard for me (typing on the phone and without a computer). For general discussions there’s this site, and it’s not clear to me why that group is needed.
In practice I tried, planning to be usually passive, but it seems I can’t join through scanning as suggested in the link here. I don’t have such a scanner on my phone. Why don’t you add people the way every WhatsApp group does?

Still, it’s much more convenient there. Maybe it’s worth trying it as an experiment.

Hi Rabbi Michi, I set up that group in order to study Torah in depth in the Michael-Abraham style, and topics we won’t be able to decide on we’ll bring to the Rabbi here on the blog for analysis. I don’t think it’s a good idea to pester you about every single thing that we can think through on our own…

I can send the Rabbi a link to the group directly through your WhatsApp if needed.

It seems better to leave it as is, as the saying goes: what the heart desires, time steals.

I simply opened this link from my phone and it added me. There was no need to scan a barcode.

Following the Rabbi’s (dismissive) comment, that “the Omnipresent will take them out if they take themselves out”:

Do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place.

Let it be known to you that an average Haredi family is tied by social, communal, familial, and economic bonds to accepted norms.
If I use a “non-kosher” device, I lose my place of study (and my kollel stipend), my children’s school, my livelihood (my wife teaches in Beit Yaakov), and I sever ties with my friends, and to some extent with my family.

Would you be willing to provide advice, accompaniment, and support—financial and emotional—to me and my family until I can start a new life in a more open place?

I suggest pinning the WhatsApp link in a prominent place on the site.

This is not a dismissive comment but a completely substantive one, and my words here should be received the same way.
Two important points:
1. I know the constraints, and still in my opinion people surrender too quickly and too easily, and in that way let the human wildlings take control. In my experience, even while I was living in Haredi society, once I didn’t let people dictate norms to me, they didn’t do so. Of course one also needs a willingness to pay prices for that (and obviously my prices were lower. I also had family “outside”).
2. There is responsibility even when it is difficult and perhaps even impossible. See Maimonides, Laws of Kings 9:14 on the people of Shechem, and in Column 67: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9C%D7%A7%D7%97%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%90%D7%94-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%93%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%98%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%96%D7%9D-%D7%96%D7%95%D7%95%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%95%D7%90/

One more note. A distinction should be made between two situations: a. You give in because of the personal and family difficulty. b. You give in because, in your value-religious judgment, Haredi society is preferable in your eyes despite its flaws, and you do not want to leave.
My remarks are aimed mainly at situation a. But even situation b does not completely exempt one from responsibility (because even if the Haredi option is preferable in your eyes, there is still room to throw yourself on the barbed wire for the sake of the public. And this is of course a demand on everyone, not specifically on you. See point 2 above). I generally am not willing to be in distress and captivity even if it is done for a worthy cause (though I admit that I was not bound to Haredi society at that same level).

“When a trout that leaps at the bait fly on a hook is caught and discovers that it can no longer swim freely, it begins a struggle whose results are thrashing, splashing, and sometimes—escape. Often the situation becomes too hard for it.
In the same way, a person struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he manages to overcome his difficulties; sometimes they defeat him. The world manages to see only these struggles, and naturally misses their meaning. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked fish.”
– Karl Menninger

Indeed. But the hooked fish fails in the opposite way: it tends to understand and accept itself too well.

To the editor: it would be good to place the link prominently on the site.

Hello everyone,
Does anyone know whether there’s a way to connect to WhatsApp without scanning a barcode (that is, through the computer)? It’s a “kosher number”; is there a way to open WhatsApp through the computer without confirming on the phone?
Thanks

I assume you can download some kind of additional Android operating system for the computer, and through that download WhatsApp. Then enter your phone number there.
(All this provided that in the WhatsApp software it’s possible to verify your phone number by a voice call of the digits and not by SMS.)

But I’m not sure.

To the editor: I suggest removing the first two comments in the thread.

I removed them. Thanks.