Q. I’m of a Chasidic background and I run an office for a company that is planing to update their Zoom office program, (as we work from home, and it is likely to continue) to the new Gather Town technology. Basically it has the added component of seeing the virtual “room” or office you and others are occupying, and with the ability to move around and interact with other participants based on your locations in the room, just like in real life. The current version uses Avatar cartoon personalities, as in screen games that youngsters play.
Future ones will use holographic Avatars that really resembles the person it represents. Will that create issues of tznius since many of the employees in our company are women?
A. Horav Shlomo Miller’s Shlit’a opinion is that it is difficult to voice an opinion without actually seeing the program work. He did suggest that it cannot be more real, that the real world itself you are used to work in until recently. Therefore, whatever measures of tznius one keeps in dealing with others in a real office, would likely be effective in the new virtual ‘real’ office too, if they affect prohibited thoughts
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as advised by Horav Shlomo Miller and Horav Aharon Miller Shlit’a