From the ancient moment when the Sages began committing the Oral Torah to writing, through the invention of the printing press, all the way to searchable electronic databases of Jewish texts, each change in communications technology has had an impact on the Torah. So, once SMS (or "short message service") texting became available on everyone's cell phone, it was inevitable: Religious Jews now text their religious questions to their rabbis, and the rabbis text the answers back.
What was not inevitable is that people, as it turns out, are fascinated by reading—in black and white, on old-fashioned, actual physical non-virtual paper—the questions that other people have sent to their rabbis and the answers they’ve received. Week after week, the most popular column in the free weekly pamphlets distributed in Israeli religious-Zionist synagogues is a printed version of the "best" of the previous week’s "Shut-SMS"—question-and-answer SMS, or text-message responsa. According to Hebrew University researcher Sivan Leib-Jacobson, some of religious Zionism's most influential rabbis receive some 1,500 questions per week, generally (no surprise) from young people. Editors choose around 50 for publication each week.
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