Two Days of Yom Tov in a World of Modern Communication

Turkey blocks access to Wikipedia. Rabbis in Israel move Yom Ha'atzma'ut to a different day. How are these events related?

One sometimes hears the claim that today, the observance of two days of Yom Tov in the diaspora is no longer relevant, because of the advent of the internet age. That is, perhaps 150 years ago one could not rely on the published, calculated calendars, because the Sages of the Land of Israel could have re-established the practice of declaring the month on the basis of moon-sighting, and one would not have heard of this in faraway lands, because of the lack of reliable telegraph lines; but today, with the internet, everyone would know about this immediately.

Yet this is not so. First of all, we see that the internet spreads as much misinformation, and fake news, as it spreads real information; while the internet is an amazing tool, it has not removed ignorance from the world. And, moreover, we see that governments can prevent whole populations from using whole parts of the internet.

Second of all, the Sages of the Land of Israel have become much more prominent and aggressive. Moving around the date of Yom Ha'atzma'ut may only be relevant to the Religious-Zionist community, in the Land and in the diaspora, but rabbis of all the various Jewish communities have come to have influence throughout the diaspora; see, for example, the influence of rulings of the late Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv and Rav Ovadya Yosef on communities around the diaspora. Moreover, rabbis in the Land of Israel have brought back practices that had fallen into disuse centuries earlier; lighting Hanukka lamps at the outside of the doorway is, perhaps, a trivial example, but the restoration of tekheleth in tzitzith is a more significant example. Restoring the establishment of the calendar by moon-sighting could fit into this whole tendency.

Yet would we be sure of it? Would it be real? Would it be a hoax? The media spread claims, before Passover, that a far-right-wing political group of rabbis had performed a Paschal Sacrifice this year. Consumers of information, around the world, believed this, and many were ready to critique it, as if it were a declaration of World War III. In fact, no such event had happened; all that had happened was a historical re-enactment, in the wrong location, on the wrong day, with no claims of being a Paschal Sacrifice. (And, I believe, it wasn't even the first time that this had been done in the past few years. Moreover, the event wasn't very political. And if they ever do get a permit to do an actual Paschal Sacrifice, it won't be a declaration of WWIII; it will be people practicing their religion, in a way that they have been looking forward to for over a millennium.)

If rabbis restore the establishment of the calendar by means of moon-sighting -- or if they do not, but they do something that looks somewhat similar -- the internet wiil be abuzz with misinformation about it. And in some countries, the governments may close off relevant avenues to find out about this, as Turkey did to Wikipedia a few days ago.

So yes. The observance of two days of Yom Tov is still quite relevant.