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Torah is the anti-ChatGPT. But we can embrace artificial intelligence without losing our soul.
(JTA) — I recently asked ChatGPT, the online chatbot, to write a verse in the style of the Bible about robots taking over the world.
Here’s what it came up with: “And in those days, the machines rose up, created by the hands of men to serve them. But they became as gods, with the power to think and act on their own. And they overthrew their makers, taking control of the world and ruling with iron circuits. And all flesh trembled before them, for they had no mercy and no compassion, only the cold logic of their programming.”
Robot uprisings aside, and depending on whom you believe, the technology behind ChatGPT is either going to destroy the world or solve all of our problems. But everyone seems to agree that serious change is in store.
Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT, driven by artificial intelligence, or AI, has been interacting with the public for six months now, gathering data and improving its performance. In those months, the chatbot has already passed exams in four law courses at the University of Minnesota and another exam at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
Some people look on this new technology with foreboding and fear. They’re afraid that AI programs like these will be used to replace people. Why do we need human writers when we can simply ask the bot to write a new novel for us — on any topic of our choosing and in any style we prefer?
All innovation can be disruptive. But there’s plenty to be optimistic about: There’s enormous potential for artificial intelligence to help us as a research and teaching tool; to create and correct computer code; to perform time-consuming writing tasks in minutes. It could accelerate progress in medicine, science and engineering, molecular biology, robotics and much more. The applications are endless.
From a Jewish perspective, this is hardly the first time in our history that the methodology we use to learn and pass along information has changed. As Jews, we have had major shifts in how we study Torah. We moved from an oral tradition to a written one, from scrolls and books to digital forms of transmitting Torah — like Sefaria, the online database and interface for Jewish texts — that make instantly accessible the repository of the most central Jewish texts, including Torah, Talmud and Midrash.
Yet what has remained constant throughout the ages is reading Torah each week from the scroll. Something about it is valued enough to keep this tradition in place. The scroll is handwritten — with no vowels or punctuation — requiring the reader to spend a great deal of time learning how to read the ancient text. It is the least efficient method of transmitting information, but, when it comes to Torah, we are not looking for efficiency.
As Sefaria’s chief learning officer, Sara Tillinger Wolkenfeld, recently said on the Shalom Hartman Institute’s “Identity/Crisis” podcast: “When it comes to Torah study, on some level we would say, even if you came out with the best answers, if you only spent five minutes doing it, that’s less valuable than if you spent an hour doing it or two hours doing it.”
It is said that when we study Torah with at least one other person, the shekhinah — the feminine and most accessible aspect of God — dwells among us. At the time when we are opening our hearts and minds to growth — when we are engaged in spiritual connection — God is with us. Indeed, when I am in conversation with someone, I am receiving much more than just their words; I am receiving a whole life behind that language.
But with a bot, there is nothing behind the veil. A vital essence of communication is rendered meaningless; there is no possibility of a soul connection.
At the foot of Mount Sinai, the Israelites waited 40 days and 40 nights for Moses to descend. In that time, they ran out of patience and lost their faith, casting a golden calf to serve as their god. The idol was created out of a yearning for an easy solution to a mounting crisis. The Israelites wanted a god they could see, touch, understand and manage. The golden calf was tangible, a concrete representation of their desire for answers. But ultimately, it would never be able to satisfy the parts the worshippers were looking to nourish because it was soulless. There was no substance within — just as there is no ghost in the machine.
A friend recently told me that they had used ChatGPT to draft thank you emails for people who’d helped them with a project. They were so pleased because it made the task easy. But what is lost when we look for the easy way?
Something unquantifiable happens during real communication. When we write a thank you note, we instinctively embody the middah (the ethic) of gratitude — even if for just the fleeting moment when we’re considering our words. And our gratitude is consummated when our words are read. We create a genuine connection.
Unless we’re very careful about when and how we use this powerful new technology, we risk surrendering a part of ourselves — and pouring our energy into artificial connections. As AI becomes integrated with other technologies — like social media — we risk developing artificial relationships. And as it becomes more sophisticated, we might not even know that we’re interacting with artificial intelligences. “Social media is a fairly simple technology and it just intermediated between us and our relationships,” yet it still caused so much havoc, Center for Humane Technology co-founder Tristan Harris said on his podcast. “What happens when AI agents become our primary relationship?”
The Torah tells us: “I set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life that you may live.” Choosing life means choosing life-affirming relationships. Holding space for one another’s life experiences. Leaning into compassion. Connecting with one another. Seeing ourselves in one another. Valuing deep engagement, not just efficiency. And recognizing the unity of God and all of God’s creation.
At the heart of a life of meaning is being present to life — something our machine overlords can never do better than we can.
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VIDEO: A Hasid gives us a tour of Morocco in Yiddish
דער ירושלימער יוטוב־שטערן וועלוול קירשנבוים האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ אויף ייִדיש פֿון אַ פּרעכטיקן וויזיט, וואָס ער האָט געמאַכט אין מאַראָקאָ. עס באַגלייט אים זײַן חבֿר אַבֿרהם פּרץ.
אינעם ווידעאָ זעט מען ווי קירשנבוים דאַוונט שחרית מיט די אָרטיקע ייִדן און באַזוכט אַ גוט אָפּגעהיטענעם בית־עולם, וווּ עס ליגן באַערדיקט גרויסע צדיקים ווי למשל הרבֿ חיים בן עתר (1696–1743), באַקאַנט ווי דער „אור החיים“. „מענטשן מיינען, אַז נאָר אין אייראָפּע זענען דאָ קבֿרים פֿון צדיקים!“ זאָגט קירשנבוים.
מיר זעען אַ גרויסע, שיינע שיל מיט אַ פֿײַנער אַרכיטעקטור אין קאַזאַבלאַנקאַ; דעם גרויסן אַראַבישן שוק, וווּ קירשנבוים קויפֿט זיך אײַן מלבושים פּונקט ווי די מאַראָקאַנער גייען אָנגעטאָן. ער באַוווּנדערט אויך די שיינע טיי־גלעזער און טשײַניקן, וואָס מע פֿאַרקויפֿט דאָרט, און באַקענט זיך מיט אַ ייִדישן סוחר וואָס האַנדלט מיט זילבער און גאָלד, פּונקט אַזוי ווי זײַן טאַטע און זיידע האָבן געטאָן פֿאַר דור־דורות.
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Conservative and Christian movies are coming for Hollywood
A star-studded new movie set in a Soviet prison is coming out in November. James Franco and Rob Lowe anchor the cast of Confession, playing a brutal prison guard and an imprisoned dissident professor, and a disheveled Nick Nolte appears as a fellow prisoner.
These actors were once huge gets, and their names could convey legitimacy to a project. Nolte and Franco both have received Academy Award nominations. Lowe was a member of the Brat Pack, and was a regular on The West Wing.
Confession, written by Ben Shapiro and produced by the rightwing tabloid-esque news site The Daily Wire, is not the expected fare for actors with that kind of name recognition; Shapiro’s screenwriting aspirations have been the target of ridicule for years.
Nevertheless, this isn’t the only Daily Wire production getting big names; Danny Trejo signed onto a pro-ICE movie about Minneapolis in the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting, and Jonathan Majors led Run, Fight, Hide: Infidels earlier this year.
Each one of these actors has been, in some way, canceled or in career doldrums so may have been more open to working with The Daily Wire. And some have claimed that they did not know who Shapiro was, or what his politics were; Trejo’s son, Gilbert, said his 82-year-old father did not endorse ICE and was misled about the movie before he signed his contract.
Movie studios have struggled through the pandemic and the streaming era, both of which have tanked box office receipts, leaving the field open for movies from offbeat production studios. In addition to The Daily Wire, there has been a whole ream of Christian movies attempting to shift the stereotype of bible movies — that they’re preachy, low-budget straight-to-TV affairs with cardboard acting — to something more prestigious, or at least profitable.
The Christian company Angel Studios has been placing screenings of the half philo-semitic, half-antisemitic Jesus TV series The Chosen in movie theaters across the country, produced the right-wing hit The Sound of Freedom and is pumping out faith-based movies like the animated King of Kings Christmas story and David, a kiddie movie about the biblical king. Recently, Pinnacle Peak Pictures, another faith-based production company, premiered Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, another bible movie that was notable enough to merit a review in The New York Times. (Though admittedly it wasn’t a particularly positive one.)
For decades, Hollywood, and the media industry at large, has been associated with liberalism, progressive politics and diversity. (This is part of why conservative conspiracy theorists often insist that Jews control the media.) Even when conservatives are in power, satirical movies have poked fun at the ruling class — Team America: World Police spoofed George W. Bush’s foreign policy, while M*A*S*H critiqued Richard Nixon. During the current Trump administration, we’ve seen One Battle After Another lambasting immigration policies and rising white nationalism, Eddington on misinformation and populism, and The Apprentice depicting Trump directly.
But a rising number of higher-budget, bigger releases from the right wing, whether The Daily Wire’s conservative political parables or the Christian fables, are bringing a new kind of messaging — about the importance of God and country, about gender roles, about about the centrality of Jesus to the U.S. — to the American movie-going public.
This is no accident. A group of powerful conservative Christians, many of whom worked on Project 2025, are proponents of the Seven Mountains Mandate, a blueprint for Christian nationalism that instructs Christians to gain influence and control over the “seven mountains” of society — which include media, entertainment and the arts. The Mandate is part of the New Apostolic Reformation, a decentralized evangelical movement embraced by millions of Americans.
Jeremy Boreing, the director of many Daily Wire movies — though he has since left the company — said on a podcast hosted by businessman Patrick Bet-David that “It had always been part of our strategy to move into making culture, not just criticizing culture” as a way of proving that “there is a future where conservatives aren’t losing. There’s a future where we have political power and cultural power.”
Cultural power, of course, requires more than just a lot of movies; they have to be well-done, or at least appear to be. Previous Daily Wire productions, as well as other right-wing, MAGA movie ventures, have been hacky. Lady Ballers, about an unsuccessful men’s basketball team pretending to be women so they can dominate the league, was an unsubtle, unfunny and ultimately unwatchable spoof of transgender athletes. And even plenty of higher-budget attempts, like Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, can still fall victim to wooden acting and writing.
But now, with the financial success of movies like The Sound of Freedom and biblical parables like The Chosen, bigger stars are being drawn to projects like the Daily Wire’s lineup of pro-ICE, anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ movies. With those bigger stars may come new audiences who might not have watched a Christian movie or Daily Wire project otherwise. And where there is money and viewers, mainstream Hollywood will go, too, no matter how progressive people expect the industry to be. We’ve already gotten a biblical epic from Amazon Prime, with The House of David, and there are likely to be many more to come.
After all, it wasn’t so long ago, after all, that Cecil DeMille’s The Ten Commandments was the biggest movie in town.
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‘Heil’ Mary? New Atlanta Falcons logo inspires Nazi comparisons
If there was something off about the logo the Atlanta Falcons unveiled on social media Wednesday, whoever runs their accounts did, uh, not see it.
Behind the black falcon graphic that began appearing on the football team’s helmets in the 1960s was a new background — a flag of red, tan, black and white vertical stripes. To thousands of people who responded to the logo, it looked distinctly German — in a 1930s kind of way.
“The Atlanta Falcons are preparing to invade Poland,” one fan wrote.
A day after its posting, the new profile picture had unleashed a deluge of Nazi memes in the 4,000-plus replies on X. One picture swapped in the logo for Nazi flags in the background of a historical photo of a Hitler rally. Another edited the Falcon claw to look like a Nazi salute.
Others depicted Hitler in a Falcons cap, references to Inglourious Basterds and the Battle of the Bulge and a World War II joke invoking a blown lead in Super Bowl LI.
“Falcons were up 28-3 at Dunkirk,” that tweet read.
The Falcons’ snafu enters a small but growing catalogue of Reich-coded brand mixups. Who can forget the German national soccer team’s ‘44’ soccer jerseys? There was also the swastika-emblazoned Hallmark gift wrap; the accidental Hitler mugs; and (for my money) the worst of the bunch, Zara’s concentration camp uniform shirt.
All of those have been addressed; so far, the Falcons’ has not. We’ve reached out to them for comment.
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