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ChatGPT can write verse, but it is no more alive than the Golem of Prague
(JTA) — ChatGPT, an AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot with remarkable abilities to mimic human language, has been making big news. One stunt that’s gotten a lot of attention is ChatGPT’s alleged ability to write poetry. If true, this would mark a major advance. If an AI app can write real poetry, it has acquired a soul.
Have we crossed that threshold now with ChatGPT? The program is fun and swiftly generates remarkably lifelike responses to queries and prompts, in grammatically correct if somewhat dull and stuffy sentences. Still, the responses are often full of excellent information.
We’ve certainly made progress in building machines that think. The chess program Deep Blue can beat any grandmaster. Given a prompt like, “Draw me Donald Duck in the style of Rembrandt surfing on an ocean of macaroni” an art-generating AI like DALL-E can produce remarkable illustrations instantly. “Write me a sonnet about e-bicycles in the style of Shakespeare “— presto, ChatGPT can spit out a sonnet.
For many, the difference between these AI-generated products and the real deal is hard to discern — as it was for the congregants of the New York rabbi who delivered a sermon generated by AI this past Shabbat. If ChatGPT is writing poetry it has passed a most difficult version of the Turing test.
Alan Turing, the early computer scientist who helped crack the Nazis’ Enigma code in World War II, speculated on how to tell if a machine has acquired real intelligence: Can it fool a human being into believing it, too, is human? Imagine yourself exchanging texts with an unseen source hidden behind a screen. If you can’t tell whether you are conversing with a machine or a person, the computer has passed the Turing test.
But I’ve found a loophole. What if the human judge is devolving at the same rate that AI is advancing? Perhaps people are becoming more like computer programs as computer programs become more human. I often hear people say, “I am multitasking,” or “I need to recharge my batteries.” They are emulating machines and even a little proud of it. What if ChatGPT seems to be writing poetry because so many people have become so mechanical in their thinking they can’t recognize the poetry of life?
Out of the wounded vanity of a merely human poet, I asked ChatGPT to “write me a poem about kabbalah in the style of Rodger Kamenetz.” Here are the first four lines:
Kabbalah, the ancient wisdom of the Jews
Enshrined in symbols, stories, and the Tree
Of Life, a map to guide us through our dues
And find the spark of divinity within
To those who know and love poetry this isn’t poetry. It is verse — language written in a rough iambic pentameter that has zero felicity.
The verse offers some good clichés about kabbalah because ChatGPT draws instantly from the whole internet. But ChatGPT has no idea what it is saying. It doesn’t care, or have access, to the kind of truths found in poetry. It just cobbles words and phrases together in a plausible way. Since I asked for a poem, it pours the content into a metrical form. But that doesn’t make it beautiful.
In skillful verse, line breaks and end rhymes create variety and emphasis. But what emphasis is served by rhyming “Jews” and “dues”? What does “dues” even mean in this context — unless it’s a reminder to pay your synagogue dues?
Judging from the response to ChatGPT’s verse, many do think it writes poetry. But that’s where the loophole comes in. The Turing test depends on a human judge. For a judge who has never spent time dwelling on what is beautiful in poetry, ChatGPT has passed the test. But that does not prove that ChatGPT is genuinely creative. It just proves that many people have little interest in poetry, and do not value primary imagination. If I can’t tell whether I am talking to a program or a person, maybe the problem is with me. I pity anyone who can’t distinguish verse written by a bot and a poem by Alicia Ostriker or Gerald Stern.
ChatGPT is no more alive than the legendary golem of Prague.
It is said that the Maharal — the great Rabbi Judah Loew of 16th-century Prague — fashioned a magical creature of river mud in order to (what else?) save the Jews. Using permutations of the names of God, the Maharal brought the golem to life by writing “emet” on the creature’s forehead — Hebrew for “truth.”
The legend is rooted in Talmudic discussions of the mystical Book of Formation (Sefer Yetzirah), and further back to Genesis 2:7 which describes a second version of Adam’s creation:
Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Here we see the original transition from matter to life, from a mere golem — a heap of dirt — to an “adam,” a human being. And according to the 2nd-century translator Onkelos, what marks that transition is the human’s ability to speak poetic language.
When Onkelos translates Genesis 2:7, he renders the Hebrew “nefesh haya” — living soul — as the Aramaic “ruach m’mamila” — a speaking spirit. Poetry is that spirit speaking. Poetry is the utterance of a living soul. And poetry inscribes truth, not on a forehead of mud, but on the human heart.
ChatGPT cannot tell — and doesn’t care — whether what it is writing is true or beautiful. But in the best poetry we hear that strong “speaking spirit” — what Wallace Stevens called “the voice that is great within us.” Poetry rings true — and makes us more beautifully human.
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Guinness World Records’ Exclusion of Israel Is ‘Deceptive,’ a Form of False Advertising, Advocacy Group Says
Guinness World Records Day 2025 at Elbtor Mobile in Hamburg, Germany. Photo: Marcus Brandt via Reuters Connect
Guinness World Records is guilty of false advertising for refusing to log the accomplishments of Israelis in its publications, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has complained to the US Federal Trade Commission in a letter demanding that the agency use its authority to stop the allegedly mendacious practice.
GWR annually publishes a Guinness World Records book, commemorating a range of human achievements, from feats of scientific discovery to musical endeavors which yielded massive record sales. However, as previously reported by The Algemeiner, GWR suspended its processing of applications reporting new records achieved in Israel and the Palestinian territories in November 2023, shortly after the war in Gaza started following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
“We are aware of just how sensitive this is at the moment,” GWR, published by the Jim Pattison Group, said in a statement issued earlier this month after the policy excluded an Israel charity’s being recognized for holding the single largest gathering of kidney donors in one place. “We truly do believe in record breaking for everyone, everywhere but unfortunately in the current climate we are not generally processing record applications from the Palestinian Territories or Israel, or where either is given as the attempt location, with the exception of those done in cooperation with a UN humanitarian aid relief agency.”
GWR’s explanation does not change the fact that it is excluding the world’s lone Jewish state from the world community over a war it did not start, the Brandeis Center said in Tuesday’s letter, arguing that, as such, Guinness World Records cannot literally claim to represent all of the world.
“They don’t have a right to deceive their readership and customer base by claiming that it is publishing ‘world records,’” Brandeis Center chairman and founder Kenneth Marcus said in a statement. “We have seen again and again that Israelis are capable of besting the competition and achieving international success. Any so-called ‘world record’ excluding such talented challengers must at a minimum carry an asterisk to disclose that it is not truly a record for the entire world.”
At the least, Marcus charged, GWR should issue refunds to customers, adding, “To the extent that GWR has been deceptively selling mislabeled products to the public, it should provide their money back.”
Notably, GWR accepts hundreds of applications annually from China, a country whose government has reportedly imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, in concentration camps. According to leaked documents from inside China, detainees in these camps have been subjected to rape, torture, forced labor, brainwashing, and forced sterilization. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Department under both the Trump and Biden administrations have assessed China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs.
Israel, by contrast, counts some 2 million Arab Muslims as full citizens in what is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.
Chinese residents perform square dance during an attempt to set a new Guinness World Record in Chongqing, China, Nov. 7, 2016. Photo: Oriental Image via Reuters Connect
GWR has also been accused of sending mixed signals about its organization’s purported political neutrality. Its website states that it is “determined to protect the integrity of our records by remaining politically neutral.” However, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, GWR “ceased” operations in Russia and Belarus, describing the decision as a “meaningful expression of our support and solidarity.”
It continued, “This means all current business, as well as all open conversations around future business relating to publishing, record consultancy and television productions. We are also exploring how we can prevent advertising across our digital platforms from these regions. We join calls for an end to fighting in Ukraine, and in any country or region where violence and fear preside over diplomacy or peace.”
At the same time, GWR welcomes many other countries in which “violence and fear preside over diplomacy or peace,” the Brandeis Center’s letter noted.
“GWR published the 2014 world record for longest talk show broadcast by a Damascus studio aligned with Bashar al-Assad,” the Brandeis Center said, quoting its letter to the FTC. “That record came not long after the Syrian dictator’s sarin gas attack on the nearby Ghouta suburb of Damascus. More recently, GWR featured an Iranian jump rope record achieved in February 2023 while the Islamic Republic was actively rounding up tens of thousands of participants in the Women, Life, Freedom protests.”
Days after GWR’s policy of excluding Israel received headlines this month, the nonprofit organization StandWithUs sent a letter to members of the Florida State Board of Administration calling on the state of Florida to investigate GWR over its ban on applications from Israel and to ensure that public funds do not support companies engaged in such a “discriminatory policy” against the Jewish state.
StandWithUs Saidoff Law, which carries out legal action for the pro-Israel group, requested that the board investigate GWR and its affiliate Guinness World Records North America regarding the “boycott policy” to see if they should be included on Florida’s official list of “Scrutinized Companies or Other Entities that Boycott Israel” in accordance with Florida law. Guinness World Records North America is registered in Florida as a foreign profit corporation.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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NFL Player Vows to Do Touchdown Dance Invoking Antisemitic Trope
Puka Nacua during a livestream appearance. Photo: Screenshot
Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua promised during a livestream appearance on Wednesday to do a dance following his next touchdown that includes an antisemitic trope.
The 24-year-old professional football player appeared in a livestream with online streamers Adin Ross and N3on. Aside from calling out NFL referees, Nacua learned a dance that Ross taught him. The moves included Ross spinning the football on the ground, flexing, and then leaning in while rubbing your hands together. Nacua performed the touchdown dance, following Ross’s request, and then the Rams player promised to perform it during a game.
Critics online have argued the moves in the dance promote antisemitic stereotypes about the Jewish community, noting the livestream took place mere days after 15 people were murdered in the deadly antisemitic attack against Jews celebrating the first night of Hanukkah in Sydney, Australia. Dozens of people were also wounded.
Puka Nacua will be doing Adin Ross’s ICONIC JEWISH DANCE for his next touchdown celebration
pic.twitter.com/W2dQL4kSMB
— AdinUpdate (@AdinUpdate) December 17, 2025
Nacua and the NFL have not publicly commented on the offensive touchdown dance. The Rams are playing on Thursday night against the Seattle Seahawks. If Nacua scores a touchdown, viewers will be waiting to see if he performs the antisemitic dance Ross taught him. The Provo, Utah, native, has been described as one of the best receivers in the league.
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Maccabi Tel Aviv Fined by UEFA, Banned From Selling Tickets to Fans for ‘Racist’ Chanting
Soccer Football – UEFA Europa League – Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv – Villa Park, Birmingham, Britain – Nov. 6, 2025, Aston Villa’s Ian Maatsen scores their first goal. Photo: Action Images via Reuters
The Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv has been fined €20,000 ($23,479) by the UEFA and banned from selling tickets to fans for one away match because of “racist and/or discriminatory behavior,” European soccer’s governing body announced on Wednesday.
UEFA said its Control, Ethics, and Disciplinary Body (CEDB) made the decision in relation to behavior displayed by Maccabi fans at a Europa League game against the German club Stuttgart on Dec. 11. Stuttgart won that match 4-1. The CEDB also imposed a ban on Maccabi selling tickets to fans for its next UEFA competition away game, suspended for a probationary period of two years.
Stuttgart police told the German publication Bild last week it was investigating Maccabi fans who allegedly chanted defamatory, anti-Arab slogans at a fan meeting point ahead of the match at the Neckarstadion stadium in Germany. Six Maccabi fans were also detained temporarily and banned from attending the game after repeatedly starting pyrotechnics, according to The Athletic.
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from an earlier Europa League match against Aston Villa in the UK on Nov. 6 because of safety concerns. The controversial decision led to intense backlash in and out of the country, and was even criticized by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Maccabi lost that match 2-0.
In November 2024, dozens of Maccabi supporters were violently attacked in the streets of Amsterdam in the Netherlands following the Israeli team’s Europa League game against the Dutch club Ajax. The premeditated and coordinated violence included Maccabi fans being chased with knives and sticks in the streets, run over by cars, physically beaten, and forced by their attackers to say, “Free Palestine.” Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema called the attackers “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” who went “Jew hunting.” Dutch police made more than 60 arrests related to the incident, and last year, five men were sentenced to up to six months in prison for participating in the violence.