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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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U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan calls Israeli government ‘evil’ like Hamas
Abdul El-Sayed, a U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan, said in an interview aired Sunday that the Israeli government is as “evil” as Hamas, sharpening his criticism of Israel in the closely-watched Democratic primary.
“Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil,” El-Sayed told CNN congressional reporter Manu Raja on the network’s Inside Politics program. “It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil. We can say both.”
El-Sayed, 41, is a physician and the son of Egyptian immigrants. He is seeking to channel the energy of the 2024 Uncommitted movement, which protested the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza. He is also hoping to build on the surprise success of the New York City mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani in taking on the Democratic establishment.
He is locked in a dead heat with state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Rep. Haley Stevens. The primary is set for Aug. 4.
Earlier this month, El-Sayed faced backlash for appearing alongside streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric — including saying that Hamas “is a thousand times better” than Israel. McMorrow, who is married to a Jewish man, and Stevens, who is closely aligned with AIPAC, have both criticized El-Sayed.
In the CNN interview, El-Sayed defended his decision to campaign with Piker, framing it as an effort to reach voters who feel alienated from traditional politics. “My understanding of America is, it’s a place where we have freedom of speech,” he said.
#MISen Abdul El-Sayed on CNN Inside Politics: @mkraju: You said Israeli government is evil. Do you think they’re just as evil as Hamas?
El-Sayed: “Yes, killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil. It’s not about how evil one is versus the other. Hamas —… pic.twitter.com/4GfJ5oCtqR
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) April 19, 2026
The Michigan Senate race is shaping up as one of the starkest tests of the Democratic coalition and how the party navigates policy towards Israel in Congress amid the wars in Gaza and Iran. The state is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States.
Last week, 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers, used by the Israeli military to demolish homes in the West Bank and Gaza; 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. It shattered a previous high of 27 Democrats who backed a similar pair of resolutions of disapproval to block some weapons transfers last year.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who is Jewish, was among those who voted for the measures. In remarks as they announced their votes, Democrats highlighted their opposition to the Israeli government’s policies in the occupied West Bank, the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the war with Iran.
The post U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan calls Israeli government ‘evil’ like Hamas appeared first on The Forward.
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NYC Mayor Mamdani Unveils Major Tax Hike on Unoccupied Luxury Real Estate
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, as a major winter storm spreads across a large swath of the United States, in Brooklyn, New York City, US, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan
i24 News – NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has officially introduced a controversial new tax targeting secondary residences valued at over $5 million.
The measure, designed to tap into the city’s vast concentration of unoccupied luxury wealth, is projected to generate roughly $500 million annually for the municipal budget.
“This tax is specifically aimed at the ultra-rich,” Mamdani stated, highlighting high-profile examples such as Ken Griffin’s $238 million Midtown penthouse and Alexander Varshavsky’s $20.5 million Columbus Circle residence.
While the city has yet to finalize specific evaluation criteria or the methods for distinguishing primary from secondary homes, the proposal has already become a flashpoint for economic debate.
The move has drawn sharp condemnation from billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who argued that the policy is fundamentally flawed.
Ackman contended that owners of luxury secondary residences contribute significant capital to the local economy without utilizing costly municipal services. He warned that the tax would likely trigger a corporate and high-net-worth exodus to low-tax jurisdictions like Miami, ultimately harming the city’s tax base.
President Donald Trump also entered the fray, denouncing the policy as “totally misguided” and claiming it is “destroying New York.” Trump, whose own extensive real estate holdings in the city could be impacted, argued that such taxation serves only to drive away the international investors who fuel New York’s development.
Implementation remains a significant question mark, as the tax could potentially affect nearly 13,000 property owners, including major figures like Jeff Bezos. Financial analysts point out that many of the city’s most expensive apartments are held through complex offshore structures and shell companies, making the identification and appraisal of these properties an immense administrative challenge for the city.
As the debate intensifies, the Mamdani administration faces a difficult path ahead in balancing its “tax the rich” mandate with the practical realities of New York’s competitive global real estate market.
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Iran Rebuffs Trump Announcement of New Peace Talks, State News Agency Reports
Iran rejected new peace talks with the United States, its state news agency reported on Sunday, hours after US President Donald Trump said he was sending envoys for talks in Pakistan and would launch new strikes on Iran unless it accepts his terms.
Trump posted on Truth Social that his envoys would arrive in Pakistan on Monday evening for negotiations, a timetable that would leave only a day for talks to make progress before a two-week ceasefire ends.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” he wrote. “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”
Iran’s official IRNA news agency cited no specific source in its report that Iran had rejected the talks.
“Iran stated that its absence from the second round of talks stems from what it called Washington’s excessive demands, unrealistic expectations, constant shifts in stance, repeated contradictions, and the ongoing naval blockade, which it considers a breach of the ceasefire,” IRNA wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Iran’s rejection of the talks.
Earlier, a White House official said the US delegation would be headed by Vice President JD Vance, who led the war’s first peace talks a week ago, and also include Trump’s envoy Steven Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump had initially told ABC News and MS Now that Vance would not go.