Month: May 2023

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AI Will Never Be Human – Bemidbar 5783

Artificial intelligence illustration with blue text AI over binary code matrix background. Abstract concept of cyber technology and automation

There has been much concern lately about artificial intelligence. You may have heard that last week a Senate subcommittee hosted the CEO of OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, Sam Altman. In his testimony, Altman (who is, BTW, a nice Jewish boy from St. Louis) actually asked the Senate to regulate AI. Many tech companies have zealously fought against regulation, so to hear Mr. Altman express concern about the potential dangers of AI and to seek regulatory controls may have been a relief for some. 

But the complicated part, and perhaps Mr. Altman is gambling on this, is that (a) Congress moves much more slowly than the rate at which widespread use of AI is unfolding, and (b) it is not immediately clear how exactly to regulate it. The devil (not that we Jews believe in such a thing) is in the details.

Nonetheless, this is clearly something to which Jews, as people whose tradition teaches us to be responsible for humanity and our world, should be paying attention.

Speaking of details, Parashat Bemidbar opens with a commandment to count people, to take a census of the Israelites while they are encamped in the wilderness, for the purposes of determining the fighting strength of their army. Much of the parashah is dedicated to these numbers.

This report of numbers by tribe might appear as a dull, bureaucratic endeavor which obscures the personhood of all of those counted, not to mention the women and people under the age of 20 who are not even counted. The first three chapters of Bemidbar come off looking something like the tape from an adding machine – lots of numbers and then a bottom line, which in this case is 603,550. (The extrapolated estimate of the entire population who left Egypt is therefore about two million, which seems like an impossibly high number. But far be it from me to say that something in the Torah is not true…) 

But here’s something that you might miss if you are not looking closely. The Hebrew instruction to perform this census is phrased thus (Bemidbar / Numbers 1:2):

שְׂא֗וּ אֶת־רֹאשׁ֙ כׇּל־עֲדַ֣ת בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל

Se-u et rosh kol adat benei Yisra-el

Now, your translation of this verse in the Etz Hayyim ḥumash says, “Take a census of the whole Israelite company.” But the Hebrew speaks idiomatically. A more literal translation is “Lift up the head of the entire group of Israelites.” The suggestion of “lifting up the head” sounds much more personal: Do not merely count heads; lift them up. Take each individual’s face into account. Acknowledge each member of the group as a human being, and as part of the greater whole. As if to drive the point home, the passages about counting are followed by the  the birkat kohanim, the Priestly Blessing of Bemidbar / Numbers 6:24-26, which occurs in Parashat Naso (which we won’t get to until the week after Shavu’ot). The third verse is as follows:

יִשָּׂ֨א ה’ ׀ פָּנָיו֙ אֵלֶ֔יךָ וְיָשֵׂ֥ם לְךָ֖ שָׁלֽוֹם׃

Yisa Adonai panav elekha veyasem lekha shalom.
May God lift up God’s face to you and grant you peace.

It’s the same verb: נשא / to lift up. 

When it comes to counting people, the details matter. It’s not just a strip of adding tape. Every one of us counts. Every one of us must be acknowledged and lifted up.

A brief report caught my eye this week, regarding the state of religion in America. An organization called the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) published the results of a recent survey of Americans’ attachment to religion. And, as you might expect, the percentage of us for whom religion is important is going down, and the number of unaffiliated folks continues to rise. 

And the Jews, of course, are the same as everybody else, only more so. 

Now, you certainly have all heard me make the case for the value of Judaism, if not religious practice in general, and I don’t need to do that right now. (But just wait until Rosh HaShanah!). Some of the statistics in this report show that people who attend religious services at least a few times a year tend to be more engaged in civic and political activities, particularly those things where people gather and work together. And I think we all know from anecdotal evidence that religious practice actually induces pro-social behavior in many of us.

So all the more so: religion brings people together, and is good for us as individuals and for society. It lifts us up, and helps us to see each other’s faces and acknowledge our shared humanity. And every one of us counts.

Nowadays, we have many fancy adding machines which help us through our lives: silicon slaves which do our bidding, and can help us achieve things which our ancestors could not even have imagined. 

The Israeli historian and social philosopher Yuval Noah Harari opens his book Homo Deus with an explanation for why people no longer need religion: because we have effectively vanquished plague, famine, and war. Yes, we have just been through a minor plague, and war is clearly still around, but the numbers of people who perish due to these things is far fewer than did so in previous centuries. Harari argues that our ability to live and thrive and not be so concerned on a daily basis for matters of life and death have obviated the need for religion, and for God. And indeed, when we have created tools such as artificial intelligence which may seem to have personality, perhaps we have achieved the status of Homo Deus, of God-like people. 

Sam Altman, in his testimony on Capitol Hill, pointed to the fact that when Photoshop was first introduced, it fooled some people initially, but we quickly learned to distinguish between an actual photo and something which had been altered. That sort of technology will of course continue to improve, and I am certain that it is only a matter of time before our adding machines will be able to deceive us in ways we would never have considered before.

And so too with language models like ChatGPT. They may ultimately sound human. But I do not believe that they will ever replace actual humans. And they will certainly never possess the Divine spark that is at the core of each of us.

ChatGPT will never be able to make a minyan. AI will never be able to give a proper hug to comfort those who mourn. It will never be able to get up and dance with joy as we name a new baby or celebrate a couple who is about to be married. It will not seek atonement on Yom Kippur, or sing moving melodies that turn the heart to God, or pray silently or yearn for God’s presence as we welcome Shabbat with Yedid Nefesh. A computer will never understand the value of Shabbat, or the conscious choice to take the holy opportunities of Jewish life, which give our lives framework and meaning.

Rabbi Danny Schiff, toward the end of his book, Judaism in a Digital Age, which we will be discussing after qiddush, addresses the question of whether the future necessitates a human presence. He writes,

Judaism’s answer to this question is yes. No matter how animated, intelligent, responsive, or reliable our AI creations might become, AI will never attain the combination of qualities that will merit the status of being “created in the image” [betzelem Elohim, a reference to Bereshit / Genesis 1:28]… The gulf between achieving convincing human-like qualities and being human is almost certainly unbridgeable. Jews are mandated to expand the Divine image in the world, not to lessen it. That goal demands the preservation of humanity. Judaism provides no license to contemplate an alternative… The irreplaceable human perspective and the poetry inherent within the grandeur and the struggle of human existence are exquisite… Each human life contains the potential for untold significance, and that will remain true even if AI comes to be viewed as functionally superior.

Put more bluntly, our devices may count us. But no computer will ever lift up our heads and appreciate the fullness of our humanity, of who we are as individuals and as the significant constituent parts of a human collective. 

And furthermore, no amount of technological modification of the human body or mind will make us God-like. God is far too elusive to enable that. Contrary to what Yuval Harari says, the need for religion – for Judaism – will never go away. We will always need to yearn together, to mourn together, to gather for prayer and celebration and comfort. We will always need a transcendent framework which brings us back to the spark of Divinity; no microchip will ever be able to recreate that.

ChatGPT, Google Bard, or whatever else comes after them will surely know Torah. They will be able to recite gemara with ease and probably teach and interpret for knowledgeable Jewish people. But they will hardly be able to convincingly sing ‘Etz ḥayyim hi lamaḥaziqim bah” / The Torah is a tree of life for those who grasp it.

Our strength comes from grasping the words of Torah. And we let that go at our peril. So we just might have to keep holding onto and holding up our tradition, paying attention to the details, and lifting our heads together for the sake of humanity.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat morning, 5/20/2023.)

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Sermons

Belafonte, Joy, and the Holiness Code – Aḥarei Mot / Qedoshim 5783

Harry Belafonte died this week. He was among my favorite performers, and although his most successful years as a performing artist were before I was born, I was exposed to his music through my mother’s old vinyl records, and in particular “Belafonte at Carnegie Hall,” his live album from 1959. 

One of the things that made his music so wonderful was his love of a wide range of folk music. Belafonte sang not only the songs of his youth in the Caribbean (his album “Calypso” was the first ever to sell more than one million copies!), but also folk songs from the American, European, Latin American, and yes, even Jewish traditions. He considered Havah Nagilah, which he performed at nearly every live show, to be one of his favorites, and there is a good case to be made that the reason that this song is such an enduring feature of the American Jewish musical landscape is because Belafonte popularized it:

הבה נגילה ונשמחה
הבה נרננה ונשמחה
עורו אחים בלב שמח

Havah nagilah venismeḥah
Havah nerannenah venismeḥah
‘Uru ahim belev sameaḥ.

Let us rejoice and be happy
Let us sing with joy and be happy
Awake, brothers and sisters, with a happy heart.

Although his paternal grandfather was apparently of Dutch Sephardic extraction, Belafonte was not Jewish. Nonetheless, my mother once told me that she and her friends agreed that he would make a wonderful cantor.

But Harry Belafonte’s great talent was bringing people together, and bringing them joy. His audiences were black and white, Jewish and non-, young and old. During his extended version of the calypso classic “Matilda” at Carnegie Hall, you can hear him take great joy in inviting different demographics of the audience to sing along with him during the chorus, lightly poking fun at “all the big spenders” in the orchestra seats, and “those people on scholarship” all the way up in the nosebleeds. And then when he invites “women over 40” to sing along, the whole place erupts in laughter and joy. 

On a more serious note, Belafonte was also an advocate for civil rights, and a personal friend to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the actor Sidney Poitier. And, perhaps due to his charisma, his high profile as an entertainer, and his inclination to bring people together, Belafonte was able to make his voice heard for the benefit of Black Americans. In 1993, he told The Times that he used his songs “to describe the human condition and to give people some insights into what may be going on globally, from what I’ve experienced.”

There were times when he was quite critical, calling out prejudice in unsparing language. Lamenting the roles Black actors received, he said, “TV excludes the reality of Negro life, with all its grievances, passions and aspirations, because to depict that life would be to indict (or perhaps enrich?) much of what is now white America and its institutions. And neither networks nor sponsors want that.”

And Belafonte had the credit to do that, because he was such a master at connecting people through his performance work, because he brought people such joy.

Our tradition, Jewish life and learning, is also heavily invested in joy. But it may not be the first thing that most of us think of when we think of Judaism. Probably the first thing that comes to mind about Jewish life is mitzvot, the 613 opportunities for holiness which our tradition teaches us.

Parashat Qedoshim opens with the line which is, in my humble opinion, the most essential line in the whole Torah (Vayiqra / Leviticus 19:2):

קְדֹשִׁ֣ים תִּהְי֑וּ כִּ֣י קָד֔וֹשׁ אֲנִ֖י’ ה אֱ-לֹהֵיכֶֽם׃

Qedoshim tihyu, ki qadosh ani Adonai Eloheikhem.
You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

Our primary duty to other people, our relational mission, is to be holy, to distinguish ourselves as individuals and as a people by acting in a way that understands the presence of God in the other, and the Divine presence found in the space between people. 

And of course, the details are in the passage following, the rest of chapter 19 of Vayiqra / Leviticus, a section known as the Holiness Code: Honor your parents. Keep Shabbat. Leave some of your produce for needy people. Do not steal; deal honestly with your neighbor. And so forth.

What it means to be holy, to emulate God, is to treat others and the Earth with respect, to appreciate what we have been given and not to abuse or take advantage of it. Much of it is a framework of living that is universal; that is, we the Jews read it as having been given to us and required of us.

But let’s face it: the world would be a much better place if we all honored our parents, took a day off to remember God’s creation once a week, and set aside some of our material bounty for others who have none.

The essence of qedushah, of holiness is, in fact, bringing people together rather than driving them apart. Holiness is creating a just society. Holiness is ensuring that other people have food and shelter and clothing. Holiness is following a code of laws which uplifts us all, a set of traditions and customs which bring us framework and meaning.

And we can more easily achieve that when we gather in joy.

I have a student right now with whom I am guiding through the process of conversion. She was raised Catholic, and she has told me that one of the reasons that she was drawn to Judaism was the joy that she has experienced in synagogue, in singing joyfully at the Hod veHadar Instrumental Kabbalat Shabbat service, in watching as we dance as a community for baby-namings and aufrufs. It might be easy for some of us to lose sight, particularly amid Shabbat prohibitions or long Yom Tov days or deep into Yom Kippur afternoon, that Jewish life is filled with music and dancing and joy. We had 85 people here at Beth Shalom on Tuesday evening to celebrate Israel’s 75th birthday, and we danced and ate falafel, after we read the Declaration of Independence. We celebrate together, and even when we are grieving, we grieve together as a community.

My student wants to be a part of that joy. And I suspect that while some of us are here this morning to fulfill the mitzvah of tefillah/prayer, many more of us are here to be joyful together.

You might think of Havah Nagilah merely as a light dance tune. The words are simple. Let’s rejoice, let’s sing with joy. Awake, my brothers and sisters with a happy heart. But we might read that last imperative, ‘Uru, awake, as a call to action. Let’s sing with joy together, so that we can go out tomorrow and work hard to build a better society and a better world. 

Dancing the hora at a displaced persons camp in Germany following WWII

What is the essential point of the Holiness Code found in Qedoshim? To unite people in holiness, so that we can ultimately get down to the business of improving our lives and the lives of others, where we raise our voices for change, just like Harry Belafonte did.

One final thought: Ramban, the Spanish commentator who lives in the 13th century, points out in his commentary to “qedoshim tihyu,” the commandment to be holy, that it is possible to fulfill all the mitzvot of the Torah and still be, in his words, “נבל ברשות התורה,” “naval birshut hatorah,” a scoundrel with the permission of the Torah. That is, one can act fully within the letter of the law and still be a horrible person. You can accept the Holiness Code of Parashat Qedoshim, and keep Shabbat and provide for needy people and honor your parents and not be a thief and so forth, and you can still be mean, ill-tempered, stingy, and all sorts of other negative descriptors.  (Perhaps some of us even know people like that.)

So in order for the system of mitzvot to work properly in helping us to build better lives for ourselves and others, they have to be perceived not as an oppressive set of laws which limit our opportunities for pleasure, but rather as a source of joy. 

And that is why the joy of gathering together for ritual, for singing, for celebrating is so essential. It is the joy which keeps us honest, which reminds us that qedushah, holiness, thrives in that relational space between each of us. We have to keep the focus outward. We have to awaken with a lev sameaḥ, a happy heart, to see the joy in our lives and the holiness in others, in order to effect change.

Awake! Live in the joy right now, so that we can go out tomorrow and face the challenges of improving the state of humanity, with a lev sameaḥ.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat morning, 4/29/2023.)