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November 21, 2025 - 1 Kislev 5786
Dear Friends, With Thanksgiving next week, we are in the home stretch of our emergency food drive. If you have not already brought a nonperishable food and/or personal item to the synagogue, or even if you have, you can still contribute. The final day to bring your items will be Monday, so they can be delivered to the distribution point before the holiday. Thanks for your participation!
I read an article in the Atlantic, by Julie Beck, about the author's experimentation with AI for everyday conversations. The claims from Cluely, the company behind this particular AI tool, are that one can use it to "cheat" at anything, especially computer-related tasks such as homework or tests; but that it's at least intended to help a person "cheat" at conversation. Put aside for the moment the glorification and championing of cheating, the blatant valorization of a concept that, by its very definition, is immoral and unethical, is kind of shocking. There is another piece to be written about how our culture embraces "winning" above all, being one step ahead of everyone with a "hack" or "cheat code," at the expense of everything else. But in the meantime, the author wanted to know if it worked. Would Cluely help her have better conversations? Spoiler alert: no. Not only did she find that the feed of real-time information that continued to spew forth towards her was a tremendous distraction from connecting with her respective counterparts, she found that its suggested lines and phrases that sounded nothing like her. It is one thing to have AI give us summaries of Zoom calls and meetings we've been a part of. It is entirely another to, in her words, "let AI pull a Cyrano," in reference to the famous Edmond Rostand play, in which the handsome hero Christian is fed flowery poetic language from Cyrano de Bergerac in order to seduce the beauteous Roxanne. “What is the point of conversations?” Beck asked. One of the experts she spoke to posited that there are two purposes to conversation. "One is simple understanding - picking up what the other person is putting down. The other is a social purpose - forming or solidifying a relationship." The first can be solved by AI. The second, the author argues, cannot. And I would agree wholeheartedly. Just because one has the "right" words at one's disposal, and even if one says them verbatim, authenticity can't be faked. Who a person is at their core, the kinds of feelings and thoughts they have, share, and hold onto, simply cannot be garnered from AI or the internet, no matter how powerful, fast, and knowledgeable they might be. We all know the difference between interactions where words were expressed but nothing felt, as well as the complete opposite - where few if any words are spoken, yet everything is said. This week's parsha, Toldot, gives us examples in both directions. The prayers of Isaac are answered, and Rebekah, our matriarch, who at first is unable to have children, becomes pregnant with twins. In the excruciating pain of her pregnancy, she offers five Hebrew words that are nearly impossible to translate accurately, yet which say everything: אִם־כֵּ֔ן לָ֥מָּה זֶּ֖ה אָנֹ֑כִי Usually translated "If so, why do I exist?" these words carry so much within them - pain, anguish, sadness, and struggle, yet through the lens of receiving what she and her husband had been praying for, I might render her words as, "If this is what it is, what's the point?" And who hasn't felt like that before? Who hasn't thrown their heads and hands up to the sky and just asked "Why???" or even just an exclamatory, "Come on! Really??" These words, these utterances, they are very much the stuff of our existence, the essence of what it means to be a human being. There is no script, there is no perfect way to express these things, and even if there were, as the owners of Cluely want you to believe and (literally) buy into, they still can't convey all of the emotions, thoughts, experiences, and practices that are what make us human, those very things gifted to us in being created B'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. And God understands those expressions. Better than any other human being. In the Parasha, God comes down to try to explain that two nations are in her womb, that they will be at odds with one another nearly all the days of their lives. I don't know that God's answer is satisfactory to Rebekah in any way, shape, or form. But I do believe that God attempts to explain, because God feels the torment and anguish in every fiber of her being in just five words that, really, grammatically, don't make much sense. It is the power of our words. And it is the power of the space between them. The tone, the passion, the hopes and hurt that lay behind and underneath them. This is the essence of human existence. And no matter how advanced artificial intelligence may continue to become, there is nothing in the world that can substitute for authentic, soul-changing human connection. It may occasionally be that that is us at our worst. But, hopefully, more often than not, they are the moments where we are at our best, and where, if we're so blessed, can catch a glimpse of the Tzelem Elohim, the divine likeness within us. Shabbat Shalom and Happy Thanksgiving, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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