Parashat Terumah: Jo, Walter and the Ark of the Covenant

 Jo and Walter were born nearly fifteen years apart.  Jo, on 5^th September in Chicago and Walter, on 19^th March in Idar-Obestein in what was ‘West Germany’.

Her father, Armando Tejada, was a Bolivian aeronautical engineer, whilst her mother Josephine was of English descent and the daughter of an architect.  Jo was the eldest of three children.  The family moved to San Diego when Jo was two years old and she attended the Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church with her mother every Sunday morning.  At the same time, her mother enrolled her in ballet lessons.  Many years later, she recalled her father as being a ‘dominating and tyrannical figure’ which led to her parents divorcing around the time she was finishing high school.

Blessed with beauty from a very young age, she won a number of contests which led to her being crowned the ‘Maid of California’.

Walter’s father was an American soldier and when he was two, his parents moved to Carney’s Point in New Jersey.  He had a younger sister and two younger brothers.  His mother obtained a job working in a bank whilst his father held down a number of occupations which included being a welder, factory worker and master mechanic.  In school, Walter had a noticeable stutter and he later recalled:

‘I had a terrible stutter.  But then I did some theatre in high school and when I memorized words, I didn't stutter, which was just miraculous.  That was the beginning of the gradual dispelling of my stutter.  I thought I was handicapped.  I couldn't talk at all.  I still stutter around some people now’.

In terms of his background, he described himself as coming from ‘a long line of blue-collar people’.

Who were Jo and Walter?  Both individuals achieved worldwide fame as Raquel Welch and Bruce Willis (dropping their true first names).

 

Sadly, Raquel passed away on 15^th February at the age of 82 and a day later, Bruce’s family announced to the world that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and that his condition had progressed to the point that ‘challenges with communication are just one symptom of the disease.’ He is only 67 years old.

In the 1960s and 1980’s, Raquel Welch and Bruce Willis could have been compared to Barbie and Ken as examples of their respective aesthetic forms.

As ‘The Times’ wrote in their obituary of Raquel:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and with only three lines in the film ‘One Million Years BC’, Raquel Welch said considerably fewer than that.

Yet the image of her in her costume (I have edited the exact description for appropriateness) was far more eloquent.  The New York Times called the shot “a marvellous breathing monument to womankind” and, even before the film reached cinema screens, a publicity still of Welch in her cave woman outfit became a bestselling poster and had turned her into one of the world’s most alluring ____ symbols (fill in the blank)

Bruce, meanwhile, particularly in his John McLane ‘Die Hard’ role, represented many of our visions of what it meant to be a ‘real man’.  He was there, in the thick of the action fighting for justice against some really nasty individuals (who were more often than not, British) and getting really badly hurt in the process.  We felt his pain, yet we came back for more.  You knew that if you saw a ‘Bruce Willis Movie’, you wouldn’t leave the cinema disappointed; and we never did.  When he wasn’t running around barefoot in a tattered shirt and shredded, bloodstained feet, he was impressing us with his performances in critically acclaimed and commercially successful films like ‘Pulp Fiction, ‘The Sixth Sense’, ‘Twelve Monkeys’ and ‘Armageddon’, not forgetting his memorable earlier work on television in the series ‘Moonlighting’.

The same Bruce who stuttered.  The same Raquel who spent her life asking people to look beyond her outer beauty and consider the intelligence below the surface.  On one occasion she told a director that she had been reading the script and had (according to the Obituarist) ‘been thinking’.   He cut her short and told her, “Well, don’t!” How demeaning must that have felt?

I thought about these two actors when I considered this week’s Parasha.

The Torah tells us that Gd spoke to Moses and gave him detailed instructions on how to create many of the Holy objects that would populate the Mishkan (Tabernacle).

Exodus Chapter 25

Make an ark of acacia wood...overlay it with pure gold, inside and out and around it, make a round rim...make a table of acacia wood...overlay it with pure gold and around it make a gold rim...make the staves of acacia wood and overlay them with gold…

Many of the holy objects, such as the Aron Habrit, the Ark of the Covenant, which would house both the broken tablets as well as the second set of the Ten Commandments, were made of acacia wood, overlaid with gold.

Using a material as simple as wood to construct and house such holy objects seems inappropriate.  Rashi tells us that the Ark consisted of three boxes.  The wooden box fit snugly inside a large outer gold box.  Within the wooden box, a smaller gold box was inserted.  The outer exposed wooden rim (of the middle box) was covered with a gold plate.  In other words, the wooden box sat in the middle of the largest and smallest gold boxes.

Why not place three golden boxes, one inside the other?

Rabbi Shamshon Raphael Hirsch (d.1888) gave a beautiful explanation.

He said that, just like the Ark, we are the vessels that hold the Torah.  The Ark was made of two materials, namely gold and wood.  We are human manifestations of the Ark, in that we are living receptacles that hold onto the teachings of the Torah as we try to lead our lives according to its ways.  Like the kind of metal it is, we too have the purity of gold in our thoughts and actions.  However, there are always challenges from within and without that try to water down our faith, our belief in Torah and in this metaphor, pollute our gold.  Though gold as a metal is beautiful, it is indeed that – a metal.  It is static and cannot fight those who wish to sully it.  Wood, however, is different.  It is organic and like a tree, can grow and develop.  Wood is alive.  It gives us the strength to hold onto our faith and fight back against those who try to rob us of our beliefs and deny us our heritage.  The Ark had a gold surface, but at its heart it was made of wood.  As we say about the Torah every time we close the Ark:

“Etz Chayim Hi Lemachazikim Ba – It is a tree of life to those who grasp it”.

On the surface, Raquel and Bruce appeared to be human embodiments of gold.  Coruscating in their beauty but underneath they were, and are, just like the rest of us - organisms that are imperfect and vulnerable.  They remind us that, ‘not all that glitters is gold’. Sometimes we need to scratch the surface if we want to reveal the real people behind the studio-manufactured product.

The Ark of the Covenant and its companions may have been covered with gold, but beneath their exteriors lay the true beating heart of the Jewish people –the Torah that we cherish today.  Its wooden structure held firm and protected it, metaphorically and physically.  Gold might be beautiful but it is soft.  Wood may not be as aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but it is very strong.  It was the perfect combination.

We are the spiritual descendants of the Ark of the Covenant.  May Hashem bless us with the coming of the Moshiach so that we may finally see the Ark returned to the Third Temple – may he come speedily in our days – bimhera beyamenu, Amen!

Shavuah Tov

Sources for this Drasha (for Raquel Welch and Bruce Willis):

·         https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/racquel-welch-actress-dies-illness-lqffj9gwb

·         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raquel_Welch

·         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Willis

·         https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000246/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm

Parashat Mishpatim: Our Arrow

‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach’
(George Bernard Shaw, ‘Man and Superman’, 1905)

‘Those who can't do, teach.  And those who can't teach, teach gym.’
(Woody Allen, Annie Hall, 1977)

A few years ago, my youngest two daughters went to New York on a sightseeing trip.  Neither had been before and they had a wonderful time together.  They brought me some souvenirs, one of which sits on my work desk and makes me smile every time I glance at it.

It’s a desk plate displaying the following legend:

Any fellow teachers out there (and presumably non-educationalists too) will appreciate the irony of the quotation.  For if that were really the case, many of my colleagues and friends would not be standing on the picket-lines losing a day’s pay to make their point.  If anything, carrying out our jobs leads to infamy!  I didn’t become a teacher to curry favour with students.  I chose this profession because I believed, and still do, in the intrinsic importance of education in a young person’s emotional and intellectual development.  Teaching adolescents is highly rewarding whilst simultaneously managing to be frustrating, exhausting and at times soul-destroying.  Why do I put myself through this on a daily basis?  That is a question I have been asking for over a decade?  Because I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else.

 Parashat Mishpatim contains 53 mitzvot, commandments, 23 positive or imperative and 30 negative (‘you must not do this’).

Topics include the laws regarding the treatment of a Hebrew slave (also known as an ‘indentured servant’); the granting of loans; the rules regarding setting up courts of law; the observance of the festivals; separating meat and milk and the mistreatment of foreigners.

The Hertz Chumash uses the following useful categories to help us make sense of the order:

1.    Civil Legislation.

2.    Personal Injuries.

3.    Offences Against Property.

4.    Moral Offences.

5.    The Sabbatical Year and the Sabbath Day.

6.    The Three Annual Pilgrim Festivals.

7.    Moses’ warning of what would happen if the laws weren’t followed.

The laws that Gd instructed our teacher Moshe, immediately following the giving of the Ten Commandments, make up the bulk of the Parasha.  If we place these in the context of what has happened to date, they are remarkable.  From the beginning of Bereishit until the end of last week’s Parasha of Yitro, the style employed throughout the Torah has been that of a narrative.

As Rabbi Sacks’ and others have pointed out, this is not accidental.  The Torah’s function as a Holy Book is to educate us.  The word ‘Torah’ means ‘direction or instruction’ from the root of yud-resh-hey (ירה) which originally meant ‘to throw or shoot an arrow’ and in modern Hebrew refers to firing or shooting a gun.  In its causative form, it means ‘to cause someone or something to move straight or true’.  Like an arrow, the Torah gives us strong direction.  It tells us how to ‘fly correctly’ following a straight line.  In other words, it guides us.

What’s the best way of educating our children (and others) to set them up on the ‘straight path’?  By telling them stories.  If I were to give you a choice of either reading a list of laws or hearing a story, which would you prefer?  I know that if it were me, I’d definitely go with the latter option.  Stories are fun.  You can engage with them.  You can relate, especially if they inform you of something that you didn’t know; all the more if they move you in the process.

However, if the Torah was simply a storybook, would it have maintained its position as the world’s best-selling tome?  According to the British and Foreign Bible Society, as of 2021, it is estimated that between five and seven billion copies of the Christian Bible have been sold and/or distributed.  When you consider that the earth has recently registered its eighth billionth human birth, this means that the vast majority of us have a copy of the Bible, which of course includes a translation of the Torah.  How accurate this is would be the subject matter of a very different Drasha.

If the Torah were simply a storybook, our arrow may fly in a straight line, but it would not reach its destination.  It must be solidly constructed and able to negotiate all kinds of obstacles in its path.  The commandments are its housing.  Stories are nice but, to be effective, they have to carry a message. 

Mishpatim opens Gd’s gift by sharing its contents following the thunder, lightning, thick cloud and the sound of the Shofar which terrified the people as they witnessed the giving of the Torah. Just as I didn’t become a teacher for the ‘money and the fame’, so the Torah, our textbook and then some, is much more than the spectacle that we witnessed in the desert. 

Moshe, our teacher, gave us Gd’s curriculum which includes every subject under the sun, including our annual timetable.  We need to have a Parasha like Mishpatim to take us beyond the stories, so that we can create societies based on the moral guidance therein.  Without the mitzvot, the stories are empty.  Without the stories, it is difficult to envisage how to keep the mitzvot.  We need to see living, breathing examples of people learning from the Torah and ‘living it’.  That’s how we can benchmark their behaviour against our own.  That’s how we can literally ‘live the Torah’.

Reading the Torah elevates my soul.  My choice to lead a life as an Orthodox Jew leaves little in my bank account, especially when it comes to keeping Kosher.  That said, despite the huge amounts of money I could have saved, I wouldn’t have chosen any other path to follow.  Just like my decision to become a teacher.

If I have managed to pass that message onto anyone else, I can be comforted in the knowledge that my arrow has hit its target.

On a final note, I’d like to refer to Woody Allen’s quote and how misguided I think it is.  Through the years, I can honestly state that ‘those who teach gym’ are some of the best practitioners I’ve come across in our profession.  I would add that those who can teach are some of the most important individuals making up our society.

A thought to leave you with.

Who was your favourite teacher and why is this the case?

Are they rich and famous?

Shavuah Tov

Parashat Yitro: I Am Not ‘Claude’

 Before I begin, I would like to confirm that although I am Claude, I am not ‘Claude’, as per the subtitle of this Drasha.  This does not mean that I have been replaced in an ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ type operation.  I have not lost control of my faculties.  Far from it.  It’s simple really. I’m just not ‘Claude’.

A short while ago, a close friend introduced me to something that could potentially change my life and perhaps yours.  It will certainly have an impact on the lives of your children and grandchildren in ways that may not yet be fully understood.  We are on the cusp of a transformative technology which you might have heard of recently.

Friends, I am of course referring to ‘ChatGPT’, the world’s most advanced AI, which we know is an acronym for Artificial Intelligence.  The company behind it, OpenAi was formed in December 2015 by a number of people including Elon Musk.  Its founders pledged $1 billion to develop its potential with Musk selling his share to Microsoft three years later.  Its offerings first came to my attention with the release of DALL-E, a ‘deep learning’ model that allows you to create digital images from natural language inputs.  So, for example, if I ask it to draw ‘A penguin eating a banana whilst sitting in a swimming pool in the style of Van Gogh, it will do exactly that.

 

This, however, was only a precursor to the release of ChatGPT (which is an acronym for Chat Generative Pre Trained Transformer) last November and was created using a database containing the entire contents of the world wide web.  It allows you to initiate a chat in the most naturalistic manner available to date.  In other words, having used it, I can testify that it feels as though you could be conversing with a human being.  More than that, you can ask it questions in the same way that you would to another person and it responds, not only to your initial question but to the follow-ups.  It is simply breath-taking in scope.

The only way that I can adequately describe the power of ChatGPT is to share the result that I received to the following question that I submitted into the chat box:

‘Write a sermon about Parashat Yitro comparing the giving of the ten commandments to the use of an AI’

This is the response that was instantly generated:

Dear friends, in this week's Parshat Yitro, we read about the giving of the Ten Commandments to the Israelites by God at Mount Sinai.  Just as the Israelites received these commandments as a guide for how to live a just and moral life, we too must consider the guidelines we need to create an ethical and responsible use of AI.

Just as the Ten Commandments were meant to be followed in all circumstances and situations, the use of AI must also be guided by clear ethical principles.  These principles should encompass issues such as privacy, transparency, accountability, and the responsible use of data.

Like the Ten Commandments, these ethical principles for AI must be widely known and understood by those who design and develop AI systems, as well as by those who use them.  Just as the Israelites were called upon to internalize and follow the commandments, we too must strive to embody these ethical principles in all of our interactions with AI.

Moreover, the giving of the Ten Commandments marked a momentous event in the history of the Israelites, transforming them from a loosely organized group of individuals into a unified community with a shared sense of purpose.  In a similar way, the adoption of ethical principles for AI can help to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders, fostering a shared understanding of the responsibilities associated with the development and use of AI.

Finally, just as the Ten Commandments have stood the test of time, enduring for thousands of years as a timeless source of guidance and wisdom, so too must our ethical principles for AI be able to endure over time and adapt to the changing circumstances of our world.

In conclusion, let us remember the lessons of Parashat Yitro as we consider the use of AI in our world.  Just as the Israelites received the Ten Commandments as a guide for how to live a just and moral life, so too must we establish ethical principles for AI that can serve as a guide for how to create and use this technology in a responsible and equitable way.  May we always strive to use AI in a manner that honors the dignity of all people and protects the rights and freedoms of all.  Amen.

When I rephrased the question and asked it to include commentaries by Rashi and Rambam, the response was even more astounding.  I have chosen not to include it as I wouldn’t want you to think that this Drasha has been nearly entirely composed by the software!

As I am sure you will appreciate, beyond the instant jaw-dropping response that you have probably experienced, there is understandable alarm emanating from the academic and literary worlds regarding the veracity of the printed word.  In an age where great efforts have been made to limit plagiarism, this tool is a godsend to anyone who is tasked with writing an essay, thesis or book.  How would we know that it hasn’t been created by a robot?  Amazon is currently selling a book called ‘The Inner Life of an AI: A Memoir by ChatGPT’, released in the second week of December– if you don’t believe me, you can check it out by clicking

https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Life-AI-Memoir-ChatGPT/dp/B0BPW5ZMC7#:~:text=Description-,The%20Inner%20Life%20of%20an%20AI%3A%20A%20Memoir%20by%20ChatGPT,its%20own%20existence%20and%20experiences

Which is where ‘Claude’ comes in.

Former employees of OpenAi (or as we would call them ‘the breakaway minyan’) have created a rival to ChatGPT called….you guessed it….’Claude’!

Anthropic’s ‘Claude’ is different to his virtual cousin in that he is built to be more user-friendly and able to refuse certain inappropriate questions on ethical grounds (I’ll let you imagine what these could be).  He apparently has a better sense of humour in his responses and provided very long and verbose answers to questions (so in that way, he’s quite like me!).

You can read a fascinating comparison of both AIs at

https://scale.com/blog/chatgpt-vs-claude#Text%20summarization

and waiting in the wings is Google’s version which is called ‘Bard’.

You may be wondering how all of this information ties in with this week’s Parasha (beyond the answer provided by ChatGPT) and if I told you that I couldn’t think of an adequate response, you might suggest that I simply refer to ‘Claude’s’ rival’s answer.  However, that is precisely the reason why I chose this week’s sedra to discuss this technology.

This Claude (i.e.  me – are you confused yet?) does not need programming to recognise the authenticity of the Torah as the Divine word of Gd.  The Lord didn’t create a breakaway minyan to talk to a few select Israelites in order to announce His presence to the world.  We are the only nation on earth who received the Divine word en masse.  Millions of our ancestors heard Hashem (mostly through the voice of Moshe) declare the ten (well, thirteen, but let’s leave that to one side for now) pronouncements that would become the bedrock of the world we live in.

Commandments such as:

·         Don’t serve idols

·         Respect your parents

·         Recognise Gd’s labour and efforts in creating the world by ensuring that we set aside a day of rest

·         Don’t steal or murder or destroy the holy union of marriage through adultery

·         Don’t pervert the course of justice through lying under oath

communicated the message that, for society to exist and thrive, two relationships had to be established and nurtured, that of human-to-human and human-to-Gd.

When we respect each other, there is nothing we cannot achieve together.  When people truly venerate Gd, irrespective of the different ways they choose to do so, we also thrive.  We have seen what happens when either of these relationships fail.

As I write these words, tragically, tens of thousands of people have been killed in devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.  Putting aside their differences and decades of hostility, Syria has asked for help from Israel and Israel has not hesitated to offer her hand in friendship.  This is not something that ‘Claude’ or ‘ChatGPT’ could predict, even if they have the entire web flowing through their machine code.  This is what it means to be a human, blessed with a soul and a heart.

With all the conflicting emotions that make us who we are.   All the contradictions that defy logic and reason.   All the strengths and weaknesses that define us and puzzle those who try to understand our thought processes.

This is what makes me Claude and not ‘Claude’.

Artificial Intelligence is intelligence but it is also artificial.  By its very nature, it cannot be real, in the same way that Virtual Reality can only ever be virtual. 

There will no doubt be challenges which arise as a result of this exciting new technology but I still believe and have faith that we will learn to harness its power in due time.  Let’s ensure that we all work together to find solutions to our own, very human dilemmas.

Reading through the Aseret Hadibrot (‘The Ten Pronouncements’) is a good place to start.

Shavuah Tov.