Sculpture by International Artist Phillip Ratner
Lee Diamond – Less Than Angels & Racism and Judaism
Less Than Angels
The robot and the Jewish question
Is beginning to surface.
New Shealot and Teshuvot
Must now emerge.
“Who is man ?
That You are mindful of him?
You have made him
a little Less than the angels ?”
(Psalms 8:4)
But what Is man
In the age of AI?
What is the significance
Of man’s creation of
Artificial intelligence
—-Of the robot—
That thinks, pursues,
And acts
That feels, judges
And reacts
That learns and teaches
That performs all human tasks and acts
That grows, that changes
That expands
Whose intelligence is unlimited
And strength is beyond human
Is AI greater than the human ?
Closer to the angels?
Closer even to God ?
Can s/he create morality
Or be moral ?
Will AI go to war?
Or will it end war?
Or beat its metal into
Plowshares.?
Will AI die or be discarded
Into scrap metal
Or plastic or artificial flesh?
Or will it have an afterlife.?
Will AI dream?
LOVE?
Emote?
Care.?
Can humans have emotional
Relations with AI ?
Will AI cry ?
Or laugh
Or feel nachat?
Can A1 drive me on Shabbat?
Or are they like servants, animals and strangers ?
Are they to
Rest on the Shabbat
like humans ?
Are they to be counted
In minyan?
Male or female ?
Jewish?
Is AI less or more than
An
Angel?
Is s/he in the divine image?
Or in our image?
Or in their own image ?
Racism and Judaism
Once we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt
And the Lord took us out of there
With a outstretched arm
And a mighty hand.
Forever Jews are commanded and committed to treat any slave, any stranger, any minority amongst them with full respect
Because of the Egyptian experience of slavery.
This Mitzvah is basic to all of Jewish thought! No Mitzvah is more basic.
If Israel is a Jewish state
It CANNOT
Expel those who seek
Refuge
From within Its borders!
If it does
It will lose Its
Right to be called A/or
THE Jewish State
And will simply be
“A body without a soul”
