Years ago, when I was a bochur learning at Yeshiva Ohr Hameir in Peekskill, I heard it said in the name of the rosh yeshiva, Rav Yisroel Eliezer Kanarek zt”l, that a person has to know when not to call a rov with a shaylah. Hashem gave us a brain (surprising sometimes, isn’t it?), and we were meant to use it. If one has a simple question whose answer is clearly spelled out in basic halacha, there is no reason to call a rov just because maybe…I don’t know…I’m just not sure. Such behavior is simple laziness.
If there is an actual shaylah, a situation where one indeed does not know the proper halacha or derech, by all means, that is what a rov is for. However, if one is simply too lazy to think about it or look it up, then he is wasting the mind that Hashem intended for him to use.
Allow me to stress (for those who read things and react without actually thinking about what they just read) that no person, in any way, shape or form, should ever be discouraged from calling a rov with a shaylah, no matter how simple or unimportant his question may seem. There is nothing wrong with not knowing something, and everything right with trying to find out and grow in knowledge. What I am talking about is when one can know on his or her own, and is simply being lazy or is unwilling to think or look something up.
Lately, I find Rav Kanarek’s teaching popping into my mind more and more often. Whether in discussions about AI, about shidduchim, about voting, and so much more, the same question becomes glaringly clear: Have we forgotten how to use our minds?
Ask the Janitor
Let’s begin with A ay yay yay… Everywhere you turn now, there are discussions about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Even in the secular world, more and more studies are coming out regarding how AI is actually making people dumber, more illiterate, incapable of making simple decisions, and far less educated, worldly, or as knowledgeable as they used to be. In the frum world, articles are being written, kol korehs are being signed, and rules are being promulgated due to the dangers of AI.
To be totally honest, when I first began hearing the noise about AI, I simply didn’t get what all the hoopla was about. After all, Artificial Intelligence (to put it very simplistically) is simply a far more powerful computer than we had until now, capable of learning as it goes along, making it a phenomenal tool when it comes to graphics, medicine, engineering and thousands of other applications. What could be inherently wrong with that?
It turns out that when people talk about AI, they are generally not referring to any of the above uses. They are speaking about one aspect of AI, namely the interfacing of AI with humans (such as ChatGPT, etc.). People are asking AI how to be mechanech their children, for example, or various hashkafah shaylos, or to pasken halacha l’maaseh.
This was a shocker. Do you mean we actually need a kol koreh and tens of articles to tell us that we shouldn’t be seeking life-altering advice from a computer?! Have we reached that level of idle brain where we would do that rather than simply think?
Picture some drugged-up, zoned-out, woke zombie who is the janitor in our yeshiva. He comes in every night after all the students have gone home, his spiky hair dyed electric blue, four earrings in one ear, and mops the halls and classrooms. He also happens to be a genius — one of the smartest people in the world. Having taught himself Hebrew, he memorized every single sefer in the entire bais medrash. He knows every other language as well, and has instant recall of any book ever printed. Nor is he simply parroting them; he actually understands every single word he’s ever read.
He also happens to believe that euthanasia is a great thing, and that old people should simply die and get out of the way. He believes in critical race theory and supports DEI programs where mass murderers — if they happen to belong to a certain minority group, even a completely fabricated one — should be hired as teachers and day care providers rather than a qualified person of a majority race. He doesn’t believe in any sort of Afterlife or spirituality, only in what he can see or feel.
Supposing someone wants to know in which sefer he can find an obscure passage, that person might just swallow his discomfort and ask this janitor. After all, whatever else he may be, he does know practically everything. We might ask him to cite every place where a certain chinuch topic is mentioned (sort of like an Otzar Hachochmah). Would any person in his right mind, though, ask this janitor’s opinion on how to apply any or all of this knowledge? Would we ask any chinuch or hashkafah issue, or how to apply practical halacha, even if there was no rov available?
Yet, this is where we seem to be. Schools, mechanchim and rabbonim are all working on spreading awareness as to why we shouldn’t be seeking advice, or even just chatting, with an entity no better — but rather filled with far more garbage and sickening ideas — than our woke, zombie janitor.
There used to be a joke where somebody cried out in frustration, “Am I going crazy? Because I feel like I’m talking to a wall!” and you would answer back, “As long as the wall’s not talking back, you’re fine…”
Well, now the wall is talking back, and we’re listening, and we think we’re normal!
“A Mind is a Terrible Thing…”
The motto of The United Negro College Fund’s scholarship program, since 1972, is “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” In 1989, Vice President Dan Quayle, a brilliant though gaffe-prone fellow, was giving a speech to the United Negro College Fund. Wanting to work their well-known motto into his speech, his mind clearly drew a sudden blank and Mr. Quayle said, “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind.”
Then, seeming to realize that he just sounded as if he’d lost his mind, he quickly amended it to, “Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful.”
While his misquote gave the media fodder for months, one wonders if perhaps the vice president unknowingly stumbled upon something. To have a G-d-given mind and not to use it —and worse, to allow it to decay and whither away from disuse — is worse than not having a mind in the first place. Look into the eyes of a cow as it peacefully chews its cud. Then look into the blank eyes of the average inner-city zombie teen who can’t answer, “Which way is right and which way is left?” without consulting his phone.
Whose eyes are more vacant?
It’s a scary question, one about which the few thinking people still left in the secular world are already ringing alarm bells.
While we leave practical guidance in these matters in the hands of our rabbonim and worthy leaders, let us take a step back for a moment and just think about what we’ve allowed to happen to ourselves in that we actually need people to remind us that we shouldn’t be seeking life advice from a woke, pro-Palestinian, kumbaya-chanting janitor (because AI advice comes with all that and more), no matter how high of an IQ he might have.
(As an aside, when all the articles and letters about the dangers of AI are written, it may be prudent to make clear what they are actually talking about, because, at least as far as this author’s humble understanding, they are not actually talking about AI, but rather about certain uses of AI, i.e. chats and other human-interactive applications. One doubts that anyone is coming out against software that uses AI to better diagnose and fight various serious illnesses or even to compute better donor lists for our mosdos. If I am mistaken, and this is an issue, then that should be made clear as well. This writer’s understanding, though, is that most of the discussions purporting to be about the dangers of AI are actually about certain aspects of its application.)
Don’t Date — Send Your Virtual Double
My focus here, though, is not on any dangers in the outside, but rather on how we, frum Jews who have been accused of many things over thousands of years but never of being stupid, are allowing ourselves to be slowly dumbed down. Technology — any type, even long before today’s amazing breakthroughs — should always be used by us, to assist us. We should never find ourselves doing anything or changing anything we wouldn’t otherwise feel is the best way to go about something, simply because the technology exists to make that way easier — in other words, because we can be lazy and get away with it.
Take shidduchim as an example. We often hear various opinions expressed about how shidduch “résumés” could or should be improved. Shouldn’t they all have a blurb? A picture? A video? Perhaps an interactive virtual dating app? (He’ll be at night seder, she’ll be at a chasunah, and their virtual doubles can date! Shades of Der Letzteh Gedank’s “Efsher tzvei andereh mentchen zenen dorten getrufen!”)
What can a résumé tell me, we ask, if it simply contains a few dry facts?
Actually, a résumé is not supposed to tell us anything. The shadchan is. When a shadchan redds a shidduch, in the “olden days,” she would take a paper and pen and write down names and numbers of people the other side can call for information. Then, when she called the other side, she read that information over the phone, and that side took a paper and pen and wrote it over. Then computers (okay, first word processors, but that’s another story) became pretty easy to access, and it was simply easier to have it all already typed up. (Which is why it is really a page of references and not actually a résumé.)
This page of references was never meant to replace a shadchan, and it never can. A piece of paper is not supposed to bring any person to life or to excite a prospective girl’s or boy’s side. A shadchan is supposed to do that. The shadchan should know the person’s personality, what makes them shine, why they are special and so much more, and should know how to give that over. Simply emailing somebody a résumé is like emailing them a grocery list.
Yet, we’ve allowed technology, and the ease of sending out “résumés” nowadays with email and all sorts of other instant apps, to make our lives and the way we redd shidduchim worse, not better, because it allowed us to become lazy and not do what we’ve always done.
Idle-Brain? There’s an App for That
It’s the same with so many other things. Printing made it easier to publicize the opinions of rabbonim, for example, with regard to various daas Torah, hashkafah, halacha, or other issues. Rather than the long or arduous process needed to typeset or stencil whatever needed to get around, modern printing allows for almost instant copying of thousands of flyers.
Does this mean that anything posted all over — whether it tells us what to do, what to buy, for whom to vote, or anything else — means anything simply because “there are signs all over”? No, it does not. Whatever mind we used until now is the same mind we should still utilize, and whosever opinion we trusted until now is no less worthy simply because now it’s easier to just rely on something else rather than try and get to the truth as we would have done until now.
We get to decide when we wish to use technology, or anything else, in service of us. We should never allow ourselves to be dumbed-down or made lazy or mindless simply because “there’s an app for that.”
