Using ChatGPT to write this week’s Torah reflection enlightened me
The Ultimate Labor Saver — And Why I Said No
When I saw an email from my Jewish Meditation and Torah Study Group saying that we needed a leader for the next morning’s meeting, I hesitated. We rotate leadership, with each of us taking turns presenting a 10-minute commentary on the week’s Torah portion, after which the group sits in silent meditation together for the next 25 minutes.
My inclination was to say no, to the request because I didn’t have time. Usually, when my turn comes around, I spend at least a couple of hours reading the week’s Torah portion, consulting my books on Torah, then scrolling through various commentaries online. Then I form my own thoughts about the portion and write a 2–3 page essay on it to present to the group.
The leader’s email reassured us that we need not do anything nearly as involved as that. She said this week’s volunteer could just bring in a poem or something else inspiring to share.
Another member wrote to encourage me to say yes. “You don’t even need to comment on the Torah portion, just speak about dreams and Judaism,” she said, knowing that is one of my favorite topics.
But then I had an idea. I’d just spent a week with my daughter, who lives in Southern California and who works in a tech-adjacent job. She had been extolling the benefits of ChatGPT, the new AI interface that she said I could use for anything from drafting blog posts to creating weekly meal plans. I thought this would be the perfect labor-saving solution for me. So, I signed into the app.
For my first experiment with AI-assisted writing, I asked the chatbot to write me a 7-minute talk about this week’s Torah portion,?Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei, for a small group of liberal-minded, reconstructionist-leaning majority women group members.
I pressed send and instantaneously a short informative essay about the portion appeared before my eyes. I read it over, and it seemed to be accurate and was written in a dutiful but engaging manner. I snapped my laptop shut and decided I’d spend ten minutes reviewing ChatGPT’s handiwork and make any necessary edits after dinner — and voilà, I’d be ready.
I waxed poetic about the experience to my husband saying it was amazing — miraculous even — how this new technology had saved me hours of work!
But just before bed, when I finally sat down to look over what Chatbot had written for me, I felt cheated. Yes, the essay was pretty good. My group would learn from it and receive insight into the Torah portion. But what I love about taking my turn as the leader for these sessions is taking that deep dive into the Torah passages and discovering what message the ancient words had for me. In this case, I had gotten the end result, a nice summary of the portion, and some lovely observations, but I didn’t receive the riches of study and contemplation.
And this portion is all about the riches! These final chapters of Exodus detail the construction of the Mishkan, a portable tabernacle, with ornate descriptions of the objects, gold, silver, precious stones, lampstands, colors, and textures that went into its construction. Members of the community were urged to bring gifts from their heart and to contribute their skills and crafts, to the endeavor. We read of the generous outpourings of material goods and artisanal labors that follow. The work sounds joyful because it’s motivated by a love of God. And the paragraphs that describe it are a joy to read!
But that’s not all. Juxtaposing all of this activity is a description of the Sabbath and its importance. That was interesting, too. I began to think and read about the contrast between building and achieving, and resting and surrendering that is contained in this Torah portion.
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It was past my bedtime by now. And despite the lure of Chatbot’s instantaneous results, I didn’t feel finished.
So I kept reading. My internet search turned up an article about this Torah portion from 2006 titled “The Ultimate Labor Saver,” by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair. In it, Sinclair extols the wonderous achievements of robotics and recounts how we are always searching for some technological fix for the problem of work. But he says, Judaism has an ancient but still revolutionary technology for that: The Sabbath. Rabbi Sinclair writes:
When we keep Shabbat properly, even if we don’t overly exert ourselves, we will find that things just seem to get done that little bit quicker and better [during the rest of the week].
As someone who writes and teaches about the power of sleep and dreams, I know the value of deep rest; of non-doing. And I appreciated the call to balance out busy-ness with rest.
What’s more, I marveled at how my experience of preparing to lead my small group — first turning to the promise of the labor-saving Chat GPT, and then rediscovering the joyful, old-school, toil of studying the portion myself — led me to a poetic insight.
In the end, I didn’t use a single sentence that Chatbot offered me. Instead, I was able to serve my community in a small way by taking my turn as group leader and digging into the work required. In the process, I received the message of the weekly text and experienced the joy of doing work in the service of spiritual growth.
Note: Please excuse any errors, mispronunciations, and mistakes in this podcast. It was, after all, created by a very human, human!
Poetic inspiration
I also asked Chatbot for suggested poems for this week’s portion, but the results of that request were less than satisfying. So, I assembled some of my own and also included one of Chatbot’s suggestions. Here’s what I came up with:
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Tzivia Gover?is the author of seven nonfiction books. Her poems appear in dozens of anthologies, journals, and periodicals.