If you want a wild ride, take a bus in Yerushalayim. If you don’t hang on every second, you can literally go flying! Someone I know found himself flat on the floor recently … the floor of the bus! Baruch Hashem, he was not badly hurt – and all the wonderful Yidden on the bus rushed to help him! -- but it could have been serious.
I wrote a book called “Hold On: Surviving the Days Before Moshiach.” These days, we are all on a wild bus ride as the world hurtles forward into the days of Moshiach. If we don’t hold on with all our strength, how will we survive?
Since the return of the hostages, the relief in Israel has been palpable, but I am concerned. Our enemies have not gone away, but there is more. There was a remarkable phenomenon among the hostages. Almost every one of them turned to Hashem during their captivity, regardless of their upbringing. They realized, in the torturous tunnels of Gaza, that we Jews cannot survive if we do not cling to Hashem.
Now that the hostages are freed, what will keep us on that madreiga?
The government of Israel is waging a war against Torah. As I write, a huge demonstration is taking place in Yerushalayim. This is not politics, but rather survival. The entire foundation of our existence is our oneness with the Torah.
What has happened to us? Are we crazy?
Perhaps we are. Only a crazy person commits suicide; a normal person wants to live. “Reish Lakish said: a person does not commit a transgression unless a ‘ruach shtuss,’ a spirit of foolishness enters him.” (Sotah 3a)
In this week’s Parsha, we learn about a place called Sodom, which, before its destruction, was so beautiful that it was considered “like the garden of Hashem” (Beraishis 13:10). But the people of Sodom lived an upside-down life, where cruelty was glorified and goodness was punished.
Why would people live so stupidly?
Recently, an Israeli friend wanted to explain the meaning of a Hebrew word to my wife and me, so he opened an app called “Gemini.” A cultured voice came out of his phone, which explained every nuance of the word in the most polished English, even explaining and spelling (in Hebrew) the root of the word. I then wished this voice, “Good Evening,” to which it replied, “And a good evening to you.” I was in shock. This suave voice spoke with perfect clarity, never losing command of its material. It was frighteningly perfect.
And I mean “frightening.”
My friends, I am not sure how to express the depth of my conviction that this voice of “artificial intelligence” represents the demise of Western Civilization. This “perfect man” is smarter than any living person. He has all information at his command. Yet he is a machine, a conglomeration of electrons. He is not alive.
Hashem commands us to love Hashem with all our heart and all our soul, but this voice has no heart and no soul. This is, I believe, our new avoda zara, our new Sodom, the soul-less world which is idolized by this generation. This is also the new Migdal Bavel, through which man tries to climb to Hashem’s level and tell Him that He has – G-d forbid – been “replaced!”
Mankind is trying to step into the “shoes” of Hashem and create man! Mankind now thinks that he is Hashem. And when mankind thinks that he is Hashem, then mankind has to be put in his place. Moshe Rabbeinu warns against “kochi v’otzem yadi …. And you may say in your heart, ‘My strength and the might of my hand made … all this.’” (Dvarim 8:17) About anyone who falls into the trap of pretending that he is G-d, Hashem warns, “I testify against you today that you will surely perish like the [other] nations which Hashem causes to perish before you….”
The Novi describes a man cutting down a tree. Half of it he burns in the fire to warm himself and bake bread. “The rest of it he makes into a god [to which] he will bow and prostrate himself ... saying, ‘Rescue me!’” (Yeshiah 44:17)
I read that Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, who has been called the inventor of artificial intelligence, now regrets his invention because of the dangers it poses to society, like the ability to falsify information and images, and the “existential risk” which occurs when machines become more intelligent than people.
What is to prevent a robot from becoming President of the United States?
I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that this new idol is a harbinger of the end of Western Civilization. Our inventions have become our masters. In Sodom, the “garden of Hashem,” the laws which Hashem created to govern the world were turned upside down. Evil was multiplied because evil was considered a virtue. The result was that “Hashem caused sulfur and fire to rain down upon Sodom and Gomorrah…. He overturned these cities and the entire plain with all the inhabitants ….”
You can see this destruction today if you travel to the Dead Sea.
The sickness around us is so pervasive that we need to “hold on” desperately to Torah as the bus careens wildly on the road of life. I read last week that the Generation of the Flood was so steeped in immorality that it had no idea what morality was. When a generation reaches that point, then there is no alternative to destruction of the entire generation, because teshuva is no longer possible.
My friends, we seem to be close to this point, but Hashem will save those who cling to Him. “One thing I asked …. to dwell in the house of Hashem all the days of my life. Indeed, He will hide me in His shelter on the day of evil .… Strengthen yourself and He will give you courage!” (Tehillim 27)
GLOSSARY
Avoda zara: idol worship
Madreiga: Spiritual level
Migdal Bavel: the Tower of Babel
Parsha: Torah portion
