Judaism Unbound Episode 408: Jewish Artificial Intelligence – David Zvi Kalman
David Zvi Kalman, owner of the independent publishing house Print-O-Craft Press, is a scholar, writer, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology, religion, and art. Kalman joins Lex Rofeberg and Dan Libenson for a conversation about the present and future relationships between Judaism and artificial intelligence (AI). This episode is the sixth in an ongoing series of Judaism Unbound episodes exploring digital Judaism.
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[1] Listen to our previous episode with Kalman at David Zvi Kalman: Episode 179: –The Jewish Polymath.
[2] Check out Kalman’s book/ritual-object store, Read & Rite.
[3] To demonstrate some of the potential limitations of AI in the context of Torah study, Kalman creates a hypothetical situation that makes the Song of Songs about tacos. We, too, remixed Song of Songs through a contemporary (albeit non-taco) lens in Elul Bonus Episode #3: What’s Love Got to Do with It? (Song of Songs).
[4] Kalman cites the anthology, Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash, to illustrate how modern-day Jews are creating and building upon new components of the Jewish textual landscape.
[5] Lex asks Kalman to elaborate on his article, Judaism’s Three Doors Into AI, which you can find on his blog, Jello Menorah.
[6] Lex describes himself as a pantheist and shouts out Jay Michaelson’s book, Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism. In response, Kalman mentions Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s publication, Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters, which explores why pantheism is so often met with resistance within more regular-shmegular religious spaces.
[7] Kalman says that the child is the best metaphor for AI within Judaism, and cites Mara Benjamin’s book, The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought, for its exploration of the role of the kiddo in the Jewish psyche. To hear more from Benjamin on this subject, check out Mara Mara Benjamin: Episode 251 – Judaism… Just *How* Unbound?
[8] Kalman highly recommends Julia Watts Belzer’s book, Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole, as a testament to today’s powerful Jewish disability activism.
