ChatGPT with RAG and Reasoning Ability, on Eliyahu Munk's Rabbinic Ordination

For a particular scholarly reason, writing an abstract about censorship, I wanted to know whether Eliyahu Munk, the prolific translator of rabbinic works, had rabbinic ordination. If so, I could refer to him by the title “Rabbi”.

It doesn’t really matter, and credentialism is often silly. There are plenty of people who have a title (rabbinic or otherwise) who express nonsense; and plenty of people who lack the title (rabbinic or otherwise) who make good points. Here, I often disagree with how Eliyahu Munk interprets texts he translates, or chooses not to translate. But his merits or demerits don’t have to do with formally receiving a rabbinic title.

My assumption is that he does not, because various positive interviews or reviews did not mention it. Still, I decided to see what ChatGPT — the 4o model with search, and the just released o3-mini reasoning model with search.

An AI receiving rabbinic ordination

Here is what each had to say. The 4o model:

Me: does Eliyahu Munk the translator of rabbinic commentary have rabbinic ordination?

ChatGPT: Yes, Eliyahu Munk received rabbinic ordination in 1985. He is renowned for translating numerous classic Torah commentaries into English, including works by Rabbeinu Bachye, Akeidat Yitzchak, Shelah, Alshich, and Ohr Hachaim.

It pointed the Jewish Press interview (of Eliyahu Munk, without title) and an Aish article, Looking for Mr. Munk.

Similarly, I asked o3-mini model this question:

Me: Does Eliyahu Munk, the prolific translator of rabbinic texts, have rabbinic ordination?

First, the behind-the-scenes reasoning.

Deciphering Eliyahu Munk's ordination

I’m gathering details about Eliyahu Munk's rabbinic ordination. The Aish.com article mentions he received it in 1985, but it’s not explicitly clear if he is the Eliyahu Munk known for translating texts.

Confirming details

I’m piecing together biographical snippets, noting Eliyahu Munk’s ordination by Rabbi Joseph Karo in Safed and Damascus, while clarifying these details with other sources.

Confirming ordination

I’ve established that Eliyahu Munk received rabbinic ordination in 1985, as indicated in various sources. The next step is to ensure that this info pertains to the translator of rabbinic texts specifically.

Clarifying connections

The Jewish tradition’s lineage of translators, including family name overlaps, points out the need to distinguish between Elie Munk and Eliyahu Munk. Eliyahu Munk, ordained in 1985, teaches and translates.

Then, this was the output to the question:

Yes, he does. According to several accounts of his life, Eliyahu Munk received rabbinic ordination—one source recounts that he “received rabbinic ordination in ’85” during his studies before he began his long career translating classic rabbinic texts into English. This ordination, along with his extensive background in Jewish education, underpins his authority and deep familiarity with the texts he translates.

For example, in a reflective piece titled “Looking for Mr. Munk” on AishFL, the author recalls meeting Mr. Munk, who mentioned his ordination in 1985, marking an important milestone in his lifelong commitment to Torah and Jewish scholarship (aishfl.com)

. This detail is consistent with other biographical references to his career as a teacher and translator of rabbinic literature.

Thus, Eliyahu Munk not only is renowned for his prolific translations but also has the formal rabbinic ordination that reinforces his scholarly credentials.

The problem with this RAG (retrieval augmented generation) and this “reasoning” is that it thoroughly misinterpreted the source that it thought it fetched.

Namely, the author of the Aish piece is Rabbi Tzvi Nightingale, and he is the one who was ordained in 1985. I’ll prove it from the two versions of the Aish article that different ChatGPT models invokes, either from Aish.com or AishFL.com (since Rabbi Nightingale is in Florida). The former gives an actual bio for Rabbi Nightingale, but otherwise the articles are the same. The relevant shared paragraphs:

Mr. Munk loved being Jewish, was proud of being Jewish, and conveyed that love and pride. He became my first true rebbe [mentor]. Because of him I began to go to shul every week.

This took place when I was 11. I continued attending synagogue well after my Bar Mitzvah. When I was 15 I started to read novels by Chaim Potok, and that inspired me even more to learn about Judaism. Potok painted a picture of learning Torah and living a Jewish life that I knew all my grandparents were keenly aware of, but that I had missed out on. For a hundred generations Jews were living the way Potok was describing and I was not about to let it end with me. I ended up meeting a high school student at an Orthodox shul I began attending who invited me to learn at Ner Yisrael Yeshiva in Toronto. There I hooked up with a couple of young rabbis who taught me until I heard of Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem, where I studied from the summer of '79, received rabbinic ordination [in the Florida version, extra words: in ’85) , and ended up in Florida where I am presently the director of Aish South Florida.

So who received the ordination in 1985? Tzvi Nighingale.

In the Aish.com article, mention of 1985 is in the author biography at the bottom:

More About The Author

Rabbi Tzvi Nightingale

Rabbi Tzvi Nightingale is Director of Aish South Florida. Tzvi grew up in Toronto, Canada, home of the perennially losing Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team. He attended Aish Jerusalem in the summer of 1979, determined to gain access to great Jewish works and thinkers such as the Talmud and Maimonides. Little did he know that it would take far longer than two months; he ended up staying in Israel for nine years. He received rabbinic ordination in 1985 and met his wife Karen, who grew up in London and is the great-granddaughter of the former chief rabbi of Meshed, Iran. As can only happen in Israel, Canadian-Polish-Jewish became intertwined with British-Israeli-Persian. Rabbi Nightingale has been involved in Aish South Florida since 1989 and has been Executive Director since 1993. During that time he has met over 20,000 people who have attended Aish programs, but he does not remember all of their names. In the meantime, watching his beloved Maple Leafs not win a championship since 1967 has taught Rabbi Nightingale the importance of patiently waiting for the arrival of Moshiach.

It is clearly about Tzvi Nightingale.

It was good that the reasoning model was able to disambiguate between different Eliyahu Munks who received ordination (see the reasoning paragraphs), but it is pretty bad that, despite this, the o3-mini model so badly botched understanding straightforward paragraphs. It saw an article with a bio of Munk, and then was confused by change of topic to the author’s own biography.

Meanwhile, someone with deeper domain knowledge could have performed a better analysis, and deduced that Eliyahu Munk did not receive semicha. After all, the title was “Looking for Mr. Munk”. In the story, he is the author’s third-grade teacher in Hebrew school, teaching a Judaic Studies class. Why is he not referred to as Rabbi Munk, if he had ordination? Indeed, the author, Rabbi Nightingale, has ordination, and is addressed by his former teacher as “Rabbi Nightingale”, in a letter signed by “Eliyahu Munk”. The disparity throughout would be extremely chutzpadik if Eliyahu Munk had semicha. But, ChatGPT is not attuned to such nuance, to be able to take cues from absence of title or an alternative title.

It isn’t solid proof, but it certainly seems indicative.

ChatGPT was willing to accept the correction. With the 4o model:

Me: That is not what those sources say. Rather, the author of the article, Rabbi Tzvi Nightingale received rabbinic ordination in 1985. And he discusses Eliyahu Munk

ChatGPT: Apologies for the earlier confusion.

Upon reviewing the sources, it appears that Eliyahu Munk's educational background includes attending Rav Joseph Breuer's yeshiva in Frankfurt for 10 hours each week during his youth. However, there is no explicit information confirming that he received formal rabbinic ordination. His significant contributions to Jewish scholarship are primarily through his extensive translations of classic Torah commentaries into English.

LLMs clearly have a ways to go.

Updates: See Happy’s comment, about DeepSeek. But you should not be using DeepSeek.

Also, I just noticed this snippet about Eliyahu Munk’s Semicha, according to the “reasoning”:

I’m piecing together biographical snippets, noting Eliyahu Munk’s ordination by Rabbi Joseph Karo in Safed and Damascus, while clarifying these details with other sources.

No Eliyahu Munk was ordained by Rav Yosef Karo in Sefad and Damascus! This was drawn from a summary on the Eliyahu Munk: Translator web page, where the referent is the Alshich!

Midrash of Rabbi Moshe Alshich on the Torah 3 volumes(2nd Edition)
by Rabbi Moshe Alshich, Eliyahu Munk, Moses Alshekh, Moïse Alshekh
Hardcover, 1,164 Pages, Published 2000 by Urim Publications
ISBN-13: 978-965-7108-13-0, ISBN: 965-7108-13-6

"Translator: Eliyahu Munk The author, Rabbi Moshe ben Chayim Alshich (hakadosh), was born in Adrianople in 1508 and died in Damascus about the year 1600. He was Rabbi in Safed and Damascus, ordained by Rabbi Joseph Karo. Although he wrote no fewer than 1400 responsa, his fame spread due to his eloquence as a preacher. He was probably the most popular preacher of his century. His Torah commentary is based on sermons delivered throughout h ..."