Purim Thoughts and Roundup
1] This morning on WhatsApp, the following challenge was going around:
Finish this pasuk
והעיר שושן…
Some finished with the joyous verse, from Esther 8:15:
having an optimistic, positive (chassidic?) approach to life, while others tagged Esther 3:15,
perhaps a more negative (or some suggested) Litvish approach.
Since this is essentially text prediction, I wonder what our favorite text prediction algorithm would say?
Josh: Please complete the following sentence from the Megillah. והעיר שושן...
ChatGPT: שמחה וששון ליהודים, משתה וכרם לרבים. (And the city of Shushan celebrated and was glad, with feasting and drinking for the Jews, and a holiday. - Esther 8:15)
OK, so it finished it incorrectly in the Hebrew, but tagged the latter verse.
Josh: Are there any other ways of completing that sentence from the Megillah?
ChatGPT: No, there is only one way of completing that sentence from the Megillah. The sentence continues as follows: "וְשָׂמֵחַ" (ve-Sameach), which means "and was joyful." This is the only way this sentence appears in the Megillah.
Josh: What about והעיר שושן נבוכה, "but the city Shushan was perplexed", from Esther 3:15?
ChatGPT: You are correct! The verse in Esther 3:15 can also be completed as והעיר שושן נבוכה, which translates to "but the city of Shushan was perplexed". Thank you for the correction.
Josh: Why do you think that you arrived at the more joyous verse and not at the perplexing and troubling verse?
ChatGPT: As an AI language model, I generate responses based on patterns and associations learned from the large corpus of text that I was trained on. In this case, my training data includes many sources that may have contributed to my response, such as religious texts, literature, and historical documents. Without a specific context or query to guide my response, I may generate an answer that is more commonly associated with the given phrase or topic. In this case, the joyous verse may be more commonly associated with Purim, which is a holiday of celebration and joy, whereas the perplexing verse may not be as commonly associated with the holiday.
2] Speaking of predictive text, who here continued reciting "kein tihyeh lanu"?
3] I posted several Purim-related posts in the runup to Purim, so in case you missed them, here are some of them.
4] Mitchell First’s article in the Jewish Link about Esther’s Uncle, which is partly based on my old parshablog post, and Ari Zivitovsky’s article.
Speaking of roundups, my last real Purim roundup in my last blog, parshablog, is linked here. Links / descriptions include, for example, Rav Yaakov Emden’s Eight-Legged Camel.
And the obligation / prohibition of getting drunk on Purim, explained as nishtaneh hateva / societal realities changing (such as the advent of automobiles).
5] Finally, given my discussion of spoof Purim Pashkevils (where I was probably wrong to apply Poe’s Law),
I should link to this year’s spoof Purim Pashkevil by Elli Fischer:
condemning the use of Sefer Yetzira by a professor in AI, where people have difficulty distinguishing between this golem and people (the Turing Test). Related, a discussion on his podcast of a teshuva on whether a golem can count for a minyan.
Here’s another pashkevil from Natan Slifkin, back in 2011, banning science.
6] Purim and deadlines. Hearing the megillah is one of those things that can be very difficult, especially for parents dealing with kids. Someone asked me again this year when it happened. The problem involves getting the the reading on time (or if something needs addressing at the very start). If you miss verses at the beginning, the solution could be to read those verses yourself and catch up. But you cannot just catch another megillah reading later and hear just those beginning verses and then leave, because that would entail hearing the megillah out of order, which isn’t valid. And while there’s a four-way dispute about how much of the megillah one must read / head, we seem to hold like Rabbi Meir that all is required, not like the eponymous Rabbi Yehuda who says it is from Ish Yehudi.
There might be slight wiggle-room if we say (a) the night reading may not be the real requirement — see Mishnah and gemara; (b) we distinguish between saying the halacha is that we read it all (Rav) and all are nahagu / accustomed to act like Rabbi Meir (Rabbi Yochanan); (c) we might hold like the one Amora that Rabbi Yochanan doesn’t extend this holding like Rabbi Meir to the megillah. So if there is a real pinch, and it is after the fact, maybe we wouldn’t require the overburdened mother to hear a whole other megillah leining.
7] Quite Scribal Error-related, a lot of variants in the run up to Purim. There is zecher / zeicher in parashat Zachor. And in the megillah itself, lots of krei / ketiv alternations. I recall Rabbi Friedman, in his shteibel in Queens, reading both versions of all sorts of variants, including sorer / shorer beveito. This year in Beth Aaron, unless I missed it, I think the baal koreh only did one variation, which Sefaria marked as being an Ashkenazic / Sefardic switchoff, going back to להשמיד to read the three word phrase twice:
