Who Fashioned A Golem? (article preview)

Here’s my Jewish Link article for this week, link to Jewish Link / summary post later, once it goes up.

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A few Amoraim were capable of supernatural creation of beings (Sanhedrin 65b). Interpreting a verse in Yeshaya 59:2, “But your iniquities have been a separation between you and your God…”, Rava* explains that the truly righteous, those without iniquities, could create a world. Seemingly demonstrating this, Rava* created a gavra / man. He sent this golem before Rabbi Zeira*, who tried to speak to it. Since Rava did not embed a Large Language Model such as ChatGPT into his creation, the golem did not respond. Rabbi Zeira says “You are from the fellowship / colleagues / Sages – Return to your dust!” Next, Rav Chanina and Rav Oshaya would sit every erev Shabbat, engage in the mystical work Sefer Yetzira. Thereby, a third-born calf, a delicacy, would be created for them, which they’d eat on Shabbat. This mystical calf-creation seems a further demonstration of Rava’s Biblical interpretation about righteous people’s creative capabilities.

Golem, return to your dust!

Much can be said about the ideas in this sugya, relating to the ethics / halachics of creating embodied artificial intelligence, especially now that some claim we’re approaching AGI (artificial general intelligence). Upstream to any such analysis, I would like to establish the identities of the Amoraim in the sugya and how they might relate to one another. For instance, did Rava truly make both the Biblical interpretation and the golem, or was one of them Rabba? What other mystical capabilities might Rava possess? Can we compare Rava’s actions with other Rava positions? Was Rabbi Zeira a colleague or teacher? Was Rav Chanina in Rabbi Zeira’s same scholastic generation, or earlier? All this could impact the halachic weight we grant any Amora’s position or action.

Rava, Rabba, and Rabbi Abba

Rava was a fourth-generation Amora active in / eventually led Pumbedita academy. Rabba (bar Nachmani) was a third-generation Amora who was active in / eventually led Pumbedita academy. We know so much about Rabba and Rava that I won’t elaborate here. Either name is a contraction of a rabbinic title (Rabbi / Rav) and Abba. Their names differ only in the final letter, aleph / heh. Are we sure the same person (Rava or Rabba) both interpreted the verse and fashioned the golem?

There are also Amoraim named the full Rabbi Abba. According to Rav Aharon Hyman, Rabbi Abba I was a second- and third-generation Babylonian Amora who eventually ascended to the Land of Israel. His lifetime overlapped with first-generation Rav, whom he quoted Rav times; we don’t observe direct conversation. He also quoted Shmuel. Later, he sat as a student before the next generation, Rav Huna and Rav Yehuda, and interacted with their students in turn as colleagues. Those third-generation students include Rabbi Zeira I, Rav Yosef, and Rav Kahana. (The caveat is that there’s more than one Rabbi Abba, Rabbi Zeira, and Rav Kahana; deciding who’s who in each sugya requires judgement calls and knowledge of still other sugyot and rabbinic biographies.) Eventually, Rabbi Abba went to Israel, where he interacted with Rabbi Zeira I, who had moved to Israel some time earlier.

Rabbi Abba II (bar Matna) was a fifth-generation Amora from the Land of Israel who studied under Rabbi Zeira and later moved to Bavel. (There’s often a scholastic generation’s discrepancy between Bavel and Israel). After Rav Yosef’s death,