Making kiddush when you’re left by yourself is as much fun as playing tennis with no one on the other side of the net – although sometimes you have no choice. True, you can go about practicing your serve, or, in my case, perusing a stack of articles printed out from sources ranging from Lehrhaus and Mosaic to The New Yorker while I’m tasting my bourbon, herring, and coffee. But there’s something missing. As the sign says, ‘Group therapy practiced here,’ which sort of explains what it’s all about. Yes, you need a group of participants to make a go of it, and it just so happened that ‘the group,’ currently Ezra and sometimes Shoshana with occasional add-ons, was off to Eilat that particular Shabbat, leaving me alone with memories of kiddushes from bygone days. Maybe there’s something to learn from all this; maybe there isn’t. Either way….
Month: December 2025
AI, Oy, Yoy, Yoy
“I’m your personal AI assistant. I can help with any questions about your site or account.” Anyone who knows me well is aware of my above-average verbal fluency. But that comes from a lifetime of communication with fellow members of my species, where with a little give and take, a little clarification, a smile, a gesture, I can get my point across, even if it involves a little effort on both sides. But with greater and greater frequency, I am (make that ‘we are’) being asked to have a dialog, a conversation with something non-human, in which you ask a question and an answer appears on your phone or computer. I’m not as clueless about AI as the current U.S. Secretary of Education, who confused AI with A-1, a bottled marinade you can slather on a steak, but I’m never satisfied by outperforming the dumbest person in the room.
