When Artificial Intelligence Came to Life in 18th-Century Amsterdam

While serving as the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam in 1712, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi (1658-1718) published a collection of his responsa that would be known to posterity as his magnum opus. Possessed of deeply held convictions, he generated a number of controversies over the course of his rabbinic career: When his son, R. Jacob Emden, became a polemicist and inveterate opponent of Sabbatianism, he was following in the footsteps of his father. Some of the controversies generated by Hakham Tsevi’s responsa, however, would become vital only decades or centuries after his letters were published. This is particularly true of his responsum about golems, a once-obscure subject whose resonance has significantly increased in the age of artificial intelligence (AI).

Golems have held a special place in the Jewish imagination for millennia. Surely none is more famous than the one whose creation was ascribed to R. Judah Loew ben Bezalel (d. 1609). The golem of Prague, a legend that originated in the first decades of the 19th century, spawned a whole genre of literature and art. The roots of the golem story go back to talmudic and midrashic traditions; until 1712, however, no significant authority had ever imported a discussion of the golem into the realm of halakhah. As R. Tsevi Hirsch Shapira of Munkács (1868-1937) put it, Hakham Tsevi was the rosh hamedaberim, a pioneer in the field of those who spoke of the halakhic implications of the man-made man.

In addition to actual case law, included in Hakham Tsevi’s book of responsa were answers to questions that had never been posed to him by a querist. In one of them, he examined whether and to what extent a golem might be counted toward a minyan.

Hakham Tsevi may have been a rationalist, a pragmatist, and an anti-Sabbatian, but none of those identities would have precluded him from entertaining a question about a golem. As Maoz Kahana has pointed out, this was a time in which mechanization had become a source of fascination, and lines separating science and superstition were blurry, if at all discernible. Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle dabbled in alchemy. If Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591-1655), a mathematician and student of Galileo, could casually mention a creature created by Ibn Ezra or a woman formed by R. Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Hakham Tsevi could entertain the status of an anthropoid. The idea that an expert in practical kabbalah might use his know-how to produce a golem would hardly have strained credulity.

Hakham Tsevi had learned that his ancestor, R. Elijah of Chelm (d. 1583), had allegedly created a golem using the Sefer Yetsirah (Book of Creation), one of the earliest texts of Jewish mysticism. Citing his father, R. Jacob Emden gave a full account of the legend.

“As an aside, I’ll mention here what I heard from my father’s holy mouth regarding the [golem] created by his ancestor, the Gaon R. Elijah Ba’al Shem, of blessed memory. When [R. Elijah] saw that the golem was growing larger and larger, he feared that he would destroy the universe. He therefore removed the holy name [of God] that was still embedded in his forehead, thus causing him to disintegrate and return to dust. Nonetheless, while he was in the process of forcibly extracting the holy name from him, the golem injured him, scarring his face.”

What is the halakhic status, Hakham Tsevi wondered, of such a man-made creature? On the one hand, not having been born to a Jewish mother, a golem cannot be said to be Jewish. On the other, the Talmud taught that one who adopted a child was considered to have sired that child. And paraphrasing the Midrash, he noted that the handiwork of the righteous was likened to their progeny. In the end, he ruled that a golem could not be counted in a minyan. A talmudic incident in which R. Zera destroyed such a creature proved dispositive.

Beyond the conclusion of the matter, Hakham Tsevi also included a novel interpretation of a biblical verse that would prove to have important implications. In the aftermath of the Flood, God declared, “Whoever sheds the blood of a person, by people shall his blood be shed” (Gen. 9:6). But Hakham Tsevi rendered the verse thus: “Whoever sheds the blood of a person inside a person, his blood shall be shed.” That is to say, only a person who has developed as a fetus inside a woman can obtain the status of full personhood such that his killer would be guilty of a capital offense.

Never mind that there is no explicit exegesis to this effect in the Talmud. Hakham Tsevi’s novel formulation about what constitutes life would take on a life of its own. A golem—or any other artificial life form—cannot be considered a human life unless and until it issues from a human womb.

Shut Hakham Tsevi no. 93

I was conflicted [over the following question]: May a [golem] created using the Book of Creation - like the one described in [Tractate] Sanhedrin (65b) [which records that] Rava created a person—or like [the golem about which] people have testified [was created by] my ancestor, our rabbi and teacher, R. Elijah the chief jurist [and Baal Shem] of the holy community of Chelm—be counted toward [a quorum of] ten for matters that require a quorum—such as Kaddish and Kedushah?

Do we say that since it is written, And you shall sanctify me in the midst of the Children of Israel (Lev. 22:32), he may not be included [since he is not one of the Children of Israel]? Or perhaps because it was established in Sanhedrin (19b) that one who raises an orphan in his home is considered as though he sired him [the orphan] as it is written, “The five sons of Michal … (II Sam. 21:8); Did Michal give birth to them? Did not Meirav give birth to them? Rather, Meirav gave birth to them, but Michal raised them …” Here too, since he [the golem] is the handiwork of the righteous [who created him], he [falls under the] category of the Children of Israel, for the handiwork of the righteous is [likened to] their progeny.

It appears to me that [we can locate the solution in the Talmud] since we find that R. Zera said [to the golem], “You were created by [one of] our group. Return to your dust …” Which is to say, R. Zera killed him [the golem]. If one were to imagine that the golem had a function inasmuch as he [might be] included in a quorum for any matter of holiness [requiring a quorum], R. Zera would not have removed [the golem] from this world.

[Granted,] there is no prohibition of murder: For one may extrapolate from the verse (though there are alternative exegetical interpretations), One who sheds the blood of a man in a man, his blood shall be shed (Gen. 9:6), [that] only [the murder of] a person who was created within [the womb of] a person—namely, a fetus that was created in the womb of its mother—would render one guilty of murder—to the exclusion of [someone like] the person that Rava created, who was not formed in the womb of a woman. Nonetheless, if the golem had utility, R. Zera would not have removed him from the world. Clearly then, he may not be counted toward a quorum for a matter of holiness [that requires a quorum].

So it appears to me.
Tsevi Ashkenazi

By treating magic as a kind of science, a conflation that would have made sense to many of the most advanced minds of his day, Hakham Tsevi laid the groundwork for ethicists and lawmakers to grapple with the all-too-real implications of AI. The 18th-century rabbi might not have given us self-styled denizens of modernity the answer to our most pressing philosophical quandaries about what constitutes life, but at least he gave us the question.

For Hakham Tsevi, the matter of so-called artificial life was straightforward. The golem might have been alive, but it was little more than a soulless brute. Even prior to the technological innovations that would occasion a new series of debates, however, this ruling met with opposition. R. Tsadok Hakohen of Lublin (1823-1900) adopted the most radical position and maintained that the golem should in fact be considered human. R. Joseph Engel (1859-1920) entertained the possibility that the golem should be accorded the status of an eved kena’ani, that is, a gentile servant owned by a Jew, who was obliged to perform the same mitzvot as a Jewish woman. R. Joseph Rosen (1858-1936) thought a golem did not even rise to the level of an animal.

What inspired Hakham Tsevi to include a discussion of the golem among his responsa remains a matter of speculation. Noticing that Jacob Emden took up the issue as well, Moshe Idel suggests that Hakham Tsevi sought to justify the actions of his forebear, R. Elijah. “By their attempt to decree the Halakhic status of the Golem as ritualistically irrelevant, Tsevi and his son endeavored to retroactively absolve their ancestor from a dubious act [of killing a golem].” While Idel’s suggestion is certainly conceivable, it does not address the question of why the discussion would have taken the specific guise of who qualifies to be counted in a minyan.

Whether or not Hakham Tsevi had a desire to clear the name of an ancestor whom he never mentioned in any other context cannot be definitively known. What can be known is his explicit mission to minimize the degree to which mysticism can dictate halakhic norms. By penning a legal responsum about a being created by kabbalistic means, he not only subjected the mystical endeavor to halakhic scrutiny but also relegated the product of that endeavour to a status in which it was quite literally subservient to halakhah.

Having introduced the golem into the halakhic discourse, the responsum precipitated a series of discussions and debates: Could a golem, supervised by a Jew, perform ritual slaughter? Was a golem required to perform mitzvot? Would a golem’s corpse generate ritual impurity just like a human corpse? Inasmuch as the halakhah prohibits a woman from being secluded with a man in a locked room, would the same law apply in the case of a woman and a golem? Should a golem find a lost article, would it belong to him or his creator? And would that creator be financially responsible for damages caused by a golem?

For all but initiated practitioners of kabbalah, these questions remained squarely within the precincts of Aggadah, the decidedly nonlegal field of rabbinic discourse. By importing the golem from the land of legend into the realm of halakhah, Hakham Tsevi created a pathway for the topic to animate legal and ethical discussions with all-too-real present-day applications.

In our day, with the arrival of questions generated by modern scientific advances, Hakham Tsevi’s responsum has taken on new relevance. What is the halakhic status of a robot, a clone, or another form of AI? How might the status of a golem bear on matters of reproductive biotechnology or the disposition of human embryos? For ethicists and policymakers alike, Hakham Tsevi’s responsum has become required reading.