I'm deeply grateful to announce the launch of @yochaiwiki - https://t.co/TDLSvY8bVX - a new way to learn Jewish texts.
The printing press made the library portable and cheap. @SefariaProject made the Jewish bookshelf free. And we're deeply grateful to them for enabling us to build atop their treasure trove. Claude and ChatGPT now make information free. But texts by themselves don't drive learning; information doesn't drive transformation. And Knowledge isn't "chiddush" (insight). The next frontier is personalized guidance through the library and the formation of deliberate practice.
Yochai is a Socratic AI "chevruta" or learning guide, powered by a foundational library of 1,000+ primary sources from the Jewish canon, (and a knowledge graph of 2.5M entities, and 16M entity relationships, 375,000 searchable passages, and 17,000 canonical concepts that we developed around our own ontology). Yochai, uniquely, takes you directly to the sources and pushes you to discover and articulate your own insights about them.
In addition to asking Yochai questions of life adviceor intellectual and spiritual interest, you can read the texts with Yochai's "lenses" in the margins, ask Yochai to produce lesson plans and source sheets, divrei Torah, textual outlines, and lit reviews, all backstopped by a verified library.
Yochai takes its name from Shimon Bar Yochai, 2nd century sage and purported author of my namesake.
Parshat Vayikra: Smelling the Future https://t.co/ZIgI9AjZoS
A Derasha from Parshat Vayikra. Going to start sharing my Derashot on Substack. Feel free to follow :)
@harari_yuval is fundamentally mistaken on this.
Torah authority has never been distilled into simple encyclopedic knowledge of texts.
It has always encompassed a plethora of other factors that are distinctively human.
Piety, for example.
But also social variables like charisma, heredity, and power.
If the last 2,170 years are anything to go on, in the foreseeable future people will continue to seek Torah authority in humans rather than in bots.
Translation of a beautiful drasha from Rav Shagar's sefer on Sukkot, titled “Zekhor Ahavat Kedumim” – Remember the Love of Our Youth.
https://t.co/wM6G7kg3BN
As Daf Yomi finishes Horayos, sharing a piece I recently wrote about Par He’elem Davar and Judicial Accountability in Jewish and US Law.
https://t.co/NGiL6aNOYM
importance of each Jew we must look at them from up close and see how they each play a vital role in composing the masterpiece that is the Jewish people.
3/3
The Pinimius of Pointilism:
Seurat created this masterpiece with millions of small dots not noticeable to the eye unless you go up close to the painting. You then recognize the importance of each dot and the role that it plays in the grand scheme of the painting.
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Rav Chaim of Sanz once explained why Jews are compared to stars in the
Torah: stars, being physically larger than our earth, appear so small to us—sometimes not visible at all— because we look at them from so far away. So too by Klal Yisrael, to understand the grandeur and
2/3
The Radomsker zy''a explains that ��בלות comes from the word סבלנות and therefore
והוצאתי אתכם מתחת סבלות מצרים
means that we were redeemed from Mitzrayim through the merit of our patience.
L'chaim to patience and deep breaths in a time when we need it most.
Gut Shabbas :)
4 Cheshvan: R'Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piacezna Rebbe (1889-1943). Tragically killed in the Holocaust. His entire life he continued to inspire others & maintain strong emuna even under enormous duress. Author - Aish Kodesh, Chovas HaTalmidim, Bnei Machshava Tova ect.