Reading Notes B: The Rabbi's Bogey-Man
The Rabbi's Bogey Man
Wow. Where to start? This story is very strange. It describes a science-minded Rabbi who manages to bring not one, but TWO, robots to life.
- The Rabbi builds himself a servant and he brings it to life by putting a piece of paper in its mouth with the Sacred Name of God written on it
- I looked this up, and traditionally the Hebrew name of God is considered to holy to say and scribes wouldn't write it when transcribing either
- The Rabbi can control the robot lady with his thought as long as he remembers to take the parchment out of her mouth
- She lights some stuff on fire and the king arrests the Rabbi and makes him build another robot to prove that he wasn't responsible for the actions of the first one (he has to prove that the robot acted somewhat on its own)
- the second robot is a man and much larger, he is pretty scary and he tries to destroy the Holy Scriptures so that he can be free to kill all the Jews
- the Rabbi takes the parchment from the Bogey Man's mouth and he falls down dead
This story was a wild read from start to finish. It was unlike a lot of the other myths in this reading - it's not set in ancient Israel or based on any characters from the Tanakh. I think this would be an easy story to retell in a different context. I used the word "robot" in my notes, but that's not really what the myth is describing, it's just a similar idea. That's the direction I will probably take my story this week.
| Ava, an artificial intelligence/robot, who turns against her creator in the film Ex Machina. |
Comments
Post a Comment