Part I - Being and Humanity

What does it mean to be human? It’s a big question, and a perennial one. But in a new context it gains a new shape. Not long ago, I attended a summit devoted to Judaism’s unfolding encounter with artificial intelligence, something I’ve long been trying to ignore. At short notice, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion responding to this weighty query.

The first thing that sprang to mind was the traditional Jewish designation of the human being as the medaber, the speaking creature. Much has already been made of the possibility that humanity’s intelligence might be outpaced by AI, and the potential consequences for our understanding of what it means to be human. Comparatively little has yet been said about whether AI’s accelerating capacity to successfully execute language-based tasks should similarly destabilize our concept of humanity. Large language models (LLMs) are the crucial element in systems that can already mimic human language patterns in all the complex and sophisticated genres human cultures have created—to a degree of success completely unimaginable just a few years ago.

AI can now generate audio files in which artificial voices simulate a podcast conversation on the topic of your choice. The conversation might be a bit flat, but that could be said of many linguistic exchanges that unfold between real humans too. With more sophisticated prompts, more pep can be produced.

To begin to speak of Jewish concepts of humanity, we must start with the Torah’s account of the creation of the first human, Adam, at the beginning of the book of Genesis. The relevant verses are subject to many layers of commentary and interpretation by revered sages throughout the ages. But anyone who glances at the Torah’s opening chapter will notice that Divine speech is the animating force of all existence: “And G‑d said, let there be light. And light came to be.”1 As the sages of the Mishnah put it, “With ten utterances the world was created.”2

When we arrive at the creation of Adam, however, this changes.

G‑d doesn’t issue a command that automatically results in the coming to be of humans, as occurs in the case of the sun and stars, flowers and fauna, birds and beasts. Instead, G‑d speaks in a more conversational tone, saying, “Let us make man,” after which, “G‑d made the man.”3 Here the Divine utterance and the act of creation lose their synonymity. The relationship of the Divine word to the human being differs from the relationship of the Divine word to all other created things. But what is the nature and meaning of this difference?

A distinction made by one of the earliest and most authoritative Torah interpreters, Onkelos the Convert (c. 35–120 CE), gives us a clue: Nefesh chayah is a formulation the Torah uses to describe both animals and humans. Yet Onkelos provides two different translations. In the case of animals, nefesh chayah is rendered as “living creature.” In the case of Adam, it comes to mean “speaking spirit.” Thus:

G‑d said, let the earth bring forth living creatures, each according to its kind: animals, creeping things, and beasts of the land …4

G‑d formed the man out of dust from the earth, and He blew into his nostrils the soul of life, and the man became a speaking spirit.5

Nachmanides—the great rabbinic polymath of the medieval era—cites other commentators who described the special “soul of life” given to Adam as the “intellectual soul” that distinguishes the human from other creatures. “But,” Nachmanides continues, “it seems the opinion of Onkelos is [that] … this intellectual soul, which G‑d blew into Adam’s nostrils, became within him a speaking soul.”6 For Onkelos, in other words, humanity is distinguished not by possession of superior intellect but by the capacity to speak.

The juxtaposition of the above-cited verses exposes another distinction between the human and the beast: “Animals, creeping things, and beasts of the land” emerge from the earth fully formed as “living creatures.” Their souls inhabit their bodies from the outset. In contrast, Adam’s body and the soul are not initially combined. First, G‑d formed the humanoid body “out of dust from the earth,” and only afterward “blew into his nostrils the soul of life.” Then a third thing happened—“The man became a speaking spirit.”

Strikingly, the intellectual soul attains the additional quality of eloquence, “a speaking spirit,” only once it has entered the human body. Yet, even before entering the body—Nachmanides tells us—the soul had a unique quality that utterly set it apart from the souls of animals, and even from the purely intellectual spirits (sichli’im nivdalim), colloquially known as angels. For Nachmanides, the human soul is not any kind of created entity, but is the very breath of G‑d’s own self: “The soul did not come to man from the elements … nor as a devolution from the sichli’im nivdalim. Rather, it is the spirit of the great G‑d … For he who breathes into the nostrils of another person gives into him something from his own soul. And accordingly the verse says, ‘The soul of G‑d gives them understanding.’”7

So what sets the human soul apart? Not its intelligence. Angels possess that too. The answer, instead, is twofold: 1) The human soul is Divine, and 2) when embodied, the human soul speaks.

The souls of all other creatures are products of Divine speech. The soul of a human is the Divine capacity of speech itself. This linguistic model of the soul, rooted in the interpretations of Onkelos and Nachmanides, would be extensively developed by the chassidic masters. To be human, they taught, is to carry the unspoken word of G‑d into the world, therein to articulate transcendence.8

According to Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi—the founder of Chabad who wove Judaism’s mystical and legal traditions into a coherent and accessible philosophy of Judaism—there are two kinds of language at play in the Torah’s account of cosmic creation:

1) Public language, or the language of cosmic being.

2) Private language, or the language of G‑d and human being.

The public language of the cosmos is G‑d’s speech as it has already been articulated and realized as the fixed system colloquially called nature. The chassidic masters call this “the language of speech,” likening it to reductive words already spoken and now available for thoughtless parroting. This is language without depth, the language of lip-service, of memes and miscommunication.

The private language of humanity is G‑d’s inner capacity to speak anew, to intervene in nature, to overcome the infinite gap between sublime Divinity and the very dust of this lowly earth. The chassidic masters call this “the language of thought,” likening it to an intuition that is still on the path to crystalized formulation. Such language runs deeper than any already-available sentence and exceeds it. This is true language, the language of the heart, through which profound meaning is communed across chasms.

“Minerals, plants, and animals,” Rabbi Shneur Zalman writes, “derive from the language of speech … They are raised up to their root by Adam, who derives from the language of thought.”9

Part 2 - Soul and Language

Private language, or “the language of thought,” is characterized by the linguistic ability to say what has not yet been said, to articulate intimacies. To speak such a language is to reach into the inner well that transcends eloquence, drawing forth words and sentences that communicate real meaning. Private language, accordingly, is not some sort of secret code, remaining unspoken and inscrutable to the public. It begins within, but forms a communicative bridge across the gap between the inner self and the outside world. To speak the private language of G‑d and humanity is to take a linguistic leap across the gap separating unspeakable transcendence from the mundane and the prosaic.

For Rabbi Shneur Zalman, this gap and its overcoming is the definitive feature of the human, the speaking creature. The gap between the Divine soul and the earthly body, he taught, is the gap uniquely bridged by human language.10

To understand the nature and magnitude of this gap, let’s consider two very different models of the relationship between body and soul. These models will also provide important context for Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s philosophical intervention.

In the Aristotelian model, the soul is merely the form of the body. It is not a fundamentally different sort of entity, but the organizing principle that brings the different parts of the body together as a single organism. In fact, without a body the soul doesn’t exist at all. This is the doctrine of hylomorphism (“matter-formism”). The complication, or problem, with this model is that the human soul has a capacity that seems to exceed the bounds of mere bodily function or form, namely the ability to think and grasp all kinds of knowledge, including complex, abstract, and immaterial concepts.11

In the Cartesian model, by contrast, the soul and the body are fundamentally different entities. While the substance of the body is material, the substance of the soul is immaterial thought. The body occupies physical space; the soul does not. The soul thinks; the body does not. This is the doctrine of mind-body dualism, in which the word “soul” and the word “mind” can be used interchangeably, and body and soul can exist and function completely independently of one another. The complication in this model is why and how these substantively distinct entities ever become connected. The technical term for this is “the interaction problem”: Why and how does a material body ever become inhabited by an immaterial mind?12

While Rabbi Shneur Zalman doesn’t explicitly reference either Aristotle or Descartes, these two models map very neatly onto his explanation of the Torah’s distinction between animals and humans. In the case of animals, he says, the soul is commensurate with the body: “Although they are two levels, one higher than the other, they are nevertheless adjacent to each other. Therefore they can connect with each other, that their creation should occur all at once … and there isn’t a gap between them.” But the human soul “additionally has … the intellectual and speaking soul,” which is “far and distant” from the body, “and therefore it could not emerge together with the body as one.”13

In an expanded version of this teaching—written and published by Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s son and successor, Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch—the point is expressed in the distinctly Aristotelian terms of form and matter:

“The body of the animal came forth simultaneously with its form and the vitality of its soul … for, clearly, its body and materiality are close—proximately and relationally one—with its soul and spiritual form. That is, its matter and form are at least commensurate … Hence they connect, unite, and partner together in their emergence … literally as one creature, from one utterance …14 By contrast, in the case of the creation and formation of man with his soul and body, his soul is very exalted, a relational leap from the materiality of his body … therefore they weren’t created together with a single utterance, for they have no connection and relationship with one another at all.”15

Aristotle’s hylomorphic model, in other words, works in the case of animals. In the Torah’s account, indeed, each animal is created as a single hylomorphic creature, with body and soul emerging together from the earth. In the case of humanity, however, the Aristotlean model can’t hold. Instead, in the case of Adam’s creation, the Torah’s account is more aligned with the Cartesian model: Body and soul are two completely different sorts of entities, utterly unconnected. They are created independently and only brought together by the act of G‑d, who forcefully blew “the soul of life” into the nostrils of the man formed “out of dust from the earth.”

At this point, however, the Torah—as interpreted by Onkoles, Nachmanides, and the Chabad masters—introduces the element of language, which is either missing or marginal in the Aristotelian and Cartesian models: Adam’s body isn’t simply animated by the Divine soul. He doesn’t simply become “a living creature.” Rather he becomes “a speaking spirit.” The human soul, on this account, shouldn’t merely be conceived of in terms of form or intellect. But rather in terms of language.

Language, according to Rabbi Shneur Zalman, is not a mere symptom or product of intelligence. Words and letters aren’t simply empty symbols manipulated by an intelligent soul to codify and communicate thoughts and feelings. “Instead,” he taught, language “is brought into being from the essentiality of the soul, wherein the twenty-two letters of the alphabet are anchored.”16

In an epistle appended to the Tanya we find a similar statement: “Annunciation of the consonants and vowels transcends conscious and understandable intelligence. Rather, it is from the hidden intelligence and the pre-cognition within the speaking soul.”17 Several texts record Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s statement: “The human soul is filled with letters.”18 These letters, he explains elsewhere, are not superimposed on the soul but are substantively one with the soul itself. They are not like letters inked on parchment, which are not themselves the parchment upon which they are inked. “Engraved letters” are a more appropriate analogy, as they “are carved into the substance and essence of a stone, and are not a superimposed entity. So it is with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Their source is in pre-cognition, in the desire of the soul, and thus they transcend thought and even the substance of conscious intelligence.”19

Communication, accordingly, is not merely one function of the human soul among many. Communication, or communion, is instead the very substance of the human soul, the very substance of soulfulness.

For the Chabad masters, this conception of soul and language explains many aspects of human phenomenology. Among them, the fact that the same idea can be expressed in a huge variety of verbal formulations, whether across different languages or within the same language. This, they argue, is because language does not begin as a set system of symbols and sounds with assigned meanings and prescribed oral techniques for producing them. In origin, language transcends any particular idea, and any particular mode or system of linguistic expression. In origin, language is innate to the soul itself. It is the innate ability of the soul to express its inner self, to artfully articulate abstraction, to place profundity within prose.

The innately engraved communicative capacity of the linguistic soul is endlessly elastic. Yet the actualization of this capacity gives particular and contained definition to the self, through the linguistic strictures (images, words, and sentences) that give thought and speech coherence. Moreover, Rabbi Shneur Zalman explains, in the process of articulation a gap emerges between the self and its linguistic expression: “When the twenty-two letters are drawn forth from the soul into thought and speech, becoming vested in materially embodied letters of speech … this is analogous to letters inscribed in ink, which are different in substance from the parchment.”

The articulated word departs from the engraved language of the soul. Nevertheless, Rabbi Shneur Zalman emphasizes, the speaking soul’s breath is still likened to parchment which holds the form of the letters inked upon it. The ink and the parchment are substantively distinct, “and nevertheless they become one.” Likewise, “it is the soul that speaks, and without it there is no speaker and no words, just as it is impossible for letters to be formed from ink without parchment.”20 Language, we might say, clings to language. Through language, the gap of language is overcome.

The Aristotelian and Cartesian models alike are built on the axiomatic assumption of a binary division between form and matter, soul and body. In contrast, Judaism’s linguistic model of the soul begins from a place of oneness, and then charts a spectrum of relational interplay, semantic transferability, and resonant attachment. The soul does not belong to one side of a binary or another. The soul, rather, is the Divine interface via which all binaries are overcome, the interface via which Divine meaning can be coherently communicated across the cosmic chasms of creation. The soul draws forth its essential communicative capacity and infuses it within the linguistic configurations of crystallizing thoughts and verbalized formulations. The extraneous symbols of a particular linguistic form become attached to the soulful meanings they are construed to express.

Part 3 - Superficiality and Integrity

At the very end of the nineteenth century, not long after the invention of the telephone, the fifth master in Chabad’s dynastic line—Rabbi Shalom DovBer Schneersohn (“Rashab,” 1860-1920)—wrote an exceptionally incisive and systematic treatise on speech, creativity, and the soul. Building on sources discussed above, he wrote that language derives neither from the vocal apparatus of the throat and mouth nor from the “radiance and revelation” of the soul, but has a “unique root and source” in “the essence of the soul.”21

For Rabbi Shalom DovBer, the distinction between “essence” and “revelation” is crucially important. Any “revelation” of the self, however pure, is already a departure from the self as it is in its “essence.” So to say that language is rooted directly in the essence of the soul, rather than being a product of the soul’s revelatory expression, is to assert that a speech act need not be regarded as a superficial departure from the essence. To speak with integrity, rather, is to discover the essential self.22

“This,” Rabbi Shalom DovBer continues, “is the difference between a human speaker and a speaking bird.” Some species of birds are famed for their ability to mimic human speech. “Yet they are not given the title medaber at all, because their speech is merely the result of having been trained to move the various parts of their vocal apparatus, and thereby words are produced. Accordingly, the vocal apparatus is the source of the words, which is not the case with the medaber at all. For the human speaker is called so specifically on account of the linguistic capacity of the soul, which is the source of speech, as has been explained.”23

Of course, the telephone isn’t mentioned explicitly. But this new method of mechanically reproduced speech probably wasn’t far from Rabbi Shalom DovBer’s mind when he invoked the more traditional parable of the talking bird. In earlier chassidic sources it is usually invoked to illustrate the capacity of novel phenomena to elicit delight. Here, however, the parrot is used to highlight the distinction between the soulful nature of human language and the mechanical nature of language-like noises produced artificially, which is to say superficially.24

This distinction, for Rabbi Shalom DovBer, has little or nothing to do with intelligence or intelligibility, and everything to do with the source of linguistic formulation. There may be all sorts of ways to mechanically produce intelligible linguistic formulations, but only humans discover their souls through speaking.

According to the Chabad masters, human language does not begin at the external point of verbalization and articulation, nor even in the higher reaches of feeling and thought, emotion and cognition. Human language begins, rather, as the unarticulated substance of the soul itself, engraved in the essence of human being. The source of human language is not superficiality, but integrity. Human speech is a projection of self, a formulation of identity, a shaping of the speaker’s persona into legible form, a process of becoming. It is this integrity that distinguishes human speech from other forms of communication; the speaking creature from the telephone, from the parrot, and even from the angels.

In 1955, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn of righteous memory (1902-1994), illustrated this point with a story:

Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Laidi once passed through the city of Shklov, whose scholars were known for their skepticism toward the new chassidic movement. While there, he delivered a Torah teaching which included the following statement: “Human souls possess integrity, but angels are superficial.”25 This statement incited a storm of protest. How could he have the audacity to say that angels are superficial?! The local scholars demanded that a canonical rabbinic source be cited in support of this pronouncement.

After waiting for the commotion to subside, Rabbi Shneur Zalman calmly quoted the following passage from the Talmud: “Said Rabbi Tanchum, a person should never deviate from the local custom, for Moses ascended to heaven [to receive the Torah] and ate no bread. Likewise, the heavenly angels descended below [to visit Abraham] and ate bread.” This is followed by the Talmudic retort: “You think they ate bread?! Rather, they made it seem as if they ate.”

In the case of Moses, a human being, the Talmud does not question the premise that he indeed did not eat during the forty days he spent in heaven. In the case of the angels, by contrast, the Talmud concludes that they made a show of eating, but didn’t actually eat. Such pretense, Rabbi Shneur Zalman said, is synonymous with superficiality. Moses too could have merely pretended not to eat. But that wasn’t the case. As a human he acted with integrity.26

After sharing the story of Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s exchange with the scholars of Shklov, the Rebbe continued to elaborate on the difference between angels and human souls:

What a soul shares with an angel, he said, is that both are ambassadors of G‑d, tasked with manifesting the divine within the cosmos. What sets them apart from one another is that the soul’s mission of divine revelation is its entire identity; its ambassadorship is integral to its being. An angel, by contrast, is a spiritual creature with an identity of its own; each personifies a spiritual ideal, whether kindness, judgement, or beauty. Secondarily, they place that persona at the disposal of G‑d.

The divine tasks angels are charged with are thus overlaid, superficially, upon their being. Unlike angels, which are created entities, the human soul originates within the divine. Its divine purpose, accordingly, isn’t ovelaid upon its being, but is actually synonymous with its being.

This paradigm of human integrity also extends to the particular dynamic of language. Souls and angels can be understood as two dimensions of divine language. Each soul and each angel is a conduit for divine revelation, just as words are conduits for meaning. Words are symbols with a superficial form, a prescribed and set structure, which makes them legible to the reader or the listener who receives the message they mediate. But that outer form and structure is a mere shell or container, and remains hollow unless it is endowed with luminous meaning by someone who speaks or writes with integrity. Such luminous meaning is the inner dimension of language. The word, ideally, becomes a transparent vehicle for the inner significance it has been chosen to carry.

Actually, the Rebbe emphasizes, the inner dimension of language has nothing to do with the external formulations that carry it. As has already been noted, the same meaning can be conveyed with a whole range of different linguistic formulations, and in a whole range of different languages. The inner dimension of language is nothing more and nothing less than the meaning the speaker or writer endows it with. The external form is superficially imposed on that meaning in order to make it legible and communicable to others.

This difference between the external word and the inner meaning it contains is precisely the difference between an angel and a human soul. The external word is the superficial language of the angels, the inner meaning is the integral language of the human soul.27

***

At the AI summit I was asked about how Torah law, and the demands it makes on the individual, can sometimes come into conflict with our sense of self, with our human identity. I began my response by broadening the question. In addition to the Torah’s specific laws, it also encompasses a larger value system—indeed a larger literary canon, together with a whole set of interpretive tools, cultural vectors and theological paradigms—which can often feel radically at odds with the mainstream of contemporary culture.

To live in accord with the Torah’s world of meaning and ideals while also remaining embedded in contemporary life and culture, is therefore to live astride a deep cultural gap. This is how I try to live my life. In my experience, however, this gap doesn’t put my sense of self at odds with the Torah’s demands. Instead, I experience this gap—and its overcoming—as the medium through which my self is discovered. Without Torah, I don’t think I could possibly distinguish which of my thoughts, feelings, and opinions are my own, and which I have simply absorbed from my immediate cultural context. Torah, especially as a lived path of daily practice, stands as an anchor of identity that doesn’t instantly adapt to the mood of the moment, which all too often homogenizes morality, culture, and social expectation into a vague sludge of unexamined assumptions.

The gap between Torah and contemporary culture is aligned with the gap between the private language of G‑d and the public language of nature. This is the gap that human language negotiates and crosses, extending from the unarticulated essence of the self into the verbalized realm of shared meaning, legibility, and explanation. Through language, the gap of language is overcome. At the same time, it is precisely the gap of language that rescues our words from superficial mimicry. The gap of language makes it possible for humans to speak with integrity.

As I was writing this essay, I read an essay on the art of the impersonal essay. Impressively, the author mentioned neither artificial intelligence nor large language models. One line especially resonated with me: “If my own ‘I’ remains a various thing,” she wrote, “it is its very variousness that forces me to acknowledge the points of continuity: the fundamentals.”28

First, G‑d formed Adam’s body “out of dust from the earth.” Afterwards, G‑d “blew into his nostrils the soul of life.” Thereby, “Adam became a speaking spirit.”