Siri, I’d like to know you better

By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF

It’s Saturday and I need to write a story – but wait a minute. It’s Shabbos – and you can’t push a pencil across paper on Shabbos, say the rabbis. The Chumash is silent on the topic. It forbids me making a fire. It forbids “work”, but even in the lexicon of G-d there was no word for pencil and there was no substance for what we call paper. So, use of it couldn’t have been prohibited. And they didn’t mention the TV Saturday football games, either.

Still, though we couldn’t work on the Sabbath, we Jews like to boast of the contributions we’ve made to the world: physics, medicine, music – all in a six-day week. The list is endless. You’ve heard the story of the Jewish scientist who discovered a cancer cure, Friday night at 2:00 a.m. He was declared a heretic and they shredded his formula. You believe it?

Well, why does no one brag about what one might call – to coin a phrase – “university ubiquity”. I’ve got Elijah on my mind. Elijah the prophet with a jonquil in his label, hand and hand with Spring, who reveals himself every Passover in every Seder (the Passover feast) in millions of Jewish homes. The same night at the same time in locations from Melbourne, Australia to Anchorage, Alaska. And by the way, he does this under the influence of eight million gulps of wine. Dead drunk and he still finds his way from Calcutta to Hushpuckinny, Mississippi. A violation of the temporal laws of the universe whispered in Elijah’s ear by the Creator of those laws, who can bend them with his breath.

Christians watched – how could it be – an omnipresent saint? Why couldn’t they do the same? BAM! They came up with a jollier, overweight version of the same miracle. And basically he brought the same message – in the form of gifts instead of hope and Spring: Santa Claus! Somehow they learned the formula for the secret that the Creator of all had first given to the Jews a millennium earlier – the convoluted formula by which time is twisted to the Creator’s purposes. And to trump Elijah this pudgy Christmas visitor even brought presents. We Jews were jealous of this infringement on our franchise. “They got it from us,” muttered scholars in Israeli yeshivas all over the world.

“Yeah,” added one famous rabbi in Sefat, “he only ate a cookie instead of knocking back a jigger of wine. Our representative was full of wine and still did his duty – their man was cold sober.”

“Right,” said another sage, “and he had those reindeer to guide him when he lost the way.” (Some believe the magic of the GPS was prematurely revealed to both.)

For years I’ve been duly impressed with both miracles – not just the universal worldwide appearance of the two gifted messengers, but how did they detect the next Jewish or Christian home? Nobody puts up a sign, you know. Many Jews put a Mezuzah on the doorpost in memory of slavery days in Egypt, but not all. Christians? How could Santa
tell? He might blunder into a Buddhist home!

For years I marveled at this incredible violation of logic. What was the trick? Only the Creator, himself, would originate such a manipulation of the orderly laws of nature dating back to Genesis.
THEN – my kids, now grown and wise to the ways of the world, visited me. They bore strange hand-held devices called iPhones. And here’s the chiller. Inside each device was the SAME LADY – in ten million phones at the same time!! Tradition loses again. Her name – Siri.

Wonder if she’s Jewish?

She is blessed with the world’s harvest of knowledge. She doesn’t guffaw like the fat, jolly Christmas Eve visitor – nor is she silent like the solemn Elijah. She could answer
your most difficult question. You could ask her anything – even personal questions dealing with her habits and inclinations. Ahem!

Or, Siri, I’d like to chat and have a drink with you – chat about my love life. But her answer was usually – sometimes – not all the time – dismissive. “That question is not appropriate.” And unlike Elijah, if you asked her, “Siri, I want to take you out for a nice supper and some exploratory conversation” or “Siri, I’d like to know you better”,
you were restricted to a list of nearby kosher restaurants. Nothing more exciting than that. And that’s not what I wanted at all.

And remember, Siri lives and thrives and dispenses information simultaneously in a million devices. Pardon my irreverence, but our computers have outdone Elijah, Santa Claus, and how about even General Tso, the well-known oriental chef, who exists and cooks in every Chinese restaurant in every city of the world. Siri, how does he do that?