Hacks, Bots, Grok and Memes: Has technology made conversations about antisemitism obsolete?

It’s a brave new world out there for the Jews.
An official statement put out by Sesame Workshop, creators of Sesame Street and Elmo, whose X account was hacked by someone who went on a Jew-hating spree.

It’s a brave new world out there for the Jews. Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen a series of stories published showing the ways new technologies are affecting Jewish life, from bot armies to A.I.-generated memes to racist Elmo to chatbots who think their surname is Hitler. But are any of these technologies creating new avenues for Jewish living (or Jew hatred)—or are they merely reflecting a culture that already existed? A.I. could represent our generation’s moral panic, as the printing press, television and comic books did before… or it could be something genuinely new and different.

And before that, our rabbi hosts tackle the great cholent debate: can you eat the customarily Shabbat food on a Thursday? In honour of the summer food edition of Scribe Quarterly, The CJN’s free print magazine, Avi, Yedida and Matthew talk about the glow-up of Ashkenazi cooking within the foodie world and its move from borscht belt to bougie.

Credits

  • Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
  • Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
  • Music: Socalled

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