Parrots and Chatgpt on Rosh HaShanah
I don’t know how many of you are fans of the music of Jimmy Buffet, who died September 1st at the age of 76. I have always enjoyed his easy-to-listen to, fun, relaxing songs that tell a story, and had the opportunity to see him a couple of times in concert. Jimmy Buffet was perhaps the most successful musician-turned-entrepreneur ever; he died a billionaire, which is particularly amazing when you realize he only had one top 10 song, “Margaritaville.” But he certainly knew how to merchandise the tropics, when to get in and out of businesses, and he made valuable friends, including Warren Buffet—who was not related to him, but became a buddy and referred to him as “cousin Jimmy.”
Jimmy Buffet was also a down-to-earth guy. A friend of ours saw him working his children’s lemonade stand in front of his beachfront mansion one day, helping his kids sell lemonade for 50 cents a glass just like every other dad. Jimmy Buffet was known for his generosity, his tremendous sense of humor and for a genuine ability to touch people in good ways.
Now Jimmy Buffet fans were called parrot-heads, in part because the calypso-flavored tunes that Buffet and his Coral Reefers Band played reminded everyone of tropical climates and tropical birds, like, well, parrots. Both the band and concertgoers wore Hawaiian shirts in parrot motifs and sang along to “Cheesburger in Paradise” or “Changes in Lattitude” or “Son of the Son of a Sailor” and it was just simple fun, instant summer vacation, even if you were in, say, Cincinnati in January, like I was once. Buffet was also an author; while his first memoir was called “A Pirate Looks at 30” his second was called “A Parrot Looks at 40.”
All of which brings me to the improbable subject of, well, parrots. My favorite all-time Rosh HaShanah story is not a new story, so please, don’t interrupt me when I tell it in order to correct how I’m telling it…
A Jewish man buys a talking parrot, and discovers the parrot’s previous owner was a Chazan, a cantor, and this is no ordinary bird. This parrot is spectacular: not only can he speak normal English, but he also knows the entire High Holy Days liturgy by heart in Hebrew, and he sings the prayers beautifully, all the time. All day, every day, it's avinu malkeinu. The new owner is very excited and begins telling the guys at daily minyan about this amazing bird who, he swears, will be able to daven the entire service on Rosh Hashanah. Well, minyan guys being what they are, they all scoff, one thing leads to another, and pretty soon there's some serious money being laid down over whether the parrot can really daven for yomtov. The parrot's owner figures he has a sure thing; he's heard the parrot's hin'ni, and knows just how great the bird is, and he takes every bet. Within a few minutes he is covering thousands of dollars in wagers.
Rosh Hashanah morning rolls around, and the man brings his parrot into shul, sets him up on the bimah on a little parrot-sized podium, puts on his little parrot tallis, opens his little parrot machzor for him, and sits back. The entire congregation waits—and waits and waits. Nothing happens. Nothing. The parrot won't make a sound. His owner cajoles him, tries to bribe him with pieces of apples and honey, begs him—but nothing. Finally, in humiliation, the man admits defeat, roughly returns the parrot to his cage, and leaves the synagogue.
As soon as he gets outside the man starts threatening the parrot. "I've never been so humiliated in my life. You cost me thousands! You miserable clot of feathers, I'm going to have you stuffed, I'm going to have you fricasseed, you'll wish you never double-crossed me..."
The parrot comes to life with a squawk: "Sha, already," it says. "Think of the odds we'll get on Yom Kippur!"
That’s my favorite Jewish parrot joke. I know two other Jewish parrot jokes, but if you want the rest you’ll have to come back on Sukkot.
Now, this year I, like many of you, was curious about the wonders of Chatgpt, the new open-source artificial intelligence application that allows you to put in a prompt and receive a fully written essay on any subject. It has caused a sensation, allowing otherwise less-than literate people to suddenly write reasonably and well. It has certainly caused issues with written work submitted for high school and college classes, I can tell you. So, knowing this great story, I decided to see what Chatgpt would come up with if I asked it about Rosh HaShanah and parrots. I mean, some people think that Chatgpt is just a kind of talking parrot anyway, right?
Well, to be honest, Chatgpt delivered, although not quite in the way I expected.
After the prompt on Rosh HaShanah and parrots Chatgpt immediately delivered the following essay: “A parrot on Rosh Hashanah could be seen as a symbol of vibrant and lively energy entering the new year. Just like the parrot's colorful plumage, may your year be filled with brightness, positivity, and beautiful moments.
“Let the parrot remind us to use our voices wisely, to speak kind words and offer blessings to those around us. May it also encourage us to sing songs of gratitude and praise for the gifts of life and the opportunities that lie ahead.
“As you celebrate Rosh Hashanah, may the presence of this lively bird serve as a joyful reminder to embrace the new year with enthusiasm, hope, and a spirit of renewal.”
Except for the fact that parrots squawk and don’t actually sing, and that a parrot is a completely ridiculous Rosh HaShanah metaphor unless you belong to a synagogue in Costa Rica or Puerto Rico, there you have it: on this 5784 Rosh HaShanah, may our Jewish New Year parrot be a harbinger of a fruitful life in the year to come, or at least of a life filled with fruit—isn’t that what they eat? And since we eat apples and honey on Rosh HaShanah… OK, that’s way too much on parrots, even if it does remind most of us of at least one pleasant summer vacation spent under palm trees on a beach.
Now since we are discussing the tropics, I thought I would share a couple of thoughts about our own recent trip to Hawaii. As I have said a couple of times recently, a funny thing happened to my family on our summer vacation… Only really, it wasn’t so funny, of course. It was sad and challenging.
I’m sure that most of you know about the catastrophic firestorm that consumed Lahaina, the capital of Maui in August. Sophie, Ayelet and I had a first-hand view of it, since we were staying in Kaanapali Beach, just a couple of miles from Lahaina. We had been on Front Street in Lahaina the day before, eating shave ice under the iconic banyan tree, and then again drove through that very morning, finally driving back through about two hours before the fire hit, essentially wiping it from the map. Our hearts go out to the victims of the disastrous wildfire—really, a firestorm—that destroyed the historical capital of Hawaii and killed so many people. The families who lost relatives and homes are permanently traumatized, and that part of Maui, including Lahaina’s iconic Front Street and the banyan tree, were annihilated. The historic structures of Lahaina, first capital of Hawaii under Kamehameha, are gone. Identifying the human remains is an incredibly painful, awful process that will continue for a long time to come.
Our own experience was trivial in comparison to what these people are suffering through, and I encourage everyone to contribute to funds that assist survivors, in particular the Hawaii Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund, which is providing direct help, on the ground, without taking an administrative cut of the charity. I support it, and urge everyone to do so now, when it helps the most.
There is nothing so capricious as a wildfire. When we were finally permitted to leave the area of Kaanapali, about 2½ miles north of Lahaina, we drove through neighborhoods burned to ash, cars still smoldering, right next to a house that appeared untouched, with utter destruction on the other side of the standing home. The overall reality was devastating. We were incredibly fortunate the fire did not turn north towards us, as we sheltered in place a couple of miles away; and it was horrible that the fire’s direction turned so suddenly towards the many people of Lahaina town. We are told the firestorm, driven by 60 to 80 mile an hour winds, raced forward at a mile a minute.
What caused this awful tragedy? Well, first, the hillsides on that side of Maui are covered with a low, dry grass—not a native plant but an invasive accidental imported species that has taken over for the native vegetation. Then, there has been a bit of drought on that side of the island. And the sudden and unexpected winds struck hard, knocking trees into powerlines—and all preparations on the island for emergencies had focused on hurricanes and tsunamis, not fires. Oh, and Maui had a grand total of six fire engines on the whole island, perhaps two on that side, not nearly enough to deal with a horrific firestorm. And the power company focused on restoring power, not shutting it down so it didn’t spark a conflagration. And in Hawaii, to be honest, fast responses are not exactly part of their DNA.
In the weeks since that tragedy there have been two more awful natural disasters worldwide, a horrific earthquake in Morocco that destroyed much of the old city of Marrakech and killed several thousand people, and then disastrous floods in Libya that drowned over ten thousand people. In fact, there have been a series of catastrophic floods all around the world in the last few weeks that have victimized people in Greece, Turkey, Brazil, Spain, China, Hong Kong and the US.
As the prayer in the Unetaneh Tokef section of our service tomorrow, B’rosh HaShanah, says about the year to come, Mi yichyeh umi yamut—who will live and who will die; mi va’eish umi vamayim, who by fire and who by flood. Indeed.
There are many who believe that global warming is the cause of the increase in natural disasters taking place on our planet. The evidence is mounting that the extremes of weather we have been seeing—Phoenix setting records for the number of days over 110 degrees in a row this summer, 31 days, followed by breaking its overall record with its 54th day over 110 degrees just last week—are indeed the result of global warming, the ways in which we consistently mistreat the remarkable planet that God blessed us with. Yes, there have always been natural disasters—but not at this level of frequency, and not compounded by the impact of human damage to the ecosystem.
Rosh HaShanah is known as HaYom Harat Olam, the birthday of the world, and our collective abuse of the globe that God gifted us is leading to changes we truly do not control. The earth is crying out to us, and it’s time to act.
And while we can’t directly control when or even where such disasters occur, there are a few things we can do in this 5784 year to try to address the ways in which we contribute to these damages. I mean, even Chapgpt came up with 13 different ways that we individual human beings can help address this in our own lives. And none of them involved parrots, although some might save a few parrots along the way.
Look, if artificial intelligence can figure out that many things we can do, well, we actually intelligent people can figure out more things, and perhaps more important ones. We can, of course, seek to recycle more objects and items. We can move towards using automobiles that don’t burn fossil fuels. We can embrace the reality that we each, in our own small ways, can change our lifestyles to consume less damaging items, foods that don’t damage the world in their production, building materials that are sustainable, clothing made from renewable products.
We can even prioritize our own choices of candidates for office on the basis of whether they actually are trying to solve this devastating problem, to address this literally global challenge, instead of those candidates who are mired in denial or have been purchased by special interests opposed to productive change.
And when we build our own synagogue building for Beit Simcha—and that’s what we are working hard on now—we plan to make it contribute to limiting global warming as much we can. After all, if we are preaching something we have to do it ourselves, now don’t we? Isn’t that the point of Judaism?
We hope that changing the way we treat our planet will avoid the dramatic increase in the natural disasters that are impacting our world right now. At the least, it should limit the severity of future disasters.
There is a passage in the prayerbook that is read every morning, and which we will read tomorrow morning, thanking God for creating the natural world, and for recreating it every single day: b’chol yom tamid oseh ma’asei v’reisheet. That is, we are grateful for the continuing dynamic work of the natural processes that God began and which renew the world daily for our own habitation.
As we enter this new year of 5784, may we each choose to work every day to restore the natural world that God has gifted us, to imitate God’s effort at creation through our lives and habits. And then, whether we use the parrot as our motif for this shiny new year or not, may we welcome a fruitful and joyous life in these coming days.
L'Shana Tovah Umetukah—may you be blessed with a good, sweet year!