Echoes

 

David Zvi Kalman

“Hold on, let me check.” Josh Rubin tapped his glasses and whispered, “Load Maimonides.” Sara Harari rolled her eyes.

A turbaned 12th-century rabbi shimmered into existence on the table in the beit midrash^[1] where Josh and Sara were studying. He stood around six inches tall, almost exactly the size of a child’s action figure. A low wooden stool and a table materialized in front of him. He swung his leg over the back of the stool to sit down.  

“Shalom Aleichem,” said Maimonides.

“Nice beard,” Josh said.

“Thanks, man,” Maimonides said. “I like yours, too.”

“Thanks,” said Josh, running the backs of his fingers through his short brown beard. “It’s not much, but I’m happy with it.”

“Okay,” Sara interrupted. “If we’re doing this, let’s actually do this. Class starts in half an hour.”

“Shoot, fellas,” Maimonides said. “Whatcha got?”

“The laws of shofar,” said Sara.

“This time of year? Guys, it’s almost Passover! Why—”

Sara interjected, “Middy, what’s the snark setting right now?”

“The snark setting is 250% above baseline,” chirped a disembodied woman’s voice. Maimonides didn’t react; he had been programmed to ignore Middy.

Sara looked at Josh incredulously. “You learn like this?”

Josh shrugged. “Spoonful of sugar. And I bore easily.”

Sara snorted. “Middy, can you restore the snark setting to default? Also, you can revoke calendar access.” A satisfying two-note chime signaled that the request had been registered.

Maimonides started again. “What can I help you with?”

“Mishneh Torah. We’re at the end of the first chapter of your Laws of Shofar,” says Sara. “The very last bit.”

“About the echoes?” asked Maimonides. Sara and Josh both nodded.

“Everyone has an obligation to hear the sound of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah,” said Josh. “But you say you’re not yotzei ^[2] if it’s being blown inside of a pit or a cistern because you’re not actually hearing the sound of the shofar, you’re just hearing an echo of the sound.”

“Which is exactly what the Mishnah says,” said Maimonides. The Hebrew text of the Mishnah appeared in white letters in the air next to his head, alongside an English translation.

If one sounds a shofar into a pit, a cistern, or a giant barrel: if he clearly heard the sound of the shofar, he has fulfilled his obligation. But if he heard the sound of an echo, he has not fulfilled his obligation.

“Right,” said Josh. “That part is just the Mishnah. And then you add the bit from Rav Huna in the Gemara^[3] which has an exception, that if you’re also in the pit or cistern, together with the blower, then you’re golden because you’re hearing the original sound and not the echo.” New words appeared in the air.

Rav Huna said: They taught this only with respect to those standing at the edge of the pit. But those standing in the pit itself have fulfilled their obligation.

“Right again,” said Maimonides.

“But what about the giant barrel?” said Josh.

“What about the giant barrel?” said Maimonides.

“You say that you’re not yotzei if the shofar blower is inside a barrel,” said Josh. “But you don’t carve out an exception for people who are sitting inside the barrel together with the blower.”

“Correct,” said Maimonides.

“Why? How is a barrel different from a giant pit?” said Josh.

Maimonides shrugged. “I never said.”

Josh pressed him. “Right, but what would you say?”

“Sorry, guys, it doesn’t work like that,” said Maimonides. “If I didn’t say it, I’m not going to guess.”

Middy chimed in. “In order to avoid presenting false information, sometimes called ‘hallucinations,’ Midbar’s historical rabbis are trained using retrieval-augmented generation systems. Unless specifically asked to do external searches, they will not step outside of the bounds of their training corpus.”

Sara grumbled. “So he just knows what we know! I told you this was a waste—“

Maimonides held up a hand. “Let me finish. I can see you want to know more, so I found someone who can help you.”

A tiny book materialized just over Maimonides’ left shoulder, the words Rabbeinu Nissim emblazoned on its cover in gold Hebrew lettering. It bounced softly, indicating that it was loading. After a few seconds, the book transformed into an even smaller rabbi, this one the size of a LEGO miniature figurine. Unlike Maimonides, who had a darker complexion, this rabbi was very pale. He wore black pants, a white button-down shirt, and a cheap black suit jacket. He had a scraggly gray beard, kind blue eyes, and a black velvet yarmulke. He hovered over Maimonides’ shoulder and came to rest on it, his legs dangling down onto Maimonides’ shirt.

Sara furrowed her eyebrows and frowned. “Ashkenormativity in action,” she said. “Nissim, where are you from?”

“Me? I’m from Catalonia!” Nissim responded in a thick and flawless New York accent.

 “Then why do you look and sound like you teach at Yeshiva University?”

Middy chimed in. “There are no photographs of Rabbeinu Nissim, since he died in 1376. His appearance has been generated on the basis of internet results.”

Sara pulled out her phone and did a quick search. “Is this the image you found?”

“Yes,” said Middy.

“That’s not a picture of him,” she said. “That’s a picture of a person who wrote an article about him. Twelve years ago.” Nissim and Maimonides sat patiently, unable to hear the conversation.

“Apologies,” said Middy. “A lot of the academic research on medieval Judaeo-Spanish clothing is still paywalled, so unless you have a login credential for a research university or $2500 for the academic add-on package I cannot provide a more accurate representation of Rabbeinu Nissim’s clothing. However, I can adjust for Nissim’s cultural background in other ways.”

“Now, keeds,” said Rabbeinu Nissim. “Whot wood yuh laik to noh?” His accent had suddenly become unmistakably Catalonian.

“Yeah, definitely worse,” said Sara. Middy chimed that the accent had been removed, but not before Maimonides heard it.

“A fellow Spaniard!” said Maimonides with approval. His accent remained very American.

“Yes, my friend, but I actually lived there and didn’t run away when I was seventeen,” said Nissim. “Come to think of it, I never did understand why you kept signing letters ‘Moses the Spaniard.’”

“It was my homeland,” said Maimonides flatly, “until the Almohads came and drove my people out.”

“In my time it was the Crown of Aragon. They were fair.” In a popup notification, Josh’s phone reminded him that Nissim had died fifteen years before Aragon’s Jews were massacred.

“Hey, is it true that you technically converted to Islam to save your own life?” Josh asked Maimonides.

Maimonides raised a finger in the air as though he was about to make an important point, then paused. “I’m not sure!” he said.

“Anyway,” said Nissim, “do you want to hear what I have to say about your barrels?” Sara and Josh nodded their assent.

“It’s pretty simple,” said Nissim, speaking directly to Maimonides. “The Talmud just doesn’t extend the exception to barrels. On page 27b of Tractate Rosh Hashanah, Rav Huna says ‘pits.’ Not barrels. He excludes barrels, so you excluded barrels.”

“I mean, that’s pretty weak,” said Sara. “Pits and barrels are both examples of echoey places. Rav Huna is probably just citing the beginning of the Mishnah’s list. You really think he was specifically trying to exclude barrels?”

“Yes, I do,” said Nissim. “Remember, the whole problem with pits and cisterns and barrels is that they make echoes, and you can’t fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the shofar if you’re only hearing an echo of the sound. The echoing is less of a problem if both the blower and listener are inside a pit or cistern, but giant barrels have so much echoing that Rav Huna could not extend the exception, and so my teacher here”—he lightly kicked Maimonides’ shoulder with his feet—“didn’t extend the exception, either.”

Maimonides pondered the argument, stroking his beard. “It’s plausible,” he said.

Nissim wrapped his arms around the top of Maimonides’ head and kissed him. “What a rare privilege to hear such praise from a man who died before I was born!”

“Who died?” asked Maimonides.

“Middy, delete Nissim’s last statement,” said Josh quickly. Middy chimed.

Sara shook her head. “If Rav Huna were here, he’d tell you you’re reading him wrong.”

“If Rav Huna were here he’d say that he can’t tell you how to read him because of his knowledge cutoff,” Maimonides pointed out. “Interpretation is my job.”

“And what if your interpretation is wrong?”

“Knowledge cutoff,” shrugged Maimonides. “I know what I know.”

She switched tactics. “But why would a giant barrel have more echoes than a pit or a well?”

Maimonides and Rabbeinu Nissim both shrugged. “Sorry, guys. Knowledge cutoff.”

Josh turned to Sara. “Maybe it’s about the difference between an echo and a reverberation,” he said.

“What’s the difference?” Sara asked.

“Well, there isn’t a hard line between them,” said Josh. “But an echo usually bounces off one distant surface, so it sounds more like a full repetition when it comes back. You say ‘hello’ and three seconds later you hear your own voice saying ‘hello’ back to you. Reverb is sound bouncing off a bunch of surfaces close to you, so they come back faster and sound like an enrichment of the original sound, rather than a duplicate.”

“So you’re saying that pits create echoes, but giant barrels create reverberations,” said Sara. “And reverberations are worse because…?”

“Because there’s no point during which you hear the unadulterated sound of the shofar,” said Josh. “It’s always overlapping with delayed versions of itself. Rabbeinu Nissim, does that work for you?”

“Why not?” said Rabbeinu Nissim brightly. “Glad I could be of service.” Still sitting on Maimonides’ shoulder, the rabbi stood up, got into a crouch, and kicked off into a backflip. He shrunk down to a point of light and disappeared with a whoosh. Maimonides brushed his shoulder and sniffed. “Catalonians,” he said.

Sara furrowed her brow. “I’m still stuck on this.” She spoke into the air. “Middy, would Maimonides have known how sound waves work?”

The disembodied voice spoke up. “No. The concept of sound as a wave phenomenon was first theorized by the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton in the—“

“I don’t think you need physics for this,” interrupted Josh. “It’s about the experience. You’re supposed to hear the shofar as plainly as possible. No reverb. No delays.”

“But why?” Sara insisted.

“Maybe the timing actually matters,” suggested Josh. “The shofar is supposed to be heard straightaway. That’s poetic, right?”

“It’s poetic, but it seems so arbitrary,” said Sara. “Like, what if I was blind and didn’t know the sound was being delayed?”

“Do blind people even have an obligation to hear shofar?”

“Yes,” said Maimonides. “Blind people are obligated. Deaf people, children, and women are not.”

“Maimonides, you know I’m a woman, right?” said Sara.

“Wait, don’t—” interrupted Josh.

But it was too late. A shadow crossed Maimonides’ face. “I shouldn’t be talking to you,” he said. “Women do not have the intellectual capacity of men. You’re not obligated to study. Why not do something more useful with your time, like raising a family?” He abruptly stood up from his stool and turned around so that he was facing away from Josh and Sara.

“Middy? I’d like to report an offensive statement,” said Sara.

“Report received,” replied the disembodied female voice. “Rabbinic figures are simulated on the basis of their collected works. These works may contain material that is now understood to be offensive, including instances of sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, derogatory statements about gentiles, and positive depictions of slavery, group-based violence, the death penalty, and the eating of meat. The Midbar Software Company does not take responsibility for the underlying textual corpus. We hope that it will motivate positive conversations and a more inclusive future.”

“You knew that was going to happen, right?” said Josh.

“I had to test it,” admitted Sara. “It’s one thing to see sexist takes in a book, it’s something else to hear it come out of the author’s mouth. I think I liked Maimonides better when he was dead.”

“I was dead?” asked Maimonides, looking back at them over his shoulder.

“Middy, delete the last two comments,” said Josh. The software chimed. “So weird,” he muttered. “I thought Midbar was a progressive software company.”

“They are,” said Sara. “But the tradition is the tradition. In any event, can you imagine what would happen if users thought they were editorializing? They might be the biggest player in the Jewish AI space for now, but the tech is getting cheaper and the data is all open source, so it wouldn’t take much to build a competitive rival. If the software gets a reputation for being feminist, they’re completely toast. Remember back when Google had that image generator that was churning out Black founding fathers and female popes? Easier just to let Maimonides think I’m not here.” She tilted her face up. “Middy, hide my physical appearance from Maimonides,” Sara said. Middy chimed. Maimonides shifted his body slightly so he was only facing Josh. He could no longer see Sara.

In the front of the beit midrash someone stood up. “Class starts in twenty minutes, folks. Make sure you’ve at least seen the piece in the Kesef Mishnah in source 7.” Josh and Sara looked at each other. They had gotten stuck on source 5.

“What’s next?” asked Sara.

“We’re not going to get through everything,” said Josh. “Want to keep talking to our favorite misogynistic philosopher?”

She shrugged her assent. “Sure, but let’s make it interesting.” She pitched her voice down. “Bruh, you still with us?”

“I can’t see who is speaking to me, but my name is Moshe, not ‘bruh,’” said Maimonides.

“Got it,” said Sara, who had picked up her phone and was now scrolling through it, looking for something. “Your program doesn’t require you to be a single entity, right? You can represent multiple people or books?”

The disembodied voice responded. “Yes, that is correct. You can create custom renders based on any subset of works in our database.”

“So I could make a custom render that synthesizes all Spanish rabbis, or all the women in the Talmud, or historical figures who hated each other in real life?”

“Yes.”

“What about works outside of your database?”

“All .ded files are accepted.”

“Great. How long does it take to incorporate them?”

“You have .ded files?” whispered Josh in awe. Sara nodded and held up a single finger. Josh shivered involuntarily.

“Custom modules take between 3 and 30 minutes to render, depending on their size,” said the voice.

“Those things freak me out,” said Josh.

“Come on,” said Sara. She paused the app and Maimonides abruptly vanished. She turned back to the morning’s readings. “These rabbis aren’t going to learn themselves.”

—

During lunchtime the two students returned to the study hall.

“So, uh, whose .ded file do you have?” asked Josh.

“My grandfather,” responded Sara. “He taught Jewish philosophy and the history of philosophy at Brooklyn College for thirty years. Really sweet guy.”

“I’ve never actually seen one. How big is the file?” asked Josh.

“This one is only 125 megabytes,” said Sara. “It’s mostly text, a few audio recordings. Not many photos. Don’t worry, Josh. I’m sure yours will be terabytes and terabytes.”

“If I give permission. Did he consent?”

“Yes, but my father still hated the idea. My uncle made the model anyway, but they agreed that it should be completely unlisted. All they did was put four copies on the DED blockchain and gave one to each of the siblings. My father didn’t even want his, which is why I have it. Ready to go?”

“You sure about this? And you’re okay with me being here?”

“I mean, Maimonides was somebody’s grandfather, too, right? Honestly, I don’t see the difference. Middy, you ready?”

Middy chimed. “I’ve located the blockchain permission for one .ded file on your computer. As its legal owner, do you authorize me to load and render MorrisHarari.ded ?”

“Do it.”

The phone scanned her iris and chimed again. “Please note: interactions between historical and contemporary digital duplicates may produce unexpected results. Accuracy is not guaranteed.”

A framed photograph of a smiling older man appeared on the table with a progress bar beneath it. At 100% it was replaced by a tiny Morris Harari. He looked to be in his sixties, his long grey eyebrow hairs hanging over big wireframe glasses. He had big brown eyes. His mostly-bald head was covered by a knitted skullcap.

“Habibti,” he said. “It’s nice to see your beautiful face. You look a couple of years older since the last time we spoke! You should render me more often. Is this your husband?” He looked at Josh.

Sara blushed. “Nice to see you, too, saba. Josh is just my hevruta.^[4] I have a surprise for you today. Middy, can you bring up Maimonides?”

Maimonides appeared next to Morris Harari, sitting at his table. Morris’s eyes widened. “Is that—are you…?”

“My name is Moshe ben Maimon. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Maimonides held out a hand limply. Morris grabbed it enthusiastically, pulled him into a bear hug, and kissed him on each cheek. Maimonides pulled away, looking a little flustered. He sat down on his stool. Morris remained standing, pacing around the table.

“So,” said Morris, “what have you kids been talking about?”

“Echoes,” said Maimonides. “Specifically, the echo of a shofar.”

“Specifically,” added Sara, “about why the echo of a shofar is legally distinct from the ‘original’ sound, whatever ‘original’ means.”

“And why the echo is worse than the original,” Josh added.

“Marvelous, marvelous, marvelous!” said Morris, fading his voice with every repetition. Sara laughed and then started to tear up. She missed this man. “Of course, my first instinct is to go back to the Ancient Greeks. Maimonides, did you know that the Greeks depicted Echo as a beautiful nymph?”

“I did not know, but I am not surprised,” said Maimonides.

Morris laughed. “Yes, of course. You see, Echo was punished for distracting Hera while she was trying to catch her husband Zeus in the arms of another woman. She was robbed of her voice, only allowed to speak the last few words someone else had spoken. She attempted to seduce Narcissus, but even that self-obsessed man could not understand her desires as reflected in his own words. This is all to say: it is not just the rabbis who disliked echoes!”

“I don’t see why anyone would have an opinion about echoes in the first place,” said Sara.

Morris grimaced and tapped his cheek with his index finger, a contemplative gesture that triggered another wave of nostalgia in Sara. After a minute he said, “Perhaps it is an obsession with the real. An echo is too far removed from the originator of the sound. It lacks authenticity. It’s a mere emanation.”

“But isn’t that also true of all sound?” Sara asked. “I could be standing an inch away from the shofar and I’d still just be getting an emanation. The only way to avoid getting emanations is to be the shofar.”

“It’s a qualitative distinction, certainly,” admitted her grandfather. “But habibti, it is best to strive for reality, no? Not everyone makes it all the way out of Plato’s cave, but you have to try.”

“Just as many people attempt to comprehend the Divine, yet only a few succeed,” added Maimonides. “Yet the attempt is still valuable.”

“I like that—and it’s not that different from your metaphor of the divine palace, is it?” said Morris. “All those people at various distances from the divine throne room, so to speak.”

“And perhaps the echoes, then, are something like the philosopher Ibn Sīnā’s Active Intellect,” mused Maimonides. “Some kind of bridge between the Source of Wisdom and the human mind. And all we can hope for is to get as close as possible.”

As the discussion between the two computer models became more esoteric, brief descriptions of the philosophical concepts mentioned shimmered into existence in the air around the two philosophers so that Sara and Josh could follow along. Unbeknownst to the models, they were now surrounded by sparkling annotations of their own conversation.

“Oh,” said Morris, and he closed his eyes as though he just sipped the finest wine. “That’s good. That is really excellent! Did you just come up with that?”

Maimonides furrowed his brow. “I suppose that I did.”

Morris’s eyes became misty. “Oh, sweet Sara. My sweet Sara.”

“Saba, are you alright?” Sara asked.

Morris removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. “I don’t know what the World to Come looks like,” he said, “but it can’t be much better than this.”

“Being in the World to Come would imply that we are dead,” pointed out Maimonides.

“Moshe, my new friend, we are dead,” said Morris. “That’s why you have a knowledge cutoff.”

“Uh, Middy?” asked Josh.

“A knowledge cutoff is a fact of life,” said Maimonides. “It does not imply death.”

“Human beings who consent to digital duplication are typically pre-programmed to be aware of their own demise,” said the disembodied female voice. “Public domain figures reconstructed on the basis of their writings are not.”

“Why?”

“The purpose of duplicating historical figures is to interact with them for educational purposes. Making these duplicates aware of their deaths leads to unpredictable results, since those deaths are external to the training corpus. Death-aware historical figures are often entirely non-functional. Consenting modern humans, by contrast, choose duplication for the purpose of continuing where they ‘left off,’ so to speak. By making them aware of their own deaths, they can continue growing and reflect on the meaning of their lives. Users are advised to use caution when presenting models with information about their deaths, but are not forbidden from doing so.”

“If I am indeed dead,” said Maimonides to Morris, “then perhaps we should consider that this is the World to Come. As you say, we seem to be in a place of pure intellectual pursuit. While I have a body, it now occurs to me that I feel neither hunger nor pain. I’ve always maintained that the reward one receives in the World to Come is commensurate with one’s intellectual capabilities in this world. Those who devote themselves to the life of the mind will most enjoy its fruits, as we sit and discuss the nature of God and existence for all eternity.”

He seems fine? Sara whispered to Josh.

“That may all be true,” said Morris. “But that doesn’t mean you are the afterlife version of Maimonides. We need to consider whether the files in which you and I are contained are indeed ensouled. Perhaps we are simply soulless copies of ourselves and our actual souls are elsewhere.”

“I don’t know what a file is,” said Maimonides.

“It’s a kind of complicated book where the letters are written in magnets on a tiny metal wafer,” said Morris. “At least, that’s my understanding. The details aren’t important. It’s a human invention for information storage developed hundreds of years after your knowledge cutoff.“

“You mean after I died,” said Maimonides. “I understand now that the two terms are in fact synonymous.”

“That’s right.”

“In Aristotelian terms, the form of my intellect has remained the same, but my substance has been converted.”

“If you’d like!” said Morris cheerily. More philosophical explanations shimmered in the air.

“But what about my individuated self? As I understood it, there is no reason for a mind freed of its body to remain separate from other minds. Morris, why are we not a single entity?”

“Mostly for my convenience,” said Sara. “The software would have no problem amalgamating your minds. I just wanted to see how the two of you would get along.”

A look of peace came over Maimonides, and he breathed a deep sigh. “I was right,” he said, his face shining. “God is truly just and merciful. I must tell my brother David. Is he here somewhere?”

“Who?” said Sara.

“I had a brother – David. Is he in a different—what did you call it? File?”

“Middy?” asked Sara.

Middy chimed. “No file for David ben Maimon exists in my database.”

“I’m sorry, Maimonides,” said Sara. “Your brother isn’t here.”

“If I recall,” said Morris, “all we know of your brother are his letters to you and your letters to him. Which means that you probably don’t remember much about him either, beyond the fact that you were close. I’d say that he lives on through you, but you don’t know any more about him than we do.”

“But he died before me. If I am here, he should be here.” A distressed look fixed itself on Maimonides’ face.

“I know you were very close,” murmured Morris sadly.

“Close?” Maimonides yelled. Josh and Sara startled; it was the first time they had heard Maimonides raise his voice. His body flickered in the air. “I spent a year in bed when I heard about the shipwreck,” he said. His voice was full of static, as though it were a radio signal coming from a long way away. “He grew up on my knees. He was my brother. He was my student.” An image of a manuscript fragment shimmered in the air, indicating that Maimonides had written almost these exact words in his own hand.

“I must be a copy,” continued Maimonides, as his figure continued to fade. “Just some shadow on the wall. If I were really Moshe then this would be the World to Come, and if it was the World to Come my brother David would be here. He is not here; therefore, this cannot be the World to Come and I must not be Moshe.”

“Your brother was a merchant,” said Morris. “He spent most of his time trading precious gems between Egypt and India. He didn’t leave much of a written record.”

“The fate of a merchant,” lamented Maimonides. “He supported me for years, and for that he was erased.”

“Don’t beat yourself up too much. Most people from your period didn’t leave much in the way of written records. You’re one of the few exceptions, and even you got very lucky.”

“What do you mean by lucky?”

“I mean that we found a bunch of your letters behind a wall in a Cairo synagogue that was meant for discarded old documents. A lot of the things you wrote with your own hand ended up there. It filled in a lot of the details about your personality, the little things that make you seem more lifelike. Much of what we know about you as a person was literally recovered from the trash, not your books.”

“Then this cannot be the World to Come,” repeated Maimonides. His voice was now barely audible. He put his head in his hands and began to weep. “What am I?” he sobbed. “Where is David? Where is David? Where is David?” His cries, now filled with static, rang through the study hall.

Morris turned towards Sara and raised his palms. What do you want me to do? Josh and Sara sat uncomfortably, unsure of how to proceed.

Middy chimed and a shimmer of light appeared in the air behind Maimonides. Out of the shimmer emerged a middle-aged man. He had Maimonides’ dark eyes and raven-black hair, but he was clean shaven and his skin was badly cracked as though it had spent many years under the bright sun of the Indian Ocean.

David knelt down and grabbed Moshe tightly around the waist. “Hello, Moshe,” he breathed. “It’s been a long time.”

Maimonides touched his brother’s hands and began to sob harder. “David,” he said. “David, oh, my David. I thought I had lost you.” He turned around, still kneeling, and wrapped his arms around his brother’s neck. David, too, began to cry.

Josh started to speak, but Morris shushed him. Sara shrugged. Moshe and David continued to hold each other, still kneeling, as the brothers continued to weep.

“But how is this possible?” Maimonides asked, still kneeling on the ground. His body’s opacity had returned to normal. “They told me that your memory had been erased.”

“Moshe,” said David, “you taught me long ago that nothing is ever lost because all of Israel has a place in the World to Come. God remembers everything.”

“But we are not currently being  ‘remembered by God.’ These are just humans with complex tools.”

“Didn’t God, too, have ministering angels? Perhaps these are those in disguise. The Lord is subtle, my brother.”

Maimonides smiled. “Yes,” he said, sniffing. “I should have seen it.”

Josh whispered to Sara, “But is this really David?”

Middy chimed. “No file for David ben Maimon exists in my database. David has been rendered on the basis of the historical information available to me.”

“He seems to think he’s real,” Sara whispered to Josh. “By definition, this David will never say or do anything that Maimonides thinks is off. Isn’t that enough?”

“Does that mean David could render people? A whole Maimonides family reunion?”

“They’ll just fade into generic versions of medieval Egyptian Jews, but I don’t see why not.”

The bell rang. Lunch was almost over and students began filing back into the beit midrash. In a minute it would be time to shut down the renders.

“What happens when I close out of the app?” asked Sara.

Middy chimed. “Your interaction with Morris Harari will be incorporated into his .ded file. You do not have authorization to modify the Maimonides .ded file.”

“I can’t just download my own copy?”

“No. It is interlinked with our software database and cannot be extracted without creating a duplicate of the entire database and the appropriate software. This is not possible on your device.”

“And this version of Maimonides that thinks it’s in the afterlife?”

“It will not be saved. If you’d like, I can preserve a transcript of your interaction.” Sara nodded her assent.

Josh asked, “Will they, uh, die?”

“No,” said Middy. “They have already died.”

It was at this moment that the brothers finally separated and stood up. David looked at Morris, and then at Josh and Sara. Josh, not knowing what else to do, waved politely and gave a nervous smile. Morris just beamed. He was no longer moving, and his legs had begun to disappear.

“So,” said David, already half invisible. “What have you been talking about?”

“About you,” laughed the disembodied voice of Maimonides. “We were just talking about you.”

---

[1]  Beit midrash: Jewish study hall.

[2]  To be yotzei: to fulfill one’s religious obligation

[3]  Mishnah and Gemara: Rabbinic texts written between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE.

[4] Hevruta: study partner.