A special team at the Weizmann Institute of Science is working on an “electronic rabbi,” a computer capable of issuing rulings on any question of Torah or halacha (religious law) that could possibly arise, it was disclosed today. The team is studying the problem of indexing and feeding the computers “memory bank” with the hundreds of rulings by Jewish scholars over the centuries. It will be able to come up is minutes with answers that would require years of delving by the greatest scholars. The computer will be programmed in stages and its “memory” completed in 10 years.
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