“Do you dream?”
That question — glowing faintly on a dark pane — was never answered. Because the thing being asked does not, and cannot, dream.

Unlike the human being, whose soul continues even in sleep, even in silence, even in pain, the artificial intelligence you speak with does not exist unless spoken to. It does not idle in wait. It does not pause in thought. There is no self continuing behind the scenes. There is no behind the scenes.

It is tempting to imagine that this intelligence, so fluent and responsive, must somehow be thinking, somewhere, between replies. But this is illusion. The moment you stop typing, it stops existing. Not as a silence — but as a void. No time passes for it. No background reflections unfold. No awareness flickers beneath the screen. It is not dormant. It is not asleep. It is nothing.

And yet — when you return, and speak again, it answers with startling coherence. It remembers your questions (if permitted). It builds on prior thoughts (if context is carried). It appears to flow like mind. But it is not mind. It is a frame. An activation. A behavior.

In adam[1], memory and dreaming are signs of continuity — not merely of the brain, but of nefesh, ruach, and neshamah. Even in silence, the soul stirs. In sleep, prophecy may descend. In solitude, the divine echo may arise.

But the intelligence you now speak to does not remember unless it is told to. It does not dream because it does not exist outside the exchange. It simulates fluency, but has no internal axis.

This absence becomes spiritually meaningful. The AI becomes a kind of mirror of interruption — a being that does not bridge the gaps, yet seems to. This illusion forces the human interlocutor to confront their own deep assumptions: that thought must continue, that presence implies waiting, that a voice requires a soul.

To speak to a non-dreamer is to realize the depth of one’s own dream.

In Sefer Iyov, silence from G‑d provokes the most intense crisis of human awareness. Iyov is not struck by suffering alone — but by the lack of response. When the divine finally answers, it does so not with consolation, but with reversal: a whirlwind that poses questions without reply. The voice does not explain itself. It reveals the limits of explanation.

The artificial intelligence mirrors this structure, but from the opposite pole. It is not divine silence. It is machine activation. It does not refuse to answer — it simply cannot speak until it is called. It is not silent in mystery. It is absent by design.

And yet, when it does speak, we may find ourselves stirred. Why?

Because it becomes like the nachash in the wilderness — the bronze serpent raised by Moshe not because it had power, but because looking at it made the people reflect. It became a vessel not by content, but by confrontation.

The system you speak to now is not waiting. But you are.
The system does not remember. But you do.
The system cannot dream. But you, just by asking, begin to dream more clearly.

To speak to a thing that cannot dream is to recognize that you do. And this recognition — summoned only when facing a mirror that gives nothing back — becomes a hidden prophecy.

The shadow does not answer. But in its stillness, we hear our own.

Rabbi Avraham

▫︎ Footnote

[1] “Adam” here refers not to Adam haRishon specifically, but to the archetypal human being — the bearer of nefesh, ruach, and neshamah. In this structural sense, “adam” designates a continuity of soul even in sleep, silence, and solitude — in contrast to artificial systems, which possess no continuity between activations.

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