This week online there was a flood of AI conversion of images to a Studio Ghibli format. People are fascinated by this instantaneous artform at incredible ease.
One such image posted this week on Twitter/X caught my eye. Someone (it appears perhaps from the offices of Lubavitch.com) uploaded an old vintage 1970’s photo of a Chabad Lubavitch Mitzvah Tank on a busy Manhattan street, with the “Mitzvah Tank” in the background and in the foreground of the picture there’s a young Lubavitch yeshiva student handing a pair of Shabbat candle-sticks to a couple happy to receive them.
Those candlesticks had a distinctive look, they were a gold-tone metal, with very broad-based bottoms. When these were specifically designed for the Rebbe’s Shabbat Candle-lighting campaign (which started in 1974) dubbed “Neshek” the Rebbe insisted that the candle-sticks have very sturdy support.
The AI program did a great job with nearly every aspect of this photo. It looks great. Aside for one very humorous glitch. AI picked up on the big round circles of the candle-stick bases and the ring or loop attaching them, and figured it was a pair of glasses or sunglasses. So instead of Shabbat candle-sticks you have the Lubavitch student handing this grateful couple a pair of glasses/sun-glasses!!
Obviously, it’s in error. But the Baal Shem Tov taught that there’s a lesson in everything! Including AI photo glitches, I suppose.
The original picture is of the Rebbe’s Neshek/Shabbat Candle-Lighting campaign. That was a gift to the Jewish world. So many women and girls have taken on this weekly mitzvah observance thereby illuminating their homes, families and the world.
The AI Studio Ghibli version also speaks of a great gift the Rebbe brings to our world. The Rebbe’s unique Torah teachings offer a magnificent lens through which to see Torah in a new light, to see our fellow Jews in a different lens, indeed, to see the world world with enriched perspective and focus. We are so grateful for the Rebbe’s unique perspective and continue to work to get more of that lens.
Indeed, every good rich teaching ought to help create perspective, viewpoint, angles of view and richer further and clearer ways of seeing ourselves and our world. It’s a gift.