What most people do not know is that Israel had already
developed a self-driving car a number of years ago. The car was able to
understand and respond to verbal commands. If you wanted the car to go to
the right, all you had to do was say “Yemina”, and it would turn right.
To go to the left, you merely said, “smola”.
Since some of the engineers who worked on the car were religious
Jews, they programmed it so that in order to activate the car you said, “Baruch
HaShem” which of course means, “thank God.” And it would go
forward. And to stop it, you said, the same thing, only in Yiddish,
“Gottza Danken.”
Everything was going pretty well on the initial test run until
the driver got to a treacherous cliff. As the car was going downhill it
began to speed out of control and the driver panicked. He could not
remember the Yiddish command to get the car to stop. He yelled out every
Yiddish word he knew, and even a few curse words in Yiddish. Nothing
worked.
Finally, as the car was about to veer over a cliff, he
remembered what to say, and just in the nick of time, shouted, “Gotza
Danken.” Sure enough, the car stopped right at the edge of the
cliff. Feeling thankful and relieved, he sat back and prayerfully said,
“Baruch HaShem.”
And that was the last we ever heard
of self-driving Israeli vehicle technology -- until now. -Rabbi Stuart
Weinblatt
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