Jewish learning in the age of AI

The good, the bad and the ugly of AI-driven Jewish learning

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

By Rabbi Patrick Beaulier

What’s next, robo-rabbis? Skype cantors? Online bar mitzvahs?

These are the kind of glib comments people made to me over a decade ago when I suggested that synagogues live stream their Shabbat services. The project (now archived) was called OneShul - and with the exception of OurJewishCommunity.org (also virtual), our commitment to an online Jewish community and a move toward more Jewish life online drove some of the Jewish educational establishment bonkers. And bonkers is a nice way of putting it.

In an ironic twist of fate, COVID-19 would draw all Jewish life online, exactly where OneShul would have been. I marveled at the halachic gymnastics that the former naysayers were using to justify what they considered previously unjustifiable: Shabbat online. And I smile now that those temporary temporary measures are now permanent fixtures. I could have never predicted a pandemic and its impact of Jewish life, but all of these things were bound to happen — perhaps this was just a much, much shorter timeline.

Now we have a new “problem” with artificial intelligence (AI). The Jewish educational landscape is about to completely change. We agreed post-pandemic that our Jewish lives could be online (some of us agreed to that much sooner - it’s just that the world is playing catch up to us). Some of this AI-driven life will be for the better. Some of this will be for the worse. And some of it will be downright ugly. Here are my predictions.