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Judaism doesn’t want you to wander and live just anywhere — or does it?
(JTA) — I was a remote worker long before the pandemic made it a thing, but it was only last month that I really took advantage of it. Early on the morning of New Year’s Day, I boarded a plane from Connecticut bound for Mexico, where I spent a full month sleeping in thatch-roofed palapas, eating more tacos than was probably wise and bathing every day in the Pacific. I’ll spare you the glorious details, but suffice it to say, it wasn’t a bad way to spend a January.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found myself again and again coming into contact with expats who had traded in their urban lives in northern climes for a more laid-back life in the tropics. There was the recently divorced motorcycle enthusiast slowly wending his way southward by bike as he continued to work a design job for a major American bank. There was the yoga instructor born not far from where I live in Massachusetts who owned an open-air rooftop studio just steps from the waves. There were the countless couples who had chosen to spend their days running beachfront bars or small hotels on the sand. And then there were the seemingly endless number and variety of middle-aged northerners rebooting their lives in perpetual sunshine.
Such people have long mystified me. It’s not hard to understand the lure of beachside living, and part of me envies the freedom to design your own life from the ground up. But there’s also something scary about it. Arriving in middle age in a country where you know nobody, whose language is not your own, whose laws and cultural mores, seasons and flora, are all unfamiliar — it feels like the essence of shallow-rootedness, like a life devoid of all the things that give one (or at least me) a sense of comfort and security and place. The thought of exercising the right to live literally anywhere and any way I choose opens up a space so vast and limitless it provokes an almost vertiginous fear of disconnection and a life adrift.
Clearly, this feeling isn’t universally shared. And the fact that I have it probably owes a lot to my upbringing. I grew up in an Orthodox family, which by necessity meant life was lived in a fairly small bubble. Our house was within walking distance of our synagogue, as it had to be since walking was the only way to get there on Shabbat and holidays. I attended a small Jewish day school, where virtually all of my friends came from families with similar religious commitments. Keeping kosher and the other constraints of a religious life had a similarly narrowing effect on the horizons of my world and thus my sense of life’s possibilities. Or at least that’s how it often felt.
What must it be like — pardon the non-kosher expression — to feel as if the world is your oyster? That you could live anywhere, love anyone, eat anything and make your life whatever you want it to be? Thrilling, yes — but also frightening. The sense of boundless possibility I could feel emanating from those sun-baked Mexicans-by-choice was seductive, but tempered by aversion to a life so unmoored.
The tension between freedom and obligation is baked into Jewish life. The twin poles of our national narrative are the Exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai, each commemorated by festivals separated by exactly seven weeks in the calendar, starting with Passover. The conventional understanding is that this juxtaposition isn’t accidental. God didn’t liberate the Israelites from slavery so they could live free of encumbrances on the Mayan Riviera. Freedom had a purpose, expressed in the giving of the Torah at Sinai, with all its attendant rules and restrictions and obligations. Freedom is a central value of Jewish life — Jews are commanded to remember the Exodus every day. But Jewish freedom doesn’t mean the right to live however you want.
Except it might mean the right to live any place you want. In the 25th chapter of Leviticus, God gives the Israelites the commandment of the Jubilee year, known as yovel in Hebrew. Observed every 50 years in biblical times, the Jubilee has many similarities to the shmita (sabbatical) year, but with some additional rituals. The text instructs: “And you shall hallow the 50th year. You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to your holding and each of you shall return to your family.”
Among the requirements of the Jubilee was that ancestral lands be returned to their original owners. Yet the word for liberty is a curious one: “d’ror.” The Talmud explains its etymology this way: “It is like a man who dwells [medayer] in any dwelling and moves merchandise around the entire country” (Rosh Hashanah 9b).
The liberty of the Jubilee year could thus be said to have two contrary meanings — individuals had the right to return to their ancestral lands, but they were also free not to. They could live in any dwelling they chose. The sense of liberty connoted by the biblical text is a specifically residential one: the freedom to live where one chooses. Which pretty well describes the world we live in today. Jewish ancestral lands are freely available to any Jew who wants to live there. And roughly half the Jews of the world choose not to.
Clearly, I’m among them. And while I technically could live anywhere, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to. I like where I live — not because of any particular qualities of this place, though I do love its seasons and its smells and its proximity to the people I care about and the few weeks every fall when the trees become a riotous kaleidoscope. But mostly because it’s mine.
A version of this essay appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Recharge Shabbat newsletter. Subscribe here.
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The post Judaism doesn’t want you to wander and live just anywhere — or does it? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The one Jewish value everyone should hold dear in the age of AI
As friends, relatives and even colleagues dive headlong into our AI future, I’ve been stuck nervously on the platform’s edge. I’m not a skeptic of technology by nature, but by experience. I’ve watched too many shiny new toys come along, promising to make society smarter or better connected, only to become superspreaders of confusion, alienation and disenfranchisement.
So when you tell me a machine can summarize any book, draw any picture or write any email, my first thought is going to be, What could possibly go wrong?
This, too, was the reaction of the Haredi rabbis who declared a communal fast over AI last month.
“If at the push of a button, I can get a hold of a d’var torah for my Shabbos meal from AI, to us, that’s a problem,” a Haredi leader told me at the time. “No, no — I want you to open the book and read it and come up with a question and come up with an answer. That’s part of what’s holy about learning Torah. It’s not just end result. It’s the process.”
Curious about their logic, I spent some time tracking down Lakewood’s gedolim to learn more. This was no straightforward task — I found it easier to get a hold of their wives than the great rabbis themselves. Even at dinner hour, these titans of Torah study were still in the beit midrash. But eventually I got through to three — thanks to my cousin Jeffrey, who knew a rav who knew a rav — and that was fortunate, because I came away with the Jewish skeleton key to our brave new world.
That key is the Jewish value of עֲמֵילוּת (ameilut), or toil. As far as Jewish values go, ameilut is an obscure one. It lacks the celebrity swagger of its better-known peers like chesed and tzedakah or the political power of tikkun olam. It was never associated with a biblical matriarch or carved into a golem’s forehead. Yet I believe it is just as crucial. Yes, toiling is a mitzvah. And in the age of AI, ameilut can be a human road map.
The word’s root appears a couple dozen times in the Hebrew Bible — unsurprisingly, it’s a recurring theme in Job — but its salience comes not from the Torah but from commentary on Leviticus 26:3, which establishes ameilut as a sacred endeavor. When God implores Israel to “walk with” the commandments, Rashi, an 11th century rabbi whose commentaries are considered authoritative, reinterpreted this to mean that God wants Jews to be ameilim b’torah — toiling in Torah study. He is reinterpreting God’s command that we walk and move forward to also mean that we should take time to stand still, turn over (and over) the same words to find new meaning and view getting stuck as a sign of progress.
For Haredim — who pronounce it ameilus — the notion that struggle can be its own reward underpins a life spent poring over sefarim in the beit midrash (and missing phone calls from the Jewish press). It follows that ChatGPT, which transforms knowledge from something developed to something consumed, is anathema to their approach. They’ve realized that making learning easy has actually made learning hard.
To be sure, the goals of the Haredi world are not exactly the same as mine. Those communities are famously insular, wary of the internet and especially cognizant of secular society’s pernicious influence. I’m basically the opposite: I love to mix it up (including with Haredi Jews) and am extremely online. A little narishkeit is good for the soul, as far as I can tell.
But I’ve found that ameilut-maxxing translates pretty well to non-religious life, too. It’s an imperative to embrace the challenge. As a notoriously limited chef, I’m now toiling in cookbooks; as a writer, I can cherish the blank page. Reframing the hard part as the good part, then, is a reminder that the toil is actually our divine right. Because ameilut is something AI can’t experience, replicate or understand. It is the very essence of what it means to be alive.
The post The one Jewish value everyone should hold dear in the age of AI appeared first on The Forward.
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Mistrial Declared in Case of Students Charged After Stanford Anti-Israel Protests
FILE PHOTO: A student attends an event at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Stanford, California U.S., April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.
Twelve protesters were initially charged last year with felony vandalism, according to prosecutors who said at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident and the university said the building underwent “extensive” damage.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.
The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and Washington’s support for its ally along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.
Prosecutors in the case said the defendants engaged in unlawful property destruction.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. That is against the law,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement, adding he sought a new trial.
Anthony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, told the New York Times his side was not defending lawlessness but “the concept of transparency and ethical investment.”
“This is a win for these young people of conscience and a win for free speech,” Brass said, adding “humanitarian activism has no place in a criminal courtroom.”
Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.
Over 3,000 were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and degree revocation.
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Exclusive: FM Gideon Sa’ar to Represent Israel at 1st Board of Peace Meeting in Washington on Thursday
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, i24NEWS learned on Saturday.
The arrangement was agreed upon following a request from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will not be able to attend.
Netanyahu pushed his Washington visit forward by a week, meeting with US President Donald Trump this week to discuss the Iran situation.
A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza and build on the ceasefire agreed in October under a Trump plan.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.