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An 1859 fight over how to make matzah has lessons about the threat of AI today
(JTA) — In the last few months the world has been dazzled by an astonishing sequence of AI systems capable of performing all kinds of difficult tasks — writing code, composing poetry, generating artwork, passing exams — with a level of competence that rivals or exceeds what humans can do. The existence of these AIs has prompted all manner of soul-searching about the nature of humanity. It has also made many people wonder which human tasks are about to be taken over by machines.
The capabilities of these AIs are new and revolutionary, but the story of machines taking over human jobs is not. In Jewish history the most important story of that transition has to do with matzah, and it’s a story that carries important lessons for the present day.
Starting 164 years ago, dozens of European rabbis engaged in a furious debate that would not be fully resolved until the beginning of the 20th century. Matzah, which for millennia had been made by human hands in accordance with the narrow constraints of Jewish law, could now be processed with a series of machines that promised huge savings of time and money. As town after town adopted these machines, opposition began to rise, until it exploded in 1859 with the publication of “An Alert for Israel,” a collection of letters from prestigious rabbis, who adamantly argued that for anyone interested in following the laws of Passover a matzah made with a machine was no better than a loaf of bread.
The arguments for this position were many, but all will sound familiar to anyone following the AI conversation. Like today, some objected to the machines just because they were new and different, but most had more specific concerns. First, there was the matter of lost jobs. In many parts of Europe matzah was made by the poorest members of society, who were given the job as a way to help them raise money before one of the most cost-intensive holidays of the year. Ceding this job to machines would take work from those who could least afford it.
It takes about 20 seconds in a 1,300-degree, coal-and-wood-fired oven to bake shmurah matzah to perfection. (Uriel Heilman)
Beyond economics, there was concern that the machines just weren’t as reliable as people, especially given the rules around matzah-making outlined in Jewish law. What if bits of dough got trapped in the gears, quietly leavening for hours and unknowingly ruining whole batches of matzah in the process? What if the trays warmed the dough too fast? Without proper oversight, how could you trust your own food?
Finally, some objected to the loss of a literal human touch. Jewish law stated that matzah was supposed to be made by people who knew they were baking matzah. A machine, no matter how sophisticated, didn’t “know” anything. How could you eat matzah on Passover knowing that this most important food was made by a mindless machine?
The responses didn’t take long to arrive. “A Cancellation of the Alert,” a collection published the very same yearr, forcefully argued that machine matzah was perfectly fine — and possibly even better than the human product. No, inventions aren’t inherently bad. No, the machines wouldn’t harm the poor, because the machines made matzah less expensive for everyone. No, the machines weren’t prone to error — and they certainly weren’t more error-prone than lazy, careless humans. No, the machines didn’t know what they were doing — but the people who built them did, and wasn’t that enough?
The machines eventually won, but then something happened that I don’t think either side anticipated. With Manichewitz’s machine matzahs claiming most of the American market by the early 20th century, it was now the handmade matzah makers who were on the back foot; it was they and not the machines who needed to demonstrate that they were up to the difficult task of preparing this food with the efficiency and reliability of the machines.
The result is more than a little tragic. Matzah is the Jewish food with the deepest origins of all — deeper than brisket, deeper than latkes, deeper even than challah — and yet it is the ritual food most likely to be picked up at the supermarket and least likely to be made at home. While there are still communities today that exclusively eat handmade matzah, even this job is now largely outsourced to just a few companies that resemble their machine-driven counterparts in scale. While teachers will sometimes demonstrate how to make matzah for educational purposes, across the religious spectrum the era of locally made matzah is over.
Despite the fact that it’s hard to imagine a simpler baked good — matzah is just flour and water, and it’s literally illegal to spend more than 18 minutes making it — its production is treated as though it is only slightly less complicated than constructing a jet engine, and people are worried about shortages as though matzah were a natural resource or an advanced microchip. The transition has been so complete that we barely remember there was a transition at all.
Baked matzah coming out of the oven at Streit’s Matzo factory on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, date unknown. (Courtesy Streit’s Matzo)
Did the rabbis pushing for machine matzah know this was going to happen? Almost certainly not. The economic impact of machine labor is relatively easy to predict, but the psychological and cultural effects are a lot harder. There was probably no way of knowing how machines would change the way we thought about matzah in the long run, but today it’s clear that automating this ancient task has changed our own relationship to Passover’s central food — and because the change has resulted in a lot of alienation from matzah production, I’m not so sure it was a change for the better. Making matzah locally could have been a way to feel connected to the ancient Israelites, who left Egypt so fast that they didn’t have time to make anything else. Instead of emulating this ad-hoc food, we optimized it for cost and efficiency, in the process turning matzah into just another specialty cracker on the grocery store shelf. Was it really worth it?
It’s probably a bit much to say that OpenAI is just a modern Manischewitz, but the parallels between the debate about machine-generated matzah and the present debate about machine-generated everything are useful for considering how short-term policy choices around AI won’t necessarily capture all of the technology’s long-term effects on how human beings want to spend their time. When we relinquish an activity to an AI for economic reasons, we may eventually come to believe that humans are no longer qualified to do the task at all.
Then as now we must balance our economic needs against our ideas about what kinds of activities make for a good and fulfilling life.
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Debbie Maslowsky playing lead role in upcoming Dry Cold Productions musical
By MYRON LOVE For the past 40 years Debbie Maslowsky has been entertaining Winnipeg audiences – both Jewish and non-Jewish, with her acting and singing. Arguably Winnipeg’s queen of musical theatre is returning to the stage on May 13 in a lead role in Dry Cold Productions’ upcoming “Kimberly Akimbo”.
Maslowsky is enthusiastic about the Tony-winning production, which debuted on Broadway in November 2022. “It’s a gem of a musical,” she says of the production crafted by the musical team of composer Jeanine Tesori and lyricist David Lindsay-Abaire.
The subject itself is not – on the surface – uplifting. As Maslowsky describes it, “Kimberly Akimbo” is the story of a teenager suffering from a very rare condition – progeria – also known as the aging disease. The genetic condition causes children to age at an accelerated rate causing them to die of old age while still in their teens. For those readers who may recall Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book, “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People” – written years ago, Kushner was responding to the death of his own son from progeria.
In the hands of Tesori and Lindsay-Abaire though, Maslowsky notes, the show is about mindfulness and living day by day. In the production, Maslowsky explains, “Kimberly is trying to live as normal a life as she can despite her illness. Her life is further complicated by a dysfunctional family. Her parents are dealing with their own issues. Then there is the madcap aunt who develops a complicated and hilarious plan to make money for a family road trip, raise funds for choir costumes – with some left over for herself.
“The play is very funny,” Maslowsky comments, “but also poignant. Kimberly knows that she most likely won’t live much beyond 16. Therefore, she wants to live every day to the fullest. She wants to live every day in the now. At the same time, she doesn’t want to hide from reality. She doesn’t want special treatment. She also doesn’t want people – such as her parents – trying to pretend that everything will be okay.”
Maslowsky last appeared on stage in Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s one-woman production of “A Pickle” in the spring of 2023. That was the true story of a Jewish pickle maker living in Minnesota who had to fight to get her pickles included in the state fair pickle competition, which tried to disqualify her because her pickles were made the Jewish way through a brining process that the non-Jewish judges refused to accept.
In the interim, Maslowsky has been focusing on her longstanding business as a trade show, conference and event manage,r as well as picking up some singing gigs. She reports that she began winding down her business last fall.
She speaks highly of her younger cast mates. “They are an amazing group of young people,” she says. “For some of them, this is their first show. I myself am still learning new things after all these years.”
Maslowsky will next be appearing in the joint Winnipeg Jewish Theatre-Rainbow Stage production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in September. “I played one of the daughters years ago in an earlier Fiddler production,” she recalls. “I feel like I am coming full circle.”
Dry Cold Productions was founded by Donna Fletcher and Reid Harrison (now retired) more than 25 years ago. The company stages a yearly musical theatre production – sometimes edgy – which has played on Broadway and is new to Winnipeg audiences.
The Dry Cold website cautions that “Kimberly Akimbo” contains “strong language (with frequent profanity), mature humour, and references to sexual activity”.
“Kimberly Akimbo” is scheduled to run May 13–17, 2026 at the Prairie Theatre Exchange. Tickets can be purchased by contacting Dry Cold productions online.
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ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan Sidesteps ‘Genocide’ Accusations Against Israel
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan speaks during an interview with Reuters in The Hague, Netherlands, Feb. 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Karim Khan, the embattled chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has cast fresh doubt on accusations that Israel committed “genocide” in Gaza, arguing in a new interview that no legal conclusion has yet been reached in the ongoing legal battle.
In a lengthy interview with anti-Israel journalist Medhi Hasan this week, Khan refused to engage in the popularized rhetoric labeling Israel’s military campaign against Hamas terrorists in Gaza as genocidal, even as pressure mounts on the ICC by activists to pursue more sweeping charges against Israeli officials.
When asked directly whether Israel’s conduct amounted to genocide, Khan emphasized the need for sufficient evidence to level charges against Israeli officials and that prosecutors must follow evidence and legal standards rather than political narratives.
“So, you’re not ruling out that there could be a warrant in the future?” Hasan asked.
“Everything is a function of evidence,” Khan responded, arguing that accusing Israel of genocide for political purposes would be “reckless.”
“You’re saying in the past three years there hasn’t been evidence of genocide in Gaza?” Hasan asked, visibly flummoxed.
Khan lamented the “suffering” in Gaza but reaffirmed that the ICC could not proceed in making final judgements about the nature of Israel’s military operations in Gaza without sufficient evidence. He asserted that officials within the ICC are vigorously analyzing the case and that he cannot reveal more about the nature of the investigation.
“So, genocide is not off limits?” Hasan pressed.
“No crime is off limits if the evidence is there,” Khan responded.
Khan has come under fire for making his initial surprise demand for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on the same day in May 2024 that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation reportedly infuriated US and British leaders, as the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Nonetheless, Khan’s latest remarks are likely to reverberate through international legal and diplomatic circles, where the genocide accusation has become one of the most contentious aspects of the war between Israel and Hamas. Over the past two years, an array of humanitarian organizations and human rights experts have accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza. These accusations have been controversial and widely contested, with critics alleging these groups and individuals lack sufficient evidence.
Khan’s comments come as the ICC faces intense scrutiny over its investigation into the conflict. In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which has provided significant humanitarian aid into the war-torn enclave throughout the war.
US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
Genocide is among the most difficult crimes to prove under international law because prosecutors must establish specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Hasan, one of the most prominent anti-Israel critics in media, has spent the past two years unleashing an unrelenting barrage of criticism against the Jewish state, repeatedly accusing the Israeli military of pursuing a “genocide” in Gaza.
In the interview, Khan also forcefully denied allegations of sexual misconduct that have engulfed his office in recent months, accusing critics of politicizing the claims amid the ICC’s high-profile investigations into Israel, Russia, and other global conflicts. He dismissed suggestions that his pursuit of Israeli leaders was intended to distract from the allegations against him, saying that he did not have evidence to substantiate the claim.
Khan further alleged that senior Western officials attempted to pressure the ICC over its investigation, including what he described as warnings from prominent American and British political figures about the geopolitical consequences of targeting Israeli officials.
The ICC’s investigation has placed the court at the center of an increasingly bitter international divide over the Gaza war. Khan’s comments won’t settle the debate, but the ICC prosecutor appeared to signal a more cautious legal approach than some of Israel’s fiercest critics have demanded.
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UK Police Charge Two Men in Connection with Filming Antisemitic TikTok Videos
The TikTok logo is pictured outside the company’s US head office in Culver City, California, US, Sep. 15, 2020. Photo: REUTERS
British police have charged two men with religiously aggravated harassment offenses after they were alleged to have traveled to a Jewish area of north London to film antisemitic social media videos.
The two men, Adam Bedoui, 20, and Abdelkader Amir Bousloub, 21, are due to appear at Thames Magistrates’ Court, a statement from the Crown Prosecution Service said on Saturday.