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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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Man Charged With Hate Crime for Car Ramming at Chabad Headquarters in Brooklyn
Police control the scene after a car repeatedly slammed into Chabad World Headquarters in Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The driver was taken into custody. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Police in New York City charged a man on Thursday with a hate crime and other charges after he allegedly rammed his car repeatedly into Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn.
The suspect, 36-year-old Dan Sohail, has been charged with attempted assault as a hate crime, reckless endangerment as a hate crime, criminal mischief as a hate crime, and aggravated harassment as a hate crime, New York City Police Department (NYPD) Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny announced at a press conference on Thursday.
“The hate crime right now is that he basically attacked a Jewish institution,” Kenny explained. “This is a synagogue, it was clearly marked as a synagogue, he knew it was a synagogue because he had attended there previously.”
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement is an influential force in Orthodox Judaism that operates around the world. The iconic 770 Eastern Parkway building in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn became the world headquarters of the Hassidic movement in 1940.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is leading the investigation into the car ramming.
Sohail is a resident of New Jersey and has no criminal history in New York City, Kenny said. The vehicle he allegedly used on Wednesday night was registered under his name and, earlier this month, Sohail attended an event at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters.
“We believe that he was in Brooklyn last night to continue this attempt to connect with the Lubavitch Jewish community,” Kenny said. Sohail was due in court on Friday.
Footage from the incident showed Sohail drive his vehicle multiple times into the rear door of the 770 Eastern Parkway building in Crown Heights, according to Kenny, who added that the suspect stepped out of his vehicle, removed several blockades from his path, and cleared snow away from a sidewalk before ramming into the building.
Later, when talking to police, Sohail claimed his foot slipped and that he lost control of the car because he was wearing “clunky boots,” Kenny said. No injuries were reported and the damaged synagogue door is currently being repaired, according to Yaacov Behrman, head of public relations at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters.
“It is clear the incident was intentional,” Behrman added. “The attacker removed the metal bollards that typically block the ramp and protect the entrance shortly before driving into the building. The bollards have since been restored.”
The car ramming took place the same day as the 75th anniversary of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson being chosen as the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, said in a statement on Thursday night that the incident “underscores a painful and undeniable reality: acts of hate, intimidation, violence, and antisemitic aggression are no longer isolated incidents or abstract threats.”
“Condemnation alone is insufficient. Real deterrence requires prompt, decisive action by the justice system — through swift prosecution and meaningful consequences — to discourage further incidents and ensure public safety,” he said. “As this incident occurred while the anniversary of the beginning of the Rebbe’s leadership was being observed worldwide, we reaffirm our faith that the world is meant to be refined — not ruled by fear or force, but cultivated as a place of moral clarity, responsibility, and goodness. We remain committed to that vision, even in the face of events such as this.”
The ramming incident occurred amid an alarming surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City.
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Left-Wing Conspiracists Attempt to Connect Israel With Minneapolis ICE Shootings
People tend to a candlelight vigil assembled for Alex Pretti at the Veterans Affairs New York Harbor Healthcare System on Jan. 29, 2026, in New York, New York, USA. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, died Jan. 24 after being shot multiple times during a brief altercation with border patrol agents. Photo: Derek French / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
Political progressives are attempting to draw a direct link between the ongoing unrest in Minneapolis over US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) and Israel, suggesting that the Jewish state has trained or infiltrated critical American governmental agencies.
A sprawling constellation of left-wing social media accounts and news outlets have argued that Israeli agencies have trained or assisted ICE, a federal agency responsible for conducting criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws. They claim that Israel has collaborated with ICE in surveillance and detainment strategies. On social media platforms such as TikTok, baseless claims that ICE agents are from Israel have gone viral.
“From Palestine to Minneapolis, ICE and Israel use the same playbook,” wrote popular, far-left social media pundit Sulaiman Ahmed on X/Twitter.
Protests in Minneapolis have intensified following a surge in federal immigration enforcement operations and two controversial fatal shootings involving federal agents this month. Demonstrations grew after large numbers of ICE and partner agents were deployed to the area under an expanded enforcement initiative, drawing criticism from local activists and officials. A statewide strike and mass rallies followed, then expanded nationally after the shooting of a Minneapolis hospital worker during an ICE operation, prompting a US Justice Department civil rights investigation.
Controversial leftist social media personality Hasan Piker was suspended from the Twitch streaming platform for spreading anti-Israel conspiracy theories and making antisemitic comments in attempt to connect ICE to the Jewish state.
“This is another big suck my d**k to all the f**king Israel d**k riders out there. You f**king rabid ultra-Zionist pigs,” Piker wrote.
“You run around going ‘Why are you tying this back to Palestine?’ Because this is precisely the same s**t. You Israel-first monsters,” he added.
Piker also posted that Israel had helped the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implement a “censorship regime” to label Americans “domestic terrorists” and carry out surveillance “on the basis of their anti-Israel & anti-ICE activism.”
“Two senior national security officials tell me there are more than a dozen secret watch lists that homeland security is using to track protestors (both anti-ICE and pro-Palestinians),” he wrote.
Other progressive commentators pointed out that ICE maintains offices in Tel Aviv, suggesting that the agency is controlled by Israel
“ICE isn’t just trained by the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], they have a whole office on Israeli-occupied land,” wrote another left-wing account on X/Twitter.
However, ICE maintains a broad international presence through its Homeland Security Investigations division, operating dozens of offices at US embassies and consulates in more than 50 countries worldwide. While ICE is best known domestically for immigration enforcement, its overseas units primarily serve as investigative and liaison posts focused on transnational crime, including human trafficking, smuggling networks, financial crimes, and sanctions violations.
Josh Paul, a self-described “human rights activist” and a former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, attempted to draw parallels between ICE and Israeli policy in the West Bank
“You have units of a security force that are imposed on the local authorities, imposed on the local police, that engage in checkpoints, detentions, including of children […] And it seems to operate broadly with impunity,” Paul told Responsible Statecraft, a publication of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank critical of US support for Israel.
“It’s kind of every man for himself. They are obviously not operating under any standard operating procedures,” Anthony Aguilar, a US Army veteran and former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who has made discredited claims against Israel, told the publication. “This is exactly how the Israel Defense Forces operate in Gaza.”
Aguilar claimed he witnessed the IDF shoot a child — Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hamdene, known as Abboud — as the GHF was distributing humanitarian aid on May 28. The GHF was an Israeli and US-backed program that delivered aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terrorist activities and selling them at inflated prices. An independent investigation later revealed that Abdul had not been killed and was alive with his mother, exposing that Aguilar’s story was fabricated.
There is no evidence to suggest that ICE, which is part of the US government and charged with enforcing American immigration laws, has taken any direction from Israel in Minneapolis.
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Israeli NGO Uncovers Online Terror Plot Targeting Jews in US on Passover, Shares Data With FBI
Rabbi to the UAE Rabbi Levi Duchman helping to prepare matzah. Photo: Jewish UAE/Shneor Shif.
The Israeli nongovernmental organization Fighting Online Antisemitism (FOA) announced this week that it uncovered a terrorist plot by white nationalists to target Jewish communities in the United States on the eve of Passover and that the intelligence was handed over to the FBI.
The NGO said the planned terrorist attack was orchestrated by a “white nationalist accelerationist cell” and was scheduled for April 1, the first night of the Jewish holiday. FOA discovered messages by the terrorist cell on X in which the white nationalists discussed their goal to “bring the Nova massacre home,” which is a reference to the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack at the Nova music festival in Re’im, Israel, of Oct. 7, 2023. Members of the cell talked about their intent to repeat the Nova attack in the US by using weapons and targeting Jewish families that would be gathering to celebrate Passover.
“We have been following this X account for a few months and recently we have noticed a shift from general slurs to operational specifics,” said Tomer Aldubi, FOA’s founder and executive director. “The group began discussing the acquisition of knives and celebrating the Oct. 7 atrocities as a blueprint. They explicitly stated it was ‘time for violence’ because ‘Jews don’t learn.’ We realized they were counting down to April 1.”
FOA shared several of the messages it found on X that were related to the terrorist plot. One post read: “Honestly we don’t have to go anywhere. Everyone just wake up on April t, choose violence, clean up our communities and cities.” Another message said: “April 1. Delete the Invaders. Pass It On!
FOA, which was founded in 2020, said it shared its intelligence with X so that the platform could remove the accounts owned by members of the terrorist cell. FOA has worked with X for many years, according to the Israeli organization. The data has also been shared with the FBI.
“The team secured a comprehensive evidentiary file, including digital fingerprints of the ringleaders, operating under specific handles, and transmitted the intelligence directly to the FBI Detroit Field Office’s hate crimes division via a confidential channel,” FOA stated.
“The distance between an online post and a terror attack is shrinking,” said Aldubi. “This success was made possible by our trained volunteers, proving that individuals have the power to protect their communities and fight antisemitism. Join us and get training on how you too can stop the next attack.”