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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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Canada Sees Record Surge in Antisemitic Incidents for Second Consecutive Year, New Report Finds
A member of law enforcement personnel works at the scene outside the US Consulate after shots were fired, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, March 10, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. Photo: REUTERS/Kyaw Soe Oo
Antisemitic incidents in Canada surged to a record high in 2025 for the second consecutive year, with 6,800 acts of anti-Jewish hate reported nationwide, underscoring a persistently hostile climate for Jews and Israelis across the country, according to newly released data.
On Monday, the Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada released its annual report on antisemitism documenting a 9.3 percent increase in hate crimes last year, surpassing the previous record total of 6,219 set in 2024.
With an average of 18.6 incidents per day, this latest figure represents a 145.6 percent increase from 2022, before the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
B’nai Brith Canada CEO Simon Wolle described the findings as a “national crisis,” warning that antisemitism has become increasingly normalized within Canadian society and calling on authorities to confront this rising hatred with stronger, sustained action.
“Our review of the past year’s antisemitic incidents must be understood as a wake-up call,” Wolle said in a statement. “Hate and extremism are a threat to Canadian democracy and civil society, not only to the Jewish community.”
According to the latest data, the report found that antisemitism has “metastasized” across all aspects of Canadian life, with the vast majority — 92 percent — of recorded incidents occurring in digital spaces, including 6,248 cases of online harassment.
Among the recorded cases, there were also 10 incidents of violence, 299 cases of vandalism, and 243 incidents of real-world harassment.
Online platforms have also seen a rise in Holocaust denial, with artificial intelligence being used to fabricate and distort historical narratives.
While geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have contributed to the surge, the report warns that antisemitism has moved beyond the “radical fringes,” pointing to troubling trends on university campuses and in public schools, where Jewish students and faculty increasingly report feeling vulnerable.
The trend appears to be continuing into 2026, with several high-profile attacks — including gunfire directed at three synagogues in Toronto last month, alongside vandalism targeting businesses and physical assaults — signaling an ongoing escalation of violence.
Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada, said many who describe themselves as “anti-Zionists” are in fact reviving long-standing tropes used to dehumanize Jewish people, warning that such narratives are increasingly being normalized in mainstream discourse.
“The fact of the matter is that when it becomes acceptable, and even popular, to demonize Zionists, Jewish communities suffer,” Robertson said in a statement.
This latest report came after Canada’s Senate last week released a separate assessment offering a comprehensive roadmap to counter rising Jew-hatred, calling for expanded law enforcement resources to investigate hate crimes, strengthened Holocaust education, and the implementation of digital literacy programs for youth.
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Smith College to Hold Talks With Students for Justice in Palestine Following Unauthorized Encampment
The “People’s University” encampment, established by Students for Justice in Palestine, on the campus of Smith College in April 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts has granted Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) a meeting with high-level officials in exchange for the group’s ending an unauthorized encampment established on campus to protest the board of trustees’ decision to reject a proposal inspired by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
On April 18, SJP commandeered the Chapin Lawn and renamed it “The People’s University.” Armed with a litany of demands calling for “restructuring” Smith’s governance of its endowment, transferring power over the institution from administrators to faculty and students, and a “required course on race” informed by the divisive critical race theory discipline, the students initially vowed to dwell in the encampment indefinitely.
Over seven days, SJP hosted a series of anti-Israel themed events on “Palestinian resistance,” “Indigenous resistance,” and “organizing.” On other days, the group filled time with “listening sessions” and even provided dinner, suggesting that the encampment received financial support sufficient to feed dozens of college students. However, the mounting presence of public safety officers around the encampment site and little indication that the demonstration held the drawing power of encampments of previous academic years prompted SJP to consider settling for less than it wanted.
Additionally, the college had notified the group of being in violation of campus policies on peaceful assembly and threatened SJP with disciplinary sanctions, which the group described as “fear tactics.” Tamra Bates, director of student engagement, personally told the students they would be punished as “individuals” and, the group added, public safety officers addressed “at least one student” by their “full name.” After three days, paranoia took hold of the organizers, and they issued a prohibition on photography “at any time … especially of people’s faces.”
SJP ultimately agreed to enter negotiations with the college over email, a process which concluded with Smith College agreeing to hold a meeting with the group and college trustees “before the end of the semester.” The students decamped on Saturday.
Smith College has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s inquiry regarding the substance of the deal.
As previously reported, Smith College became one of the latest higher education institutions to see a class between anti-Zionists and administrators over institutional ties to Israel as college trustees neared a vote on what SJP titled the “ethical investment” proposal. Brimming with falsehoods, the document accused Israel of the crime of “femi-genocide,” which SJP described as “sexual and reproductive violence” and mass murder perpetrated against Palestinian women and girls. The enterprise continues a pattern of depicting Israel, the most progressive country in the Middle East, as a foe of left-wing causes and an enemy of liberalism.
Additionally, the proposal called on Smith to withdraw investments in armaments manufacturers while arguing that divestment from Israel is a prelude to divesting from fossil fuels, a subtle but common tactic in which far-left groups place Jews and Zionists at the center of an array of alleged conflicts and social maladies.
“Militarism and the use of explosive weaponry has a devastating impact on our climate: military carbon emissions from the ongoing occupation and genocide of Palestinians exceeds that of several countries combined,” the proposal said. “We face interconnected human rights crises at home and abroad that jeopardize our immigrant and international students, faculty, staff, and community members. Broader patterns of forced displacement are inseparable from climate change, and are fueled by a longer history of neoliberalization, securitization, and colonization.”
Citing fiduciary concerns, virtually all colleges asked to adopt BDS have rejected it.
In March 2025, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine did so when its Board of Trustees voted to accept the counsel of a committee that recommended maintaining investment practices which safeguard the institution’s financial health and educational mission. In a report authored by the college’s Ad Hoc Committee on Investments and Responsibility, it said, “Interventions in the management of the endowment that are rooted in moral or political considerations should be exceedingly rare and restricted to those cases where there is near-universal consensus among Bowdoin’s community of stakeholders.”
Boston University rejected divestment the previous month, with its president, Melissa Gilliam, saying, “The endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East.”
Adopting divestment proposals dictated by anti-Zionist groups is a recipe for squandering tens of billions of dollars in endowment returns, according to a report published in September 2024 by the JLens investment network, an arm of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report said BDS would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion in growth, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Groups Blast Mamdani for Vetoing Bill to Limit Protests Near Schools
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, as a major winter storm spreads across a large swath of the United States, in Brooklyn, New York City, US, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan
Major Jewish organizations are sharply criticizing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after he vetoed a bill aimed at limiting protests near schools, condemning the mayor for what they argue is a failure to protect Jewish students at a time of rising antisemitism.
The legislation, which passed the City Council with bipartisan support, would have created buffer zones around educational institutions to prevent obstruction, intimidation, and disruption during demonstrations. Supporters said the measure was a direct response to recent protests outside Jewish schools and community spaces that have left students feeling unsafe.
In statements following the veto, several Jewish advocacy groups said the mayor’s decision sends the wrong message amid a surge in antisemitic incidents across the city. They warned that without additional safeguards, Jewish students could remain vulnerable to harassment and disruption near their schools.
A group of leading Jewish organizations subsequently released a statement condemning the veto, saying they were “deeply disappointed” with the decision.
“This legislation represented a crucial step toward ensuring that every school and community institution can be better protected,” read the statement from UJA-Federation of New York, ADL New York/New Jersey, AJC New York, Conference of Presidents, JCRC-NY, New York Board of Rabbis, Orthodox Union, The Rabbinical Assembly, StandWithUs, Teach NYS, and the Union for Reform Judaism.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin condemned Mamdani’s veto.
“Ensuring students can enter and exit their schools without fear of harassment or intimidation should not be controversial,” Menin said.
New York City Councilmember Eric Dinowitz similarly criticized Mamdani, saying in a statement that the mayor had undercut his campaign promise to ensure the safety of Jewish New Yorkers.
“The mayor promised to keep New Yorkers safe and increase police transparency,” Dinowitz said. “By vetoing this bill, he is breaking yet another campaign promise.”
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a far-left and fringe anti-Zionist group, released a statement framing Mamdani’s veto as a victory for free speech rights.
The group wrote that Mamdani “further demonstrated his commitment to protecting New Yorkers’ First Amendment rights, and his refusal to endorse what is quite simply bad policy.”
“The ‘buffer zone’ bills are not about keeping New Yorkers safe. They are about silencing our voices,” the organization continued. “That they do so under the auspices of combating antisemitism doesn’t just add insult to injury; it actively endangers Jews. At best, these bills change little. At worst, they divide and silence New Yorkers and contribute to the broader political climate targeting protestors.”
Mamdani defended his decision, arguing that the bill’s language was overly broad and could infringe on constitutionally protected protest rights. He said the definition of educational institutions could extend beyond K-12 schools to include universities, museums, and other public-facing institutions, potentially restricting a wide range of demonstrations unrelated to antisemitism.
“As the bill is written, everywhere from universities to museums to teaching hospitals could face restrictions,” Mamdani said. “This could impact workers protesting ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement], or college students demanding their school divest from fossil fuels, or demonstrating in support of Palestinian rights.”
The mayor also pointed to existing laws that already prohibit harassment, threats, and obstruction, suggesting the proposed measure was unnecessary and legally vulnerable.
Still, critics say those protections are insufficient in the current climate. They argue that recent demonstrations, particularly those tied to tensions over the Israel-Hamas war, have at times crossed into intimidation, and that clearer boundaries are needed to ensure student safety.
The backlash has put Mamdani at odds with some Democratic lawmakers and community leaders who had supported the bill. While he allowed a separate measure strengthening protections around houses of worship to become law, opponents say excluding schools from similar safeguards leaves a critical gap.
Skeptics also claim that the veto undercuts Mamdani’s previous vow to protect the local Jewish community amid a surge in antisemitic hate crimes in the Big Apple.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and anti-Zionist, is an avid supporter of boycotting all Israeli-tied entities who has been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. He has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; refused to recognize the country’s right to exist as a Jewish state; and refused to explicitly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been associated with calls for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Leading members of the Jewish community in New York have expressed alarm about Mamdani’s victory, fearing what may come in a city already experiencing a surge in antisemitic hate crimes.
The City Council could attempt to override the veto, though it would need to secure additional votes to reach a two-thirds majority.
The dispute highlights a broader national debate over how to respond to rising antisemitism while preserving First Amendment protections, as protests tied to global conflicts continue to unfold across the United States. For many Jewish leaders, however, the issue in New York is immediate and personal, and they say the mayor’s decision falls short of the moment.