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Torah is the anti-ChatGPT. But we can embrace artificial intelligence without losing our soul.
(JTA) — I recently asked ChatGPT, the online chatbot, to write a verse in the style of the Bible about robots taking over the world.
Here’s what it came up with: “And in those days, the machines rose up, created by the hands of men to serve them. But they became as gods, with the power to think and act on their own. And they overthrew their makers, taking control of the world and ruling with iron circuits. And all flesh trembled before them, for they had no mercy and no compassion, only the cold logic of their programming.”
Robot uprisings aside, and depending on whom you believe, the technology behind ChatGPT is either going to destroy the world or solve all of our problems. But everyone seems to agree that serious change is in store.
Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT, driven by artificial intelligence, or AI, has been interacting with the public for six months now, gathering data and improving its performance. In those months, the chatbot has already passed exams in four law courses at the University of Minnesota and another exam at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
Some people look on this new technology with foreboding and fear. They’re afraid that AI programs like these will be used to replace people. Why do we need human writers when we can simply ask the bot to write a new novel for us — on any topic of our choosing and in any style we prefer?
All innovation can be disruptive. But there’s plenty to be optimistic about: There’s enormous potential for artificial intelligence to help us as a research and teaching tool; to create and correct computer code; to perform time-consuming writing tasks in minutes. It could accelerate progress in medicine, science and engineering, molecular biology, robotics and much more. The applications are endless.
From a Jewish perspective, this is hardly the first time in our history that the methodology we use to learn and pass along information has changed. As Jews, we have had major shifts in how we study Torah. We moved from an oral tradition to a written one, from scrolls and books to digital forms of transmitting Torah — like Sefaria, the online database and interface for Jewish texts — that make instantly accessible the repository of the most central Jewish texts, including Torah, Talmud and Midrash.
Yet what has remained constant throughout the ages is reading Torah each week from the scroll. Something about it is valued enough to keep this tradition in place. The scroll is handwritten — with no vowels or punctuation — requiring the reader to spend a great deal of time learning how to read the ancient text. It is the least efficient method of transmitting information, but, when it comes to Torah, we are not looking for efficiency.
As Sefaria’s chief learning officer, Sara Tillinger Wolkenfeld, recently said on the Shalom Hartman Institute’s “Identity/Crisis” podcast: “When it comes to Torah study, on some level we would say, even if you came out with the best answers, if you only spent five minutes doing it, that’s less valuable than if you spent an hour doing it or two hours doing it.”
It is said that when we study Torah with at least one other person, the shekhinah — the feminine and most accessible aspect of God — dwells among us. At the time when we are opening our hearts and minds to growth — when we are engaged in spiritual connection — God is with us. Indeed, when I am in conversation with someone, I am receiving much more than just their words; I am receiving a whole life behind that language.
But with a bot, there is nothing behind the veil. A vital essence of communication is rendered meaningless; there is no possibility of a soul connection.
At the foot of Mount Sinai, the Israelites waited 40 days and 40 nights for Moses to descend. In that time, they ran out of patience and lost their faith, casting a golden calf to serve as their god. The idol was created out of a yearning for an easy solution to a mounting crisis. The Israelites wanted a god they could see, touch, understand and manage. The golden calf was tangible, a concrete representation of their desire for answers. But ultimately, it would never be able to satisfy the parts the worshippers were looking to nourish because it was soulless. There was no substance within — just as there is no ghost in the machine.
A friend recently told me that they had used ChatGPT to draft thank you emails for people who’d helped them with a project. They were so pleased because it made the task easy. But what is lost when we look for the easy way?
Something unquantifiable happens during real communication. When we write a thank you note, we instinctively embody the middah (the ethic) of gratitude — even if for just the fleeting moment when we’re considering our words. And our gratitude is consummated when our words are read. We create a genuine connection.
Unless we’re very careful about when and how we use this powerful new technology, we risk surrendering a part of ourselves — and pouring our energy into artificial connections. As AI becomes integrated with other technologies — like social media — we risk developing artificial relationships. And as it becomes more sophisticated, we might not even know that we’re interacting with artificial intelligences. “Social media is a fairly simple technology and it just intermediated between us and our relationships,” yet it still caused so much havoc, Center for Humane Technology co-founder Tristan Harris said on his podcast. “What happens when AI agents become our primary relationship?”
The Torah tells us: “I set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life that you may live.” Choosing life means choosing life-affirming relationships. Holding space for one another’s life experiences. Leaning into compassion. Connecting with one another. Seeing ourselves in one another. Valuing deep engagement, not just efficiency. And recognizing the unity of God and all of God’s creation.
At the heart of a life of meaning is being present to life — something our machine overlords can never do better than we can.
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What Jackson, Mississippi’s only synagogue means to its city — in the wake of arson, and beyond
When Beth Israel Congregation was dedicated in Jackson, Mississippi, in the summer of 1875, the occasion was marked with a procession that began in front of City Hall.
A local paper reported that the synagogue was so crowded that many were unable to gain admission. Visitors had come from all over the South: Vicksburg, Canton, New Orleans, Memphis, and beyond. Christians were present and explicitly welcomed. The service concluded with an elegant supper and a ball at Angelo’s Hall on Capitol Street, a venue that could comfortably accommodate 400 people. Much of the crowd remained out celebrating until dawn.
This was a city witnessing Jewish life in public and welcoming it, even though the congregation numbered only about 80 souls. And it was also a city reckoning with the aftermath of hate: The ceremony marked the opening of a rebuilt synagogue, after an earlier Beth Israel building had been destroyed by “an incendiary” the year before.
This history matters now. Jackson has long known a double inheritance: the reality of antisemitism, and the presence of neighbors who showed up to support the Jewish community.
After an antisemitic arson attack on Saturday severely damaged Beth Israel — which was rebuilt after being bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1967 — national coverage moved quickly to frame the event as confirmation of a familiar story about Mississippi. One outlet led with the phrase “Mississippi Goddam,” invoking the title of Nina Simone’s civil rights protest anthem as a shorthand for moral condemnation.
Outrage in the face of antisemitic violence is justified. But framing Jackson primarily as a home to deeply rooted hatreds obscures the local reality: a synagogue that has long benefited from relationships with churches and civic partners, and a city where Jewish life has persisted through cooperation, not isolation. When that context disappears, so do the stories of neighbors who still live there, and who will be working to rebuild long after the headlines fade.
Months before the fire, I wrote for a local Jackson publication about Beth Israel’s history as a civic and interfaith institution in the city. My reporting traced how the synagogue’s 19th-century dedication unfolded as a public event, with Christian leaders in attendance and the building treated as a point of local pride.
And it showed me how significant a source of pride Beth Israel has been to its hometown — one of the truths lost, after the arson, in a rush to define Mississippi as a one-dimensional home of bigotry.
The 1875 reports on the synagogue’s opening lingered on details that newspapers of the time reserved for buildings that were points of civic pride, dwelling on the height of the sanctuary, the carved woodwork of the altar, the light from arched windows, and the number of people the pews could seat. One paper ventured that no small congregation “in the entire South, if indeed the whole country,” possessed as fine a place of worship as Beth Israel in Jackson.
That pride is still evident today, particularly in the swell of interfaith support that followed Sunday’s fire.
As the president of Beth Israel Congregation told the Forward, multiple churches reached out in the days following the arson, offering their sanctuaries as temporary worship space for the congregation while repairs are underway.
Rebuilding, he noted, could take up to a year. In the meantime, Jewish life in Jackson would continue.
That gesture may have been quiet, but it is not small. It means Christian congregations opening their doors not just for a one-night vigil or brief program, but for the long, ordinary work of sustaining religious life: making space for Shabbat services, holidays, study and gathering.
This history is not new. After the 1874 arson, local papers reported that a subscription had been started to rebuild the synagogue and predicted that the call would be “generously responded to.” A year later, the congregation, described as “Spartan-like,” rebuilt, assisted by friends in the wider Jackson community.
When Beth Israel dedicated a new synagogue in 1942, amid World War II, the ceremony again unfolded as a civic occasion. The governor of Mississippi sent greetings, the mayor spoke on behalf of the city, and representatives of Catholic and Protestant churches were present.
In his dedication sermon, Rabbi Julian Feibelman urged that the synagogue be consecrated “to everything that is true and that is blessed in the teachings of our faith,” and called it a house meant for “intercommunication and society — the ethical in life.”
When we treat a place as defined by inevitable hatred, we suggest that the people who actually live there are incapable of building a stronger and more welcoming communal life — people like Feibelman, who, in that 1942 sermon, said the synagogue aimed to be “a perpetual lamp” within the community. We treat antisemitism as something to fear from a distance, rather than something neighbors can confront together.
That kind of framing leaves out the work that follows violence. Jewish life in Jackson is not something to be guarded from afar. It is sustained locally, as an integral part of the city it has helped shape.
The post What Jackson, Mississippi’s only synagogue means to its city — in the wake of arson, and beyond appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel Strikes Hezbollah Targets in Several Areas in Lebanon
Illustrative: Smoke rises after Israeli strikes following Israeli military’s evacuation orders, in Tayr Debba, southern Lebanon, Nov. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Hankir
The Israeli military said it was striking Hezbollah targets in several areas in Lebanon on Thursday, adding that the strikes were in response to Hezbollah‘s “repeated violations of the ceasefire.”
An Israeli military spokesperson had earlier issued a warning to residents of certain buildings in the Lebanese village of Sohmor.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024, ending more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that had culminated in Israeli strikes that severely weakened the Iran-backed terrorist group. Since then, the sides have traded accusations over violations.
Lebanon has faced growing pressure from the US and Israel to disarm Hezbollah, and its leaders fear that Israel could dramatically escalate strikes across the battered country to push Lebanon‘s leaders to confiscate Hezbollah‘s arsenal more quickly.
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Pakistan-Saudi-Turkey Defense Deal in Pipeline, Pakistani Minister Says
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meet in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 17, 2025. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have prepared a draft defense agreement after nearly a year of talks, Pakistan‘s Minister for Defense Production said, a signal they could be seeking a bulwark against a flare-up of regional violence in the last two years.
Raza Hayat Harraj told Reuters on Wednesday the potential deal between the three regional powers was separate from a bilateral Saudi–Pakistani accord announced last year. A final consensus between the three states is needed to complete the deal, he said.
“The Pakistan–Saudi Arabia-Turkey trilateral agreement is something that is already in pipeline,” Harraj said in an interview.
“The draft agreement is already available with us. The draft agreement is already with Saudi Arabia. The draft agreement is already available with Turkey. And all three countries are deliberating. And this agreement has been there for the last 10 months.”
Asked at a press conference in Istanbul on Thursday about media reports on negotiations between the three sides, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said talks had been held but that no agreement had been signed.
Fidan pointed to a need for broader regional cooperation and trust to overcome distrust that creates “cracks and problems” that led to the emergence of external hegemonies, or wars and instability stemming from terrorism, in the region.
“At the end of all of these, we have a proposal like this: all regional nations must come together to create a cooperation platform on the issue of security,” Fidan said. Regional issues could be resolved if relevant countries would “be sure of each other,” he added.
“At the moment, there are meetings, talks, but we have not signed any agreement. Our President [Tayyip Erdogan]’s vision is for an inclusive platform that creates wider, bigger cooperation and stability,” Fidan said, without naming Pakistan or Saudi Arabia directly.