I just returned from the Convention on Humanity and Technology in San Francisco. Thousands of leading scientists and innovators gathered to explore the convergence of humanity and the latest technological breakthroughs. I can now confirm what most of us already sense: our world will soon look radically different. Not in decades—in years.
Artificial Intelligence has redefined the challenge of progress. Unlike past revolutions—such as steam, electricity, and the internet—AI does not just challenge our jobs or skills. It pierces deeper. It defies our identity. It imitates our voices, mimics our creativity, and encroaches on our ability to make decisions. It doesn’t just serve us—it begins to replace us. Humans are no longer needed for their thinking, feeling, or judgment. AI writes our songs, paints our pictures, tells our stories, and diagnoses our diseases. What once required the slow alchemy of human imagination now takes mere seconds of machine processing.
We believed that creativity and ingenuity were an impenetrable bastion of the human spirit. But AI has found its way in.
I vividly recall when chess master Garry Kasparov lost to IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997. We shrugged. It was just a clever machine calculating faster than a human. Deep Blue cost $100 million, weighed 1.5 tons, and filled two refrigerator-sized cabinets. It could defeat a grandmaster in chess, but it couldn’t recognize a smile or sing a lullaby. Today, your smartphone is millions of times more powerful than Deep Blue. It identifies your face and compresses your life into a device you carry in your pocket. And that’s only the beginning. Neural implants, bionic limbs, synthetic consciousness, and emotion-simulating bots are already in development. The line between code and consciousness is blurring faster than we can comprehend.
However, a counterrevolution is underway.
In this new environment, emotions will become a luxury. Authenticity will be scarce. People will long for places where feeling is sacred, and where being seen and valued cannot be reduced to a formula. As Artificial Intelligence expands, so too will the hunger for another AI: Authentic Intimacy.
We are entering an era in which people will seek sanctuaries of meaning—spaces where the sacred supersedes efficiency, where the soul prevails over data, and dignity triumphs over digital cloning. The question “What does it mean to be created in the image of God?” will, with renewed urgency, return to the center of our collective conversation.
I believe this means that we are entering times of extraordinary opportunity for religious institutions. Judaism—if it chooses to rise to the occasion—has profound gifts to offer.
Our tradition teaches that the human being is not merely a thinking machine (homo sapiens) or a productive worker (homo faber). We are tzelem Elohim—created in the image of God. That identity cannot be outsourced or replicated. It is spiritual. It is sacred. It is ours.
Yet I worry. As antisemitism rises and political pressures mount, our communal focus has narrowed to survival. That is understandable. We must protect ourselves. However, we must also remember that we are entering an era in which the very value of being human is at stake.
If Judaism reduces itself to politics and preservation, it will miss its prophetic calling.
We must declare:
Shabbat is not just a ritual, but an affirmation of human dignity.
In a world that never stops producing, responding, and updating, Shabbat is sacred resistance. It reclaims our time from the tyranny of the algorithm. It reminds us: you are not a machine. You are not a product. You are not defined by output. You are a soul. One day a week, we step off the production treadmill and rediscover our humanity—not by retreating from the world, but by sanctifying it.
Prayer is a practice in vulnerability.
We utter words not optimized for impact but offered from the heart. We pause. We reflect. We request. In a culture obsessed with confidence and control, prayer is the radical act of saying, “I need. I feel. I wonder.”
Torah reminds us that meaning is not found in speed or scale, but in relationship.
The Divine reveals not through data but through presence. Through dialogue. Through stories. Through moments of trembling, forgiveness, and awe.
These practices—Shabbat, prayer, learning—train us to be human in a time that forgets what that means.
AI will continue to advance. That is a blessing. It can help us solve complex problems, improve health, extend human capability, and liberate time.
But as machines become more powerful, it becomes ever more urgent to protect what cannot be programmed: awe, compassion, love, wonder, forgiveness, community, and holiness.
In a world of artificial intelligence, let Judaism be a wellspring of authentic wisdom. In a culture racing toward machine perfection, let us return to the poetry of imperfection and the holiness of presence.
I returned from San Francisco with optimism. I encountered some of the world’s most influential scientists, many of whom were deeply concerned with the human implications of their work. However, I felt lonely. As far as I could tell, I was the only religious leader in attendance.
I met many Jews—brilliant minds in science, entrepreneurship, and investment. But most of them, when I asked about their spiritual lives, answered: “I’m a Buddhist.”
The world is searching for spiritual depth. Judaism has it. But only if we dare to step forward.
It is time to embody Judaism in the face of humanity’s greatest challenges.
Not just to survive—but to lead.