A Jewish Funders Network panel recently issued a challenge to Jewish philanthropy: We cannot afford to sit out the conversation about artificial intelligence.

We agree. 

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But as funders, we think there is a second question that deserves just as much attention: If we are going to get into the AI conversation, what exactly should we be funding?

Because we have learned that EdTech (education technology) that is all Tech and little Ed doesn’t work. And because AI offers seemingly limitless opportunities as well as unintended consequences, we must be strategic.  

We have seen what happens when technology gets ahead of purpose. We have watched schools acquire devices, platforms and programs because they were new, innovative or promising, only to discover that the technology itself did not solve the educational problem. We have watched organizations invest in tools before they invested in the people who would use them.

So, when we decided to make a significant philanthropic investment in AI, we did not start by asking, “What should we build?” We started by asking, “What do we need to understand first?”

That decision led us to invest in Hebrew at the Center’s Hebrew + AI initiative.

We chose Hebrew education as the place to begin because Hebrew is about far more than language acquisition. It is a thread connecting Jewish identity, Jewish Peoplehood, Jewish texts and culture, and Israel. What happens to Hebrew education, therefore, has implications for how young people understand and experience their relationship to the Jewish people and to Israel.

We chose Jewish day schools as the initial environment because they offer a rich setting in which to explore those questions in practice. They bring together sustained Hebrew learning, Jewish education, teachers who can engage deeply with pedagogy and students who experience Hebrew as part of a broader Jewish educational environment. They also give us the opportunity to test ideas in real classrooms, with real teachers and learners, and to learn what it takes to implement AI responsibly.

But the ambition is larger than day schools. What we learn can inform Hebrew education across settings (including supplemental schools, camps, community programs, and other contexts) and contribute more broadly to the Jewish educational field’s understanding of how to approach AI with purpose and intention.

Our investment is built around three interconnected areas of work: field leadership, micro-pilots, and a holistic approach to AI-enabled Hebrew learning.

That combination is intentional. We are not simply funding technology. We are funding the process of figuring out what responsible, purposeful engagement with AI should look like for students and educators, and what it should make possible.

Start with the questions

The JFN conversation rightly emphasized that Jewish leaders have a role to play in shaping the conversation about AI, not simply reacting to whatever the technology industry puts in front of us. But shaping the conversation requires more than convening conversations about AI. It requires doing the work.

For us, that means starting with Hebrew education and asking basic questions:  

What are we actually trying to accomplish?

What does excellent Hebrew learning look like?

Where are the persistent challenges for teachers and learners?

Where might AI genuinely help?

Where might it make things worse?

And what should remain fundamentally human?

Those questions inform a holistic approach to the initiative. Rather than treating AI as a collection of tools, the work considers what an excellent Hebrew learning ecosystem should look like in an AI-enabled world and what the right balance should be among teachers, peers, content, individual learning, and AI. That is important because AI has the potential to play numerous roles, but that doesn’t mean it should.

Experiment before we scale

The second element of our investment is a series of small, purposeful micro-pilots.

These pilots explore specific educational questions such as: Can AI help teachers make better use of assessment data? Can it support more personalized Hebrew reading? Can it create more opportunities for students to practice speaking?

The point is not to prove that AI works. The point is to learn where it works, for whom, under what conditions, and whether the value is worth the investment.

Each pilot is designed to generate evidence and learning that can inform what happens next. Some ideas may ultimately become scalable initiatives. Others may be adapted. Some may stop, which is an acceptable outcome. Philanthropy often rewards the visible thing: the new platform, the successful pilot, the impressive demonstration. But in an emerging field, some of the most valuable knowledge may come from discovering that something isn’t worth scaling.

We need funders willing to pay for that knowledge. And we need to be willing to learn from these experiments not only within day schools, but across the broader Jewish educational landscape.

Watch the people, not just the technology

The third piece we are watching is what happens around the technology.

What happens to the teacher’s role?

What happens to student-teacher interaction?

What happens to peer interaction?

What does a school need to change in order for an innovation to actually work?

And what do teachers need in order to make thoughtful decisions about and effectively use of AI?

These questions are why implementation and teacher readiness cannot be an afterthought. They have to be part of the investment from the beginning.

A tool can function exactly as designed and still fail to create educational value.

If teachers don’t understand it, trust it, or see how it connects to their goals, it isn’t going to transform learning.

If Jewish funders should engage, let’s fund the infrastructure for learning.

One of the most compelling ideas to emerge from the JFN conversation was that the easy philanthropic move is to fund practical AI “how-to” work, while the greater opportunity is to support thought leadership and deeper exploration of what AI means for Jewish life.

We agree.

If Jewish funders and leaders should be engaged in the AI conversation, engagement cannot mean simply funding more AI projects. We need to invest in the infrastructure for learning about AI and how we might best take advantage of its potential.

That means funding experimentation. It means funding the people doing the work. It means funding research and evaluation. It means giving educators and organizational leaders time to learn. It means creating mechanisms for sharing what works, what doesn’t, what surprised us, and what we still don’t know. And it means supporting field leadership that can take what is learned from individual experiments and make it useful to others.

We want the learning generated through this work to travel – to other Jewish educational settings, to other organizations, and to other funders making decisions about AI.

The goal is not to create one successful Hebrew AI initiative. The goal is to help build a field that is better equipped to make thoughtful decisions about AI.

The JFN conversation shared the right message. But showing up is only the beginning.

The Jewish Funders Network conversation was right to challenge us not to sit this moment out. But showing up is only the beginning. Funders now have a choice.

We can chase the next shiny thing. We can fund AI because every proposal suddenly has “AI” in the title. We can invest in products and hope that educational value follows. Or we can do something harder.

We can insist on purpose before technology. We can ask what we are trying to make possible before deciding what to build. We can fund experimentation before scale. We can center the people who will actually use the technology. We can support research, reflection and knowledge-sharing. And we can be willing to learn publicly, including when the answer is no.

We believe this work has to happen first. The technology will continue to move. The philanthropic dollars will follow it. The question is whether our investments will help Jewish education and Jewish life simply keep up or whether they will help us shape what comes next.

We do not need Jewish education to be the fastest adopter of AI. We need Jewish education to bring something distinctive to the AI conversation: intentionality.

Our tradition does not ask us to embrace every new technology or to reject it simply because it is new. It asks us to wrestle with change, establish thoughtful boundaries, and consider how our choices align with our values and our responsibilities. AI should be no different.

So, to our fellow funders: if you are going to invest in AI, do it. But do it right.

Don’t just fund the technology. Fund the questions. Fund the experimentation. Fund the learning. Fund the people who can help us figure out what comes next. And then share what you learn.

We intend to.

Joe Kanfer is a founding director of Lippman Kanfer Family Philanthropies and serves as chair of Leading Edge, the center for talent and impact in the nonprofit Jewish sector. He currently serves on the board of Israel Policy Forum and has served on the boards of numerous other philanthropic organizations. Joe and his wife Margie have six children and 19 grandchildren.

Mamie Kanfer Stewart is a director of Lippman Kanfer Family Foundation and a founding director and chair of Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. She currently serves on the board of Brooklyn Org and Chautauqua Institution and has served on a number of other boards.