As business leaders, scientists, politicians and commentators debate the risks and benefits presented by artificial intelligence — and the need to restrain the emerging technology — Jewish funders and leaders cannot afford to keep out of the conversation, a group of Jewish thinkers and professionals argued yesterday at a Jewish Funders Network High Holidays Gathering.

The discussion, held yesterday on Zoom, comes after weeks of ominous warnings from within the industry, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and over 1,000 artificial intelligence scientists calling for self-imposed restraints. Many view the threat posed by the technology as existential.

At this moment, there is a “really important window” for Jewish religious leaders to work with AI companies, so programs can be developed with care, DZ Kalman, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, said at the panel. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, leaders should be actively engaged in multifaith coalitions already working with AI companies.

According to Sara Wolkenfeld, chief learning officer at Sefaria, the “easy,” but less consequential way for funders to target AI initiatives “is to fund on the practical side, the how-to workshops about how we can use AI better and more effectively.”

While this is helpful to a certain extent, she said, the real focus should be elsewhere. “I’m not saying there should be none of that,” Wolkenfeld said, “but really, where funders can make a difference is to fund thought leadership in this space.”

Wolkenfeld pointed to the investment other faith communities have put into AI resources, which she said she was jealous of, including Pope Leo XIV’s May encyclical, “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.”

“We need a group, a class of communal leaders, a diverse group of communal leaders, who look different and sound different and come from different streams of Judaism,” Wolkenfeld said, “and [funders] need to be able to give them the space and the resources to work on these questions, to work on educational initiatives, to work on convening these conversations, and doing that for the benefit of the Jewish community.”

At the webinar, which was titled “Aspire 2026,” JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny said that Judaism is poised to help society navigate the possibilities and perils of AI.

“When we talk about AI, we oscillate between extremes: naive optimism that everything will be OK and catastrophism… Judaism can offer a third way, that is the way of responsibility,” Spokoiny said. “Being a people of 4,000 years of history, this is not the first tectonic shift we’ve encountered. There have been many. We’ve been there when bronze and iron were created, when the stirrup was introduced, when the telescope was invented, the steam engine, the first computer.”

One panelist, Rabbi Zvika Krieger, has spent his career walking the line between technology and religion, sometimes working part-time as a congregational rabbi and in the tech world. From 2000 to 2002, he served as Meta’s first director of responsible innovation, and today he is the spiritual leader of Berkeley, Calif.’s progressive synagogue Chochmat HaLev and an advisor for several AI companies, including Anthropic.

It’s the first time his work is overlapping, with Jewish community members seeking him out with existential fears about AI and AI companies wanting his input on the spiritual and existential matter at play with their work.

The AI revolution comes at a time when Jewish schools are struggling to retain educators, and there is a rabbinic pipeline issue, leaving congregations without leaders, Krieger said.

The use of AI to lessen the load for rabbis and teachers currently causes some problems, including some rabbis using sermons created by “AI hallucinations,” false information presented as fact, and inaccuracies then affirmed online and in the pulpit. In time, Krieger said, AI will get more accurate and be a great resource to both rabbis and teachers. 

As fields change and jobs shift, people are redefining how they see themselves in relationship to their work, and are yearning for spirituality to give meaning to their new lives, said Krieger. “Religion and spirituality and Judaism in particular, are being called to step up to the plate in this time when people are struggling with these fundamental and existential questions.”

Yet one intervention that is not productive is talking at, but not with, tech companies, Krieger said. And just because tech leaders happen to be Jewish doesn’t mean they represent or understand Jewish values, he added.

Throughout most of history, Jews were disenfranchised members of their communities, watching on the sidelines as technology was introduced, Kalman said. Still, Jews were never Luddites.

The Jewish community “has not distinguished itself as being particularly resistant to technological change, nor has it really distinguished itself as being particularly excited about technological change in most of Jewish history,” Kalman said. Instead, there has been an acceptance of technology in the Jewish community — with thought-out boundaries set.

Kalman gave Shabbat as the prime example. After the invention of electricity, the community formed a cautious relationship to technology, with Shabbat serving as a respite that others in society now appreciate.

Israel was formed at the crossroads of technology and religion, Kalman said, pointing to Theodor Herzl, who imagined the Jewish state as both scientific and technological. Today, Israel is a global technology and innovation leader, placing third this year in a ranking of countries based on AI implementation, development and research, according to the Israeli government’s annual economy report.

But unlike other technological advances, AI is by far the fastest-moving, Kalman said.

As AI improves, it will force a redefinition of the roles of educators and rabbis. A study of medical students at Arak University of Medical Sciences in Iran published this month showed hopeful results that AI counseling could provide similar results to human counseling for spiritual well-being.

“The question for our community is: What do we want to prioritize having humans do, and why?” Wolkenfeld said. For her, this decision doesn’t always come down to simple statistics: Even if an AI educator attained similar results in student test scoring, there will always be reasons to go with human educators.

The education world needs to embrace the aspects of the AI revolution that can help, Wolkenfeld said. A decade ago, many Jewish educators tried to avoid using computers and were shaken when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. If the Jewish community does that with AI, “we’re going to live with those consequences,” she said.

“I am still more afraid of humans than I am of machines,” Wolkenfeld said. “To the extent that I have fears around AI, they are fears of the way that these machines will amplify some of the worst of what I sometimes see in people, so I’m worried about antisemitism, and I’m worried about misogyny, and I’m worried about other kinds of bias.”

While the Jewish community has invested in AI-Torah study programs, including many “Powered by Sefaria,” there hasn’t been much investment in AI that can build community, Kreiger said, such as programs that can match people for Shabbat dinners, learn about individual’s interests and recognize when someone isn’t showing up in the community and needs to be contacted.

Now is the time for funders to have “a lot of tolerance for risk and failure,” Spokoiny said.

AI will continue to be a focus of JFN, including at JFN’s March conference in Tel Aviv, he noted. “We’re gonna need to be trying a lot of stuff, and probably most of it won’t work. In dealing with technology, we need to acquire a little bit of a startup mentality.”