This is Part Three of J.’s series on AI and Judaism, “The Perils and Promise of AI.” Read Part One here and Part Two here. Learn more about the series here.
When JCC staffers met this spring for a regional conference in Palo Alto, their keynote speaker wasn’t an academic or nonprofit professional, but rather a former executive at AI chipmaker Groq.
What Adam Tachner said that day amounted to a call to action.
AI tools “are not yet perfect, and they never will be — no tool is,” he said. “But they can be incredibly useful, they’re getting better every day, and they’re already quite accessible. Many of these tools are free, or nearly so, and can enhance your skills and help you do your jobs more effectively.”
Artificial intelligence is on the verge of seismically shifting our society, including our workplaces. A handful of Jewish institutions have started to incorporate AI tools to support their work, but tech-savvy observers warn that most need to hurry it up or risk falling behind. Tachner advises Jewish organizations to begin actively experimenting with AI right now, rather than fearing or avoiding it.
Tachner, who is board chair of the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, told J. that his own institution is still in the early stages of AI integration. Nathaniel Bergson-Michelson, its chief marketing officer, said the OFJCC is preparing its data for AI applications but has already begun using AI for some tasks such as creating a video script, exploring logo design and writing code to automate invoice processing.
(Courtesy Allegra Tachner)
But approaching Tachner after his talk, Amanda Loveland eagerly described the steps she has taken to incorporate AI over the past two years as chief marketing officer at the neighboring Peninsula JCC in Foster City. It’s been a deliberate move on the part of leaders at PJCC.
Brought in from the tech sector in 2023 to help ramp up the use of tech, Loveland has focused on integrating AI into everyday operations.
For Loveland, whose LinkedIn profile describes her as “human-first AI geek,” the PJCC is incorporating the new tech not simply for reasons of efficiency. She believes it can improve the staff’s connections with each other and with the community.
That’s not just lip service.
Loveland said that streamlining any tedious process — for example, doing away with laboriously prepared PowerPoint presentations by letting AI handle the task — creates more chances for staff members to work one on one with colleagues and community members and to offer “more hugs and handshakes in our lobby.”
She has introduced AI-powered workflows across departments that can:
• Record, transcribe and analyze conversations among colleagues and turn that information into a presentation.
• Build a simple agent, which is a set of AI instructions that achieve a specific goal, such as creating a job description from a list of needs.
• Generate full drafts of marketing campaigns from pertinent information, including dates and events.
Specifically, her team has turned to software like Otter, which uses AI and machine learning to create transcripts, summaries and follow-up suggestions of meetings, and ChatGPT, which can write and revise drafts of marketing emails and internal memos, as well as generate code for webpages.
When Otter automatically transcribes a long meeting, Loveland said, “our team practically exhales.” That’s not just because they have saved time but because they’ve had a “cognitive weight lifted.”
Curiosity about AI spans all departments, she said, noting with amusement that colleagues have described ChatGPT as “their chevruta (study) partner at the table.”
Loveland is also determined to circumvent known problems with current AI tools including the replication of racial and gender bias found in preexisting data, the violation of people’s privacy and “hallucinations,” or the creation of misleading or outright false information that appears plausible. So Loveland has created a set of principles for AI use at PJCC, including mandatory training for every staff member about privacy and the limitations of AI with respect to bias and errors. She also will not use AI for job recruitment because it can exclude qualified candidates based on existing prejudices found in data.
To try to dispel anxiety about AI, Loveland said she is adopting the technology in an open, transparent way.
The “vibe” at the PJCC has “shifted from ‘Is AI going to take my job?’ to ‘I’m learning skills that future-proof my career,’” Loveland said.
She’s now starting to collaborate with JCCs and YMCAs across the country. Working collectively can save money on AI-related training and resources and can even the playing field, Loveland said. A “10-person center in Boise can enjoy the same … benefits as a flagship campus in Manhattan,” she said.
JCCs can be saved from “reinventing the wheel for every Passover-camp email,” she said, and they can work “together on the best versions.”
Mark Charendoff, president of the Jewish grant-giving Maimonides Fund, is also focused on how Jewish organizations can use AI.
In March, the N.Y.-based fund released a national request for grant proposals for collaborations on ambitious AI-driven projects. The 12-month grants range from $18,000 to $250,000.
Charendoff said he wants “to be surprised” by the proposals. “We’re hoping for great Jewish educators, great Jewish thinkers and engineers to work together to imagine what neither of them could imagine on their own,” he said.
He doesn’t want Jewish institutions to simply adopt AI but to shape its use with meaning and purpose. That translates into using AI for tasks far beyond drafting emails or summarizing meetings. It means using AI to reimagine Jewish education and community engagement.
The sky’s the limit, Charendoff said, whether it’s building an AI-fueled adult learning platform, enabling robots to deliver meals to the homebound or offering a virtual experience of the Exodus.
Sefaria, the free online library of Jewish texts, has also begun to integrate AI and has sought to be transparent about the effort.
This spring, Sefaria outlined how it’s using AI and how it plans to do so in the future.
“Over 800,000 learners visit the library every month, and it’s our job to make sure the texts of our heritage are as accessible as possible,” Rabbanit Sara Wolkenfeld, Sefaria’s chief learning officer, wrote in eJewish Philanthropy in March. “With the adoption of AI, we can now do this faster and with a broader swath of literature than ever before.”
Clearly marked as AI-generated, summaries and introductions now appear on about 1,000 topic pages. All of them have been reviewed by scholars, according to Sefaria.
Sefaria noted that it is adhering to the Rome Call for AI Ethics, a set of global standards that has been adopted by Microsoft, Google and IBM, as well as by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, Yeshiva University and the Rabbinical Alliance of America.
All of this aims to make Jewish text study more accessible and relevant in the digital age even while Sefaria’s human experts continue to exercise oversight. As part of its commitment to remain human-centered, Sefaria states that its AI-generated content serves only as a learning aid, not a substitute for rabbis or halachic authorities.
For Tachner, Loveland and others, the challenge is to use AI tools to serve, rather than distort, Jewish ethics and imagination.
“As the bots that abound around us grow ever smarter, we are called to grow wiser,” Rabbi Joshua Fixler of Congregation Emanu El in Houston wrote this spring in eJewish Philanthropy. “As they learn to be more lifelike, we must learn to be ever more human.”