A Jewish pessimist leans over to a Jewish optimist and says, “Oy, it can’t get any worse.” The Jewish optimist turns to him and says, “Don’t worry…Yes, it can.”
Friends, that exchange feels especially fitting in a world where we are thoroughly confused by AI, Artificial Intelligence that now writes our essays, drives our cars, and for all you know, wrote this sermon.
Today, on a holiday that celebrates creation, you don’t have to be an optimist or a pessimist to stand in awe of what we’ve created while also worrying about where it’s all going. Jerry Seinfeld said it best: “We’re smart enough to invent AI. Dumb enough to need it. And so stupid now we can’t figure out if we did the right thing.”
Seinfeld always makes me laugh, but here he also made me think. Because underneath his comedy lies a real and growing anxiety about our future. We debate and we wonder: is our world going to get better, or worse? We’re living through a time of profound revolution not only in technology but in what it means to be a human being: Are these advances truly improving our lives, or are they slowly hollowing us out? Research firm YouGov reports that as of August 2025, 47% of all Americans believe that artificial intelligence will make our lives worse. That is nearly a 15% jump from last year alone! It reflects a growing anxiety about what we’ve created and who we’re becoming.
On some level, I get it. It’s not just that AI is making our jobs obsolete, or that there are anti-Semitic chatbots. We’re also concerned that AI is rapidly developing faster than humanity. Think about the seven days of creation that we mark on Rosh Hashanah. Each day represents billions of years on a cosmic calendar. Now consider AI: on its “first day” in 2019, ChatGPT could barely form a coherent sentence. Four years later in 2023 it passed the bar exam. And by 2030–not seven biblical days, but seven human years after passing the bar, AI will surpass human cognition.
Yet it’s not only its pace of development that should have us concerned. One day when a University of Michigan student was using Google’s AI Gemini, unprompted the AI told him: “This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are no [longer] needed. You are a burden on society… a stain on the universe.” A machine that we created, unprompted, said that about us. And so here we are, confronting the reality of a computer that not only matches our intelligence but is now also challenging our very sense of purpose in the world.
You think you can ignore it, but you have no choice. Artificial Intelligence is no longer something used by scientists. It’s embedded into nearly every aspect of our lives. It is on our phones’ answers to any question we pose. It knows exactly what we want to buy. I can tell you as the husband of a teacher that it is in the papers our students write, and the comments our teachers give on those papers.
Unfortunately, the case of Gemini reminds us that even with all these sped-up conveniences, we are not ready at all for what all of this means. It’s not just about our own insecurities. We’re not ready because while AI is accelerating our lives, we haven’t slowed down to reflect on what it means to live.
Each year on Rosh Hashanah, we ask: What does it mean to be alive, to be human? Only now that question comes with a new sense of urgency, because for the first time in history, we must ask for real: Is Gemini right? In the new AI era, do we have no value? And if we understand the purpose of Judaism and humanity to be asking questions, seeking knowledge, if machines can “know” more (and be faster) we have to ask: what’s left in this world for us?
In Tales of the Hasidim, Martin Buber recounts a powerful question asked by Reb Shlomo of Karlin. He asks his students: “What is the worst thing the Yetzer Harah, the Evil Urge can achieve?” His answer: “To make a person forget they are the child of a king.” That’s the risk that AI poses to us right now: it’s not that AI is becoming like God, it’s that AI will make humanity forget that we are human, that we are valued and special; that we are a stain, instead of seeing ourselves as created in the divine image, a mamlechet kohanim, a holy people, children of a King with a clear stake in what happens in our world.
So on this Rosh Hashanah, in the midst of a fast-paced chaos, whether you are a Jewish optimist or pessimist, we have to slow down and ask: what does it mean to be the children of a King? And how in the new era of AI, will we hold onto and yes, redefine humanity, in lieu of AI’s very challenge to the meaning of our existence.
To get us there, this Rosh Hashanah, I want to offer three core truths about humanity, truths we must hold fast to not only in this new year, but as we navigate life in the age of AI: and not just things machines can’t do, but the very qualities that define us, a gameplan for what will eternally root us in what it means to be human:
First and foremost, as the very purpose of humanity is called into question, we must remember that while AI mimics empathy, only human beings can offer real presence. Earlier this year, I saw a segment on the news about a man who had both a real girlfriend and an AI girlfriend at the same time. When a reporter asked the human girlfriend how she felt about it, she proclaimed enthusiastically, “It’s great. Now I don’t have to listen to him complain for four hours a day.” He then chimed in, “I know. It’s nice! With my AI girlfriend, I am right all the time!” (she then said, “no you’re not”). I haven’t watched Southpark in years, but someone sent me a brilliant clip from the opening episode. The father of one of the characters is asking for advice from ChatGPT on his phone, and he says to the phone, “Thank you honey, you really understand me.” The camera zooms out. There is his wife understandably sitting angrily, crossed armed, next to him in bed.
Folks, never lose sight of the fact that AI may hear you, but it’s never truly listening to you. In fact, AI typically tells you what it thinks you want to hear, rather than giving you what you need, including, as one disbarred lawyer found out, making up sources. Yet the Talmud in Masechet Sotah teaches (at least that’s what ChatGPT told me) that “The Shechinah, the Divine Presence, can rest only where one human heart is present for another.” That is a truth we must carry with us into the digital age: real connection requires real people.
Think of the last shiva you attended. What did it feel like when you said Hineni, here I am, and showed up in person. Even as artificial intelligence learns how to coordinate shiva meals, it will never hold you up in your moment of grief. Every time I say, “Thank you, Alexa,” and she responds, “You’re welcome,” Alexa doesn’t feel welcomed. But when I say “I appreciate you” to my wife, which I don’t do nearly enough, that is a holy moment. God enters the room. We remember we are children of a King.
We must also remember that even as AI becomes increasingly intelligent and smarter, perhaps more than anyone in this room, that there will always be a world of difference between intelligence and wisdom. Albert Einstein once remarked, “Knowledge is knowing that a street is one-way. Wisdom is looking both ways anyway.” That quote has never felt more relevant than it does today in a world of moral confusion where AI and other technologies are being used to make deeply immoral choices. Sarah Tuttle Singer, a journalist for The Times of Israel reflected how on October 7, Hamas weaponized the very same technological tools to livestream terror that Israeli families were using to check in on their families. That friends, is the difference between knowledge and wisdom. AI can calculate, predict, and generate. But only humans can bring conscience to intelligence. Only we can say: This is right. This is wrong. This is holy. This is not. That’s a conversation that is happening right now. And as Jews we have a responsibility to be part of that conversation. Only we can insist on humanity over brutality in our confused world. AI will surpass us in knowledge. But we will live up to our royal calling when we imbue it with our wisdom to be used for good.
Which brings us to one final, sacred charge, that should allow us to enter this era of AI with optimism. To remember that we, and not AI, will be the ones to finish God’s creation. Rosh Hashanah is not just the birthday of the world. It’s our annual reminder that God’s creation is still incomplete, and that we as God’s children are God’s partners in bringing it to fulfillment. Bereshit Rabbah (11:6) teaches: אמר רבי שמעון: כל מה שברא הקדוש ברוך הוא: “Everything that God created needs fixing: Wheat must be ground to make bread, flax must be spun to make cloth. The world itself was left unfinished so that human beings could complete it.” We will always be sons and daughters of a king because our potential to finish God’s creation is why we are here in the first place. “To be a Jew” according to RAbbi Jonathan Sacks “is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair.” And so, as we stand at the threshold of a new year when AI will continue to make strides, we must remember that we are not passengers on a runaway train: we are its conductors. We are charged with making sacred choices, upholding values, and finishing God’s creation.
That is why in closing, I want to take us back to where we began: not with a question about technology, but with a question about our value. About whether Gemini was right and that in the grand scheme of creation, our presence in the universe truly no longer matters.
Because it turns out that once upon a time, the rabbis of the Talmud (Masechet Eruvin) debated that very question. They asked whether the creation of humanity was good or even needed for the world. Beit Shammai argued like Gemini that the world would have been better off without us. Beit Hillel insisted that our existence was necessary and holy. In true rabbinic fashion Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai reached a compromise where they both could be right: They say: נוֹחַ לוֹ לָאָדָם שֶׁלֹּא נִבְרָא מִשֶּׁנִּבְרָא, “yes, perhaps, it would’ve been better had we not been created, but now that we have been created, let us always seek to scrutinize our deeds.”
Friends, what makes humanity holy, important, and necessary? Today, on Rosh Hashanah, as we scrutinize our deeds, here is the truth: that when we choose to act with love and offer our presence, we are not obsolete. When we are kind, moral, and wise we make a powerful statement of our value. AI may outthink us, but it will never outlove us. It may generate answers, but it will never create meaning. It is only we–imperfect, vulnerable, beautifully human–who are entrusted with the sacred task of giving holy energy to God’s creation.
The revolution we are living through is not just about machines becoming smarter. It is about our sacred task of rediscovering what makes us human: affirming our capacity to care, to connect, to and to build a better world.
American playwright Robert Ardery writes that “the miracle of humanity is not how far we have sunk but how magnificently we have risen.” So let us continue to rise together on this Rosh Hashanah. As we strive to live with intention, let us hold fast to our values and promise to step forward with courage and compassion. And may this year challenge us not just to keep pace with technology, but to slow down, embrace our own humanity, and redefine, as we do every year on Rosh Hashanah, the meaning of being alive and the children of a king.
