For many rabbis, the questions is not whether to use AI, but how
Rabbi Dr. Jason Weiner has been very pleased with his newest chavruta. Its name is ChatGPT.
“It’s always beneficial to work with any sort of partner, and that’s the main thing I use AI for,” explains Rabbi Weiner, rabbi of Knesset Israel Congregation of Beverlywood and the senior rabbi and executive director of the Spiritual Care Department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. “It’s like having a chavruta who is always available to talk things through. It helps me formulate my ideas. And it’s great for asking for feedback.”
Rabbi Weiner isn’t alone. As the use of artificial intelligence apps and tools becomes more mainstream, many congregational rabbis are exploring how the emerging technology can support their work—though not without a good measure of caution.
Rabbi Yitzi Genack of Shaare Torah in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shares a telling experience. “I asked AI to prepare a source sheet for a class I was going to give,” he recalls. “It gave me an Iggerot Moshe, quoting a paragraph with an exact citation. To be safe, I took the sefer off my shelf and looked it up—and it wasn’t there. The source was entirely fabricated.”
While prudence is important, most rabbis interviewed emphasized that the question is not whether to use AI, but how.
Rabbi Genack, undeterred, has continued using AI regularly for various tasks—“some more successfully than others”—but never to prepare derashot or divrei Torah.
Rabbi Weiner is similarly “reluctant to use AI for Torah study” because of its widely acknowledged tendency to “hallucinate,” or give inaccurate or misleading information. “That’s not its place. But if I’m working on a derashah, I might ask AI for help finding a contemporary anecdote or a thought experiment that illustrates a point.” However, he always asks ChatGPT to provide links, and he verifies every source before using it.
“Like anything else, we need to know what it can do and what it can’t do,” says Rabbi Menachem Penner, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA). “It’s well known that AI hallucinates incredibly well for Jewish sources. If you ask it for help writing a devar Torah or a shiur, it will find excellent sources and quote them all in the original Hebrew . . . except they often don’t exist.”
“Even when its sources are accurate, AI produces low-level Torah content,” Rabbi Genack says. “It gives you random ideas that might be cute or interesting, but not real substance.” He notes that as technology continues to improve, there will be serious questions about how AI might impact true Torah scholarship.
The halachic encounter with AI is the latest chapter in a long history of rabbis wrestling with the tools of their time. Each technological leap has triggered a battery of practical questions. The printing press forced authorities to grapple with whether machine-printed books possess kedushah and whether mass production leads to more textual errors. Later, the matzah-baking machine sparked a fierce debate: Is an act through a machine considered as if it is done lishmah (with intention), and does the heat from its mechanical rollers accidentally leaven the dough?
The telephone likewise forced a re-evaluation of human presence: Does a voice converted into electrical pulses still count as a human voice for a mitzvah, and can one fulfill an obligation while listening over the wire? Today, AI presents new challenges, but it’s simply the latest tool raising questions similar to those prompted by earlier innovations.
Rabbis are, however, approaching it proactively. Indeed, at the last annual RCA convention, Rabbi Gil Student, OU director of Media, Publications and Editorial Communications, gave a seminar on “Rabbis and AI,” which helped spark ongoing conversations about how rabbis are using AI in their own work. Unfortunately, he says, “every conversation about AI begins with people complaining about hallucinations. That’s the real barrier for us.” He believes rabbis can learn to give better prompts to avoid getting false information, or make use of AI in ways where hallucinations are less of an issue, such as for administrative tasks.
Other practical ways rabbis are using AI include creating source sheets, translating and transcribing. “I’m not asking AI to pull my sources,” says Rabbi Weiner, “but I can put in the sources I want to include, and it will make it look outstanding and bring it to life.”
Rabbi Student finds that AI is very helpful in translating German Torah scholarship, for example, into English. “AI is also pretty good at adding vowels to Hebrew,” he says. “It might even do a better job than most rabbis!”
AI as an Administrative Assistant
AI can be especially helpful for a rabbi in a smaller shul without a lot of administrative support. For Rabbi Genack, who does not have an executive assistant, AI has proven to be very useful for “office work” and “writing that is not creative,” like formal letters to clients in his role on the Pittsburgh Vaad Harabonim.
Rabbis are figuring out when it might make sense to use a shortcut—and when it may not.
“It helps me to churn out something quickly, if I know what I want to say, but I don’t have an hour to write it,” he says.
“AI can handle the tasks a rabbi does that aren’t particularly rabbinic,” says Rabbi Weiner. “As an example, I send out the zemanim for the week to my shul email list. You don’t need to be a rabbi to do that job, but the rabbi gladly does it for his congregants. It’s great to find a way to have AI automate that email.”
AI can also be helpful with planning the logistics of travel. “I had to visit four cities in eight days when I was in aveilut,” Rabbi Penner recalls. “AI found minyanim in every city—it even reminded me to say Tefillat Haderech.”
Where to Draw the Line
As society as a whole is grappling with questions of where to draw the line when it comes to using AI, rabbis are figuring out when it might make sense to use a shortcut—and when it may not.
There is definitely a risk in overusing AI tools, says Rabbi Penner. “Shortcuts can lead you the wrong way,” he says. “There is one basic question to ask about anything that is a time saver: What does it give you more time to do?” By that calculation, most would agree that having more time for Torah learning and doing mitzvot is a net benefit.
“The value of a rabbi in 2026 is to be with his congregants,” says Rabbi Penner. “[Congregants] can find a thousand shiurim to listen to online, but no one else can sit and be with them in their time of need. That’s the rabbi’s most essential function.” If a rabbi can make use of AI tools to do his desk jobs more efficiently and thereby spend more time away from the computer and with his congregants, that’s ideal.
Rabbi Penner shares a scenario that could be all-too-familiar to any shul rabbi: “He has to run to the hospital to be with someone in crisis, but he had planned to use that time to prepare a devar Torah for sheva berachot that evening. So he should use AI to get started on the devar Torah and get over to the hospital. Yes, he’ll still have to fine-tune the devar Torah and check every source, but he’ll be able to be where he is needed.”
“Shul rabbis undertake an enormous number of varied tasks,” says Rabbi Penner. “The rabbi wants to teach and to be there for everyone, but we need to be realistic about how many things he can stay on top of. At the end of the day, with the help of AI, we can be better rabbis.”
Rabbi Penner and Rabbi Student are working together to build a series of AI prompts to help rabbis keep up with their long-term pastoral care responsibilities. Using Gemini, for example, one could automate reminders for common situations.
“Let’s say Mr. Schwartz is sitting shivah this week,” Rabbi Student explains. “AI tools can mark your calendar with reminders to arrange a daily Shacharit minyan at his house, call him every other day, and reach out to him in advance of the sheloshim.”
Despite the adoption of new technology tools by their clergy, Rabbi Student says that no one need be concerned that their rabbi will be replaced by AI. Not only is much of their work done on Shabbat and yom tov, but their pastoral role—comforting, guiding and celebrating—cannot be automated. “AI cannot replace a human being,” he says. “And it certainly cannot replace a rabbi.”
Rachel Schwartzberg is a writer and editor who lives with her family in Memphis, Tennessee.
In This Section
Torah in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
How to Use AI (And How Not to Use It) by Dr. Moshe Koppel
When Rabbis Meet AI by Rachel Schwartzberg
AI in Medicine: Halachic Reflections on Emerging Challenges by Rabbi Dr. Jason Weiner
Spotify for Shiurim? The OU’s AI-Powered App Provides Customized Torah Learning by Sandy Eller