AI, Halakhic Decision Making, and Torah Education
Rabbi Jonathan Ziring
Rabbi Jonathan Ziring is a Ram and the Educational Coordinator at Yeshivat Migdal HaTorah. Rabbi Ziring received semichah from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University. He also received an MA in Jewish Philosophy from Bernard Revel Graduate School and a BA from the Honors Program at the Yeshiva College of Yeshiva University.
Rabbi Ziring studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion and continued his learning there as a member of the Kollel Gavoah. He was also a fellow at the Tikvah Fund and Center for Modern Torah Leadership’s Summer Beit Midrash. Rabbi Ziring has previously served as Sgan Rosh Kollel of the Yeshiva University Torah miTzion Beit Midrash Zichron Dov and as the Rabbinic Assistant of BAYT in Toronto. He has taught in many contexts in the US, Canada and Israel, focusing particularly on the Halakhic Process.
All new technologies force us to ask how Torah can respond to, or shape the development of, such changes. Artificial Intelligence, especially generative AI, has raised many new questions, both moral and practical, and a language must be found to frame these issues religiously. In this course we will focus on how AI changes the way we think about halakhic decision making and the goals of education, especially when AI can seemingly do many of the things previously done by human beings.