Artificial intelligence keeps asking Judaism an old question in a new way: Who gets to answer?
Last year, I wrote about whether AI might someday replace rabbis. My conclusion was fairly clear. No matter how sophisticated these tools become, they lack the depth, context and human relationship that sit at the heart of Jewish life. But as AI continues to evolve, a more interesting question has emerged. If these tools are not replacements, what are they becoming instead?
One possible answer is JewPT, a new free AI assistant designed specifically for Jewish textual learning that was created by Jonathan Gugenheim, who lives and works in London in the FinTech industry. JewPT bills itself not as an “AI rabbi” but as a study partner (chevruta in Hebrew) for exploring Torah, Talmud and Jewish wisdom. The distinction is not just semantic. It sits at the center of an increasingly urgent conversation about authority, transparency and ethics in Jewish-facing technology.
The idea for JewPT did not come from a think tank or a synagogue boardroom. It began at home. Jonathan told me the project started when his girlfriend began her conversion journey.
Like many people entering Jewish life, she had questions. Lots of them. Each answer led to three more, in classic Jewish fashion. Some were simple. Others felt too basic or too vulnerable to bring directly to a rabbi. He realized there was no easy place for those questions to land.
