opinion
An 1859 Fight Over How to Make Matzah
Has Lessons About the Threat of AI Today
David Zvi Kalman
pexels / Cottonbro Studios
I n the last few months, the world has been dazzled
by an astonishing sequence of AI systems capable
of performing all kinds of difficult tasks — writing
code, composing poetry, generating artwork, passing
exams — with a level of competence that rivals or
exceeds what humans can do.

The existence of these AIs has prompted all manner
of soul-searching about the nature of humanity. It has
also made many people wonder which human tasks
are about to be taken over by machines.

The capabilities of these AIs are new and
revolutionary, but the story of machines taking over
human jobs is not. In Jewish history, the most important
story of that transition has to do with matzah, and it’s a
story that carries important lessons for the present day.

Starting 164 years ago, dozens of European rabbis
engaged in a furious debate that would not be fully
resolved until the beginning of the 20th century. Matzah,
which for millennia had been made by human hands
per the narrow constraints of Jewish law, could now
be processed with a series of machines that promised
huge savings of time and money. As town after town
adopted these machines, opposition began to rise, until
it exploded in 1859 with the publication of “An Alert for
Israel,” a collection of letters from prestigious rabbis
who adamantly argued that for anyone interested in
following the laws of Passover a matzah made with a
machine was no better than a loaf of bread.

The arguments for this position were many, but all will
sound familiar to anyone following the AI conversation.

Like today, some objected to the machines just
because they were new and different, but most had
more specific concerns. First, there was the matter of
lost jobs. In many parts of Europe, matzah was made by
the poorest members of society, who were given the
job to help them raise money before one of the most
cost-intensive holidays of the year. Ceding this job to
machines would take work from those who could least
afford it.

Beyond economics, there was concern that the
machines just weren’t as reliable as people, especially
given the rules around matzah-making outlined in
Jewish law. What if bits of dough got trapped in the
gears, quietly leavening for hours and unknowingly
ruining whole batches of matzah in the process? What
if the trays warmed the dough too fast? Without proper
oversight, how could you trust your own food?
Finally, some objected to the loss of a literal human
touch. Jewish law stated that matzah was supposed
16 APRIL 6, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
to be made by people who knew they were baking
matzah. A machine, no matter how sophisticated,
didn’t “know” anything. How could you eat matzah on
Passover knowing that this most important food was
made by a mindless machine?
The responses didn’t take long to arrive. “A
Cancellation of the Alert,” a collection published the
very same year, forcefully argued that machine matzah
was perfectly fine — and possibly even better than the
human product. No, inventions aren’t inherently bad.

No, the machines wouldn’t harm the poor, because the
machines made matzah less expensive for everyone.

No, the machines weren’t prone to error — and they
certainly weren’t more error-prone than lazy, careless
humans. No, the machines didn’t know what they were
doing, but the people who built them did, and wasn’t
that enough?
The machines eventually won, but then something
happened that I don’t think either side anticipated. With
Manischewitz’s machine matzahs claiming most of the
American market by the early 20th century, it was now
the handmade matzah makers who were on the back
foot; it was they and not the machines who needed to
demonstrate that they were up to the difficult task of
preparing this food with the efficiency and reliability of
the machines.

The result is more than a little tragic. Matzah is the
Jewish food with the deepest origins of all — deeper
than brisket, deeper than latkes, deeper even than
challah — and yet it is the ritual food most likely to be
picked up at the supermarket and least likely to be
made at home. While there are still communities today
that exclusively eat handmade matzah, even this job
is now largely outsourced to just a few companies
that resemble their machine-driven counterparts in
scale. While teachers will sometimes demonstrate
how to make matzah for educational purposes,
across the religious spectrum the era of locally made
matzah is over.

Even though it’s hard to imagine a simpler baked good
— matzah is just flour and water, and it’s literally illegal to
spend more than 18 minutes making it — its production
is treated as though it is only slightly less complicated
than constructing a jet engine, and people are worried
about shortages as though matzah were a natural
resource or an advanced microchip. The transition has
been so complete that we barely remember there was a
transition at all.

Did the rabbis pushing for machine matzah know
this was going to happen? Almost certainly not. The
economic impact of machine labor is relatively easy to
predict, but the psychological and cultural effects are
a lot harder. There was probably no way of knowing
how machines would change the way we thought
about matzah in the long run, but today it’s clear
that automating this ancient task has changed our
relationship to Passover’s central food — and because
the change has resulted in a lot of alienation from
matzah production, I’m not so sure it was a change for
the better.

Making matzah locally could have been a way to feel
connected to the ancient Israelites, who left Egypt so
fast that they didn’t have time to make anything else.

Instead of emulating this ad-hoc food, we optimized it
for cost and efficiency, in the process turning matzah
into just another specialty cracker on the grocery store
shelf. Was it really worth it?
It’s probably a bit much to say that OpenAI is just a
modern Manischewitz, but the parallels between the
debate about machine-generated matzah and the
present debate about machine-generated everything
are useful for considering how short-term policy
choices around AI won’t necessarily capture all of
the technology’s long-term effects on how human
beings want to spend their time. When we relinquish
an activity to an AI for economic reasons, we may
eventually come to believe that humans are no longer
qualified to do the task at all.

Then, as now, we must balance our economic needs
against our ideas about what kinds of activities make
for a good and fulfilling life. ■
David Zvi Kalman is the scholar-in-residence and
director of new media at the Shalom Hartman
Institute of North America.

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Wikimedia Commons via JNS.org
nation / world
Stanford Digitizes Thousands
of Pages of Nuremberg Trial
Documents, Available to Public
Stanford University digitized thou-
sands of pages and documents from
the International Military Tribunal at
A view of the proceedings at the
Nuremberg, which followed the defeat
Nuremberg Trials held in Germany
of the Nazis and the end of World War II
between 1945 and 1949
in 1945, JNS.org reported.

The archive is a collaboration with the library of the International Court of
Justice in The Hague. It relied on funding from Taube Philanthropies and catalog-
ing assistance from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“The idea is to present to the public, without any cost, information that is
directly derived from these trials, directly derived from the prosecution of people
who have committed crimes against humanity,” Michael Keller, a librarian at
Stanford, told NBC’s Bay Area affi liate.

The Taube Archive of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, 1945-’46,
includes a digital version of Nuremberg courtroom proceedings, fi lms, audio
recordings of the proceedings and about 250,000 pages of digitized English,
French, German and Russian documents, according to its website.

The more than 9,900 items — searchable and viewable in digital form — include
“evidence exhibits fi led by the prosecution and the defense” and “documents of
the Committee for the Investigation and Prosecution of Major War Criminals,” as
well as the judgment.

Greece Arrests 2 Men Suspected of Planning Attacks on Jewish
Sites in Athens
Greek authorities arrested two men on March 28 who were planning mass terror-
ist attacks on Jewish sites in Athens, including a Chabad outpost and a Jewish
restaurant, JTA.org reported.

The Mossad, Israel’s spy agency which contributed to the investigation, told
the Associated Press that the men, who are Pakistani nationals, are also part
of an Iranian terror network. A third man is wanted for questioning. The group
reportedly entered Greece from Turkey illegally four months ago.

“After the investigation of the suspects began in Greece, Mossad assisted in
unraveling intelligence of the infrastructure, the methods of operation, and the
connection to Iran,” the Israeli agency said in a statement.

In Greece, home to between 2,000 and 3,000 Jews, the attacks were believed
to be imminent, offi cials said, noting that the suspects “had received fi nal instruc-
tions” to carry them out. Police searched for the suspects in Athens, southern
Greece and the island of Zakynthos.

Greg Weiner Becomes First Jewish President of a US Catholic
University When he was inaugurated as Assumption University’s 17th president on March
23, Greg Weiner reportedly became the fi rst Jewish person to run a Catholic
university in the United States, JNS.org reported.

After serving in the role on an interim basis the prior year at the educational insti-
tution in Worcester, Massachusetts, he was eventually nominated for the position.

Weiner, who earned a doctorate at Georgetown University, a Jesuit school,
came to Assumption in 2011 as a professor in the political science department. In
2019, he became provost and vice president of academic aff airs.

Weiner has authored four books on U.S. politics and history. He has also
served as a non-resident senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute. He also
worked on the Hill in Washington, including as communications director and
press secretary to senators.

Raised Orthodox, he is an active member of a Conservative synagogue. His
grandparents founded an Orthodox synagogue in Florida. ■
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
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