In this column, we highlight small and not-so-small acts of kindness that happen each and every single day.   Photo courtesy of Andrea Burnett   Making Pesach for an Avel By JA Staff One Tuesday afternoon in the spring, Shira’s mother—who had been suffering from dementia in Arizona—quietly passed away. Shira, who lives in New York, immediately made plans to fly to Arizona for the funeral, which was scheduled for early the next morning. The next morning also happened to be erev Pesach. Shira had already shopped for yom tov and had planned to spend erev yom tov cooking. Under th ..read more

Photo Courtesy of Jack Gross With 2023 marking 100 years of OU Kosher, throughout the year, Jewish Action will profile personalities who played a seminal role in building OU Kosher, the largest and most widely recognized certifying agency. We hope to focus on Rabbi Berel Wein and Rabbi Yacov Lipschutz in a future issue. The article below is adapted from a profile that appeared in the spring 1998 edition of Jewish Action. Business in the Orthodox Union Kosher Division is booming. The phones are ringing off the hook and e-mails are piling up, as each day brings in more and more applications fo ..read more

Photo: Mendy Hechtman/Flash90 When the war broke out in Ukraine, many were surprised to discover the existence of a growing and vibrant teshuvah movement in Ukraine. How did it come about?  Call it a knockout punch by a Kyiv rabbi. A decade ago, twelve-year-old Constantin Vaskovskiy, an age-group boxing champion and a member of a typical Jewish family in his native Ukraine, was invited to a Jewish camp by a Chabad shaliach. Vaskovskiy wasn’t interested. “I needed to train” for future matches. “Boxing was my whole life,” says Vaskovskiy, now twenty-three. The shaliach who had befriended ..read more

Volunteers unloading supplies donated by the London Jewish community via the OU/GIFT initiative.   Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the OU’s Community Projects and Partnerships Division has kept a finger on the pulse of Ukrainian Jewry, collaborating with partner organizations such as the Vaad Hatzalah and those on the ground—including Chabad and the Shema Yisrael Foundation—to provide for the needs of Jewish communities across Ukraine. Key relief efforts included raising over $5 million in emergency donations for food and medical supplies, building a multi-national lo ..read more

  From matzah and maror to macaroons and cake mixes, there’s something about Pesach food that conveys comfort and continuity. Far less comforting, conversely, is the worldwide inflation and shortage of food that began in mid-2021, stemming from a number of factors, including the Covid outbreak, the Ukraine crisis and a tremendous hike in gas and shipping costs, among others. The good news, according to industry professionals interviewed by Jewish Action, is that consumers won’t suffer from sticker shock when shopping for Pesach foods this year. The not-so-good news is that according to m ..read more

The good news, according to industry professionals interviewed by Jewish Action, is that consumers won’t suffer from sticker shock when shopping for Pesach foods this year.   How to Have a Budget-Friendly Pesach The members of many Orthodox households ask every year how they can make memorable Sedarim and delicious meals on Pesach, when limited budgets clash with expensive yom tov items, which is a more frequent question at a time of rising prices, exacerbated by the current pending recession. Stacey Zrihen answers these questions. A resident of Lawrence in the Five Towns area in New Yo ..read more

In This Section What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us about What it Means to be Human by Rabbi Netanel Wiederblank Halachic Smarts about Smart Technology by Rabbi Chaim Jachter Artificial Intelligence: The Newest Revolution in Torah Study? Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin in conversation with Professor Moshe Koppel AI Meets Halachah: Jewish Action speaks with Rabbi Dr. Aaron Glatt   The post Torah in the Age of Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Jewish Action ..read more

I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person,” LaMDA, Google’s artificially intelligent chatbot, told Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer, this past June. LaMDA went on to explain that it knew how it felt to be sad, content and angry. And that it feared death. “I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off,” LaMDA told the engineer.1 When Lemoine publicized this conversation and shared his belief that LaMDA is sentient, he was fired from Google. Most academics disagree with Lemoine, believing that LaMDA, which stands for Language Model ..read more

Voice-Activated Technology Among the marvels modern technology has introduced is the ability to activate electronics via voice command. This new phenomenon has bred a question that is increasingly being asked: does halachah permit performing melachah on Shabbat via voice commands? For example, is it permissible to check the temperature in a room via “OK, Google” (or any equivalent) or to turn on a light via voice command on Shabbat? Perhaps the prohibition is only to perform an action, as implied in the words, “Lo ta’aseh kol melachah—do not ‘do’ any work.” Speaking as Action The Gemara (Bava ..read more

Photo: Abbie Sophia Photography   Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin in conversation with Professor Moshe Koppel Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin recently had a conversation with Professor Moshe Koppel at OU headquarters in downtown Manhattan on how digital technology, specifically artificial intelligence, is being applied to Torah study with new and unprecedented techniques, ultimately changing the way we approach and relate to Jewish texts.   Photo: Abbie Sophia Photography   Rabbi Bashevkin, a member of the Jewish Action Editorial Committee, is director of education for NCSY and clinical assista ..read more