The Golem in the Schoolhouse
by Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer
In the late sixteenth century, the Jewish community of Prague lived in an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear of persecution. According to legend, the community's leader, Rabbi Judah Loew — known as the Maharal — sought to protect his people by bringing a powerful human-like being into existence.
Rabbi Loew formed the creature from clay, based on ancient mystical teachings; some versions explain that he wrote the Hebrew word emet — truth — on its forehead. This being became known as the Golem. The Golem guarded Jewish homes and protected people from violence. It was strong, and its mandate was clear.
But eventually, the Golem began to spin out of control. It ran amok, causing fear, confusion and harm. The Golem, once a savior, became a source of danger.
Reluctantly, Rabbi Loew chose to flip the switch. By erasing the aleph, the first letter of emet (truth), he was left with met: dead.
In an age of increasingly capable machines, how do we engage fully in the human experience of teaching and learning?
Jewish writers have connected the Golem narrative with another powerful human creation: Artificial Intelligence. It isn't difficult to understand why. Both are miraculous and frightening. AI, like the Golem, is an intensely capable human creation. And, like the Golem, it raises questions about responsibility, truth, human agency and human uniqueness.
But the metaphor only takes us so far. Unlike Rabbi Loew, we cannot just “erase the aleph”.
AI is here. Our students already live and work in a world shaped by it. Our questions cannot simply be how do we make AI go away? How do we control it? Rather, let’s ask: In an age of increasingly capable machines, how do we engage fully in the human experience of teaching and learning?
At the heart of this question is product versus process. A machine can remove the experience of learning. But our mandate as educators is not exclusively about arriving at answers. We strive to develop people — their independence, judgment, curiosity, responsibility, creativity and capacity to think. As AI becomes ever more capable, human effort becomes ever more important.
So how do we find our way? We need a compass — one rooted in three distinctly human practices: wisdom, wondering and wrestling.
Wisdom: Know Your Core
Hold fast to instruction; do not let go. (Proverbs 4:13)
החזק במוסר אל-תרף
What is unalterably at your core? What values, mission, vision and purpose define your school, fuel you every day, guide your steps?
Start there. Hold fast to the unchanging pieces of your school’s identity. Before we ask what AI can do, we need to know what we are trying to do. Part of our work is guiding students to carry their own compass -- one that will help them navigate AI challenges every day. The most useful questions are not simply “Can I use AI?” or “Is this cheating?” but rather: What am I trying to learn? What am I gaining — and what might I be giving up? Is this helping me grow?
Wonder: Stay Open
A listening heart. (I Kings 3:9)
לב שומע
AI invites us to approach innovation with openness, curiosity, and wonder. Not to embrace every new tool, but not to reject it, either. It beckons us to experiment, ask questions, listen, and reflect —to make intentional and informed choices about its place in our schools. That’s a real challenge against the backdrop of daily-changing technology. But there’s something exciting here, too: the chance to explore, to be surprised, to change our minds, and to experience the joy of learning something new ourselves.
Wrestling: Challenges Lead to Growth
Turn it over and turn it over again.
(Pirkei Avot 5:22)
הפך בה והפך בה
Let’s resist easy answers -- and easy binaries. The most important questions about AI are rarely as simple as good or bad, allowed or prohibited, cheating or not cheating. They involve competing values: efficiency and productive struggle; assistance and independence; capability and responsibility. Our students need more than rules. They need opportunities to identify those tensions, sit with discomfort, and wrestle with them. Our work is developing their judgment, and helping them realize that this conversation is never complete. The goal is not to eliminate the tension. It is to learn how to navigate it.
Which brings us back to the Golem. Its downfall came because it lacked judgment. Our task as educators is to develop what power alone cannot provide: judgment, responsibility, purpose, and wisdom. And most importantly: love of learning.
Perhaps a deep danger, then, is not that our machines will become increasingly human-like. The danger is the inverse: that we will begin to understand humans as increasingly machine-like — valuing speed over struggle, efficiency over encounter, and output over growth. But our tradition is clear: do not be fueled by fear. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote in From Optimism to Hope:
Ours is a very future-oriented religion. We are not afraid of new technologies. Religion doesn't mean living in the past, it means living with the past — taking the message of our ancient scrolls with us as we journey into the undiscovered country called the future.
The eternal question remains: What is learning for? We do not have to choose between the wisdom of the past and the possibilities of the future. We can hold fast to one while approaching the other with wonder — and wrestle thoughtfully with what happens when they meet. AI will continue to change what our students can do. Our work is to keep asking what we want their learning to do for them.
Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer is Division 11-12 Rabbi at Milken Community School, where she guides spiritual life, Jewish learning, and student leadership. She teaches a course on Jewish Ethics and supports Milken’s Beit AI initiative, exploring how Jewish values can guide emerging technology in education. Outside of Milken, she has mentored emerging rabbis for more than two decades and is co-author of the book A Day Apart: Shabbat at Home.
