Each year, the High Holidays invite us into a practice of reexamination – an opportunity to begin again, to renew, and to recalibrate. We take a magnifying glass to the past year and consider opportunities to advance. We identify the mistakes of our previous selves and commit to being better versions of ourselves, to surpassing. 

The seeds of school-wide innovation are so often planted by our children, and Beit AI is no exception.  It was from conversations with and observations of our students that we first felt the seismic shift of AI, and it was from our students that we understood early on that we had two distinct choices when it came to generative AI: We could embrace it or we could resist it. Most schools, at the time, were doing the latter.

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.

Every year, the High Holidays arrive as a kind of interruption — a pause built into the calendar that asks us to slow down before we speed up again. This year, I'm especially grateful for that interruption, because the conversation around AI in education and college admissions has moved fast, and speed is not always the same thing as clarity.