AI in yeshivas and Jewish day schools

Most published guidance on AI in schools was written for a context that assumes a school's only content concern is age-appropriateness. That guidance is not useless here, but it does not address the questions that actually get asked in a yeshiva or day school.

Those questions are usually four.

1. Will it put things in front of talmidim that should not be there?

This is the first question and the one that decides everything else. A general-purpose assistant applies its vendor's safety policy: it refuses what a large company considers harmful, and permits an enormous amount that a frum school would not want raised with its talmidim.

The practical distinction is between a tool with a fixed policy and a tool where the school writes the policy. Only the second can be aligned with a particular kehilla's standards, because only the second is asking.

It is worth checking that the standard applies to every tool. Filters are usually built for text first; a talmid blocked from discussing a subject in chat who can generate an image of it has found the gap without trying.

2. Is this bittul zman?

Sometimes, plainly. A tool that answers instantly invites aimless use, and a phone in a pocket during seder is a problem whatever is on it.

But the same tool used to clarify a difficult Tosfos, to check a translation, or to generate practice questions before a bechina is the opposite of bittul zman. The question is not the tool, it is whether its use is directed.

This is where time controls earn their place — not as a punishment, but so the tool is available during the hours it is meant to be used and not during the hours it is not. A control that a school can actually set, and that follows the talmid home, is worth more than an instruction that relies on self-discipline at 11pm.

3. What about limmudei kodesh specifically?

Here caution is warranted, and it should be said plainly: a language model is not a posek and is not a reliable source for halacha. It will produce a fluent, confident, and sometimes wrong answer, including inventing sources that do not exist. A talmid who takes a machine's answer as a psak has been badly served.

The defensible uses are narrower and real: translation help, unpacking a difficult passage in one's own words, generating questions to test one's own understanding, organising notes. The line worth teaching is that the model can help you understand what you are reading, and cannot tell you what the halacha is.

Any school permitting AI should say this explicitly, because students will not infer it. Fluency reads as authority.

4. If we ban it, are we solving anything?

A ban is honest about the school's position and it is worth something. But talmidim have phones and older brothers with laptops, and a ban's measurable effect is usually that use moves out of view rather than stopping.

There is also a cost that is easy to miss. Students who leave without ever having used these tools in a supervised setting will encounter them anyway, in a workplace or a seminary, with nobody having taught them where the tool is unreliable or where it is inappropriate. A school that permits a filtered tool and teaches its limits is doing more for its talmidim than one that says nothing.

The choice is rarely between AI and no AI. It is between AI a school has shaped and AI it has not seen.

A workable position

• Permit one tool where the school writes the content standard, rather than accepting a vendor's default.
• Confirm the standard covers images and video, not only chat.
• Use time windows so the tool is available when it should be and not during seder or late at night.
• State explicitly that it is not a source for halacha, and why.
• Tell parents what the school has permitted. A parent who knows there is a filtered option is less likely to hand over an unfiltered one.