A rabbi uses ChatGPT to navigate centuries of Jewish thought

# Faith

# Judaism

# Texas

Rabbi Andrew Bloom connects ancient Jewish teachings to modern questions about how AI should be built and governed.

For Rabbi Andrew Bloom of Fort Worth, Texas, ChatGPT serves as a study guide, helping him navigate centuries of complex Jewish texts. It also inspired the ethical framework he developed in his latest book, drawing on ancient Jewish teachings to answer some of AI’s new questions. His interest in AI began when a fellow rabbi told colleagues that he had asked ChatGPT to write a sermon and then read it to his congregation word for word. That exchange led Rabbi Bloom to dive more deeply into how AI was changing religious life. The research became Technology and Theology: How AI Is Impacting Religion, his first book about faith and AI. The book examines what AI could mean for worship, education, free will, and moral responsibility. That research also led him to a larger question: Could ancient moral principles help guide how AI is built and governed? His second book, The Ten Commandments of Ethical AI: From Mount Sinai to Silicon Valley, answers yes. Drawing on the Ten Commandments, Rabbi Bloom proposes what he calls a “moral architecture” for AI, with human dignity, accountability, transparency, privacy, and human oversight built in from the beginning. “Ethics should be part of the foundation, not an afterthought,” he says. In his own study, Rabbi Bloom built a customized guide in ChatGPT that can surface commentaries from Rashi, Maimonides, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. He uses it to find relevant sources, checks the original texts, and then does the deeper research and writing himself. The result is less time spent searching and more time spent thinking. Rabbi Bloom, who has led Congregation Ahavath Sholom in Fort Worth for 15 years, draws on a background unusual for a pulpit rabbi. In addition to his ordination, he has postgraduate certifications in cybersecurity from UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business and in AI strategy and governance from Wharton. He also has a personal connection to the technology: his son Daniel works at OpenAI, though Rabbi Bloom is quick to note that he experiments with a wide variety of AI models. He is working to turn this framework into an interfaith effort. Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, argues that AI cannot be treated as morally neutral and must respect human dignity and serve the common good. Rabbi Bloom sees strong overlap with his own work. Through his local bishop, he has sent the Vatican a proposal for Jewish and Catholic leaders to collaborate on shared standards for ethical AI. He is equally clear about the boundary. ChatGPT can help locate sources, compare interpretations, and prepare someone to ask better questions. It cannot know the whole person, supply human judgment, or replace a rabbi, a human study partner, or a faith community. He tells people to ask for sources and verify them. “AI needs to be a tool in the toolbox,” he says, “and not all the tools and the toolbox itself.”